fern's

Production design / The Danish girl

Since the oscars has been the top hot topic currently, it seems such a  not to talk about stunning beautifully-made movies that had been nominated this year. Besides the incredible fact that Leonardo DiCaprio (finally) won an oscars for best male actor, I have found another category interesting which is production design. It is fascinating to know that this kind of design is really important and influential to enhance the movies and also to make the scenes more engaging and realistic. In the oscars, there are five movies nominated, and Mad Max: Fury Road won the award. However, amongst the five nominees, The Danish Girl seems to interest me the most in terms of the content, costumes, actors and decorations etc.

The Danish Girl is about the two married painters, Gerda and Einar Wegener. This movie is based on a true story, showing Einar’s transition to a woman and how he had to struggle with the physical and emotional issues, also with the acceptance from others. The film took audience way back to the late 1920’s and the production designer, Eve Stewart, had done an fantastic job for bringing us back and feel like we are actually there with the characters.

Eve Stewart, the oscars-nominated production designer, has done a really good job setting up the scenes, it is basically a masterpiece. Her work is to take care of the visual elements of the film, to make it stick with the theme. According to the interview between Jezebel and Eve Stewart, this talented designer told us about how she came up with the theme colours and more. The research is really important when it comes to making a film alive and to engage with the audience, in order to make it look as realistic and alive as possible, Stewart did plenty of research about their lives of the character, since it is based on an actual event.

Einar and Gerda’s art was a crucial influence. “The art was like going through the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland,” Stewart says. “That was the way into the design.” (Stewart’s interview for Architectural Digest)

To make it even more visually immersed, Eve Stewart went to the actual apartment two painters lived and actually shoot there. Further in the film, Eve said that the art by Einar and Gerda was really influential. She also made the Gerda’s art of Einar dressing like a woman to show how Einar was as a woman. The whole movie is basically about Einar’s journey as a transgender and Stewart had done a great, fantastic job telling the story. Also, throughout movie, not only the actors’ brilliant performances that make me believe in story but also the production designer that bring me into it and feel attached to the film.

Overall, this movie includes plenty of good shots and performance. Additionally, I have found how powerful and influential the production design can be to a film. To get into details of what the designers do to make the movie best, it is fascinating that these little details, such as clothing, colours, and locations, these can make the whole thing a lot better.

 

All about prompt, brief & aims

Media and filmmaking has always been one of my favourite things in this world besides graphic design and music. As I’ve been studying for almost a year already, I have learnt that filmmaking isn’t only shooting great shots and telling interesting stories to other people. Filmmaking also involves writing scripts, cinematography, making it engaging, editing videos, acting etc. It’s always been interesting for me to know media can be really effective, for instance, Leonardo DiCaprio talked about climate change in his speech after (finally) winning the best actor oscars award. This showed me that media gives people opportunities to send messages to the world of what’s going on and people actually took it seriously.

I hope this course will enhance my skills such as writing, brainstorming and shooting and editing videos. I want to learn more about what’s behind the screen and how they make such great and fascinating movies and documentaries. Unfortunately, I do not have much experience in this kind of industry, however, I am always interested in media, so I hope this course will improve my skills and lead me to a clearer view of what media actually is. Furthermore, I hope I will not only appreciate the process but also enjoy and cherish the process. It is apparent that media is one of the greatest ways to deliver messages, therefore, I hope I’ll be able to use the best out of it.

Also, hopefully, this course will bring me creative thoughts, ideas, and concept to tell good stories. It can be challenging, however, I believe that this course will lead me to know and understand better about this industry.

 

First class as a media practitioner

First class of the semester, we got the chance to practice using the camera in groups. Paul showed us several basic things we have to know when using the camera such as, the right way to carry the camera, how to use focal length, why ‘zebra’ has to be used when recording etc. I have learnt some basic things from this class, which enhanced me to understand a bit better about how film making is quite hard and complicated when it comes to things like using as camera. As I always have been interested in film making, this class brought me to my interest in cinematography. It is challenging to make the film come out not only beautiful but also giving some kind of an emotion to audience basically by movements, angles, and lightings.

After testing the camera, we had the chance to explore around the university to do some shots from human actions. Firstly, we shotted at the stairs in the building for 10 seconds each shot, then we went outside to shot actions. We found the perfect spot between two buildings, it had a little bit of lighting to make the whole video better, people walking pass the camera and everything was just on spot. Afterwards, we recorded people crossing the streets through the bars at the fence which was also a great shot.

Overall, I was glad how the shots turned out the way they did because we did not only just film something but we actually thought it through about how the camera works and how we try to use things around us to make the videos better such as lightings and angles.