Wes Anderson’s 2004 film “The Life Aquatic of Steve Zissou” provides the audience with characterisation through the use of mise-en-scene.

In particular, Anderson’s extensive use of compositional balance through centring the frame on Steve Zissou exerts his authority and leadership amongst the “Zissou team”. Emphasising this notion of a team, the members are dressed in uniform; light-blue tracksuit pants, red beanies, Adidas shoes and are given a gun to personify Zissou’s trust in them. Although the members are not consistently identical, Anderson maintains the casual attire, and accented red, yellow and blue colour palette throughout the film.

On the contrary, a neutral based colour palette are maintained in the costumes of Bill Ubell portrayed by Bud Cort and Cate Blanchett’s portrayal as the character of Jane Winslett-Richardson. This principle of contrast exhibits these characters to be non-official members of the team and reflect Zissou’s scepticism towards their motives. For instance, Blanchett’s persona as an outspoken female reporter is continuously criticised by Zissou, thus her less vibrant khaki cargo pants and neutral t-shirt or button down attire. Similarly, Cort’s character who was kidnapped by Filipino pirates and according to Zissou, is a “bond company stooge”, is dressed in khaki pants, a cream shirt, a jacket, and a plain brown tie.

Costuming also epitomises a character’s development in the film. Zissou’s nemesis Allister Hennessey’s outfits are always regal and formal, a stark contrast to Zissou’s casual and laid back persona. However, as Hennessey is saved by Zissou from the pirates, he dresses casually and eventually like Zissou and his team to symbolise his gratitude and trust in Zissou.

Ultimately, Anderson’s use of costuming allows the audience to depict the entire film through Steve Zissou’s perspective.

The struggle to answer some these of questions allowed me to re-analyse the structure of my interview and question the purpose of every frame and idea within the portrait. Is there a certain way I want my mum to be perceived? Is this “controlling idea” consistent throughout the interview?

What is the “controlling idea” (Robert McKee) of your portrait?

The “controlling idea” of Beyond Healing is breaking the common misconceptions about the nursing industry and my mum’s reflection in building her career as a nurse and teacher.

How is your portrait film structured?

Narration is provided through a voice-over while the narrative structure circulates from how she never thought of being a nurse due to the common misconceptions in nursing and then concluding on the rewarding experience nursing and teaching has given her.

What do you want your audience to make of your interviewee?

My aim is for the audience to reflect on how they’re beyond their occupation in determining their happiness and self-fulfilment. Furthermore, I want the audience to empathise with my mum when it comes to building their career and

How is your portrait being narrated?

Narration is provided through voice-over while the visual can sometimes contrast to the narration in order to evoke a sense of depth and a personal attachment.

What role will the “found footage” play in the portrait?

Filming at my mum’s workplace was unlikely. Therefore, I purposely used vintage found footage as a means of representing how primitive and ignorant the superficial ideas are and how they’re unnecessary judgements in this day and age. It also shows how the nursing industry has progressed overtime; from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Does your portrait have a dramatic turning point?

No, since the portrait is more of a reflection and informative piece.

When does this turning point happen in your portrait and why?

Not applicable

How does your portrait gather and maintain momentum?

It maintains a slow, consistent pace that imitates the reflective narration my mum provides with the help of dissolves and pans.

Where will your portrait’s dramatic tension come from?

Dramatic tension situates within the found footage as my mum elaborates on the common misconceptions in nursing.

Does the portrait have a climax and/or resolution?

I would consider the climax to be apparent as soon as she explains her reason for continuing nursing while the resolution occurs when she realises how it’s a rewarding experience for her as she reads through the cards.

Beyond Healing focuses on Norma Salvador’s journey of being a nurse for over twenty-seven years. In reference to the lectorial on Monday, Project Brief Three did become a bitter-sweet task. From the beginning, my mum Norma was the subject I wanted to interview, however collating and realistically filming her as a nurse in practice was the ultimate challenge. My sole focus was on nursing and upon pre-production and producing open-ended questions, I realised that this “sole” focus was an extensively broad one.

To narrow it down, I asked myself; what prompted me to interview her in the first place? It was ultimately the curiosity of how nurses can be the subject of prejudice and misconceptions. My mum’s own experience was vital in providing a personal connection with the audience. Re-watching the film, my questions could’ve been a bit more specific and more of my mum expanding her answer from those questions.

Through the use of voice-over, Norma was comfortable and more fluent in her responses, and became beneficial towards the pacing of the narrative. The phrase “I didn’t want to be a nurse at first” became the bookending of the interview. It juxtaposed the photographs of her graduation at the beginning and, likewise, as insert shots of the Thank You cards concluded the film. I never actually realised this many aspects in creating a portrait.

Essentially, Beyond Healing is broken in sections. Firstly, the photographs of her graduation serve to the cement the foundation of her career and the interview itself. I then move onto recognising the common misconceptions that nurse face on a regular basis.

I purposely used vintage found footage as a means of representing how primitive and ignorant these ideas are and how they’re unnecessary judgements in this day and age. It also shows how the nursing industry has progressed overtime; from the 1950s to the 1970s.

The next section extends on the matter of witnessing life and death, and how to deal with this heavy subject on an emotional perspective. Visually, I decided to highlight the physical affects it could have; the apparent eye bags on her eyes and the wrinkles on her hands.

The next section, contrasts the previous by asking why she continues to pursue this occupation and establishes the personal tone again. Concluding with her reading through her Thank You cards serves to provide the audience with the message that it’s not the title of your occupation but what you do in life that determines your happiness and could end up being a rewarding experience. As the title suggests, nursing is more than taking care of a patient.

Insert shots and close-ups were extensive throughout the film in order to create an intimate and emotional connection with the audience. In conjunction to this, is the use of cross dissolves for reflective and nostalgic purposes.

The bitter sweetness I experienced throughout this project brief broadened my development as a media practitioner. It’s crucial to have a focal point in an interview and then expand on that idea or else you’ll lose control, discovering the power in the relationship between sound and visual, and the benefits of planning ahead.

How can I condense my holiday video within a short amount of time?

The first few weeks of 2016 involved soaking in the Europe and Dubai winter breeze. Other than enjoying the holiday itself, I wanted to find a way to reminisce on the trip through a short length video, rather than procrastinating on flicking through over a thousand photos once I returned to reality (for my own sanity). Ultimately, this burst of motivation originated through my acceptance into the RMIT Media course, and partially because I wanted to also reignite my creativity and refresh my post-production skills.

So I ponder on how can I actually condense my holiday video within a short amount of time? That’s when I realised that my main focus was the visual aspect itself. A lot of thoughts can occur during a sixteen-plus hour flight. One of those happen to be having the subject doing a simple movement while everything else in the background changes. I drag my brother to be the subject and basically having a static shot of him walking forwards.

Through post-production I realised the importance of a tripod and lighting. It became a tedious task in which I would use the “motion” setting in the effects control section to give the illusion of him walking in a consistent straight line. Like a photograph, I would analyse each frame to ensure that flows well with the next through the use of symmetry (ensuring he was the centre for each frame). As I replay the video, I recognised how the lighting differs in certain frames that even colour grading wouldn’t fix it, and how the position of his backpack changes. These factors contribute to not getting that full illusion. Next time, I wish to recreate this video with improving these factors. Maybe across a different continent this time?

Our eyes can be deceived through trickery and optical illusions. Below are a series of photographs and (photos of) paintings. Are you able to identify whether they are the former or the latter?

A

B

C

D

E

Answers

A

Photographer for the National Geographic magazine, Frans Lanting captured this photograph in Dead Vlei, Namibia. According to Lanting, this painting illusion is due to “the intensity of the sunlight falling only on the dune in the distance, while the foreground is still in early morning shadow, so the trees are almost in silhouette”. The 12,000 feet tall dune against the vivid reddish-orange colour further contributes to the illusion.

http://www.sunnyskyz.com/happy-pictures/1347/This-is-not-a-painting-This-is-the-Namib-desert

B

Hyperrealist painter, Pedro Campos produces realistic still life shots through the use of oil paint. Hot Day III presents intricate details, illusion of light and blending of harsh lines produce the illusion of an image. At 46 years-old, Campos only began oil painting at 30 years-old!

15 Unbelievable Paintings That Look Like Photographs

C

Alyssia Monk employs oil paint to “distort the body in shallow painted spaces”. Through heavy paint strokes and immense attention to colour, Monk creates a convincing glass, steam, water and woman from afar. However, the strokes from the paintbrush become obvious up close.

Alyssa Monks – Figurative Realism Oil Painting

D

Alexa Meades photographs her representational painting that’s on a real-life subject. Her manipulation of three dimensional space becomes an optical illusion of a two dimensional painting.

http://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/alexa_meades_photographs_that_look_like_paintings/

E

A finger-painted portrait of the great Morgan Freeman. See for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEdRLlqdgA4

http://planet1051.com/amazing-ipad-finger-painting-looks-like-a-photograph-of-morgan-freeman-video/

Semiotics: the study of signs and symbols and their practice within interpretations.

Monday’s lectorial focused on this central study of semiotics and its contribution towards different interpretations according to four main factors:

Culture

Country

Experiences

Beliefs

This further distinguishes connotative / associative meanings from the literal / denotative meanings. In order to grasp this broad concept of textual analysis, we were to analyse a Brook’s Brothers’ advertisement as an example “text” through a range of signs, denotative meanings, connotative meanings and codes. Below I replicate this activity through a Farage advertisement featured in GQ magazine.

http://www.farage.com.au/publication/gq-septemberoctober-2013/

To objectively sum up the photograph’s message/story/meaning, it’s a man adjusting his suit outside.

The tailored suit could denotatively advocates a dress code or uniform but also connotatively suggests his occupation in the white collar industry. Possibly in a highly professional position by the tie clip and deliberate placing of the handkerchief. Since the obvious colour palette is blue, it is thus associated to a male target audience.

One may also interpret this man to be dressed for a wedding or formal occasion due to the employment of naturalistic lighting and the presence of an architecturally “exotic” building/object in the background. Moreover, his clean cut hair, cleanly shaved moustache and along good looks is emphasised with him in the centre of the image with the trees and (presumed) building in the background.

His European ethnicity is associated with the brand itself and implies high quality clothing for men while his youthfulness and the addition of the website targets a young-adult demographic. The simplistic “Farage” title further highlights the male subject and it’s placement on the man himself in the centre. Its simple font, the fact that it features in GQ magazine and high quality formalwear extends to middle to upper class customers.

Okay, so this week’s Looking at Photographs reading on photography made me realise how much I need to broaden my vocabulary. It was such a dense reading but a number of points I’ve found related to my current understanding of semiotics.

According to Victor Burgin, semiotics identifies “no ‘language’ of photography, no signifying system” but rather, “a heterogeneous complex of codes upon which photography may draw”. In other words, an image is open to interpretation if it weren’t bound by a caption or title. An interpretation that is instead, bound by their own experience and what makes sense to themselves.

Photography is also the middle of the spectrum between a painting and film. To differentiate between the mediums is to know that photographs are “offer themselves gratuitously”. If I were to mix photography with film, it would be considered experimental film. For instance, La Jetee’s use of audio, transitions and still images.

http://www.brixpicks.com/la-jetee-a-17810.html

Chris Marker’s experimental, science fiction film La Jetee (1962) perpetuates the perception of time lapse and movement from the point of view of the two main characters. The photographs are devised to trap the audience into the stillness of the images in order to empathise with the characters of the film that are trapped in time itself. With the use of transitions and subtle live action footage, La Jetee focuses on the narrative convention of time travel in order to explore dimensions of the human psyche and condition. Even though photographs are “received… as an environment”, the images are structured in a narrative order by the director (with the help of audio) so that the audience consumes a particular story and message. This however, still allows the audience to interpret the content they consume from a narrative perspective.

Nearly six weeks in and I’ve “survived” university.

Louise introduced us to the Sony MC50 video camera as part of our preparation for Project Brief Three. In a group of three, we were to take turns in interviewing our two peers on how to survive six weeks of university. Since time wasn’t on our side, twenty minutes was all we had to establish and isolate ourselves to a quiet location, set up our tripod, rotate from interviewer to interviewee and export the footage from SD card to computer.

What I enjoy about using the Sony MC50 video camera is the smoothness it has when recording footage. Compared to filming handheld on a DSLR, the Sony MC50 didn’t have any sort of “shakiness” or sensitivity that the DSLR tends to have. The only worry I have when using the Sony MC50, is the menu itself with its infinite options that it becomes time consuming when finding what you particularly want, especially using manual settings for focussing and exposure.

Surviving Uni focuses on one aspect that a majority both students and staff dread the most; 8:30am lectures and tutorials. Unfortunately, a few required shots were missing such as a reaction shot of the interviewer but I focused mainly on expanding on the relationship of audio and visuals from an interviewee’s answers.
Anyway, enjoy!

P.S. I apologise for the poor quality. Premiere Pro was lagging on me for some reason and I have no idea why YouTube uploaded it this way (Need to research and work on that).

http://giphy.com/search/holy-motors

Leos Carax’s 2012 film Holy Motors features an avant-garde form and genre fluidity that stays true to the art of film. Carax’s extensive use of paradoxes and symbolism criticises the modern yet “dying” medium of film.

At the beginning of the film, the mise-en-scene consisting of a low angled shot of a man on the balcony of a movie theatre overlooking an audience watching a film is a meta-narrative in itself. Meta in the way that I was watching a man observing movie-goers watching a film. The man exemplifies the importance of isolating oneself from the overused, regulated and recycled concepts in films.

Moreover, Carax’s relies on juxtaposing in order to subvert audience’s expectations. Towards the beginning of the film, the audience assumes that Denis Laurent’s character is an affluent, white-collar worker through his tailored suit, white limo, Celine as a professionally dressed chauffeur and the constant referral to “appointments”. As soon as the back of the limo transforms into a dressing room, so does Mr Oscar’s appearance into a homeless person. In conjunction with the sudden switch from a white collar worker to a homeless person, Mr Oscar describes himself as “alone, and they are everybody” through non-diegetic sound. This suggests that people can still feel isolated and alone despite the obvious contrast in social and economic factors.

Each “appointment” therefore represents as established narratives in film with contradictions. There’s the “anti” coming-of-age with Angele, the poignant romance with Eva Green, the science fiction interaction with the CGI aliens, the spontaneous musical number with the orchestra, the dark comedy of the “beauty and the beast” appointment and the nuclear family but with chimps.

Carvax even questions illusion from reality. The white limousine is used as a motif to epitomise Mr Oscar’s inner psyche and sense of reality. L’Homme a la tache de vin is a figment of Mr Oscar’s subconsciousness through his lack of interaction with Celine in the limousine. While communicating with L’Homme a la tache de vin, he argues that “there’s no more (eye of the) beholder” when defining beauty. Carax reiterates how people are blinded by societal trends and expectations that people conform and thus aren’t their own beholders.  Kylie Minogue’s character as she explains to Mr Oscar that her eyes are actually “Eva’s eyes” during an appointment and further reiterates how reality itself can be an “act” as we can often accept real life situations in film as reality.

Holy Motors stays true to what it conveys, as we as the audience have to think for ourselves and are left with a heap of unanswered questions. Well, that’s post-modernism for you.

Is there a common ground between Star Wars: A New Hope, 22 Jump Street, Reservoir Dogs, Looney Tunes: Back in Action, and more than two-hundred films? Yes, the use of the Wilhelm Scream sound effect.

Having started this trend in the 1970s, the sound itself originated in the 1950s. According to popular belief, actor/singer Sheb Woolley was proud of his own screaming ability that he recorded various vocals during post-production for the 1951 film Distant Drums. The visual consisted of a man leading his soldiers through a swamp until a soldier was attacked and dragged under by an alligator, thus the scream. However, the name itself “Wilhelm” wasn’t officiated until 1953 where the character Private Wilhelm is shot in the leg during a scene in The Charge at Feather River.

Sound effects designer Ben Burtt noticed this Wilhelm trend throughout various 1950s films and decided to incorporate this into every film he worked on, even the classics; Indiana Jones and Star Wars. Funnily enough, feature film directors Peter Jackson and Quentin Tarantino expanded on this fascinating scream into their blockbuster and highly acclaimed works. Suddenly, it’s become a sound effect that even independent film directors, television shows and video games embed into their art.

Still don’t believe me that there’s such a thing as an inside-joke within the cinematic world? Please take a seat, and watch this compilation below: