I wasn’t able attend the studio class in which everyone else did this writing exercise although I did at home with the same constraint of 30 minutes. I found this a useful exercise but a difficult one. My biggest problem with writing is coming up with an idea. I spent the first 10 minutes pondering about what to write about until I stumbled upon the idea of camping as I’d camped last weekend. This piece of writing could easily be adapted into a horror/thriller film which is interesting as it’s not really a genre I generally enjoy. It was the first fiction writing exercise I’ve done since Writing Media Texts in the first semester of my degree. It was a useful exercise as it prompted me to think more about ideas for short films.
Film 3
Project 1 – Writing Exercise
The flame flickered in the reflection of Carl’s eyes as he stared into glowing orange. The fire was pulsating with the glowing embers moved in rhythm with diminishing flame. The once intense heat from the campfire seemed to dissipate in the cold air before reaching his cold hands. ‘Laura should of been back by now’, Carl thought as he watched the last oak log crumble into ash. Laura had gone to find reception so she could call her parents and said she would search for some wood on her way back. ARRRGHHH! Suddenly a loud high-pitched scream punctured through the flickering sound of the fire. Carl’s blood ran cold and the hairs on the back of his neck spiked, he knew it was Laura. Fear and adrenaline surged through his veins as he rose from his foldout chair. He lent down, picked up the wood axe that was buried into the dirt and ran into the darkness.
Film by Hilary Harris (Initiative Post 2)
In last Friday’s Film3 Studio we focused on experimental film. Robin showed us some work by Hilary Harris which really captured my attention. While some film feels like science Hilary Harris’ abstract work come across a pure art. I was particularly impressed by his film Highway made in 1958. Watching it I was reminded of being in the back seat of the car as child and looking out the window to see the city lights. The shots are pieced together perfectly with the tempo of the jazz/rock & roll music and I think that is what makes this video such an experience. The five long minutes create this sense of repetition, repeating the same shots over which I think is clever as that’s often how it feels on the road. Interestingly, after a little research I discovered to capture these moving shots Hilary Harris drilled a hole in the bottom of his car to create a mount for his camera.
His 1951 creation Longhorns was truly something I hadn’t seen before. I saw it as a cinematic dance with no human actors, just a pair of long horns with there mesmerizing movement. It had that hypnotic and memorising feel that seems to be common in his work.I discovered that he was a sculptor and I think this film must have been a middle ground between the two mediums of sculpting and filmmaking. Besides that, do I know what this film means? No. Do I need to know? No.
Another mesmerising work of Harris is The Nine Variations On A Dance Theme released in 1967. At first I just thought it was a bit weird. It gave me that same hypnotic feeling, making me calm but somewhat eyrie at the same time. It took me a moment to realise that it was the same dance movement every time. I started to see its beauty as I watched the same movement 9 times but every time I saw something new. Every variation seemed to feel more intimate and more intense as the variations in Harris’ camera techniques become more elaborate and complex. Adding to this is the slight change in soundtrack for each occasion. Even though it changes the sound and vision seemed to merge into one one smooth series of movements.
After enjoying these films so much I decided to watch a lengthier and more recent work by Hilary Harris titled Organism (1975). It depicts Harris’ epic vision of New York City shot over 15 years (1959-74) in which time he pioneered time-lapse film making techniques. Using this he achieved this unique experimental view of New York City. The film juxtaposes scientific commentary on anatomy with the time-lapse video of the city. For instance the voiceover describes digestion while shots of New Yorks dumps comes on-screen. similarly, when the commentary talks of the process by which cells communicate it shows New Yorks JFK airport. I was mesmerised by this film. I believe it was making a critique on the invasion of technology in the world.
When Hilary Harris was asked why he makes films at all? He responded “To give a richer vision of surrounding reality. My aim is to lift people out of their preconceptions.” Through his films he searched for understanding of the complex world.
By looking closely at Harris’ work I have learnt that film does not need to follow a formula. It dosen’t need a story arc or characters to be a great film. Its more important to have purpose and make the audience feel something.
Over and Out,
Luke
First Filmmakers (the initiative post)
We are lucky in modern society to have powerful video technology that fits in the palm of our hands. We have the ability to instantly film with the click of a button and output high quality video. If we accidently shoot the wrong thing we can simply delete it and try again. The beauty of the digital age. Robin has stressed in class that we shouldn’t take this for granted. It’s too easy not to think about what we are filming and how we capture it because today technology can do so much of it for us. To truly appreciate film as both an art and science we should look back to those who pioneered the movie camera. Using the most basic movie cameras they created masterpieces so I wanted to learn more about some of first filmmakers and their creations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEQeIRLxaM4
In 1894 inspired by Edison’s peephole kinetoscope the Lumiere brothers developed the cinematograph which was a portable, crank operated camera. A year later they shot their first film titled The Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory and it featured exactly that. One of their other early actuality films was titled Arrival of a Train at La Coitat Station. French filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier described this film as evidence of the Lumiere brothers being much more than inventors of the cinema or the first filmmakers but genius in ‘their very modern approach to filmic composition, such as their use of diagonals and contrast’. This 50 second film simply documents a familiar everyday occurrence, despite this it’s attained fame and is now a film history icon. It’s interesting to note that this film actually caused fear and terror by cinema audiences. German journalist Hellmuth Karasek wrote “although the cinematographic train was dashing towards the audience in flickering black and white (not in natural colours and natural dimensions), and although the only sound accompanying it was the monotonous clatter of the projectors sprockets… the spectators felt physically threatened and panicked”. It seems to strange to look back and think people were frightened but it’s important to remember the audience weren’t accustomed to seeing a moving image, especially not one that appears to be moving towards them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_9N68MO9gM
The Lumiere brothers were the first real documentary filmmakers and they mostly stuck to making these ‘actuality’ films. George Melies on the other hand was quite the opposite. His films were much more fantastical, theatrical and often involved film tricks or special effects. The ‘cinemagician’ discovered the classic substitution stop trick in 1896 and was one of the first filmmakers to use time-lapse photography, multiple exposures, dissolves and hand painted colour in his films. While the Lumiere brothers documented reality, Melies transformed reality through cinematography. Furthermore, unlike the Lumieres who shot on location, Melies worked mostly in a studio, often using elaborate sets. Interestingly, Melies was an audience member of the Lumiere brothers’ first screening and approached them wanting to buy their cinematograph device. The brothers refused his offer so he built his own.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlsWesjhNWw
By learning about the Lumieres and Melies we are contrasting fiction and non-fiction methodologies. Melies created fantastical fiction and the Lumieres made actuality documentaries yet both tried their hands in the others art.
Over and out,
Luke Egan
White Balance / Color Balance
In today’s studio we learnt how to adjust the white balance both manually and by using the preset buttons in which we could customise. Color temperture is measured in Degrees Kelvin (K). The color tempertures we use most are Daylight which is ballparked 5600K and indoor Tungsten lighting 3200K. Higher color tempertures such as Daylight are considered cool (blue) and lower color tempertures such as Tungsten are considered warm (yellow/orange).
Considering this, if I am shooting indoor under tungsten light I will set my cameras white balance settings to 3200K. The camera will then correct your camera’s settings to ensure that white appears white.
To mannually set white balance get a white card (white paper will do, even though its not pure white, it’ll do for most cases) and hold it front of the camera so it is taking up the entire shot. Angle the paper towards the light source you want to use. Then click the manual white balance button on the camera and it will read the exact color temperture of the light source.
Over and Out,
Luke Egan
50 Second Shot – Reshoot
Our task this week was to shoot another 50 second shot at 12mm in our own time. By doing this we further familarised ourselves with adjusting camera settings to obtain a aesteciallty pleasing and vissually correct shot. Mitch and I decided to hire a camera between us and do our shots together. His 50 second shots were of a digger on a construction site at RMIT. Annoyingly, everytime he started to shoot the digger would stop doing anything interesting. This is evident by his second take where the driver jumps out and has a ciggerette and a chat 5 seconds in. This is one of the challenges faced in actuality filming or documentary in cases where you can’t control the scene.
My 50 second shots were of the Victoria St intersection near Bowen St, RMIT. I choose this location as it was early in the morning and there wasn’t alot going but this intersection was quite busy. My first shot was front on with the pedestrian crossing and primarily featured people crossing the road. For my second shot I choose to shot on an angle to the intersection as to capture both the pedestrians crossing and the cars on the road. This compisition was much more aestetically pleasing. Although my shot was more or less correctly exposed I made a rookie mistake of forgetting refocus the image after moving the camera so the image was too soft.
Sound and Location
Part of today’s Film 3 studio was focused on recording audio. We were to choose a location and record a variety of sounds to evoke a sense of that place. We used the h4Zoom audio recorder. I partnered with Mitch and we choose the RMIT hub as our location to record. I think our location would be identifiable to a student listening due to our recording of the hub loudspeaker announcing ticket numbers. However if we put that recording aside we failed to clearly illustrate our place through sound. Our other subjects of recording were quite general and could of been a variety of places for instance the microwave, elevator, payphone and person walking up the stars. The audio contained a lot of background noise due the hub being a busy place filled with people. If we lowered the gain and position the microphone closer to the desired subject the unwanted noise would be minimized. In saying that, the background noise of people talking and walking isn’t necessarily an unwanted sound as it does evoke the sense of the place. So to an extent we did evoke an audible sense of the hub although its limited as a listener would struggle to identify the site.
Hands on with the Sony EX3 Camera
I was relieved when I first walked into the classroom and I saw a trolley with camera cases. Finally some practical work after purely theory filled first semester. After Robin familiarized us with the SONY EX3 Camera we left the classroom and started to shoot video. Our task was to go out an film something for 50 seconds with a fixed focal length of 12mm without any camera movement. This exercise was interesting as it caused us to carefully think about the perfect position to place and angle the camera to frame the shot we wanted, as there was no option to zoom or move the camera once we begun filming.
Another part of this exercise was to practice adjusting the IRIS to gain the perfect exposure with the addition of using the inbuilt Neutral Density filter to limit the light entering the lens. Furthermore, by taping off the zoom lens we were unable to zoom to a subject to accurately focus and would need to estimate the distance to gain clear focus. Luckily we wanted the whole frame to be in focus so we could just use a small aperture with a deep depth of field.
I learnt something very useful today and that is how to correctly calibrate the brightness and contrast settings on a video camera’s viewfinder. If the viewfinder settings aren’t what they should be then what you will see through the viewfinder may be significantly different to what the camera is recording.
For homework Mitch and I have to re-shoot the 50 second video by next weeks class. To improve on our first attempt we must be more careful with adjusting the exposure as our first clip was noticeably overexposed and our second clip underexposed. Its important that we remember that it’s always better to have a slightly underexposed image then an overexposed one as its easier to fix in post production.
Over and out,
Luke Egan