Month: April 2015

Religious Conspiracy

Reading Log #6

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How does the director, Charles Laughton construct the narratives of his film The Night of the Hunter (1995)?

The Night of the Hunter narrative is based on the cause and effect of character’s actions. Because both the boy’s father and the preacher Harry committed a crime, they have met in the prison. The event then leads to the father spilling information about the money he had hidden to the preacher. This sequence then causes Harry to hunt for the money in which the father’s son, John knows where he had hidden. This chain of events is an example of how narrative relies on causality.

Being that narratives also rely on time and space, how does the filmmaker manipulate the two principles into the film?

Charles Laughton has directed that the film plot will go on a chronological order, relating to its causality. Therefore, as the chain of events is presented in an order of chronological time, the story’s duration is about months in time. This is shown by the growth of the two young characters, John and Pearl, and their journey throughout their escape from the preacher Harry. Viewers can see that their journey took a few overnights from the time of the day that has passed as the two children stopped by places to ask for food. Laughton has also manipulated space with a film noir/German expressionist style to show the children’s escape through the lake. Within the frame, viewers see the children on the boat but infer that Harry is chasing them nearby from the sound and perception outside the frame. These are Laughton’s technique to manipulate the narratives of The Night of the Hunter.

Intro with a microphone

In week 6, Rachel lets us fiddle with a Zoom H2/N recorder. In this workshop exercise, we recorded a number of sounds using the microphone and “learned” to download them to our PC. Apparently we also need to “Normalise” the sounds and I had a hard time figuring out how to set it. These are the sounds we recorded:

Zoom_ZH2N_H2n_Handy_Recorder_Portable_811053

Way back to the Monroe time

We all know who Marilyn Monroe is. The famous actress, model and singer. The famous pop art subject. The girl with a blown skirt.

But yesterday was the first time I have actually seen one of her films, Some Like it Hot (1959) by Billy Wilder. This black and white film is a romantic comedy with action sequences and reminded me of Keenen Ivory Wayans’ White Chicks (2004). How these two films are an intertextuality is that both main characters, two men are impostors to two women. In Some Like it Hot, the two men searches for a job but found one that needs women musicians, causing them to dress up as two girls. Similarly in White Chicks, two FBI agents are made up and impersonating two white girls. Both films also have a lady character which film theorist may call “femme fatale” and one of the two men ends up with the lady. While, the other man had to have a date with an attracted wealthy man. Finally, action sequences are present in both films. So there’s no such thing as an original idea. What if Wayans has actually seen Some Like it Hot and was inspired to direct his film? There’s always an adaptation in process of converting stories. From what I’ve listened in week 8 lectorial, that is why narratives have patterns of representation and expectation, as we as viewers have already experienced the ideas implemented through the stories.

One scene that I particularly like in Some Like it Hot is the musical performance scene where Sugar Kane (starred by Monroe) sings “I Wanna Be Loved By You”.  This song has stuck on my head since then, which is quite annoying but interesting because it has made me appreciate its music as an art form of communication. Well clear to that, I’ve been singing it to my best friends.

Yaking

My friend introduced me to this new app called Yik Yak. Wow another social media. It’s pretty cool though, as it is a twitter-like app but the fact that we posts things anonymously makes it a lot less personal. Plus, safer I guess in a way that no one can stalk you that easily. Other “yakkers” could also vote on the posts or down-vote… Don’t take it too personally there yakkers! Having to determine our location, we can only vote or comment to those around us, as in those who are roughly in the same area as us. So, I thought I could try it out and download the app on my iPhone.

What I’ve posted there for the first time got 28 votes, which is okay and made me hyper for a while. So proud of myself! Jokes… It’s just that feeling when others like your idea or thoughts, to feel that you have entertained some in those social apps.

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Romantic Perspective

Reading Log #5

Letter From An Unknown Woman (1948) By Max Ophuls is complemented with particular styles of editing techniques that contribute to its narratives. For example, blurred dissolves are used to indicate the character’s mental subjectivity. These blurred dissolves are used often as the story is based on a written experience of a character, the unknown woman who wrote the letter.

The Kuleshov effect is pointed out in the reading. It is about editing shots consequently that viewers’ readings are affected by its position. We would infer that a person is hungry in the shot followed by a shot of food.

Where can we see the Kuleshov Effect in the Letter From An Unknown Woman?

  • A shot of Lisa swinging and then picking through a window followed by a shot of a man playing piano.

This juxtaposition of the two shots suggests that Lisa is watching the man playing the piano through the window. If there were only one shot of following Lisa’s point of view to the man, it would have a different effect and it is also more time and space consuming.

  • The miniature train ride at the park, where both Lisa and the man sat inside. This shot followed by the man coming out the train ride to buy more tickets.

This effect seems that inside what is inside the train ride from outside view. But it may be that these two shots are taken in different places or time.

Framing the Sunrise

Reading Log #4

William A. Wellman, Harry d’Abbadie d’Arrast are the two directors of the film Sunrise (1927). The viewers are invited to engage with the German expressionist film through the use of framing techniques. When a husband was about to kill his own wife, a medium to close up shot and a low-angle shot of the husband is used to show his power along with his murderous (yet confused) facial expression over the scared-crouched wife. In the other hand, the wife is shown in a point of view shot, medium-close up and high angle shot to imply her fear and state of being powerless. Continue reading →

What is Editing

Quote of the day: “The bigger the space or gap, the higher the art is”. 

Editing is deliberately breaking things to encourage audience to fill the gaps themselves. It is so that when audiences read texts, they would give itself the meanings. Representation consists of connotations that we understand through our own experience of our own understanding of the “world”. Contexts also contributes to we understand representations. Therefore, editing is about creating gaps by taking away time and place, while making sequence that doesn’t go in an orderly manner. This encourages the audience make their own readings, to “think” and creating meaningful meanings. In this week 4 lectorial, we did a little activity involving cards and had to create series of events that can be reordered in different chronologic. The activity therefore, represents editing sequences in storytelling.

i.e. Continuity editing:

The 180 degree rule.

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The Koulechov Effect:

Is a montage editing technique. It is about interpreting events and meanings based on the gaps they fill. An example of this effect is a close-up shot of a person’s face, that is followed by a shot of a food in a plate. We would automatically infer that the person is hungry. While our mind is separated from the body, making conclusions without thinking. But if that shot of a person’s face is followed by a shot of a crying young girl. We would infer a different meaning, where the person is sympathising the crying girl.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNVf1N34-io

Peer Feedback on “Someone: Fun Found in Funny”

What feedback have I got for the brief 3 Media portrait of someone?

What is good about the portrait is how my shots look, especially the filters for the credits background. My peers also like the comedic side in the narrative, thought it is funny to compare the person with found footage animals. The music also gives humour which adds the matching footages of Samuel’s actions and the actions of animals presented.

The portrait could be better if there is and indication or a connection between the plane footages among the others. As it is unclear that planes are the interests, the footages of Samuel picking fossils on the beach could be shown clearer by indicating that he is a geology student. Therefore, what could have been done is recording an interview and actually telling the audience about who Samuel is rather than showing a pure ambiguity on screen.

Continue reading →

Documentary Ontography

Week 4

What is this again? I have lost my attention to most of what our lecturers said. So I googled what “Ontography” means and it came up with this: A description of beings, their nature and essence. But according to Adrian, documentary ontography is about making without thinking as nonfiction stories are told using lists of things.

Some tips I’ve heard: 

Learn by doing

Adapt to changing technologies

Be thinkers

&

engaging with contemporary media