As I outlined at the beginning of the semester, my goal in exploring the film musical is to understand the genre conventions and how these fit together. This week a particular focus in class was in the different genres that musicals can inhabit which leads me to believe the idea of the film musical is more complex than the taxonomy of Hollywood marketing would suggest as the musical seems to be able to serve multiple styles and stories. In class we watched the Australian film musical, One Night the Moon and scenes from both Les Miserables and Rent. Lastly listening to a rap battle from the new American musical, Hamilton. It becomes incredibly obvious how different an Australian dramatic short musical is from the UK produced sung-through integrated musical. Yet the contrast is highlighted even further by the gritty, very broadway Rent and Hamilton.

These are all, not only different styles of musical but also different iconic locations. Les Mis is most certainly a West End production in it’s original form and the film version has a very European style (as well as it’s inherant French setting) which contrasts with Rent which is as Broadway as they come. Somehow all these musicals end up in Hollywood and these places find themselves encoded into the art. By including Hamilton in the mix, the discourse opens up to even the idea that stage musicals and film musicals tell stories in very similar ways. This would suggest that the musical is less of a film genre and more of an all-encompassing storytelling art form.

Here’s a really interesting watching experience, not just because we had to be evacuated in the middle of it, but because the film is so open to interpretation I wouldn’t even know how to describe it in words. The film is a meta-cinematic horror film that moves very quickly from piece to piece. The difficulty for me was actually trying to put a timeline in place to describe what happens in the film, even just to try to extract meaning from it. This film reminds me of Holy Motors in the way it literally just tries to stop you from drawing conclusions. I’m honestly not even sure if there are conclusions that can be drawn. What the film was amazing at was drawing you into the environment of the sound studio through its unbelievable use of sound elements. The film contains almost exclusively diegetic music. One thing I did notice having been in rooms with that many racks of equipment is that they’re a lot noisier but horror is silence at the end of the day. I love the comments made by the film in terms of sound production and the way the film entirely exists within only the confines of the studio.

The torture underscoring is really apparent. Though the question is why our point of view character has such an aversion to horror as a genre if he appreciates torturing people with sound. I do really love the way this film harkens back to a historic hollywood era. The shot above really encapsulates the intrigue of the film, it would appear to be just a man just playing with his food, but the scene despite the lovely spread in front of him is very dark.

Here I am having finished Project Brief 2 and wondering what monstrosity I created. After a string of bad luck, I ended up with a  shortage of time with my friend Obed to actually practise any kind of original song for my genre sketch on the film musical, so naturally we improvised about current events, namely the ABS census which of course was a total non-event. We recorded a total of six different combinations of music and song, exploring different ways in which performers can break into song. This linked really nicely to my piece exploring Barry Keith Grant’s “Charmed Space” and the way in which it is constructed by characters and filmmakers. The charmed space essentially refers to this holy, seperate space that the performer, as a character is separated from the other characters via some dimension sometimes distance, sometimes time. The idea is that this separation creates a space for the audience to suspend disbelief. For our song about the census, the key was the way in which the introduction took place. For the recording I chose, we used the piano as a way of easing into song. The difficulty here is that without vision it’s almost impossible to distinguish which element of the diegesis the defining “seperate” factor for the charmed space, that is something I would love to explore in my final sketch. Sadly, due to the constraints of PB3, I cannot use the musical genre in PB3, but that can only result in a more diverse selection of work. I look forward to what comes next.

“The issue on the table” whether or not Aliens is in fact just a sci-fi film or something much more than that. Whether that is in reference to its genre or its societal poignancy, anyone would prefer the side championing it’s more-than-sci-fi-ness, but I was shoved onto the nothing-more-than-sci-fi side of the debate. We actually compiled a lot of research of what makes a sci-fi a sci-fi and it’s more complex than I originally thought. One of the main things that I had forgotten about the Science Fiction genre is the way it differs from fantasy in that a Sci-fi is the fantastic, explained by the mundane. In essence where a horror film or a fantasy would simply “leave the supernatural intact”, a sci-fi film explains it and it, in effect, becomes no longer supernatural (read a super interesting article that I stole that quote from here: http://www.darkecho.com/darkecho/horroronline/scifi.html).

As a team we formulated an argument around the idea that if the aliens in Aliens are explained as a natural part of the landscape on FQ57568FI (whatever the name of the planet is), then the film is not really a sci-fi fantasy or a sci-fi horror film, it’s really just a sci-fi film. We also cottoned on to the idea that Sci-fi is inherently a bit of a mashup genre that consists of lots of other little elements that make up what a sci-fi is. It is inherently an action film or a horror film, it isn’t sci-fi cross action or horror, etc.

Whether or not I believe that Aliens is more than a sci-fi film for any number of reasons is irrelevant, we won! That’s all that matters.

It did make me think though that if Sci-Fi is just fantasy (or supernatural) explained, does that make Star Wars: A New Hope a space fantasy and The Phantom Menace a Sci-fi because midichlorians………….

In a class on genre, it’s only fitting that we explore my least favourite genre, Sci-fi horror. From the time I was a child, I hated every film with an alien in it, I just couldn’t stand it and the very minimal amount of the film Alien I had seen, I loathed, for whatever reason, I would be happier watching a normal horror film but when you add extra terrestrials of any kind, suddenly it gets a whole lot creepier. Aliens, on a more pleasant note, surprised me, I thought it was honestly going to be terrifying, but I actually quite enjoyed it. I liked the tasteful way it was constructed, obviously there were always going to be a few jump scares and some belly-busting action but Cameron’s film is really well constructed from a character perspective and there are a few moments of actual respite in the film, even though they pretty much immediately turn back into non-stop crazy action.

In class, we discussed the film’s significance in terms of not only gender characterisation but also it’s place in the genre of sci-fi whether that simply meant it fell into the Sci-fi genre or was in fact something more (and what that meant). The reading for the week on gender was really interesting, the way it used language to describe the visual language of the film very viscerally but more importantly, discussed the significance of the female characters in the context of the time in which the film was made. In the case of Ripley, we discussed the idea of “the male surrogate”, as I was watching the film, it never occurred to me that this could have been the case or at least the way it was written. At the end of the day, I’m not entirely surprised that there is so much of this in Hollywood especially, as there are many male screenwriters working in the industry (Cameron included).

Catch up camera workshop and part two of the same workshop down, and wow was that a thorough workshop, it was cool to have my hands on the EX3, it’s very similar to the FS7 in many regards, Sony definitely like to maintain their continuity across their products. One thing I took away from this that I had genuinely no idea was that Zebra patterns can be set to percentages and that 70% is generally acceptable caucasian skin exposure. Who knew! Also love the easy way to check with colour bars (of course this is only helpful with cameras that have a colour bars function, and zebra for that matter) definitely cool.

The Miller tripods are fantastic and super easy to handle, I’ve worked with a couple of broken ones in the past and have found them a little frustrating. I am surprised at how much of a step up the kit is from the cameras we were using in Media One however I am still undecided as to whether I should choose to shoot with one of the EX3s or borrow the FS7 from work for my final genre sketch.

We also got to take a look at the Sennheiser shotgun microphones and boompoles that can also be borrowed from the illustrious tech humans and received some really great training on how to properly operate a boom. What I took away from this is that when it comes to boom operating, there are really not that many rules other than:

1. Don’t use it side on, point it down
2. Move it when someone talks
3. Try actually be comfortable at the beginning of the take, don’t try moving half way through.

Today James Thompson (who also happens to be my tutor for “Popular Cinema”) was in for an editing workshop. This workshop was very thorough, which I appreciated. I loved how much of an emphasis James put on media management, something I’ve tried really hard to work on, on previous jobs. I did appreciate the explanation on what “Scratch Disks” actually do, because I have wondered for a long time but just never really investigated. It is super handy to save internal hard drive space for basic read/write cache and preview storage, although, I wonder if the limitations of external drive speed would throttle the editor. It was also really interesting hearing James’ feedback to many people in the class after watching their edited “test” projects. I really appreciated his explanations on why cuts should be made and artistic explanations on why certain edits are effective and recommended in specific circumstances. It is always fantastic to observe someone else’s workflow and what works for them especially with Post-Production. I found it really helpful to see how James handled ingesting media and organising it neatly on hard drives. I was really impressed with how quickly he was able to find things because he knew where they were.

I wasn’t at the screening for Sukiyaki Western Django but I sincerely wish I was having watched it at home and struggled through it with very little context. I absolutely loved the artificial, theatrical setting of the opening (complete with Tarantino cameo) and I almost half expected the rest of the film to be shot like the opening. What ensues is the most stereotypical western film anyone could hope for. A lone hero who must stand in the gap between two warring tribes, but the plot twist (which isn’t actually a plot twist) is the strong, Japanese, stylistic overtones that suddenly take the film into a strange hybrid genre all its own. I’ve read elsewhere that the film’s title can even be taken as a reference to the style, a sort of Japanese, stew-like thing.

This image says it all. Two revolvers, a conical hat, a mental amount of smoke and a black suit. Total, anachronistic disregard for accuracy or conventionalism, it’s all about effect and all about genre. Perfect start for the semester’s screenings.

Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy is considered (mostly outside the academic world) to be a masterpiece of franchise filmmaking, three films with a common story arc that takes place in the same universe with the same cast, yet three distinctly different films from a genre perspective. The first film, Batman Begins attempts to ground the trilogy in a common thread of realism, the entire first act of the film takes place outside of Gotham city for this exact purpose. The film is pitched at Batman fans as a Batman film, almost a genre all its own, however, its first hour is glaringly devoid of Batman. This is where Nolan plays with the genre, the film is an action, franchise movie riding (partially) on the success of previous Batman films but instead of delivering a Michael Bay action-franchise movie, its a subtle, considered, slow-paced build that develops the character of Bruce Wayne. Movie Pilot claims Nolan “let the audience know this was a real world Batman and the events in Gotham effected the entire world.” by spending the first hour in the mind of the character of Bruce Wayne. The character of Batman is in fact a completely different character in the original screenplay of the film and he doesn’t enter the film until the second act. Breaking genre conventions is one of Nolan’s strongpoints, one only has to look at the way he manipulates genre conventions in Inception to understand why many claim that he has his own genre. Inception’s arc is the antithesis of Begins, as it skilfully manipulates the audience into believing they are watching a quasi sci-fi heist film before revealing that the story is actually a broken love story and the protagonist’s need is to let go of his late wife in order to restore his relationship with his children. It’s only at the end of the film that you realise that you in fact care about Cobb as a character. In many ways Batman Begins does this for Batman, a character that has rarely been portrayed with substance or even remotely sympathetic but by tricking you into caring about Bruce Wayne, the stakes when the film actually reaches it’s action packed third act are dramatically raised.

What would I like to get out of Exploding Genre? I would absolutely love to walk away with a better understanding of directorial as a practise. I have always loved musical theatre but have never really been into the movie musical because movie musicals are always trying to wrap something slightly absurd in a medium we almost exclusively associate with realism. This Semester in Exploding Genre, I have decided to study the movie musical. I think movie musicals are extremely complex from a technical perspective but also have the ability to be profoundly moving.

I would really love to hone my skills in colour. Really nailing the construction of colour within the frame and I think colour is a really important aspect of the musical genre. I know that colour is probably one of the easiest elements of filmmaking to overlook, and I know I have definitely overlooked it’s significance in my own work. I would love to keep studying the effect that different colour looks have on the final film and even how using coloured light can influence the emotional undercurrent of a scene. I’m not sure how I would form an exegesis around a musical film because it would require original source material, but I’m kind of excited to tackle that, assuming the musical is the genre I get to study for the semester.

As for the technical, I would love the opportunity to use “real” lights in a film environment. I’ve spent a lot of time around cheap fluorescent bulbs packed into floodlight assembly from a bunnings somewhere but I’d really love to use some real lighting kit this semester.