Category: Uncategorized

So this week we were tasked into groups to shoot a scene on the stairwells of building nine.

We had more time to shoot this scene compared to last week so we were a lot relieved to be able to put more thought into how our shots would be constructed. I was director, not because I asked to be but because no one else wanted to be. I obviously love directing films and having that creative control over how something looks, however, I know I need to try harder to experiment in the other aspects of film making. I like that for these tasks we have an executive team and a supportive team. I am able to do what I enjoy about film making, whilst doing what another team wants and needs me to do behind the scenes.

At first we were a bit confused with the task as last weeks task and its somewhat failures lingered in our minds. Despite this, we were able to start shooting straight away and get 5 different shots (I think it was 5).

I was really happy with how efficient we were with getting the task done, and we finished with time to spare so the other team had 20 more minutes to think about what they wanted to do. This was surprising as we hadn’t drawn a storyboard for our scene and had a quick 10 minute discussion in the stairwell to figure out what we were going to do.

I enjoyed this task and love working in a productive group.

Every now and then I will be listening to a song and will quickly think, wow this is amazing, I wonder if they made a music video to this, and am instantly curious to see how they chose to portray their song visually.

When you hear a song you like and then watch the music video, it can either make you start to dislike the song or make you like it even more. And vice versa for songs you don’t like.

I was listening to a song by Jungle titled Julia, and found myself on youtube looking up the music video for this song.

Within the first five seconds of the music video, I knew it was going to be good. I wanted to discuss the way the director made this video (as well as the amazing choreography of the dancers), however I had already written my found scene and this probably doesn’t fall into the category. I did however get the sudden realisation of the effectiveness of camera choreography and how an excellently choreographed camera on a dolly doing one lengthy shot can be just as, and even more amazing than a scene or music video of the camera angels changing every few seconds.

The camera follows the dancer as he moves around in the open space and moves in, out, around, and above the dancers making their movements even more enticing.

I feel as a director I can learn from the directors J from Jungle and Oliver Hadlee Pearch and utilise the seemingly empty ‘hard to work with’ space of a room and use the camera itself on a dolly to create an amazing scene to look at.

I probably wouldn’t have appreciated this style of dancing nearly as much if the camera hadn’t followed the dancers the way it did in tune with the music.

I think it is one of my favourite music videos to date and it makes me like the song even more.

 

 

The Theory of Everything – May Ball Scene 1963

I loved everything about this scene the moment I saw it. The lighting is phenomenal and the way the director constructed these shots was truly breathtaking. The framing of the characters within the shots is well done and the rule of thirds is executed excellently.

 

 This an intimate scene in the film and shows Stephen Hawking and Jane Wilde in the early stages of their relationship. This scene mainly consist of close up shots of them as they stand beneath the fairy lights behind them. The lights in the background have been shot in bokeh, and I think the use of this effect dramatically increases the romance of this scene. The scene is, as corny as it sounds, set up to look magical.

I think the director chose to have mainly close ups during their discussion to force us to join the intimacy of their conversation. As they decide to dance together the camera dollys backwards opening up the scene changing the audience from being part of the conversation, to being observers watching from afar.

 

I begun to think about the ‘preparation’ that goes behind documentary making. Do documentary makers have a specific ‘storyline’ in mind when they begin to make their films, or do they have a subject of interest and by filming such subject with the point and shoot method, then develop a storyline as true events unfold?

How much of real documentaries are real? Can you manipulate the feelings of the audience in the same way as scripted fictional films?

Do the documentary makers have to film what they can and they consider the possibilities of assembly after they shoot their footage as what they shoot is to an extent unpredictable?

 

I was really pleased with the end result for this shoot. I managed to find a good location to shoot the scene. We shot from the roof of one of the buildings and had the city as our background. I felt that the choreography could have been slightly tighter, however, we did the best we could in the space. We were very worried that the scene would be over exposed, however, the cameraman did a very good job at the white balance. The end is a little bit weird and doesn’t make much sense, however, I like the transition from the two subjects in medium close up facing each other, to the two close ups of the subjects. One swishing the tissue in front of the camera as if it is the subject, and the other with the tissue swishing on the girls face.

I liked this exercise and working in a good space can really help make your shot look amazing. I think also that we didn’t do as well as we could have because we had such an amazing location to shoot as. We weren’t as concerned with how to make it look amazing because we had the background supporting us.

So for this individual directing task we went out in groups of around 6 to shoot one shot from a scene, using the scripts Paul gave us. I won’t like, I did not like this task.
I love directing however, being forced to direct something in 10 minutes that you are “proud” of, is near impossible. We had issues with the white balance and that took almost ten minutes to try to resolve. I like the idea of being forced to direct something in a shot time, I just think that ten minutes is suuuuuper impossible.
The idea behind the task is a really good one, however, if we could have been given 20 minutes to the task each it would have been a lot better.
We ended up just saying well look, we don’t have time to make this perfect so just shoot whatever so we have actually shot something. Myself and another member of the group didn’t get to direct our scene because we went over the ten minute requirements trying to help the other members get their shots done.
I think most people in the class felt this way, and in a way it still taught us some valuable lessons so it wasn’t all negative.
We learnt that planning and time management is so freaking important when making a film. You need to utilise every minute of a shoot and literally time schedule down to the individual minutes to be productive.

Shoots never go perfectly, but if you can plan your time management, by god you will be so much better off!

Reservoir Dogs – ‘Ear’ scene or ‘Stuck in the middle with you’ scene

The infamous film Reservoir Dogs is loved by many for numerous reasons. It has been a favourite of mine for a long time, and I always find myself returning to watch this movie and never find myself bored by it. The scene I have chosen shows Mr. Blonde intimidating the young policeman and finally gruesomely cutting of the policeman’s ear.

 

This scene in particular is where Mr. Blonde ‘tortures’ the young policeman whilst dancing to the song ‘stuck in the middle with you. It feels as though Quentin Tarantino directed this scene to suit the song. Usually when directing a movie or scene, they chose the music after the footage has been cut, however, with this scene, the flow of Mr. White and how he moves within the scene is based around the flow of the song.

Another reason why I chose this scene to comment on this week is because of Quentin’s ability to have long shots for a scene. In this scene The camera rolls for 3 minutes, moving slightly to show the characters better as Mr. Blonde moves around the frame. Quentins ability to do this without the viewers feeling like the shot is dragging on is truly amazing. These scenes are cleverly choreographed so the characters frame the scene rather than the camera needing to change angles to show their actions.

Similar to last weeks scene deconstruction of Night Rider, a majority of Reservoir dogs is shot within the inside of the warehouse that the men are hiding in.

I think it is truly amazing if directors can film a majority of their films within the same space and keep it interesting.

 

I struggled a little bit to generate thoughts of the Scene in Cinema this week, purely because I haven’t properly thought about film in a while, as I have been away travelling. I did however manage to develop a few thoughts on how a director decides to style his or her film.

How long do they debate on how to portray the style of direction they chose to take for a film?

The stylistic choices tend to frame the idea behind a film as well as ‘hold’ the genre of the storyline. I would like to know if there is an actual process that a director takes when deciding how to portray the style of a film they are directing.

How does a director come to the decision of what style they choose to direct their film in?

FOUND SCENE

-Found scene: Winona Ryder as cab driver in Night On Earth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR6pmB09s5U
http://putlocker.is/watch-night-on-earth-online-free-putlocker.html

The film Night On Earth is based on the journey of five cab drivers in taxi cabs around the world. The scene that I am focusing on is that of the first cab ride with the character ‘Corky’ driving the talent hunter from the airport to Beverly Hills.

I chose this film because the majority of the scenes are shot within the enclosed space of a cab ride. The majority of the shots have been taken from the front of the cab focusing on ‘Corky’ as the important protagonist of the episode.

The angle of the camera gives off the illusion that it is sitting on the dashboard of the car in front of the driver ‘Corky’. The angle is also tilted slightly backwards so that it is looking up at Corky slightly, showing the illusion of her being small so we understand that she is a young girl.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When the second protagonist talks as she sits in the back seat on the opposite side of the driver, we usually see her talking behind the cab driver, the camera still forcing us to focus on Corky. Every now and then the shot cuts to a close up of the second character talking in the back, however, this is over the shoulder of the seat in front of her, emphasising that she is a passenger and is not the main focus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also see close up shots of the cab driver Corky chain smoking her cigarettes, forcing us to see the grease on her face and the constant cigarette behind her right ear which she never removes, even though she keeps smoking her cigarettes. The camera tends to focus on showing the cigarette behind her ear. When she shouts out the window at another driver, we see it from the empty passenger seat side, the camera again forcing us to look at the cigarette behind her ear.

What I got out of this semester, was realising the consistent effort that film needs. I think I have been lucky with my groups for my subjects in the past few semesters, and I didn’t fully understand the struggles of group work. This semester really taught me the importance of group work and how every one needs to contribute their load so that the work you are making can be at its best. I did a lot of outside work experience as well and I found I was able to put into practice things I learnt from film tv2.

Question 4.

Select from one of the readings and briefly describe two points that you have taken from it. Points that interest you, something you could apply to your own documentary.

1. Observational film makers- When making a documentary I always assumed I must ask questions and have people respond to said questions and have a sort of story line for my documentary. However, I never put much thought into observational documentary. You can still have a story line and something to follow but the idea of being a fly on the wall and just documenting what you see really interests me as it seems more real. “The Canadian filmmakers were directly influenced by the street photography of Henri Cartier- Bresson, which mixed formal composition and spontaneity” (pg.25) I like the idea of spontaneous documenting and would very much like to include some spontaneous footage in my documentary.

2. Mise-en-scene of Speech in documentary- I never took accents into consideration to much when it comes to fiction films. Films usually stick to similar accents to keep consitency and avoid confusion and when they include a different accent it’s because they want it to be obvious that this character is from a certain place. However with documentary characters can demonstrate a wider variety of accents, dialects and speech. Another part concerning speech that really interested me is the difference in spoken language and written language. There is a lot more natural conversation in documentaries with people cutting each other off, speaking over one another all natural parts of real conversation, whereas, in fiction film, conversation is very controlled.

Question 3.
“From a distant gaze …” (1964) directed by Jean Ravel, picture Pierre Lhomme & Chris Marker, words by Louis Aragon, narrated by Jean Negroni, music by Michel Legrand. Describe a few things that intrigue you – it might be shot construction, camera work, editing, overall structure, thematic concerns etc. Describe the camera work and why you think it has been shot that way.

Some things that intrigue me from From a distant gaze 1964 are firstly the way they chose to show humanity and the hustle and bustle of the city in between moving vehicles. The camera is obviously following the people on the street but have chosen to show them from across the road with vehicles constantly blocking the viewers from seeing the people. The editing is considerably quick with cutting of one scene to the next however it the viewers can’t really tell the shot has changed until they see that the people within the shot have. The editors have made a conscious decision to stop and start the cuts on the movement of the vehicles.
Another thing that intrigued me was as soon as the narrator started to speak the footage of the people was no longer interrupted by vehicles moving in and out of the frame. The camera now shows the hustle and bustle of the street but we now see the hustle and bustle of all the people focusing on their faces close-up.
The camera follows the people but is not necessarily following any one in particular we don’t see people enter and leave frame as much as the camera tries to follow them all moving around.

Question 1.
Anna Broinowski’s 2007 film: describe in detail all of the audio, how it may have been recorded/sourced and how you think it has been edited / layered in post. 

• (start 0:01)birds chirping- sourced by a. giong to a park and recording birds chirping b.music program.  Layered over footage.
• (start 0:01)Music sourced from artist layered over the original footage also
• (0:07)’Ting’ when man smiles- a. sourced by recording the ‘ting’ from a triangle instrument or b. already made music i.e. garage band
• (0:13-0:14) Chimes- recorded actual chimes, or sourced from music program if free
• (0:14-0:15) flute- recorded someone playing the flute. sourced from music program
• (0:17) old car driving off- sourced from music program or recorded an old car driving
• (0:20) Throwing off scarfe- sourced from music program
• (0:22) Scarfe landing on ground- music program
• (0:28) Wind blowing- sourced from music program
• (0:31) Closing of book and slamming on table- sourced from actual recording from interview layered over the other footage
• (0:37) Type writer sound- sourced from music program most likely layered over the original footage and sound.
• (0:42) Journalist putting down book on table- sourced from music program and matched to original footage.
• (0:43-1:08) Journalist Narrating over other footage of journalist, photographs of journalist
• (0:46) humming prayers layered over footage orginal sound has been muted.
• (0:56-01:02) journalist typing on computer and clicking on images layered over close up footage of images and computer
• (1:09) car beep- original recording
•  (1:04) Chimes *same as above
• (1:21) Birds chirping- original footage
• (1:26) Chimes *same as above
• (1:31) camera click- music program
• (1:41-1:43) two readers reading the same thing layered over footage
• (1.45) suspense music sourced from music program
• (1:47) Heart beat- music program layered over computer made map whilst narrator continues to talk.
• (1:52) Ripping of paper- music program
• (2:04) suspense noise- egg shakers
• (2:28) music- sourced from artist potentially free
• (2:34) shaver- layered and matched over original footage
• (2:57) reader and journalist narrating- layered over varied footage
• (3:01) coins in hand- music program
• (3:08) lighting cigarette- music program layered over footage
• (3:10) fast forward sound- music program layered over sped up footage
• (3:13) page flipping- orignal or music program
• (3:26) Building construction fast sound effect from music program
• (3:28) metal bang- building gone form orignal footage
• (3:36) type write ting- media program
• (3:56) beep on phone- media program

My portfolio consists of artwork I have created over time. There is no real purpose or meaning to anything that I have created other than I felt like making them.

Check it out

https://www.behance.net/torikat