Brief 4, Lighting

Worked with, Morten, Thor, Mundhir, I worked on the lights and did the editing, (although the titles were unfortunately not my idea)

Bromance with natural light; 

Bromance using no natural light;



This brief was very fun, Learning how to use the lights made me feel very professional! Although carrying the lights up and down a hill was not fun.
We worked well as a team as the Producer (Morton) controlled the group well and told us exactly what he wanted from each of us. We found that using the natural light was somewhat easier, and more realistic, the setting in the first film feels like a real place and a real setting whereas in the second film (or the sequel) the setting could be seen as confusing.
 One thing that we should have considered was having matching titles for both films, if we considered the second as a sequel then we should of had matching titles. However I do believe that it makes the second one somewhat more amusing.

Bicycle Thieves 1948

Vittorio De Sica's Neorealism film Bicycle Thieves is set in post war Italy, It's a tragic story about a Husband and father who needs to earn a living for his family. After his bicycle is stolen he is unable to work and he does everything he can to try and get it back, eventually stealing a bicycle himself but being caught, his young son see's and we are left wondering what is to become of the family and how other family's who couldn't even get jobs in the first place.
 I found the film very moving and interesting as all the actors used in the film were amateurs, real people from Italy who knew exactly what life was like at the time, people who were in a way, living the film.

Images like this which show the desperation in the characters faces, here we have Antonio and son Bruno wondering what will happen to them now the bike has gone.
It seems so sad that even a child is having to understand what its like to struggle without a job. But there were simply none going.

Sharon's lecture last week discussed how Realism could be beautiful, and although the pathetic fallacy here portrays the actors loss and sadness as they know that if they don't get the bike back they will be in a very bad situation, how ever there's something to me that makes the image quite beautiful, like Romantic cinema.

Chew, Film with continuity, less than 10 shots. MDA1300

The group; Sofiane, Paulina, Maliha, Claire and myself, I took the role of editor.



This project was extremely stressful! We started off filming in a small room with not much light, with 5 of us in the group trying to work together tension began to rise and eventually we gave up and restarted.
Despite this, the second try was really fun to work on, obviously there were problems, the editing in the first half is a little off and the pace is slow but we passed the task and had a lot of fun in the editing room learning how everything works and now we know for future projects how to edit more efficiently.
Other problems we had was exporting the film from final cut pro, when showing the film to class the gum insert went into slow mo, nobody is quite sure how this happened, but from now on we'll have to watch the film from another computer before showing it in class.
After editing this project editing has become on of my favourite roles. Hope I can edit again soon.

Interviews MDA1300

The group; Paulina, Jorgen, Maliha, Francisco and myself, I was editor, as you can see, there was not a lot to edit.

With a boom

With the Lapel


This task was a little disappointing, again it was great learning how to use the mic's but as you can see we didn't use their full potential and made a rather boring interview (to say the lest).
What we should have done was have the camera move between the interviewer and the interviewee, going close up to Jorgen when he answered a particularly serious question.
In the first interview it was discussed that a much better background could have been used, with such a boring background the audience is drawn into boredom themselves thus making the interview a failure. This interview is also filmed at a rather strange angle and in a real interview the people in frame would have been moved a lot further away from the wall making sure there are no shadows caused unless of course this is the desired effect.
There are also problems with the sound, but for our first try at least there IS sound.
Its going to be good now that we can use sound properly in films, hopefully we will start making some good things this year!

Our Faust Presentation

Brendan's Fantastic Intro!



And our presentation including our story,

Faust Presentation

View more presentations from Lizzy Morey.

Production

For this weeks project I'll be working with; Francisco who has taken the role of Producer, Sofiane who is our Director, Claire who will be our Camera person and casting director, Adam our editor and myself who is sound and graphics for the opening titles.
After doing various projects this term I am starting to get used to working in a group, letting the director direct and learning what powers a producer has.
 We have chosen Sofiane's short story, which is why we think he'll be perfect as Director, he came up with the story and can see the film visually, of course we all have our own ideas and in pre production have all been working together to get the script down to perfection.
 Our Story;
Mary is a single parent trying to make ends meet, she has only one son aged 14 years old names Joseph. The week before Christmas Mary went to Westfield shopping centre with Joseph to Pick up her pay check as she works there as a toilet cleaner. As they walk through the mall there was a real sense of Christmas festive season in the air. There was an element of sadness is Joseph's face, his mother turned to him and asked him.
-What's wrong?
-Mum, everybody in my class has the video game FIFA, I really wish I could have it for Christmas.
His mother leant down to him and said,
-Joseph you know we can't afford it, look, mummy can't even afford to have a chain for the pendant that nana gave me, and you know how much this pendant means to me.
The boy looked down to the ground and nodded.
Mary didn't want to let her son down, so she decided to sell the pendant in order to afford the video game. On Christmas morning they couldn't wait to surprise each other, and indeed when they exchanged gifts the reaction on their faces was that of surprise
After they had explained to each other what they had done, they both began to cry, not because what they did was pointless, but because they realized how lucky they were to have each other.   

We've already had one week and have found available actors, the problem is that we have a perfect actress, but nobody to play Joseph, the best thing to do may be to replace Joseph with a female actor, but until that's done production has grown to a halt. 

We have also been having problems with the script because of this decision. Hopefully by tomorrow we will decide and then get back onto our feet, but from other productions it seems that we are further ahead that in previous projects. 

Realism

Mondays lesson was all about Poetic realism, we watched 'A day in the country' by Jean Reneor (the music is still stuck in my head) which showed us how french independent film varied from other French cinema of the time. 'A day in the country' was both beautiful to look at and interesting to watch, the middle-class family, father, mother, mother-in-law and daughter gave us, the audience something to relate to haven't we all had a holiday where our families have embarrass us? It reminded me of the TV series 'The Royal Family'. The elements of comedy from family conflicts were there but also (even in The Royal Family) a great sadness. Classing of class. In between humours scenes, in between the lines we know that the classes cannot mix in the society portrayed.
 In Thursday Lesson we looked at how Realism could be more grim, less poetic. Socialist realism came in 1932 from Russia, Eisenstiens 'The old and the new' is a story about how Machines take over mens jobs. Men are no longer needed in the fields. For some reason the men seem to be happy about this which tells me that this film isn't really realistic, but there are realism elements to the film, for instance the camera work of the men cutting the grass, the camera shows the pov of the scythe and then contrasting shots of the locust and the machine. It's beautiful the look at, the wind blowing on the grass makes it look like water and distracts from the reality that these men are going to loose their jobs. The problem with this film is that it had to be modified for the governments aproval, thus Eisenstiens vision's could be said to have been warped. In reality these men would not be smiling at the end of the film, in reality a machine probably wouldn't have taken their jobs. But this all adds up the making the film one of Socialist realism.
 After looking at Socialist realism we looked at Britain's influence on Realism in cinema, Social Realism is a strand of Realism that for me is easier to identify with, These films are gritty, real, films like 'This is England' where people talk how they would, real people are used, sometimes in the place of actors, theres a dark truth, things don't always end well.

Faust

In groups of 4 we we're told to research our character, Faust. We looked into the characters origins, artistic representation, political readings, cultural importance and charactrs, artistic works influenced by Faust and then told to make a presentation for the class about Faust and then giving a pitch for our own Faust film.
In our versions Faust was to be a modern character, so we made him a business man from Oxford named Frost.
 The changes we made to our character were to get Faust to fit in with the everyman. The modern world.
Faust is a character that has lasted because his story sends a strong message. The choices Faust makes due to his greed and hunger for power and knowledge send him to his doom. I'm sure all of us as humans sometimes feel like Faust, like the world is out to get us 'if I only had their contacts'. Life is unfair, making excuses about things you cannot help. Instead of making you're own path, you let life happen to you. So by giving Faust a miserable end it tells people the way not to think. Live life with a positive attitude.
 Our story keeps this message, Faust becomes a successful businessman but then dies of a heart attack from the outcome of his success. He drinks, he sleeps around, he party's to hard. He enjoys life too much, he does not work hard for the things he gets. Power kills him.

These images show Faust either making his pact with the Devil or summoning Mephistopheles the devils servant.

VFX Workshop

Today was the 1st of 2 visual effects workshops. Using Blender (2.60) we learnt how to make a 3D shape and then how in place the 3D shape into film, for instance we might want to add robots or statues to our films, or place our characters in a setting which they are not really in.

Blender will be useful in making films where special effects are too hard or costly.
Simple things to remember from the workshop are the keys;

0= Camera view
1= Front view
7= Top view
3= Right view

XYZ = RGB meaning RGB move the axes XYZ.

There are plenty of videos to watch on youtube for help on the program and the best thing is that its free to download! Although the Hollywood pros use Maya (a costly alternative) Blender is pretty easy to use and is fun to experiment with.
We we're also given some good websites with free footage to experiment on, Hollywoodcamerawork.co.uk which is a free website where amateurs upload their work for others to play with.

Overall Blender is a fun program and I enjoyed the session a lot! Can't wait to start using blender in my films.

I'll leave you with the start image from Blender, a simple cube to experiment on.