Scream is a prime example of postmodernism, it has intertextuality it has homage, it refers to itself and no matter how corny you think it is its still pretty brilliant postmodern wise. The horror movie 'rules' are particularly amusing postmodernism wise, Randy: There are certain RULES that one must abide by in order to successfully survive a horror movie. For instance, number one: you can never have sex. [crowd boos] Randy: BIG NO NO! BIG NO NO! Sex equals death, okay? Number two: you can never drink or do drugs. [crowd cheers and raises their bottles] Randy: The sin factor! It's a sin. It's an extension of number one. And number three: never, ever, ever under any circumstances say, "I'll be right back." Because you won't be back. Stu: I'm gettin' another beer, you want one? Randy: Yeah, sure. Stu: I'll be right back. [crowd cheers] Randy: See, you push the laws and you end up dead. Okay, I'll see you in the kitchen with a knife.
This script refers directly to the audience, Scream is telling us that it knows that it is a horror movie, but that it can still be scary with a "LOOK BEHIND YOU" audience participation.
And then we have Scary Movie... a film making fun of a film thats making fun of film?
Postmodernism is awesome, but extremely hard for me to define, mainly because the more you think about postmodernism the more postmodern everything seems to become.
Its easier to break down postmodernism into elements;
Bricolage
Parody
Pastiche
Homage
Semiotic
Intertextuality
Realism
Identity
Economics
And many more words can be used to describe postmodernism.
Its easy to find Postmodernism in film (not just because our teachers choose Scream for us to watch on Monday) but also because quite often in postmodern films there are so many references and chances for the audience to pick up on postmodernism, such as most of Quentin Tarantino's films. You can tell by his movies that he was heavenly influenced by Italian director Sergio Leone, the music Tarantino uses and even the shot types, his long takes and wide shots, but why is this postmodern? When I watch Tarantino's films I think of Leone, I'm reminded that the film is a film and a homage at that.
In our lecture we looked at a scene from Pulp Fiction, the famous dance scene, where Travolta and Thurman dance. It was interesting to see that even though unintentionally Tarantino hadn't cast Travolta thinking that people would reference him back to one of his most recognisable character from Saturday night fever. Even though Tarantino had not put the message there the audience were still making what they will of it. What I think is even more postmodern is that now a days people dress up as Mia and Vincent so much that when I got around to watching the film (it came out when I was two) I thought that the characters in the film were dressed up in fancy dress, like in other films I had seen, taking an entirely different meaning from the scene.
Another way we could reference the scene was from Godard's 'Bande a parte' which is probably the most likely reference from Tarantino, especially as the name of his production company is called A Band Apart.
I was going to link the dance on here however every version I find on youtube has had music added to it, it seems like the dance scene has become a meme in the internet world.
We looked a little at Roland Barthes in class and his book "Death of the Author" and his theory that the meaning and messages are all picked up by an audience and that nothing is controlled by the author.
I'll leave you with "copy shop" as I can't get the "Bande a Parte" dance!
"Do you suffer from; Restlessness,inability to sleep, Helplessness, tearfulness, mood swings, Anxiety, Worthlessness, Lack of Energy, emptiness, loss of interest
or even, Consumed by a black cloud
This could be caused by;
Leaving friends and family, Living with strangers, coping with work loads, Stress, meeting new people, unhealthy eating
Lifestyle Change, Lack of exercise
If this is you, you might have depression and are not alone.
15% of students suffer from depression and that mean 900,000 thousand of you, Yes you, but there are things you can do.
You can help yourself.
You can exercise, You can eat a balanced diet, You can see a counselor, You can talk to someone, You can join a support group, You can think positive, You can seek help. Don't suffer in silence."
This is the first draft for our Script, it needs a lot of work, there are not many examples of depression campaigns out there so we (Nicole and I) have been struggling to find something to base ours on to match.
Perhaps this is a good thing as it means our campaign will be completely unique and AWESOME.
Assignment 3 – Campaign Film Pre-Production Template
Producer: Lizzy Morey
Director: Nicole Michaelides
Synopsis:
Students suffering from depression at a university (represented by fingers) learn what the symptoms are and how to deal with it.
Treatment:
Key aims - what do you want your work to do?
We want to advertise university counseling services to students who may be depressed so that their time at university is more enjoyable and easy to cope with,
Create awareness,
Change behavior,
Motivate people to act.
Key messages what do you want your work to say?
We want our film to tell students that its okay to be depressed and that they are not alone
That depression can be dealt with and that its nothing to be embarrass about
Students can help each other with depression, its not something to keep in the dark, its something you can talk about.
Audience - who are they? Where are they? Why should they watch your programme?
This film is directly aimed towards university students, students with or without depression, to learn how to recognize and cope with symptoms that they or someone they know may be experiencing.
Style - how will your work look and feel? What stylistic devices will you use?
Our campaign will be a stop motion using pictures of fingers with faces painted onto them. The faces on the fingers will change (according to their emotion) and also the backdrop.
Distribution -how, when and where will your audience see your programme?
This will be distributed on the Middlesex University counseling page and on youtube.com
We aim to promote our videos ultimately on all university websites.
Schedule:
Saturday – Buy all Equipment, White bored, eye liner, pens, tripod, lights
Monday – 12.30pm – 5pm set up room, lights, camera, tripod, white bored.
Tuesday – 9.00am Prepare hand models,
10.00am First scene with single Finger
11.00am Single Finger with addition of Restless, Inability of sleep, helplessness etc
1.00pm Lunch
1.30pm Second scene, Caused by scene
2.30pm Single finger
3.30pm You can scenes
5.00pm Finnish. Clear up.
Wednesday – Time to re film if needed, if not start edit 10am, record Narration
Thursday – Editing from 10.00am – 11.00am 12.30pm – 2.00pm
4.30pm – 9.00pm
Friday – Time for more editing if needed
List of crew:
Nicole Michaelides - Director
Elena Magee – Animator/ Photographer
Lizzy Morey – Producer
Aaron Willet Purchase – Hand Model
Becci Lee – Hand Model
Alex Crowley – Hand Model
Narrator
It's my first time as working as Producer and its been very exciting, I had to prepare a treatment for the first time and it was hard to know what and what not to put onto the treatment.
There are still some things missing from our treatment for instance the narrator. I really hope we find a narrator soon, Im sure we will.
Working with Nicole has been really good so far and pre production has been fairly easy, we're pretty lucking in this project because we have two animators helping us on the day of the shoot and even in the editing stage, that is if nothing goes wrong (which inevitably it will).
I decided that just the first 8 minuets will be enough to give you the general gist of this film.
After watching this, and during watching this, I felt extremely sick, I thought I was going to BE sick, much like the rest of my class. It was extremely hard to watch, I wanted to look away but I didn't want to miss anything, incase there was something to pick up on to make some sort of plot.
There was nothing.
I picked up that maybe the film was set in a circus. Towards the end especially we are given a couple of wide shots that could make out the whole of an object instead of just shapes.
Before showing the film we talked a lot about Cubism, we looked at paintings by Picasso and Braques, but I found more sense in their paintings than any of this film.
We looked at Features of Modernism
Takes Contemporary life as a theme, technology, city life, personal identity
Challenges traditional 'realistic' art which is not really 'real'
Often critical of mass entertainment.
I can pick up these features in the paintings, in cubism but for me Ballet Mecanique is just to abstract for me and I couldn't focus or pick up anything relevant to... anything.
I really loved the idea of this project and in researching watched Molly Dineens film about Angel tube station.
However I found it extremely difficult finding something that the world had not seen before and trying to fit that 'something' into a two minuet film.
For this project I worked as Director with Kohei as Producer.
I started off with two ideas, one was to film Ariel and Monte doing their film of an observational documentary, but after watching the rushes from that day I realise it wasn't really working and that I needed to find something or somebody, a subject that I really cared about.
So I choose to film my friends, not an original idea, but people that I knew would be comfortable with me filming them and to act natural. (although its debatable whether running around in your pants is natural)
I really enjoyed making this film and hope that others can learn something from it, about student life. On showing the film to fellow film students they all commented how they wished they lived in halls and how halls life here looks exciting and different, which I believe it is. So I felt really good about the film and about making a difference to peoples opinions on halls life, especially on Writtle house which is classed as 'the quieter' of the halls on the Middlesex website.
Im thinking about making another observational documentary this time about my younger brother James who is 5. I may do an experiment and give him a camera to see what he films, and if he can make something better than I can by capturing something that adults ignore.
Today was the first of our post production editing workshops with John Cox, it was a lot of fun and I feel i'v learnt a lot even within the first hour.
We looked at Artofthetitle.com and examples of professional titles from oscar winning title designers such as Saul Bass (I didn't even realise there were oscars for title designers)
But it showed how important titles were to a film, they are the gateway to the film, the very first thing that the audience see so its incredibly important to get titles down to perfection.
Crap titles tell the audience its going to be a crap film.
We worked on two different types of software, Final cut pro and Adobe premier pro.
Things I need to remember for Final Cut;
Effects button (top next to file etc)
Titles button (right hand screen under viewer)
Filters such as Bloom, Alpha and invert, Invert gave a really cool effect, like the titles for skins or E4 channel programs.
Needing to render film after putting titles on
Stop Motion Buttons
From the things John showed us in the lesson its going to be easy to experiment with, we can make our own titles from the little things he showed us, the Motion buttons for instance make it very easy for us to make all kinds of titles and move them around the screen easily, whether we want them coming in from the left, the right, or whatever we want them to do.
Its far simpler than when Bass had to create his titles. His were hand crafted, so really we have no excuse for rubbish titles anymore.
In future projects I hope to make titles such as this;
These titles have been very inspirational to me, in Juno they have been hand crafted, each frame drawn, but the same effect can be achieved on adobe premier pro.
Hopefully we will see much better titles after this week!
In France during the 1920's there were two film movements; Surrealism and impressionism. Un Chien Andalou is a prime example of Surrealist film, directed by Luis Bunuel and heavily influenced by Salvador Dali its no wonder this film is the way it is.
Un Chien Andalou is a film that reflects on dreams and the subconscious, dreams show us what we are really thinking and the protagonist in Un Chien Andalou (either the girl or the main man, I have not decided yet) shows us their thoughts, worries and deepest thoughts/desires and then Bunuel exposes them on screen.
Moments which particularly stand out to me and probably the majority of audiences are the eye slitting scene, this scene builds up, we see the male sharpening the knife and then cutting his finger, we wonder what he'll do, we have a shot of the moon which then matches the shot of the woman's eye, a close up of the cut, its all extremely shocking, in class there were gasps and sounds of disgust. We talked about what this symbolises, does it symbolise the woman cutting into herself, her inner self, cutting into her subconscious, a title card says 8 years later, but her eye is fine, are we now in her dream? The film is completely up for interpretation, maybe the knife symbolises something else, her worst nightmare perhaps, or something she is remembering. Its interesting to see her staying so calm, not struggling, she doesn't even blink. I love how when watching the film everybody in the audience is asking the same questions, mainly, What is going on here?!
The other scene of interest is the man who pulls the pianos, not just pianos but what looks like the 10 commandments written on stone and two religious men followed by 2 dead horses! Again all these things are up for interpretation, he's pulling them over to the women he wishes to sleep with (we assume after he has groped her) maybe the things are pullings against him, say religion is telling him not to rape this woman, and the pianos symbolise his class, would a middle-class man rape a women. Alternatively it could be interpreted that he has worked his whole life, the horses are dead, he should be allowed to be with the woman. The religion could be saying that he has a right to the women, as in the bible/ other religious texts a woman is the property of man, and its her duty to sleep with him.
The mans hands, ants coming out of them means his desire to kill, I found a quote on IMDB.com
"The French phrase "ants in the palms," (which means that someone is "itching" to kill) is shown literally."
After watching the film the 'ants in the palms' gives the film another interpretation, does the man want to kill the woman?
Is the film even about the man at all, or more about the woman choosing between two guys? The films editing comes to mind when reviewing the scene where the woman sticks her tongue out at the man and leaves him on the second story room to go to the beach. She's now with a new man, only to end up dead by spring. We are left here with the classic 'fin' ending, shocked.
I started thinking about my own dreams and what happens in my dreams, in dreams we accept what is going on, no matter how bazar and go along with it. Bunuel expects us to do the same and after a couple more viewing perhaps we will.
Un Chien Andalou (even the title doesn't make sense) 1928
I worked with Martins Galenieks this week to producer our 'Space' themed film, we didn't really specify who was Producer or Director, however I generally took the role of Produce.
We had a couple of aims for the film, one was to show how the space transformed when the Buddhists prepared it for meditation, another was how the community centre itself changed, we also had a more spiritual meaning, that of the Buddhists themselves, the way their 'space of mind' changed when they were in their sacred space.
To have so many different messages flying around in our heads whilst making this film confused the film a little, in class people found it difficult to find the exact message we were sending. And after Eddy asked if people would of know that the film had a space theme without knowing that it had a space film, made it clear that we hadn't really passed the task.
However we did get some good comments about the camera work (although if you look carefully the camera is pretty tilted).
I did enjoy making the project although having to get up at 4.30am on a wednesday morning wasn't the highlight of the year, but I did learn that their defiantly needs to be a prominent director and producer unless we want a messy film with mixed messages.
It was also fun working with a Editor from TVP who knew exactly how to use final cut pro without having to ask the teccy's to help us with every little detail.
Overall i'm pretty happy with our space project as well as learning a lot about Buddhism.
Very much looking forward to our documentary project for this week and hoping that a little bit of snow isn't going to mean uni's closed!!!
"to create reality in front of camera and pull the truth out of it"
Abbas Kiarostami
Close up made in 1990 directed by Abbas Kiarostami is a filmed version of real events, its a mixture of real documentary and reenactments following the events before, during and after the trial of Hossain Sabzian who had convinced a well off family in Tehran that he was famous director Mohsen Makmalbaf.
One of the most interesting things about this film is the casting, Kiarostami managed to get the whole Tehran family to play themselves even though in the film and probably in real life, they were made out to be quite foolish. Throughout the film the father claims that he knows the truth, but keeps it from the children to 'test' them. But how true this is we will never know.
Its quite hard to know how much of any of this film is completely honest as even during the trial cameras were rolling and questions were being asked from behind the camera, and people change when they are in front of the camera. Hossain talks a lot about acting and who he wants to be in the trial, it makes it even stranger that he then goes on to act in the film.
Throughout the film we never really find out Hossain's intentions, but maybe thats because he didn't know what his intentions were, all he wanted was to make a film, which at the end, he did, if it wasn't for him this film wouldn't have been made.
"A story like this doesn't come along every day"
One of the films first lines and its true, when a story like this comes along, its only natural to want to share the story or make a film about it.
