"All you can do is play along at life and hope that sometimes you get it right."

Andy's class on Monday was severely enjoyable, laying into Robert Flattinson (because he's, like, 2D), Gerard Butler and his chipmunk-ness and as usual a casual bringing up of Megan Fox. With regards to the stick insects of modern cinema, I think I'd like to treat them to a good KFC family bucket, Keira Knightley especially, I think she's trying for a size beyond Size Zero:Monday afternoon was perhaps my favourite Richard session so far. The reason being that we were all pitching our ideas and it was great to hear everyone giving constructive feedback on everyone else's ideas and really, there wasn't a bad one in the class. There were some I loved more than others, like Michael's which made me think that a horror could be done as a student film, albeit a quite expensive one. I also thought it was good to have some fresh eyes (or in this case, ears) to my own idea since myself and Richard like it but that doesn't necessarily mean it will be a great story. All feedback has been bounced off the idea and most of them have stuck. Thanks class! And of course Richard.

Tuesday was a short discussion with Andy and Adam on this week's scenes. I was glad to hear their intentions and I look forward to this coming week, it's quite exciting. I'm actually thinking of developing something outside of the course during next term to hopefully put any directing skills gained into practice. I didn't intend in becoming the prop master on the scenes but I guess creating a reminder list can sometimes send you in a certain direction. It was good fun having a right old rummage around the prop store though and thankfully we've found just about all of the props!

Thursday was a full day of Gav and while it wasn't as difficult to get through as I thought, the subject matter wasn't terribly exciting. It was good to learn how to customise and make ourselves comfortable with Avid since we will be spending extended time with it in the future. Also, as I noticed with camera last year, I see where I was going wrong when editing in Avid at college.

Friday opened for me with a performance of The Island Tapes, which I loved the concept of and it was a welcome break from my sometimes louder iPod tracks. Each of the musicians were particularly talented and someone mentioned afterwards that it was a modern day equivalent of silent movie-era type live accompaniement and I hope we get to take part in the planned cityscapes version.

After this I had my rummage in the prop store and then as darkness fell, my Adam tutorial which went quite well, even though we maybe began to get too sidetracked for a Friday evening.

I have a fair few reviews to post about, but they'll come along at some point.

"I think that gay marriage should be between
a man and a woman."
Arnold Schwarzenegger

Blogging a dead horse

Week 8 began with Andy's class, this time focussing on the star system which was a good class, though one of the key thoughts, that Brad Pitt is not a movie star, I'm sure has been raised before. Either that or I've already looked at his box office success. Of the Brad Pitt films I have watched (12 Monkeys, Seven, The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, Burn After Reading, Inglourious Basterds), none of the flaws of the films are his performance, he is quite a diverse and talented actor but for some reason, doesn't attract big money. A real oddity. So does being a sex symbol really affect the box office returns? Apparently not.

With Richard we studied some smaller scenes like the unforgettable opening of Scream. The film has dated terribly and this was one of the films that I struggled to make it through without my hands covering my eyes back in the day. It still scared Galina though, which was quite funny. Richard also informed us that this coming week, we will be pitching our story ideas to the class. This should be fun.

On Tuesday, we watched My Fake Baby and the beginning of Evicted which I'm quite glad, didn't finish, I wasn't quite in the mood for a depression. My Fake Baby comments can be found in my previous post.

Wednesday began at 1 with a programme meeting which I think made us look like we despised the course, which obviously isn't true. Sometimes our class seems quite happy to suffer in silence but thankfully we got everything off our chests. In terms of technical, for some reason I spoke up but the words I said were more related to other peoples thoughts than my own. I feel fairly comfortable behind the camera, though as I've expressed before, I'm not yet confident with lighting and the camera additions, such as filters in the matte box. With the comments over the past few days though, I've come to terms with the idea that I just have to ask more questions when it comes to lighting and actively seek support which I have done in the past. I think a Ray tutorial post-scene shoots may be in order, even though I know that is not the focus of the exercise. I'm also now happy to accept that lighting will be something I'll learn a lot more of in term 2 and 3 and even more so if I decide on camera specialism. While it is pretty concrete that's the route I'll follow, I want to try my hand at producing, I think I'm organised and good enough at planning ahead to give it a reasonable stab. Who knows, I could end up having a last minute change of mind.

After the meeting it was quite reassuring to see the effect our comments had on both Ray and especially Adam later in the week. Adam mentioned that he can't imagine us not doing films, he said something along the lines of we would certainly be doing one though hopefully 2 or 3 or maybe even four. I understand the funding issue and would be happy to do scenes all year but at the same time, I think we may be even more stressed for our grad films if we don't have practice at our production roles this year. I was also quite shocked to find out that Adam and Andy will be our directors for the scenes and really, there are few better to teach us how to talk to actors. Our history with them also means we should be at ease to raise questions. While it would be quite chaotic, I would have liked to be present on Andy's day too, you can never learn too much. Maybe someone can record that session for me.

Zam's class was replaced with a screening of Salesman, thoughts are in my previous post.

Thursday was a great sound revision class with Cammy. I was quite annoyed though when some of the class seemed quite unwilling to engage as much as some of us who are fairly confident we won't be following the sound channel (yes, a pun). In my eyes, you never know what the future holds and if no work in my chosen field was available, I'd love to put myself forward for a sound recordist/boom op position if it meant getting valuable on-set experience.

Gav's class was decent enough but I'm finding it hard to pay attention during editing, maybe it's the DTU or maybe it's just because I'm sat in front of the computer but whatever it is, I'm dreading full editing days. As Adam said on Friday, we'd probably just end up 'zombified'. We'll see, though Gav constantly making light of what we're doing certainly eases me.

Friday started with an hour with Adam and then myself, Murdo, Phil and Graeme were off to film the Brodsky Quartet. I'm not into the classical musical scene (yes, shocking I know), but these guys were pretty good and were quite patient with us, though ideally, I'd have wanted to move the one member who seemed a bit of a diva. The lady (Jacqueline?) seemed especially nice and came over and introduced herself to each of us beforehand. I wasn't as nervous as I thought I would be, I suppose my multi-camera nerves are almost non-existant since no-one was looking at me, only at the performers. Some of the shots I reckon will be pretty useless though I think my nice focus pulls and intimate shots will help Gavin's edit. A great experience and I managed to even stay calm and collected when the battery went down, I know that a year ago that would have seemed like the end of the world. The directed study I did the night before helped me put in to practice timecode syncing, a technique I'll remember for the next multi-cam shoot.

RANT/THOUGHT?

This weeks 'star' class got me thinking that I have a problem with the term 'character actor'. Actors such as Robert DeNiro, Michael Douglas or Morgan Freeman are known as character actors. This (i think) refers to the actors playing similar, deep characters but where does the line between being typecast and being a character actor, get drawn. Plus, 99% of the time, actors are playing a character, so isn't everyone a character actor? Even blockbusters have characters with back stories, thoughts and processes so really, what is a character actor?

"Rarely is the question asked, 'Is our children learning?.'"
George W. Bush

And of course Henry the horse dances the waltz...

Finally, time to do a reviews blog, faithful readers will be glad no doubt. There will be a rant or two but generally, I'm going to try and keep it small and specific, though I do have a lot to write about.

TV

Mad Men - This has been tagged with The Wire like praise and whilst I wasn't taken so much by The Wire (it apparently requires long term dedication before you can be rewarded, how can I cope with that? I was born in the 80's!), there was something I loved about Mad Men from the opening titles. Mainly, it's style.

The show plays it's time period perfectly and there are no modern day shows I can think of that can pull off the 60's.. It almost feels as if you could colour this black and white and most audiences would be hard pressed to tell it's a modern day show. The only problem I had was that the opening episode was not the best introduction to the characters, it almost felt as though I had came right in the middle of something. By the third episode though, I was quickly trying to find time to watch it. Every image in the show could be a beautiful photograph and after having recently stared for extended periods at a lighting plot for the Draper household in American Cinematographer, it doesn't seem to be a simple case of post-production grading.

Brass Eye - Having watched a fair few episodes of The IT Crowd, and loved Chris Morris' every second on-screen, I really wanted to see what he was up to beforehand. The show borders on Borat/Bruno sort of madness and taste and isn't for everyone but it's level of satire is unparralled by any other show before or since with most of the humour coming from an exaggeration of content and questions which would be asked in Panorama/World In Action sort of shows.

DOCUMENTARY

The Beatles Anthology - When it comes to music documentaries, there are few which are better. Recent re-releases and the Rock Band game has given The Beatles another cash injection as well as introducing a new generation to their boundary-pushing music. Recently, I watched Episode 5, which covers their career as they realise that their live performances are becoming poor, due to the number of women who come along to their gigs and only ever scream, apparently they couldn't hear themselves. In the 1960's it was also commonplace for bands to go onto shows like Top Of The Pops and many others and "perform" or rather, mime. In 1965, The Beatles needed more time to write and tour and so came up with the idea of having a "Promotional film", showing the band performing to a backing track usually of their new single.

The first, was "Paperback Writer" and while The Beatles themselves aren't single-handedly responsible for creating the modern day music video, they are certainly the first major band to have one. The video itself doesn't have the breakneck pace of modern music videos, then again, the music itself isn't exactly breakneck either. A year previous to the "Paperback Writer" film release, Richard Lester directed them in A Hard Day's Night, which itself is considered must-see viewing for anyone interested in pop promo's, for me, this section is the must see:


My Fake Baby - A quite disturbing documentary, I was shocked constantly throughout and saw the woman who looked as if her grandson had died, as a mad woman, until at the end, we find out the grandson is alive and just in New Zealand. Then I realised the woman was clinically insane. The documentary was especially effective and is one of the few worthy of repeat viewing. Very well edited and much cleverer than audiences, who may tune out after a break or two, may give it credit for.


Salesman - This doc was quite difficult to follow, it may have been my old ears or it may well have been the room but I had a lot of difficulty hearing what was being said. Besides that, the "narrative" was decent and just about engaged me enough, though it picked up towards the end. The idea was much stronger than the execution and could have done with losing 10 or 20 minutes, which I put down to there being too many scenes of the men selling bibles.

FILM

Zombieland - A great little film with lots of one-liners and an addictively watchable Woody Harrelson and an interesting narration style from Jesse Eisenberg. Of all zombie movies, this seems to have the least but the film becomes more about the dynamic between the four leads and is a road movie disguised as a zom-com. Certainly one to watch, though I don't think it was quite funny enough (besides the cameo) to watch again.


Saw VI - The franchise continues and by the look of it, is not yet ready to end. It's returns may be dwindling but considering how much they cost to shoot, the series is still turning massive profits. Those money men at Twisted Pictures and Lionsgate are very smart folks. I can't sell this to anyone since like serial drama, the audience has to soon wane. If you didn't enjoy one you won't watch two and therefore won't watch three e.t.c. but I consider myself a fan and this episode, was stronger than the previous two. For me, the series isn't particularly scary or creepy or indeed shocking anymore and I can only compare it to something like Eastenders, except with more gore and less misery. It often pans out like a soap, with random relations turning up, characters coming back from the dead and lots of people shouting/screaming at each other. If you liked Saw V, you should see Saw VI, though I doubt anyone reading this is interested.


The Battle Of Algiers - I wish I could write more about this, I really don't remember much about it, but I do remember enjoying the riot sequences, I didn't love it, but also didn't really hate it. Maybe my memory is depreciating.


2012 - Roland Emmerich is destroying the world again and as much as it was entirely dumb, poorly written and is really a road movie with collapsing buildings, it is VERY entertaining and VERY funny. It may actually be my favourite Roland Emmerich film though that statement gets me thinking, Mr Emmerich's "style" isn't a million miles away from Michael Bay's "style" but if Michael Bay had made this, would I treat it differently? I think I have a lot more respect for Emmerich because of Independance Day, which was one of my favourite sci-fi films growing up. Anyway, if you like to see lots of things blow up, John Cusack be an amazing driver and then chased by fireballs and also see the funniest Russian in cinematic history, then you have to see this.
***********************
That's another reviews blog, hopefully I won't have as much to write about next time.

A Monday off and a great camera day makes Paul a something something...

Really good times this week, a Monday off and then Tuesday with only Andy's factual class where we touched on documentaries and the possibilities of us making some in the future.

Wednesday, like Monday, was a lax day and involved me turning up simply to record voiceover for The Golden Rule, which wasn't exactly my job.

Thursday was one of the best tech days ever, an entire day with camera add-on's and such. I knew bits and pieces but gained a decent amount of additional knowledge with regards to matte box filters and finally learning the proper way to get focus marks. The greatest part of the class was us all getting our chance to be either cable basher, grip, camera operator and focus puller. It may have taken a while for everyone to get their own chance but I think it was certainly worth it in the end. I hope that we have enough time and preperation for the forthcoming scenes since it seems we will be under a good bit of pressure, not a bad thing and I'm looking forward to be able to try something else and being taken out of my comfort zone.

Friday opened with a nice short class from Adam where we spoke further about Life On Mars and it's themes and devices. The class proved useful in seperating themes from devices but I also thought that some could be a bit of both. The week ended in a screening of The Battle of Algiers which was decent but not great.

I'm falling behind with reviews but they will all come in time...hopefully.

"I have a degree, but I prefer to pose half-naked in newspapers."
Myleene Klass

Falling behind...

This has been a long time coming but here's my next blog update, with photos from The Golden Rule courtesy of Petra, thank you!

Last Thursday, was a class with VL Derrick Ritchie, a professional gaffer. Derrick's advice and tips were useful and I was powering through notebook pages as he spoke. My questions probably didn't mean much to anyone else, or maybe even seemed insignificant to Derrick and Ray, but while I understand the 3-point lighting principle, I find it difficult to apply it to a smaller space. Case in point, The Golden Rule, interior scenes. We had no room for a backlight since the entire back wall was being shown in the shot, our key light worked fine, as did our fill, but I can't quite get my head around how to make light look like it is coming from a source, and still fulfilling the 3 point principle. I understand that 3 point lighting is basic and it can be manipulated to fit the room and purpose, but I don't think I know enough about gels and such to create a particular mood yet. I don't know how much we'll go into this during the year but I don't think doing it in an AGOS room or similar is going to help, I'd love to have Ray or one of the 4th years with much more experience than I, to shadow me or whoever else and advise the best way of creating a mood or simulate a source. One for next year maybe? Since I have so many questions which I think can only be solved from making mistakes and practical advice on-set, I found it hard to ask anymore questions than I did.

Thursday afternoon and Friday morning was time dedicated to Zam, with us developing our simple stories and then knocking out the beats and then drawing storyboards. My drawing ability is beyond limited but Zam's simplification of showing basic eyelines and angles was helpful. Even though I would still prefer to photoboard just so no-one can mistake the fairly poor drawings, I at least now know the best way to tell a story in a short time.

After our screening of The Searchers, we rushed to pick up kit and then begin filming of The Golden Rule, Phil's FilmG entry. My countless hours of prep didn't exactly pay off for the interior footage, I feel I did my best, but it is still far below even a basic DoP level. It's all practice, and I am still learning but sometimes it's good for things to go wrong, to remind me that I can't get ahead of myself or pat myself on the back just yet. There are some sections I am happy with, such as the opening pan (though again, a bit of a lighting failure) but hopefully any visual weaknesses will be looked over if the story is strong.

Saturday started off very well and it made me glad that I have now permanently given up Saturdays at Asda. The international 'day of rest' is now the only day I work. Scene 6, the final scene, was the first we shot and it all went fairly well, some of the shots I felt came off better than I could imagine. Our luxury of time was quickly lost in the afternoon when not only were we running low on minutes, but also battery power. We often only had time for 1 take and I felt terrible about the outcome of both scene 4 and scene 2, feeling they were undershot. Our last hour, forced us to sacrifice the monitor due to lack of battery power and later, we were warming batteries with our armpits just to get the last few necessary shots. We would have had enough to edit the film together but sadly, thanks to dirty camera heads, we were forced to reshoot the following Saturday. This I didn't consider a loss, since we now had time to reshoot and get everything we needed and not have to rush. It went very well, scarily well in fact and fingers crossed that the footage is great, we don't have time to reshoot again. I will state though, I suggested weeks ago that we would need 2 weeks and in the end, we did.

Last Monday's class was with Andy, talking of genre theory. We looked at what makes a genre a genre, talking about iconic images, style, settings, narrative and character. It was all really interesting, though I'm not sure if I would consider Die Hard a western, though I would say that John McClane is an urban cowboy, the many references to it without the film backs this up. We also identified the pleasures of genre viewing and rounded out the class with a documentary on film noir. The classification of film noir, whether under style or genre seems to bother a few people but my thinking is that it is a genre, but with style.

Monday was rounded off with another Richard tutorial, this time with far less notes. Hopefully I can develop it all into a servicable script.

Tuesday only consisted of a trip to the Mitchell library which was fascinating. Finding documents of over 800 years of age in front of my eyes was certainly different, it'd be good to take another trip to the Mitchell just to wander around.

The rest of the week didn't have much of anything in it, besides an episode of Being Human (which I had watched before) and then Friday consisted of boothing and helping out in Richard's open day class. I also, always seem to get the talkers at the open day, or maybe it's just me.

The past few weeks have had many hours dedicated to The Golden Rule and I'm now glad that all I can do on it has been done. Let's hope we end up with a good film.

"I'm not smart enough to lie."
Ronald Reagan

"0118999 88199 9119725..3"

A quick catch-up on film/tv watching over the past week or so.

FILM

12 Angry Men - I didn't have high hopes, especially when moments before the film started, Andy told us that the film was almost entirely set in one room. I was pleasantly surprised though, when I soon got hooked to every glance, every angle and every line. Some of the best films seem to be born out of keeping the setup simple and usually only having a couple of performers but this relied on 12 strong performances to carry the film which it pulled off, with gusto. Henry Fonda was a name I was familiar with but I had yet to see a film with him. He was great on-screen and while I knew exactly where the film would end up from the second he chooses to go against the rest of the jury, I was hooked by every word from his mouth, like Yoda, only less green.

The script was obviously written for theatre but it never goes against it, especially when Sidney Lumet carves interesting surroundings from what could, in other hands, be a really dull room. I did begin to feel like I was locked in a stuffy room when the on-screen characters had quite odd sweat patches on their clothing. I would have to watch it again but I have a suspicion that Henry Fonda's jury member is the one who approaches the broken fan at the beginning. Could he be extremely clever and simply have manipulated the entire thing?

Such a great film and one I will watch again.


The Searchers - I'm far from the biggest fan of Westerns, but I really enjoyed this. John Wayne has always seemed a bit of a Sean Connery to me, he's always John Wayne no matter where you put him or what type of character he plays. In The Searchers, this didn't bother me. We seemed to have over analysed the opening scene and the relationship between Ethan and Martha was never taken any further since a little later Martha is killed or kidnapped. Like Andy said in Monday's class, it's almost unexplainable how it works but you know it does and theres a certain charm about it. For a film that was 2 hours long, I also felt it was very well paced and didn't drag or hang around at any point. There are two things I'd like to ask Andy about though, one of which is, for the night-time scenes, did they shoot day for night? It has a very odd quality about it but much more realistic than everything being awash with moonlight. Also, how did they shoot the tracking with horses shots, I don't imagine they had the fancy rigs and equipment that the industry has today, which probably means that the camera operator simply had to be ace at his job. Good fun and now I don't have such a strong dislike for Westerns.


The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus - You can't hate Terry Gilliam, or at least you shouldn't. The man has forever had trouble with studios, the most infamous incident being Brazil, where Gilliam took out a full page ad in Variety, telling the studio exec to allow him to release his movie. Gilliam however, created buzz for the movie by showing it to film students without the studio's permission and when good word got around about his version of the film, the studio were forced to abandon their terrible "love conquers all" version and instead stick with Gilliam's vision of his dystopian world. The media have always said that Mr Gilliam is cursed, though in my eyes, no-one wants to take a chance on something that is truly original and execs aren't quite willing to let an imagination such as his, breathe. His films are always plagued with production difficulties as well and his latest, was the production which suffered most from the death of Heath Ledger. Those who think the film may narrativly suffer from this would be wrong to approach it with that mindset, since Gilliam, the master craftsman that he is, still manages to create a story which just about holds together.

The problem with the film, isn't Heath Ledger's death since his friends (Colin Farrell, Jude Law and an only-on-screen-for-five-minutes, Johnny Depp) step in whenever his character passes through to the mirror universe. The problem seems to come from the confusing and somewhat unexplained facts about what is happening. Though it may just be that the plot is so simple yet I expected it to be much more complicated.

The film looks very pretty as well, I was constantly looking forward to our next journey to the mirror universe, since it is all so colourful and bright and dream-like. As usual, Gilliam's use of those fish-eye like lenses adds an additional otherworld-ly quality to his films.

In short, I loved the film and want to see it again, though if you can look past the small narrative faults, you could find one of the most original and visually interesting films of the year so far.

TV

Dr Who (Season 2) - I'm a fairly late adopter of Dr Who and those around me (Gavin) have avoided spoilers meaning I can just about see the show with fresh eyes each time. This series had some absolute crackers, for me, the Cybermen two-parter, series finale and The Girl In The Fireplace being my favourite. My only problem still lies with the monster/planet/old Dr Who baddie of the week formula. It obviously works but I think in the fairly recent advent of serial shows, I have been spoiled and rewarded for remembering subtle little call backs to earlier episodes or seasons. Don't get me wrong, Dr Who still has this though some episodes could probably be lifted into any other season of the show. Then again, if the show was as heavily serialised as other shows I love, it may well loose it's charm and most importantly, it's audience.

Still, the show continues to break my expectations of British Sci-fi and indeed budget. David Tennant is also one of the most likable protagonists on my TV radar and is definitely the main driving force of the show, playing humour and drama like a true megastar. I'll certainly be continuing to watch the Doctor in his adventures, looking forward to that day when I actually do catch up with it all and having another show to geek-out over.


I still have to blog about Mad Men, but I'm scared in case I can't stop raving about it.

"Don't believe every thing you read, especially The Mirror."

Monday was perhaps one of my favourite classes of the year so far with Andy, dealing with framing, deep focus and saccadic vision. While bits and pieces I had picked up through filming, piecing it all together was very entertaining. I wasn't the best at reading The Searchers since I still have difficulty deconstructing a film, especially one that I have yet to see. Before starting the class, I reminded Phil what we would be studying that day and I said that hopefully we can implement some of what we learn in the shotlist for The Golden Rule, Phil's entry for FilmG on which I have drawn the hefty task of DoP. I think we have implemented some of it but not forcefully, rather subconciously. I doubt we'll reach the lofty heights of feature films but hey, you've got to walk before you run and we're still at the crawling stage.

One thing occured to me in class, and I may try it with a few opening scenes to films to see if my theory is correct, but in general, modern films do not take enough time to setup or even often tell the story. It's a problem I have with the idea of the MTV generation and modern day editing, everyone wants to get in and out as soon as possible and no-one takes the time to just enjoy the moment and hold a shot or use a tripod anymore. I imagine that in the future there will be a reaction to this and everyone may want to return to slower paced storytelling. I feel like a tired old record since I've made this point several times on here but since joining the academy, I've found respect for directors and editors letting the actors drive the scene and not solely the editing. Some films we've viewed have been quite badly paced or difficult to follow but I think that like fashion (which I am a dedicated follower of), all the best trends return and I think young directors should be looking backwards to make their mark, not poorly attempting to set trends or be entirely original. Maybe just like there are only so many stories that can be told, there are only so many ways a film can be shot.

I really wish we could have more classes on this and I'm not sure if Ray would touch on it if I decide to definetly choose camera next year. Thankfully, I'm going to have a bit more time in the next couple of weeks to hopefully watch some of Andy's recommended viewing films. I'm also thinking the Sidney Lumet book is one I must pick up, especially after digging around a little and finding out that 12 Angry Men was his stonking feature film debut!

Also, after it was raised in the class, I decided to cover my bottom and check out the resources tab on moodle. It turns out that Andy has wrote masses of stuff on there, which I think will work on my iPod, which could be some valuable reading, though, where are last years articles?

(All of this was written much earlier in the week, a rest of the week post coming soon.)

"It's dull from beginning to end, but it's loaded with entertainment."
Michael Curtiz, film director.