I would like to continue my practices with editing and create a film that uses post production techniques to an advanced level. I would like to create a sequel and improved version of a film I made previously called “Verses: A live action 2D fighter”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzcRLZOmUY
Along with this, I could study into the fight scenes from movies or look into the blurring lines between video games and cinema.
’11’09’01 September 11′ is a 2002 film composed of 11 short films from different countries and filmmakers, each from a different country. Each gave their own vision of the events in New York during the September 11th attacks in a short film of 11 minutes, 9 seconds, and one frame.
We watched only a few of the 11 short films. The first one interestingly enough is from Iran, and is directed by Samira Makhmalbaf. The short documentary of their lives starts with a group of very young or very old men and women trying to build a bomb shelter in anticipation of the US retaliation. There are no young men to be seen, as they are likely to all be forced to fight. These scenes show the humanity of Iran as they are simply normal people afraid of bombs, just like the US. The scene changes half way to a teacher trying to explain to very young children what has happened in the US. The children have no idea of what’s happening in the world outside of their close lives. Whether it be someone they know falling down a well and dying, they can still tell and laugh about it as they are more comfortable with death than any child should be. One of the final scenes in this film is looking up at a massive tower well, which shows relative cinematography to the Twin towers.
The second film we saw was a staged dramatization of the events filmed directly in New York, and is directed by Sean Penn. This film is a scripted narrative of a deaf lady whose boyfriend is a New York tour guide for other deaf people. He goes to work on the day of the bombings and she is left to her own silence. She has no idea of the bombings and her only clue is a slight momentary shaking before her boyfriend gets home covered in dust from the debris.
I believe that because of the year of Walter Benjamin’s essay was written, he is threatened by the future of technology and the possible direction of art.
Benjamin wrote that his essay is in the effort to describe a theory of art that would be “useful for the formulation of revolutionary demands in the politics of art.”
Because I find the academic language used is to a level that is not common in our modern day, I can only speak on my hard earned opinions of the essay. Walter writes about film and compares it to a painter and even a surgeon, with the cutting of film. I think he finds film to be a very unnatural art form compared to the theatre. With film you are forced to experience the edited result. He talks about the illusionary nature of film, as it plays with reality. This is where he also compares it to a magician. I believe this is backed up in ‘Jump Cut: A review of contemporary media’. Richard Kazis on Benjamin Walters opinions, says “A film is an ordering of multiple fragments, a series of scenes shot in order of expedience rather than in logical or temporal order.” He also says that Benjamin is expressing the distance film presents from the audience to the actor compared to the stage.
I believe that Walter thinks moving image will spoil traditional art, but I disagree. He is concerned that with these new technologies, ‘traditional’ art will be replaced and forgotten about. I can respect that opinion from the year that he was writing, the future could hold many things, and it sure did. But now in 2013, moving image as an art has vastly grown to a level that Walter would surely find unbelievable. He would also be able to disregard his fears because film hasn’t hindered ‘traditional’ art in the slightest, it’s given inspiration for many other areas of art.
Here is a trailer for Nanny McPhee we made that changes the genre to a horror.
I kept in mind the conventions from my Dark Skies trailer analysis.
Working with Amy and Connor, we originally planned on creating a trailer for Jackass, to make it seem like a horror movie. Our idea changed to Nanny McPhee as a horror when we realised the contrast between the genres wouldn’t be very great, as Jackass already contains plenty of screaming and pain. However Nanny McPhee is for children and to turn it into a horror would be much greater and make the final product more effective.
We worked in and out of college on the edit. We started by watching Nanny McPhee and picking any moments or dialogue that we thought would be useful. At home I went through the movie again for more scenes, as well as watched the sequel.
We’re happy with the outcome and the trailer has been very well received on the internet.
Here is my presentation against fast food that I presented last week. The feedback from the class was positive in the favour of my powerpoint.
For our trailer editing projects, I will be analysing the conventions of a Hollywood horror movie trailer, or instead what is called a horror. Hollywood never has quite grasped the difference between horror and action. I haven’t seen the movie Dark Skies directed by Scott Stewart. I think this gives me an unbiased advantage to extracting all the information that I can from only the trailer.
The trailer begins with the equilibrium of a typical wealthy happy American family. Everything is cleched, the young good looking husband and wife; one mowing the lawn and the other setting the table and talking on the phone. I’m sure I don’t even need to say which is doing which task.
Suspense and paranormal presence is introduced in the immediate next scene of their other son riding his bike in a dark street at night. The non-diegetic sound creates suspense as it eerily approaches the street lights to flicker loudly off. The boy looks back to the empty street and a deep drum hit shows an establishing shot of their house, also at night. The disequilibrium is fully created when an alarm brings the family downstairs at night to find every can and box in the house to be perfectly balanced in the kitchen. Each cut to follow is now quick and surrounded by half a second of darkness as well as the drum.
The trailer now follows a series of mystery as it shows characters trying to explain the happenings. This doesn’t go on for long. It’s soon enough interrupted by an abridged scene of birds hitting the window violently. This scene ends with the character looking up at the ceiling to symbolise the extra-terrestrial presence. It cuts into darkness with another deep bass kick.
The following scene is the characters talking about the three different migrations of birds flying into the window, and mentioning that it was as if they were drawn to their house. Now half way into the trailer, the main characters are concernedly talking about how something strange is going on as the non-diegetic background tracks go silent.
The next scene shows a sunny day, but not all is right as people are examining the scars on the youngest boys body that look like hand prints. The final frames of this scene flicker between negative shots. This is a standard technique used in many horror trailers, usually to represent danger or against some kind of awaited reveal.
The next scene is again trying to explain the previous one. As the characters are finally catching onto the aliens side of things, they stop listening to the logical explanations and talk of other encounters with aliens that have been reported.
The final scenes of the trailer are speeding up the pace for a climax as it shows quick scenes of danger or action. Most of these scenes take place at night. The pace suddenly drops towards the end as it shows a scene of one of the main characters hitting her head against a glass door repeatedly. Upon the third hit, the pace quickens again to the final scene of the trailer which reveals a silhouette of the alien standing in the hallway behind the character.
The trailer ends to the creepy ambience and the text “Dark Skies”
Here is a link to the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8iLp1xQtPQ
Here, I have recreated the opening to the first Lord of the Rings movie by Peter Jackson.
In the original, the movie starts with a battle at Mount Doom that occured hundreds of years ago. In my version, this has been replaced with the last scene of the third movie, which is also at Mount Doom.
Showing this was well received by the class and those who have not seen Lord of the Rings before found this edit to be suspenseful and left them wanting to watch the movie. Other students made comments that this edit would change your opinion of the main character throughout the movie, as the whole time you would be expecting him to turn evil.
I believe this is a good example of non-chronological editing.
I worked in a group with Connor, Katy and Richard. Connor and Katy presented on screen while I worked the camera and Richard held the light reflector. I also did editing
Obesity in the UK is a largely growing problem. No pun intended, well maybe a little. Unfortunately there’s nothing little to find here as cheap junk and fastfood is too much of an easy and fast option for a snack, or any proper meal.
We have to ask who’s to blame. Is it that fast food is too cheap? Is it that healthy food is too expensive? Or is it the impact of the advertising for unhealthy food that is to blame?
Being told to eat healthier by the government while being bombardered with unhealthy food advertisements can be strenuous.
The BBC claim that doctors of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges have this to say:
“Fizzy drinks should be heavily taxed and junk food adverts banished until after the watershed, doctors have said, in a call for action over obesity”
Here are the links to the websites and a few organisations I have found:
http://curiosity.discovery.com/question/expensive-healthy-foods
http://curiosity.discovery.com/question/junk-foods-cheaper
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21478314
Evaluation
Connor and I are happy with how the finished film has turned out. I feel that we have portrayed Tintagel in a respectful and appealing way. Although in retrospect, the choice of equipment was not to the standard that we would’ve expected; lowering the overall video quality, giving the video scan lines and screen tearing. However we believe that the project does not rely on video quality but rather content. The process of finding interviewees didn’t go as smooth as possible with many people declining or outright refusing, although we finally found three willing interviewees.
The interviewees themselves were of high quality in their responses. The only thing letting one interview down was the overall background audio quality which unfortunately rendered the interview unusable.
Exporting the video didn’t go quite as planned as it left us with a 6 gig video file. I’m still trying to reduce the file size to something reasonable. The last render was 500mbs but the audio was out of sync. We’ve also decided to make another version of the film that says thank you at the end to the interviewees and to the one that we didn’t use.
BA Hons and FD Film 