Neon Bible

The concept of interactive music video is a relatively new one. And a handful of directors have started to dice with the idea experimentally. Neon Bible’s interactivity gives more of a depth to the experience. Allowing control of the video itself gives a sense of fun for the interactor, and provides replayability. It also adds a whole new reason to send this new experience to your friends, creating a far greater audience.  Before the virality of the internet this video could only have been seen in galleries and media spaces. But since social networking and unlimited connectivity has arrived the spectrum of potential viewers is infinite, thus creating an ever greater need to attract people through innovating tech that can be picked up virally and expanded exponentially. 

My personal feelings are of indifference to the particular song but enjoyment of the concept of an interactive music video. With ever broadening horizons in technology, there will be ever constantly evolving ways to experience music video and media in general. The next being perhaps physical, or three dimensional experiences, touch and emotion involved or brain controlled.

In creating homage to neon bible; without the interactivity as we are not yet that advanced in our production, was a good experience. Learning involved lighting setup, new editing skills and new ideas and possibilities. We used beads to create the effect of rain and a book in reference to a bible. In retrospect I think the finished product could have been more attractive but we showed we have learned the techniques necessary.

http://www.beonlineb.com/

Single Camera Production

As its name suggests, a production using the single-camera setup generally employs just one camera. Each of the various shots and camera angles is taken using the same camera, which is moved and reset to get each shot or new angle. The lighting setup is typically reconfigured for each camera setup.

In contrast, a multi-camera setup consists of multiple cameras arranged to capture all of the different shots (camera angles) of the scene simultaneously, and the set must be lit to accommodate all camera setups concurrently. Multi-camera production generally results in faster but less versatile photography.

In single-camera, if a scene cuts back and forth between actor A and actor B, the director will first point the camera towards A and shoot shots number 1, 3, 5, 7, and so on. Then they will point the camera toward B and do shots number 2, 4, 6, 8, and so on. In the post production editing process, the shots will be assembled into their final order. In contrast, multiple-camera shooting would record a variety of angles of actors A and B simultaneously; the director would then have the choice of switching among the angles while the program is being recorded (or broadcast) or recording all shots and cutting them together in post production. Further, single-camera productions tend to cluster the shooting of all the scenes that utilize a certain set and cast, while most multiple-camera productions are shot "in sequence"—the shooting progressing sequentially through the script.

The single-camera setup gives the director more control over each shot, but is more time consuming and expensive than multiple-camera. The choice of single-camera or multiple-camera setups is made separately from the choice of film or video (that is, either setup can be shot in either film or video). However, multiple-camera setups shot on video can be switched "live to tape" during the performance, while setups shot on film still require that the various camera angles be edited together later.

The single-camera setup originally developed during the birth of the classical Hollywood cinema in the 1910s and has remained the standard mode of production in the cinema. In television, however, a multiple-camera setup is just as common.

Single Camera Drama

The coffee cup

                    

This project presented many challenges throughout the progression of the task. Using one camera is hard on its own, but when using it in a confined space it provides a considerably ready disposition to failure. But in an effort to incur a redoubtable efficiency upon myself I persevered in filming a somewhat valued picture for my fellow compatriots.  The idea was to use one camera to observe and document two people whilst conversing. The setting of a call centre seemed adequate so we set about devising a script appropriate with the setting.  Once achieving this we decided upon the correct clothing and after finding an empty computer scenario set about filming the narrative.

The room was small and cramped and stuffy. Soon enough we started to become aggravated with our surroundings, but the production came together by parking the camera in corners, pointing it through windows and further places throughout the room. In trying to create the illusion of a larger space, we inserted cutaways of keyboards to maintain the façade of the office environment. We used a single headset on both actors to involve phone communication. As goes for planning there wasn’t much more than script, costume and prop for consideration but this is how we like to work, on location, where you can get much more of a feel for your surroundings, and decide on how to mould your own designs into a reality around the solidity of your environment.

Overall I think the production went well, although we had to lose some of the story in the edit because we only had half of a conversation on film, precisely because of only having one camera. But nevertheless it is amusing and not highly offensive to look at, which might be underplaying it but I am my own worst critic. 

Submarine

A Refreshed Cinematist

For the young, the smart, the bound by youthful composition and novel design, for the principles of a remembered youth.  Here lays a film proposing such notions with an optimistic scale, amongst many indie spirited sorts of movies it portrays seemingly insignificant lives in a purposeful light (Brick, Juno). With some much defined mannerisms it comes to display delicately these definitions of purpose upon those who may or may have not have experienced such troubles, those being so unlucky may have something of a more hearty affection for such a tale. A story of a boy, which half of us are, a story of the love of two kinds, which some might be lucky to regard and a story of loss which in the current climate of domestic disaster we all might have some experience of. Touching elements that I am sure must have been a great definition of Richard Ayoade's childhood.

Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) is a duffle coat adorned affluent who sees himself as a less than violent hero who displays his story as he sees fit. His character is consistently divulged with an adult retrospective that allows him to have a wisdomic overview that would be highly envied amongst youths and this gives him a very affable appeal. Oliver develops an infatuation with Jordana (Yasmin Page) who is a red coat wearing dark intelligent and difficult character that he projects onto an affection of a masculine intent. Whilst trying to balance life, love and parental division he befronts the task of using rather clumsy and amusing tactics to solve all these negatively affected prospects he is rapt by.

My personal feelings where that of the correct majority, I thought it was a refreshingly original expression of British film. It is despite Richard Ayoade’s history in television a very beautifully cinematic film. I found it funny and touching, edgy but truthful experience that I will enjoy again.

The Waiting Room

This project is enabled us to view time in a slanted sense. To be deemed as a longer period than what it seems. By using wide shots and concerned speculative images we make the film seem unhurried and hesitant. Anxious expressions and nervous body language, close ups create a time consumed atmosphere that deliberately turns a sullen situation into a hopelessly eternal one. Our project was about a person in an S.T.D clinic waiting room.  The subject is awaiting his results and is very troubled. His surroundings seem to meld around him into a solemn decapitation of happiness encumbered by his anticipation of his fate. Other attendee’s arrive and depart with aspirations of hope and severe pain. 

Black Box Work - Split Screen

Split screen is used to portray two different corresponding aspects of a scene or story line. It is usually utilised both shots in real-time.
When a ascending story arc is cascading towards the culmination of a significant plot line. Many directors have been known to practise this technique in order to apply drama to a scene.
The technique breaches the illusion that the screen's frame is a seamless view of reality, similar to that of the human eye.

My split screen production however was not to utilise these ideas and was a considerable failure. This was due to a large proportion of our film being lost during post production.
And so my computer defouled editing mishappenings and lack luckiness continues into the second term. To say anymore on this matter is a waste of time and I assume you agree entirely with my very own diagnosis that it is a considerble piece of crap.

Split Screen - Timecode

Drinking Rules

Aden, Grant, Perry and myself made a film about the tribulations of alcoholism and its affects. We were lucky enough to be granted access to the downstairs of a pub which was closed off to the public. This is where we filmed many of the required shots we were asked to produce.

We also filmed a time lapse in which I was ordered to drink three pints of lager for the good of the cause. I also had to sip on some leek and potato soup in a effort to reproduce the affects of alcohol consumption. The time limit and shot task on this production I found to be a excellent challenge, as did the rest of the team. Job done.

Black Box Work - The Collision

The Collision

Editing/Kuleshov Theory

Montage editing is compiling a compilation of unrelated shots into a certain meaning. It can be used to create a specific mood or desire of a character, or used to portray thoughts or emotions through a visual aid. The origin of this technique was Kuleshov who baffled hollywood by inventing a original persuasion in film.

His aims were political and he was purely a propagandist but his technique was aquinted enthusingly by western film makers and taken more publicly into the region via mainstream film and television. Enabling editors to interpret film capture as they saw fit. Plastering the convenience of unrelated imagery into decidedly parallel fiction and replacing it with alterations of truth. 

Kuleshov Experiment

Julien Temple - Director, The Filth and the Fury

Julien Temple (born 26 November 1953) is an English film, documentary and music video director. He began his career with films featuring the Sex Pistols, and has continued with various off-beat projects.

Temple grew up with little interest in film until he discovered the works of French anarchist director Jean Vigo when he was a student at King's College, Cambridge. This, along with his interest in the early punk scene in London in 1976 led to his friendship with The Sex Pistols, leading him to document many of their early gigs.

His first film was a short documentary called Sex Pistols Number 1, which set out to show the rise of the band from 1976-1977 in a series of short clips from television interviews and gigs.

This led to Temple making The Great Rock And Roll Swindle, another documentary, telling the story of the band from the viewpoint of their manager, Malcolm McLaren, as band members Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious had left. The film told of the rise of the band as apparently manipulated by McLaren and how he had shaped the band throughout their short career. Much of the 'facts' given by McLaren were disputed by John Lydon (who had dropped the Johnny Rotten name after leaving the band), who accused McLaren of using the film to attack him personally. This helped split opinion on the film as although it was praised for attempting to capture some of the punk scene of the time, it was seen as too skewed towards McLaren's vision.

Ref; Notes via Wikipedia.

The Filth and the Fury - A Critique

The Filth and the Fury sees John Lydon and his former bandmates rewriting punk history and attempting to set the record straight, in regards to the greater swindle pulled off by McLaren: namely, his version of the Pistols' story (immortalized on celluloid in 1980's The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle) in which he cast himself as the architect and arch-puppeteer of punk, pulling the strings of his naive proteges Cook, Jones, Matlock, Rotten and Vicious.

Directed by Julien Temple, who also helmed McLaren's original myth-making film project, The Filth frames the tragicomedy of the Pistols with a keen sense of its cultural and historical context.

I thought this documentary was interesting historical musical document of the birth and death of a fleeting disposition in british culture. I thought the piece was long and dragging - with a wide birth trailing through and over the filthy nature of the self destructive band.

Michael Moore - Director, Bowling for Columbine

Michael Francis Moore (born April 23, 1954) is an American filmmaker, author and liberal political commentator. He is the director and producer of Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, Sicko, and Capitalism: A Love Story, four of the top ten highest-grossing documentaries of all time.

In September 2008, he released his first free movie on the Internet, Slacker Uprising, documenting his personal crusade to encourage more Americans to vote in presidential elections.He has also written and starred in the TV shows TV Nation and The Awful Truth.

Moore criticizes globalization, large corporations, assault weapon ownership, U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, the Iraq War, and the American health care system in his written and cinematic works.

Ref; Notes via Wikipedia.

Bowling for Columbine - A Critique

Moore's somewhat scathing documentary attempts to find answers to the question why American culture is steeped in violence and fear. The interviews that range from a bank that gives away guns to Marilyn Manson are baffling, hilarious and mildly revealing.

Moore is stubborn in his ways for answers and arrives at somewhat startling connections, for instance when visits Lockheed Martin, the world's largest weapons manufacturer, which just happens to be located in Littleton, Colorado. Standing before massive ballistic missles, the company's PR man goes on about "anger management classes," blissfully unaware of the sweet irony.
　
Whatever else you can say about Moore, subtle he is not. With bone-chilling panache, he cuts straight from the cries children of Columbine crying over their dead fellow classmates to a triumphant Charlton Heston, lifting a rifle over his head with the shout "From my cold dead hands!" In a hysterical animated history of America, narrated by a bullet, he links the NRA with the KKK.

I thought the documentary was very intriguing piece of film and was not one too upset his cast of unusually brilliant collection. He stood firmly within the borders of reason and unbiased reckoning.

Filming

Shooting. 

Werner Herzog - Director, The Grizzly Man

His films often feature heroes with impossible dreams, people with unique talents in obscure fields or individuals who find themselves in conflict with nature.

Herzog's films have received considerable critical acclaim and achieved popularity on the
 encyclopedia entry about film-making which he says provided him with "everything I needed to get myself started" as a film-maker—that, and the 35 mm camera that the young Herzog stole from the Munich Film School.[5] In the commentary for Aguirre, the Wrath of God, he states, "I don't consider it theft—it was just a necessity—I had some sort of natural right for a camera, a tool to work with." He studied at the University of Munich despite earning a scholarship to Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
At 14, he was inspired by an


Ref; Notes via wikipedia.art house circuit. They have also been the subject of controversy in regard to their themes and messages, especially the circumstances surrounding their creation. A notable example is Fitzcarraldo, in which the obsessiveness of the central character was mirrored by the director during the making of the film, as shown in Burden of Dreams, a documentary filmed during the making of Fitzcarraldo. His treatment of subjects has been characterized as Wagnerian in its scope, as Fitzcarraldo and his later film Invincible (2001) are directly inspired by opera, or operatic themes. He is proud of never using storyboards and often improvising large parts of the script, as he explains on the commentary track to Aguirre, the Wrath of God.

The Grizzly Man - A Critique

The Grizzly Man is an exciting tale of impending carnivorous doom. Why?

For thirteen years throughout the summer, Timothy Treadwell would be flown to Alaska's Katmai National Park (and then left there, by pilot and ex rodeo rider, Willy Fulton) to spend his summer months with the bears that reside there.

He would trek through the national park, through an area called the Grizzly Maze.

In the last five years with the bears he shot over one hundred hours worth of footage.

During his expeditions he was mostly alone, except for the last two years in which his woman counterpart Amie Huguenard would accompany him - even though she was reportedly terrified of the beasts.

In 2003, they were consumed by one of the bears that Timothy loved so much.

It was Fulton that discovered the remains of what appeared to be human ribs.

Treadwell had turned the camera on at the time of being done in by the ravenous bear, however the lens cap was on - so no visual. There isn't any audio either, due to director Herzog not wanting to make a snuff film.

Some say he was flirting with death, others thought he was crazy.

Near the end of his life it seemed he preferred bears to humans.

I thought the documentary was well narrated by director, Herzog but thought the antics of Treadwell were somewhat foolish and that the man had lost contact with his human side along the years.

James Marsh - Director, Man on Wire

James Marsh (born April 30, 1963 Truro, Cornwall) is a film director known for directing the cult film Wisconsin Death Trip starring Marcus Monroe and Sir Ian Holm. He won 2008 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for directing Man on Wire.John Cale.The King which was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.
　
In 1998 he directed a documentary about the Welsh musician
In 2005 he directed the film
 Man on Wire, about Philippe Petit's walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York. Man on Wire won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 81st annual Oscars, the BAFTA award for best British film, the Independent Spirit award, and many others. The film, called "exhilarating", has had a hugely positive audience response and was among the Top Ten Films of 2008 on many critics' lists.
In 2008 he made the documentary
 Red Riding (TV - Channel4) and will direct The Vatican Tapes in 2010.
In 2009 he directed the '1980' episode of
 Nim Chimpsky.
In 2010 he directed Project Nim which based on the book "Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human" by Elizabeth Hess. It is a documentary about the landmark study conducted by Herbert S. Terrace on the subject of animal language acquisition and the subject of the study is a chimpanzee named


Ref; Notes via Wikipedia.

Man on Wire - A Critique

Man on Wire is a 2008 film about a human construction of an amazing feat of boldness and ludicrousness; not so much about wire walking but about a corageous man chasing to the final hurdle his childhood dream.

Philippe Petit and his assembled band of brothers, their relationships and a beginning to end extravagance in their poetic project, their metaphor for life.

This film can educate us on how to concern ourselves resolutely on realising our dreams.

My personal feeling of this film were that of a sombre nature. There seemed to be a hopeless pessimism in each persons story that made me feel mildly cheerless and drained.

Philippe had a slightness about him of perhaps arrogance or egotism. That I suppose, he earned from his exotic lifestyle of adrenaline fielding and placelessness.

The film dwelled a little too much on worry and frightful anticipation. Indifference to excitement with an almost nonchalance, to the possible inevitability of a lurking doom.

It shows the sacrifice we as people have to make to live our dreams and the consequences of them being completed.

ITV vs BBC

I found the debate an amusing event for the class; it was constructed well for the opposing groups to bring forth their arguments efficiently for the contest to go forward.

 

I also enjoyed the back and forth and tried to provide notes to my comrades whilst simultaneously recording the sound. But personally as part of the ITV crowd I found myself drawn more towards the BBC side of the argument because I am bias for this network and I do not watch ITV.

 

But none the less I brought forwards reasons against the BBC argument. I found the debate a mostly one sided affair because of our lack of constructive quarrels constructed previously to the matter at hand.

 

If we had written more notes and interpretations of our argument we would had been better prepared to perform against the overwhelming superiority of the BBC argument.