(The week of April 1th, 2010) This week’s class was even shorter than the last. All my group members were gone. Jordan could not make it and Jenny and Bryan were out of town. I came to class with the intention of digitizing our tape so that we could begin the tedious editing process. However, the camera was checked out to another group, so we could not do anything new with our movie this week. We had to go a second consecutive week without digitizing.
In class, Eric explained how the digitizer on the camera works. Basically, one can digitize while filming if they sync the digitizer with the camera. This sends the video from the tape straight to a hard drive. The alternative is to digitize the footage after one has finished shooting. This takes much more time and energy that the previous digitizing method. Our group did not digitize while we shot because we were shooting an action film. This required a lot of movement of the camera and having the digitizer protruding from the top of the camera made it very inconvenient for the camerawoman, Jenny.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
No Digitized Footage...
(The Week of April 8th, 2010)The group meeting was short this week. We could not digitize because the camera was checked out to one of the groups and they were behind on their shooting. This put our group behind schedule. We had hoped since we had to organize and shoot earlier than the other groups, we would have more time to edit and perfect the finished film. Despite this set back, we still discussed how we would like to edit certain shots and what kind of music we felt would fit best in the movie throughout the week. Other than that, we there was not too much communication about the film; we were just ready to start editing and seeing the fruits of our shooting labor.
Adaptation
The Adaptation is a movie about a screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman, who has to create a screenplay out of a novel. Kaufman is very impressed by the simplicity and honesty of this book about a rare orchid, and he wants to preserve the integrity of the novel. He does not want to use ridiculous hooks, ambiguous metaphors, or cliché endings in his script to entice people into watching his movies.
Kaufman’s struggle to stay true to the novel directly exemplifies the message the director, Spike Jonze, wants to convey. Jonze believes, like Kaufman, that movies too often rely on hooks and twist endings to draw an audience rather than telling a story that is original, simple, and true to real life. What makes the movie interesting is how Jonze uses characters and events that purposely contradict Kaufman’s and, ultimately, Jonze’s ideas on good script writing. Charlie’s twin brother, Donald, is one example of this. Charlie believes writing is an art form and should be approached with forethought and purpose. However, Donald finds success in using the methods that Charlie is annoyed by and Jonze is warning against. He writes a script for a story that does not make sense, he throws in metaphors that loosely relate to the movie, and he writes an ending to his script that is not consistent with the rest of the story. Charlie represents writers that do their job for the passion and enjoyment of the art while Donald represents the mainstream writers that do so simply for the money and acclaim.
The main problem that frustrates Charlie is how to end the film. The novel ends with no real concrete resolution; it is in no way flashy or exciting. Charlie is against recurring endings. He wrestles with the idea that a movie does not have to have a familiar or overly exciting ending for it to be good. Movies should reflect real life, and Charlie feels that life stories can be simple in the way they develop and end. I feel like Jonze shares the same view and wants the audience to feel the same way and notice when writers are using cheesy endings. Jonze does this by using those exact tactics to end this movie. Adaptation ends with a sex scene, violence and killing, and Charlie’s attitude and personality changing for the better. After hours of being told to stay away from such cliché methods, Jonze abruptly and awkwardly ends the movie with these scenes to show just how unrealistic movies are nowadays. He purposely wants the audience to feel insulted by the ending so we can recognize similar endings in other movies.
I noticed the shift in the movie from trying to keep away from falling into the stereotypical plot scheme and ending to purposely following that stereotype. And I admit I was very turned off once the movie started ending because I was sort of expecting an ending that would end differently. I wanted Charlie to find a conclusion that made him happy rather than him changing to follow the stereotype then becoming happy. The love affair between the autor, Susan Orleans, and the novel’s subject, John LaRoche, the fact that the orchids were really used as a drug, and the swamp death scene all seemed very fantastic and unrealistic. After discussing the movie in class I was less angry about the ending, but I would have enjoyed the movie better if the ending had been consistent with the rest of the movie.
Kaufman’s struggle to stay true to the novel directly exemplifies the message the director, Spike Jonze, wants to convey. Jonze believes, like Kaufman, that movies too often rely on hooks and twist endings to draw an audience rather than telling a story that is original, simple, and true to real life. What makes the movie interesting is how Jonze uses characters and events that purposely contradict Kaufman’s and, ultimately, Jonze’s ideas on good script writing. Charlie’s twin brother, Donald, is one example of this. Charlie believes writing is an art form and should be approached with forethought and purpose. However, Donald finds success in using the methods that Charlie is annoyed by and Jonze is warning against. He writes a script for a story that does not make sense, he throws in metaphors that loosely relate to the movie, and he writes an ending to his script that is not consistent with the rest of the story. Charlie represents writers that do their job for the passion and enjoyment of the art while Donald represents the mainstream writers that do so simply for the money and acclaim.
The main problem that frustrates Charlie is how to end the film. The novel ends with no real concrete resolution; it is in no way flashy or exciting. Charlie is against recurring endings. He wrestles with the idea that a movie does not have to have a familiar or overly exciting ending for it to be good. Movies should reflect real life, and Charlie feels that life stories can be simple in the way they develop and end. I feel like Jonze shares the same view and wants the audience to feel the same way and notice when writers are using cheesy endings. Jonze does this by using those exact tactics to end this movie. Adaptation ends with a sex scene, violence and killing, and Charlie’s attitude and personality changing for the better. After hours of being told to stay away from such cliché methods, Jonze abruptly and awkwardly ends the movie with these scenes to show just how unrealistic movies are nowadays. He purposely wants the audience to feel insulted by the ending so we can recognize similar endings in other movies.
I noticed the shift in the movie from trying to keep away from falling into the stereotypical plot scheme and ending to purposely following that stereotype. And I admit I was very turned off once the movie started ending because I was sort of expecting an ending that would end differently. I wanted Charlie to find a conclusion that made him happy rather than him changing to follow the stereotype then becoming happy. The love affair between the autor, Susan Orleans, and the novel’s subject, John LaRoche, the fact that the orchids were really used as a drug, and the swamp death scene all seemed very fantastic and unrealistic. After discussing the movie in class I was less angry about the ending, but I would have enjoyed the movie better if the ending had been consistent with the rest of the movie.
Shooting
(The Week of March 18th, 2010) This has been a busy and stressful week for our group. We spent a lot of time last week trying to figure out good times to get together to shoot our movie. Also, it took multiple attempts to get a cast for our movie. We simply needed a main character that was fit to play our action star. We wanted someone that looked like a normal student, but we didn’t want to cast anyone that was in honors to keep the audience (the class) to have preconceived notions, ideas about the actor. We tried three or four people that agreed to do the movie then had conflicts with shooting. We got lucky when we stumbled onto Justin Philips. He seemed to be very comfortable with the idea of shooting a movie and the role. As it turns out, Justin was easy to work with, took direction well, and enthusiastic about the film. The second role we had to cast was that of the antagonist professor. We had Doug Corbit as our first choice but due to time and our limited access to the camera before spring break, we used Brian, who settled into the role with ease. Finally, we were able to cast Stefani for the girlfriend role. If you’ve ever seen Stefani act, then you know she is very talented, so we were all excited to start shooting and see how the shooting process would turn out.
We shot practice shots Tuesday evening to get a feel for type of shots we would like and to get a better feel for the actual shooting process. Our first day of shooting was rough, but everything smoothed out quickly. Throughout the week, we got together whenever possible (8 am on Monday, X Period on Tuesday and Thursday, and Friday afternoon before spring break) to get all the shots we planned for. What I wanted for the movie was to have plenty of varying shots of the same sequence, and to have quick, coherent cutting of the shots to invoke the feeling of stress that Justin was feeling. The shooting was tough on everyone throughout the week; however, when we met to shoot, we were very productive. Moreover, fun wasn’t sacrificed to get the movie done; we had a lot of laughs and blooper while filming. I enjoyed every part of this process.
We finally finished filming Friday afternoon. The group was productive, easy to work with, and enthused about the project which made things immensely easier. Group 2 is the best!
We shot practice shots Tuesday evening to get a feel for type of shots we would like and to get a better feel for the actual shooting process. Our first day of shooting was rough, but everything smoothed out quickly. Throughout the week, we got together whenever possible (8 am on Monday, X Period on Tuesday and Thursday, and Friday afternoon before spring break) to get all the shots we planned for. What I wanted for the movie was to have plenty of varying shots of the same sequence, and to have quick, coherent cutting of the shots to invoke the feeling of stress that Justin was feeling. The shooting was tough on everyone throughout the week; however, when we met to shoot, we were very productive. Moreover, fun wasn’t sacrificed to get the movie done; we had a lot of laughs and blooper while filming. I enjoyed every part of this process.
We finally finished filming Friday afternoon. The group was productive, easy to work with, and enthused about the project which made things immensely easier. Group 2 is the best!
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
"So noir...so noir..."
Honestly, if it wasn’t for this class, I don’t think I would like or appreciate this movie as much as a do. I have a feeling that I would have watched the movie, judged it on the fact that it was made in the early 1990s, hated the ending, and called it a terrible movie. However, knowing what kind of movie it is (film noir) and discussing some of the themes and messages the director was trying to convey helped open my eyes to some of the other aspects of movie making and looking a little bit past the plot, effects, and ending for a good movie.
In summary, The Player is about a movie executive – very close to losing his job - that starts receiving threatening and blackmailing postcards and messages. In his anger and anxiousness to end this harassment, he accidentally murders a writer whom he thought the messages were coming from only to find that he killed the wrong man. He starts becoming a darker, soul-less person as the movie progresses and he tries to cover up his murder. Finally, he ends up keeping his job, marrying the widow of the person he killed, and getting away with the murder that everyone knows he committed.
We talked about a lot of the different cinematic aspects of this movie which makes it good. First of all, this was a film noir movie. It’s a dark depiction of the movie industry. It shows the evil, conniving, and, often, selfish motives of the writers, directors, and executives that make movies we all enjoy. The movie plot was very dark and the ending elicits an uneasy feeling. Some of the icons that let me know this was a suspenseful film noir were the dark, shady bar that leads to the murder scene and the alley way where the murder was committed. I did not automatically think film noir, but it started to click as the movie continued. Also, The Player is a good satire of the movie industry; it shows the lack of creativity and substance in Hollywood and the selfishness of many of the people involved in making movies. I thought it was funny that almost every movie pitch was either a sequel to another movie or a blend of two completely different movies. I also liked how every writer wanted to use either Bruce Willis or Julia Roberts as their leads because they knew the audience loved those actors. Moreover, I thought the cinematography was pretty creative. There were two things that struck me as creative in this movie. First, the use of the famous movie posters to allude to the plot of the movie and give the viewer an idea of how to feel about the movie was interesting. It was blatant and bold and the first time I’ve noticed anything like that in a movie (now I’m curious to see how often directors do this). Second, there are a few scenes where the sound and focus shift from something in the foreground to something in the background, vice versa. I liked that a lot. It was very striking, especially in the opening scene (which was an amazing single shot).
Overall, I liked this movie. Like the ones before, it was very eye-opening for me.
In summary, The Player is about a movie executive – very close to losing his job - that starts receiving threatening and blackmailing postcards and messages. In his anger and anxiousness to end this harassment, he accidentally murders a writer whom he thought the messages were coming from only to find that he killed the wrong man. He starts becoming a darker, soul-less person as the movie progresses and he tries to cover up his murder. Finally, he ends up keeping his job, marrying the widow of the person he killed, and getting away with the murder that everyone knows he committed.
We talked about a lot of the different cinematic aspects of this movie which makes it good. First of all, this was a film noir movie. It’s a dark depiction of the movie industry. It shows the evil, conniving, and, often, selfish motives of the writers, directors, and executives that make movies we all enjoy. The movie plot was very dark and the ending elicits an uneasy feeling. Some of the icons that let me know this was a suspenseful film noir were the dark, shady bar that leads to the murder scene and the alley way where the murder was committed. I did not automatically think film noir, but it started to click as the movie continued. Also, The Player is a good satire of the movie industry; it shows the lack of creativity and substance in Hollywood and the selfishness of many of the people involved in making movies. I thought it was funny that almost every movie pitch was either a sequel to another movie or a blend of two completely different movies. I also liked how every writer wanted to use either Bruce Willis or Julia Roberts as their leads because they knew the audience loved those actors. Moreover, I thought the cinematography was pretty creative. There were two things that struck me as creative in this movie. First, the use of the famous movie posters to allude to the plot of the movie and give the viewer an idea of how to feel about the movie was interesting. It was blatant and bold and the first time I’ve noticed anything like that in a movie (now I’m curious to see how often directors do this). Second, there are a few scenes where the sound and focus shift from something in the foreground to something in the background, vice versa. I liked that a lot. It was very striking, especially in the opening scene (which was an amazing single shot).
Overall, I liked this movie. Like the ones before, it was very eye-opening for me.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
More Action!!!
We started off class by watching a couple short, low-budget films, so we could get an idea of the type of final products we could potentially produce with our resources. I really enjoyed the minesweeper video because I know a lot of people that were (probably still are) addicted to minesweeper, and I thought it was clever for them to portray minesweeper as a war movie. I think those short films were very inspiring in helping us develop our idea and understand that we could still make a very good movie even with our limited experience and resources.
Our movie is starting to take a lot of form. Now that we have the storyboard complete, we have an idea of the important scenes and desired camera scenes for each scene. We have a better understanding of the flow events, what scenes we need to emphasize, and what scenes we brainstormed but would not work out for the movie. Right now, we’re getting our actors together, finalizing our script, and getting a better idea of how the actual shooting process will go once we have the cameras on location. First, find our actors. We have two more characters that need to be confirmed, our main character and our main antagonist. For our protagonist, I think our group all envisions a regular student who has to endure exaggerated and extraordinary circumstances. I think it’s very important that they seem like a normal student so that our audience can easily identify with him (her maybe??? Lol). I don’t want to say much about the casting of our antagonist because I think that will be a nice surprise, but I hope we can get him confirmed. Our script is relatively short because this movie focuses more on the actions rather than the conversations, so I think that will be finished this week.
In my opinion, our movie is coming together very well, and I am very excited to start shooting. I kind of see this movie being something similar to Red Eye (yeah, the movie with Rachel McAdams!!!) in that this movie is more about the running, the stress of being rushed, unexpected occurrences, suspense etc. instead of having explosions, big fight scenes, ninjas etc.
Our movie is starting to take a lot of form. Now that we have the storyboard complete, we have an idea of the important scenes and desired camera scenes for each scene. We have a better understanding of the flow events, what scenes we need to emphasize, and what scenes we brainstormed but would not work out for the movie. Right now, we’re getting our actors together, finalizing our script, and getting a better idea of how the actual shooting process will go once we have the cameras on location. First, find our actors. We have two more characters that need to be confirmed, our main character and our main antagonist. For our protagonist, I think our group all envisions a regular student who has to endure exaggerated and extraordinary circumstances. I think it’s very important that they seem like a normal student so that our audience can easily identify with him (her maybe??? Lol). I don’t want to say much about the casting of our antagonist because I think that will be a nice surprise, but I hope we can get him confirmed. Our script is relatively short because this movie focuses more on the actions rather than the conversations, so I think that will be finished this week.
In my opinion, our movie is coming together very well, and I am very excited to start shooting. I kind of see this movie being something similar to Red Eye (yeah, the movie with Rachel McAdams!!!) in that this movie is more about the running, the stress of being rushed, unexpected occurrences, suspense etc. instead of having explosions, big fight scenes, ninjas etc.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Blow-Out!
Blow-Out was a completely different movie from the previous two that we’ve watched in class. This movie was made in the 1980s rather than the 1950s, so the production value was much closer to movies we are used to. Blow-Out is about a sound man, Jack Terry, happening upon an attempt to frame a congressman who is running for president. The framing goes wrong and the congressman is killed, and Jack Terry is the only one of the few witnesses that is willing to tell the truth despite a conspiracy to keep the murder from becoming public knowledge.
I was not very impressed by the actors (though they were not terrible actors) as much as I was by the cinematography of the movie. As Donna said the director, Brian De Palma, was very “ballsy” in this movie. He knew what shots he wanted, what emotion each shot would convey, and how to captivate the viewer very well. And that’s what he did. One of the shots I enjoyed from the movie was in the scene where Jack loses the video of the incident and realizes that someone has erased all his tapes. The camera turns completely around the room a couple of times with Jack in the shot looking in different shelves and all over the room looking for a tape that hasn’t been erased. That scene captures the exact feeling of frustration, agitation, and excitement you get when you lose something. I saw that scene and right away thought about times where I’ve lost things and the feeling and emotion was very similar to what was on screen. I also liked the shot right after. If I’m not mistaken (because it has been almost a week), it’s a birds-eye-view of the room as Jack Terry walks out and you see the tapes and stuff scattered across the room just to show how frantic Jack was. There were a few chase scenes but I’m pretty sure they were car scenes so I don’t think it will help in our movie. However, this movie is inspiring in that it encourages me to analyze my scenes and try different ways to invoke the emotions of the characters and tones in the scenes.
I enjoyed the visual aspects of the movie as well as the overall theme. I think this movie said a lot about American’s and our attitude and culture. It depicted American’s as a whole as being very oblivious to some of the things that occur in government and politics. And I can completely identify with that. It’s crazy to think, but there are things going on every day within our government, military, even schools that we don’t and might never know about. I thought the fact that there was that bell ceremony occurring during the conspiracy sort of emphasized that obliviousness and that feeling of false safety. Moreover, the fact that Jack ends up using the scream of Sally dying in his horror film exemplifies the cold-heartedness and lack of sympathy in American movie makers. I remember asking myself why was that scream so important and having that question linger throughout the movie, so I thought it was clever that De Palma (or most likely the writer) had the scream at the end. I thought that was a powerful way of stress one of the overall themes of the movie. The two themes of obliviousness and a self-centered mentality are related because it says that Americans are very self-oriented and are more concerned about self improvement. Thought this movie doesn’t place Americans in a good light, it does convey those themes very strongly. It’s a good movie in my book…
I was not very impressed by the actors (though they were not terrible actors) as much as I was by the cinematography of the movie. As Donna said the director, Brian De Palma, was very “ballsy” in this movie. He knew what shots he wanted, what emotion each shot would convey, and how to captivate the viewer very well. And that’s what he did. One of the shots I enjoyed from the movie was in the scene where Jack loses the video of the incident and realizes that someone has erased all his tapes. The camera turns completely around the room a couple of times with Jack in the shot looking in different shelves and all over the room looking for a tape that hasn’t been erased. That scene captures the exact feeling of frustration, agitation, and excitement you get when you lose something. I saw that scene and right away thought about times where I’ve lost things and the feeling and emotion was very similar to what was on screen. I also liked the shot right after. If I’m not mistaken (because it has been almost a week), it’s a birds-eye-view of the room as Jack Terry walks out and you see the tapes and stuff scattered across the room just to show how frantic Jack was. There were a few chase scenes but I’m pretty sure they were car scenes so I don’t think it will help in our movie. However, this movie is inspiring in that it encourages me to analyze my scenes and try different ways to invoke the emotions of the characters and tones in the scenes.
I enjoyed the visual aspects of the movie as well as the overall theme. I think this movie said a lot about American’s and our attitude and culture. It depicted American’s as a whole as being very oblivious to some of the things that occur in government and politics. And I can completely identify with that. It’s crazy to think, but there are things going on every day within our government, military, even schools that we don’t and might never know about. I thought the fact that there was that bell ceremony occurring during the conspiracy sort of emphasized that obliviousness and that feeling of false safety. Moreover, the fact that Jack ends up using the scream of Sally dying in his horror film exemplifies the cold-heartedness and lack of sympathy in American movie makers. I remember asking myself why was that scream so important and having that question linger throughout the movie, so I thought it was clever that De Palma (or most likely the writer) had the scream at the end. I thought that was a powerful way of stress one of the overall themes of the movie. The two themes of obliviousness and a self-centered mentality are related because it says that Americans are very self-oriented and are more concerned about self improvement. Thought this movie doesn’t place Americans in a good light, it does convey those themes very strongly. It’s a good movie in my book…
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