#art | deandunderdale

Mommy 2014

Posted on November 5, 2015 by deansblog96

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This film was film was released back in 2014 and was made by Xaiver Dolan. I was very surprised by this film. The director set you up, making you think you knew what was happening and straight away the plot would take yet another twist. You couldn’t look away for 2 seconds because if you did you’d miss something vital.

The uses of flash forwards are known for putting the audience in control. It gives an insight into what you expect to come, putting your mind at rest, whilst creating a enigma of what happens in between, but with this film it doesn’t take the path you are told. Within the film it shows the boy graduate from University. By showing this it portrays the end will be happy, but this is not the case as the film ends up with the mum sending her son to a mental institute. In an interview with the Director he states ‘I don’t know many great mum’s’. This shows within the film, she’s never perfect and as a character you feel many different emotions towards her. When you see she is physically abused by her son who has ADHD, you feel nothing but sympathy for the woman, but as the film goes on and as you see the end it proves the point no body is perfect, everyone has the flaws and faults and that she or her son is no different.

The reason why this film stands out to me is because the connection you have to the film, although it has a level of high drama, you can connect to the moral of the story making it more believable. But the film itself is very cinematic. The structure of the film and the way the film was edited in post production was something I haven’t seen in many films within the last few years. The most baffling of this was the aspect ratio of the film. The traditional aspect ratio for HD video is 1.78/16:9. Whereas Dolan decided to film this in 1:1 something you don’t see many filmmakers do in the current day. By doing this it doesn’t leave much to the imagination because it puts you at the centre of the screen. An example of this would be when Steve is walking down the street with his headphones on, you attention is just on Steve and not on what is happening around him. It gives the film a more personalised and sincere feel to it. Also the use of filters and slow motion shots add to the film. Many films that attempt to do this could really loose the viewer’s attention, especially for a new and current film. But the slow motion shots really put you in the position of Steve and his mother. As I have stated the film is full of drama, most which isn’t happy, so when a happy moment comes along Dolan could recognise in a film like this it would be good if you could cherish moments such as these, and he did this by adding these slow motion shots.

Bibliography
Bradshaw, P. (2015) Mommy review – outrageous and brilliant, a daytime soap from hell. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/mar/19/mommy-xavier-dolan-film-review (Accessed: 3 December 2015).
Citations, Quotes & Annotations
Bradshaw, P. (2015) Mommy review – outrageous and brilliant, a daytime soap from hell. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/mar/19/mommy-xavier-dolan-film-review (Accessed: 3 December 2015).
(Bradshaw, 2015)

260MC Lecture notes 30th October

Posted on November 2, 2015 by deansblog96

For todays lecture we were looking at a film maker who focused on creating moving images from art. This is clearly important for us as we have to do the exact same. So here are some of the notes that I made from the lecture and some of the clips that we watched from different films created by the filmmaker and the artists his was inspired by.

David Lynches films

‘Two things that films have the painting lack in, is movement and sound’

‘Sometimes a picture gives you an idea of what sound should go with it , that’s the place to start’

He started as a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of Arts Philadelphia, and he started to experiment with film in 1977

His influences were Frank Daniel, and the Dean of the Czech school of film.

You should treat your film set like a untreated canvas’

Six men getting sick (1966) David Lynch

‘Francis Bacon is the number one guy, my hero painter’

He focused of capturing movement within a painting, which is something not many people achieved.

Love is the Devil (John Mowbry)

(Blue Velvet) At the start of the film he finds a human ear, this is an important metaphor which backs up what David Lynch believes, which is the fact that a film is 50% movement and 50% sound.

What I take away from todays lecture is how you can turn a picture into a good piece of moving image. Just like an image everything within it has to come into consideration, nothing within it is not thought about, so when creating our peice we have to think about everything within the frame, and the reasoning for it. The shades, the patterns and the props all adds to the short film. Most importantly we have to really look into the painting and go further into, what sounds can we create by looking at the colours and the background he’s in. What sort of lighting we use and the atmosphere the painting gives us, if we can capture all of these things within the piece we are definitely going to be on the right track, to making a good short film.

The mill and the cross is a film that turns a painting into a film with the use of three cinematic devices;

Long shots

depth of field

editing

Placing your Media into Context Task 4 Part two

Posted on October 30, 2015 by deansblog96

Today was the day that we showed our piece. We were very content with what we had made and happy with the interoperation we had on the passage we were given, like I said in the previous post we didn’t want to take it literally, we wanted to give our own take on the piece and create something different that others wouldn’t think from it. Here is a link to the final piece that we showed in our lecture.

https://vimeo.com/groups/cinecollective/videos/144040383

The feedback we received was mainly positive but what I want to focus on were the points that could be improved within the clip that we made. Some of the criticism that we received was that within the plot we wanted it to look like the Woman was in the wrong and that as the audience you felt sympathy for the Man, but you didn’t, in fact it was the other way round, they felt sympathy for the Woman because of the colours and the way they were positioned. The mistake that we made was because there wasn’t any dialog we had to really focus on framing, expressions of the actors and the colour lighting that we used. When we first see the Man and the Woman together the Woman is curled up in the conner with the Man standing over her, it makes it seem like his has a higher status than her. That she’s almost scared of him because she doesn’t respond to him, when filming we done this because we felt it would show guilt. At a different point it showed the man with the colour predominately being red which shows anger, and the audience also took this and showing him as the villain, which is something that we didn’t take into consideration. So when doing tasks like that its important to re-evaluate what you’ve filmed to see what the interoperation is on the piece that we made. Overall we were happy with the feedback we had received, and the points were we have to improve because it means our final short film will be better because we know what we have to improve on.

Placing your media production in context Task 4

Posted on October 29, 2015 by deansblog96

For this weeks task we had to take a passage from Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and turn it into a short clip, using what we have learnt in previous tasks, with the use of natural and staged lighting. The first thing that we done when we had been given the task was to sit down and understand the passage and come up with an idea to take forward, so we knew what we were doing when we went to film. Here was the passage:

“One day he got there about three o’clock. Everybody was in the fields. He went into the kitchen, but did not at once catch sight of Emma; the outside shutters were closed. Through the chinks of the wood the sun sent across the flooring long fine rays that were broken at the corners of the furniture and trembled along the ceiling. Some flies on the table were crawling up the glasses that had been used, and buzzing as they drowned themselves in the dregs of the cider. The daylight that came in by the chimney made velvet of the soot at the back of the fireplace, and touched with blue the cold cinders. Between the window and the hearth Emma was sewing; she wore no fichu; he could see small drops of perspiration on her bare shoulders.”

We also have to incorporate two staged colours into our clip. When looking at the colours we decided we wanted to use red. Red has many connotations to it, such as danger and anger. We looked at the clip and we got that from the passage, its quite awkward and cold. Everything seems very secluded, so we thought we could use the red to show anger, and the coldness of the blue to show seclusion. When we were thinking of a narrative to go by, we thought it would be difficult to create the scenery, so what we thought we could do is take the emotion, and the concept of the man and the woman in what we thought was a hostile environment, and created our clip from that. Also we want to use the blind affect in the clip because we said it gives a caged affect to the scene that is described in the passage, it adds to the seclusion of the scene, and how locked away the woman is.

When thinking about a plot to this passage, a few of us thought about domestic violence, the fact the woman seems to be locked away like she’s not allowed out, but we wanted to flip that on its head, so we’ve come up with the idea that the woman’s in the wrong and instead of her being locked away by the man, the woman is locking herself away. So far we have a strong idea for the clip we are going to create, and to help us along our way we thought it would be a good idea to go out and experiment with some Roto lights and some coloured gels and diffusers to see the sort of affects we could get, and the different situations we could use those lights in and how affective they will be when using others lights such as LED’s. We gained a lot from doing this and from what we have learned in the previous tasks.

260MC Task 3

Posted on October 25, 2015 by deansblog96

This weeks task has involved me watching different movies and clips form the German Expressionism movement that was very well known back in the 20’s before World War 1. The next part of the task was to use what we had taught ourselves about the movement to recreate a famous scene within a movie. The scene that we chose to recreate was from Skyfall.

We chose the scene were James Bond is brought in and tested with words. Bond is given the task of playing the word association game. We chose this because speed of the scene, and the opportunity to use quick cuts from word to word. Also within the scene it looks closely at the shadows and use of contrast within this clip. When making this clip we used a harsh amount of make up on the faces for close ups, to intensify the contrast and to apply what we had learned from watching movies such as Nosferatu. We used quick cuts and tried to avoid fades to add to the realism of the clip. We used staged lighting also, because it really helped to add to the contrast from the white makeup to the darkened areas formed by shadows. Here is the clip we recreated in the style of German Expressionism, and also a link to the original scene in Skyfall. I hope you enjoy the work we produced.

https://vimeo.com/groups/cinecollective/videos/143291057

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgi487sRy6c

The Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky 1975)

Posted on October 22, 2015 by deansblog96

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When A film is called ‘One of the greatest of all time’ by a number of well renowned critics and fans of Andrei Tarkovsky, everyone can’t be wrong. ‘The Mirror’ was this weeks screening and a film I won’t forget in a hurry. If there was one word to describe this film it would be ‘enigmatic’. The film could easily be described as boring, but being a film maker, and being someone who has to take into consideration what we have been shown for the benefit of our films, its a gold mine of information and knowledge. One scene and possibly the most memorable of the film, was the fire scene. The way everything was perfectly done, from the movement and framing of the camera, to how the audio fades from inside to outside as the camera moves. Scenes like this make the film so easy to get lost in, and with a story which isn’t very strong or solid comes out so well because of the way it is shot.

When watching this even as a media student its easy to forget about the person behind the camera, and this is one of Tarkovsky’s traits. They look effortless and almost unreal. Thats why when you watch ‘The Mirror’ you cannot tell if the story is suppose to be real, or wether you are watching a dream. A film about time and memory, which doesn’t have a narrative sounds like a recipe for disaster. But something Tarkovsky has always done was get across meaning not through a narrative piece, but through a more poetic piece, something with more meaning than what meets the eye. Using past memories and relaying them into a film like this is anything but easy, which is probably why this is claimed to be one of his best pieces of work.

There are many things that I can take from this and use in our final piece. One being that to create a dream like effect, you do not have to sit there and change a whole shot in post production, something as simple as moving the camera in a slow and flowing motion can give this affect. Also when filming at shot you change location, but Tarkovsky has taught me that wit use of space you don’t have to cut from scene to scene every 4 seconds when somebody moves, use the space around you to create a different meaning, and a different way of looking at your film.

Brown (2002) Cinematography Theory And PraticePractice

Posted on October 14, 2015 by deansblog96

Within this Reading I learnt a lot about framing and how to position your camera to get across what you want. This was a vital part of the task because by doing this I can take what I learnt from this piece and develop these thoughts into my own through the task we have been given. In previous tasks and lectures we had been told about the importance of rule of thirds and composition when creating our films. In an extract from this Reading ‘Brown’ says ‘ and that’s how most people would respond if you asked them ‘what do you see?’ Most people would say ‘A man, a woman and a tree’.

Only if you asked them ‘what time is it’ they would say ‘Around sunset’. If you moved the viewer so the horizon was in another place and the sunset not being visible they probably wouldn’t be able to tell what time of day it is’. This is why in filming you have to think about everything you have placed within your frame. When thinking of ideas of what you want your shot to look like. Always refer back to the meaning of your story. It is from here you can come up with props and items to specifically fill your frame.

The next part of this chapter that I wanted to focus on was about ‘sequences’. Sequences play a huge part in your film. Obviously if you create a film was a poor sequence your more likely to loose your audience and them becoming less interested in what they watching. You have to have a logical order. An order that makes sense, an order in which your viewers can understand and follow throughout. Without this your film will look like random shots put together without meaning. This also intertwines with separation. Knowing when to come into a particular shot and when to cut to the next one. Without doing this again your film loses meaning, and will initially lose your viewers.

Types of shots are important. According to this passage these are the building blocks for types of shots you should use:

Wide shot
Full shot
Medium
Head/Shoulders
Big head
Cowboy
Type two
Dirty single
Clean single

It states that apart for the first two shots the rest are about the human form. These shots are used for many different reasons, all which have different meanings to many different people. But for example a wide shot should be used to set the scene, to feed information about the location to the audience. Full shot is the equivalent to the wide shot but for humans. A full shot could be used to show the whole body of someone, this could show their posture, their size, their build. It’s shots like these that making film interesting. It is never as simple as going out and filming. It should always be a process and everything within your film should have meaning, and a reason for being there. This passage has really helped me understand more about the task we have been given and I look forward to creating it in the week ahead.

260MC Task 1

Posted on October 12, 2015 by deansblog96

This weeks task was to experiment with lighting, we had been given this task because at the end of the module we are expected to create a short film which includes both natural and staged lighting, so we have been looking into how light affects the face, and how angles can also do the same. When looking at the most inspirational films, and taking what I have learnt from the screening of ‘ The passion of Joan of arc’ is how to frame the face. When I was first given this task I was confused on the meaning of it. But I learnt that by changing the position of the camera in the slightest changes the whole meaning of what you are shooting. Happiness is equilibrium. Shift your weight. ‘Equilibrium is pragmatic. You have to get everything into proportion. You compensate, rebalance yourself so that you maintain your angle to the world. When the world shifts, you shift’ (Tom Stoppard). For the task we had to make a video showing what we done within this experiment, in mine I wanted to see how colour and positioning affected the way we look at the subject of the frame, so instead of using stills I changed the lighting and position of light all within 2 shots. When you think of popular films, the lighting that is used is deliberate. The way the lighting is set up and the way the film is framed isn’t by mistake.

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This is just one example of many. In the ‘Phantom of Menace’ the Villain of this film was Darth Maul, when you see this photo, you can automatically assume that this guy isn’t going to be the hero of the film. Why? Because of the way he stands and the way the hood blocks out the majority of light to his face. He’s purposely covering his face from the light, and light symbolises everything that is good. From happiness to hope. So When taking this into consideration, the colours you use and the way you position the lights play a huge factor in your film. Here is the final piece that I made.

https://vimeo.com/groups/cinecollective/videos/142180713

The passion of Joan of Arc

Posted on October 9, 2015 by deansblog96

Today was the first screening of the module, and the film that we watched was called The Passion of Joan of Arc’. This film was created in 1927, although many sources claim it was made at a different point. The film was made and destroyed many times before it was finally found in a mental institution in Norway, many belived that they would never see the full cut version of this film, but since the full cut has been discovered it has been named as one of the best films ever made.

The sole reason behind watching this classic was because of the diversity in the facial shots within the film. Majority of the shots are close ups of the face. When creating silent cinema its hard to get across the emotion without the influence of sound, you have to rely on visuals. There is a backing track to the film, but normally with films such as these made in the 20’s and 30’s they would have live music played over the top to add the emotion and flow of the film. I think this is what makes the film stand out to many others around its time. The fact that with the time they had to get the emotion and the purpose of the story across, they were able to use the human face, many other films have never done that before, this is why it stands out, and is still shown in the present day. I’d say after watching it the only thing I disliked about this film was the cut scenes, they’d cut to a black scene with words, which of course was the only way to do this at the time, but when watching I struggled to keep up, but overall for a film to use narrative though facial expressions was remarkable.

Egon Schiele

Posted on October 5, 2015 by deansblog96

For the main part of our 260MC module we have been given a task were we have to create a short film thats is five to seven minutes long. The short film has to stem from a photograph that we have been given. The friday just gone was the first time that we saw the photograph that our group had been given, and here it is.

We have been told that we shouldn’t focus on making our documentary just yet, but just start to think of ideas for what the short film could be about. When we were given this photo we was very surprised and very nervous because we didn’t know what to think of it. But for us to come out and make a good short film from this we have to stick with it and come up with a strong idea. So we thought the best idea was to come up with our own ideas and see what we interoperate from this photo. The thing I wanted to do before I analyse the photograph was to find out more about the artist, to see more of his work, and understand more about him as a person. Through some research I found out that Egon was born in 1890 in Austria, and growing up loved to paint, but as he carried on his love for art he didn’t like school very much at all, he was very rebellious, and didn’t like to be held back, and when looking at some of his work, this side of him is reflected very strongly. Back in the day that he was painting, nudity wasn’t something that was featured with pride, when looking at the biggest artists of the time such as Picasso whilst his work featured nudity, it was quite hidden and tame. Whereas Egon wanted to celebrate nudity and make it a thing of the norm. An exhibition of his work was shown not to long ago and in a review by the guardian Egon was described as ‘ A man who loved vaginas’. His work was brave and bold, and he liked to push boundaries and wanted to paint what he wanted without thinking about the repercussions or the feedback that he would receive. When linking this back to the short documentary idea, the themes that come to mind are confidence, difference, controversy, and the most obvious one nudity.