Coursework - Evaluation (draft)

The course, moving image arts, has been extremely good fun. I really enjoyed making the video and learning more about film technology and the processes that you have to go through to make a piece of moving image. The flexibility of the course was a huge surprise to me and I have really enjoyed to literally be able to make any kind of video I like.

My final film has been a huge success. Technically, the film doesn't have very much to it; one camera angle, one object and the same lighting through the whole piece. I did this because the transitions between all the cuts and fades had to be almost invisible. Using influences from German expressionism and early 20th century art I created a music video for a song I produced over the previous summer.

The creative vision I pictured last summer is almost identical to the video I have created over the year. Of course, the idea has been adapted to and modified due to conversations with many people and advice from others. One major change was that I had not realised a story line was needed in the film. I then wrote some short sentences I believed worked with the formalistic and imaginative idea of the film. The three sentences where extremely poetic and comments I received tell that they thought about extraordinary things such as life and the meaning behind existence. The visual product I have now finished has far exceeded what people had though I was creating. People have described it as ‘trippy’ and almost too colourful to watch.

The reaction of my audience pleases me greatly. To contemplate deep meaning even exceeds what I thought my film would evoke. Not all comments have been positive, some complain that I have taken the easy route and not stretched myself in the making of this video but I completely disagree. The filming and editing process were extremely difficult. Many problems occurred and not all of which I could easily get around.

The initial problem occurred when filming. I had one weekend in which to film because I had only those days where I could keep the rostrum at home with me. As soon as we began filming, the camera ran out of battery and no mains supply lead was provided when we took the camera from school. Fortunately, my aunt who was helping me with the filming had a camera which we could use. The camera worked well and all was good until we had finished recording and tried to watch the video on the computer. My aunt remembered that the camera was from America and therefore in NTSC, not in PAL. So I had to wait about a week for her to transfer it to her computer and from there, convert it and give it to me. This put me back a week. Once the footage was on my hard drive, I took it to school and began working on it. After just one lesson with my footage, the school’s system broke down and I was unable to do any work on the computers for at least two weeks. During this time I worked on my story boards and finished my script.

From making this film and the process of developing it I have learnt many things. One of which is the ability to critically analyse films and review their attributes. This I found helpful when trying to think of ways of developing what you see on screen and also how to evoke the reaction you want from the audience. Before I began the course I had never used final cut pro ever, the only piece of film equipment I ever used was I movie, and that isn’t very stretching. Over the year I feel I am extremely proficient with the program and can quite comfortably edit footage. The ability to write and draw story boards we have worked on through both years ten and eleven and I can now draw accurate and proportionately correct images with correct language to describe the movements.

To conclude, I have greatly enjoyed this course and in making the film and I believe I have created something I did not think I could have eight months ago. I feel that as time progressed, I became more confident with the idea of making a film and stretched my ideas beyond the original confines of my mind and expanded on what I would normally do. The reward of knowing, I did this, I made this film is great and knowing I have the ability to create such things is a fun thing to be able to do. I am extremely proud of what I made and with the time I have put into this project I feel I have achieved.

Coursework - Final Film

Final Film - This is my final piece and the video i will be submitting for the moving image arts AS level.



enjoy!

Homework - Storyboards

The storyboards above reflect what i am doing for my final AS moving image peice. A colourful resemblence of what my final film will look like and the text explains most of what happens in the peice.

Homework - Script

As you have previously read, i am going to have a short story in the bridge section of my song. This will be read out in a very deep peaceful voice which I hope will add to the empasis on formalism.

Voice: Fase 1, the seed is planted when opposites attract. It takes the physical to create the physical; one action for another.

Voice: Fase 2, the flower blossoms to what appears to be a concrete surface. I.e. greed, racism, insanity… physical and social handicaps. These are the things that mould the flower. Red rose or black rose, no in between.

Voice: Fase 3, the judgement, if it were to fall apon you today, what rose would you be? The red rose, or the black?

Classwork - Pre-Production exercise

This is my Pre-Production exercise. In doing this I have been practicing and working out how to cut video to music. I was very fortunate with this song as it was exactly ten frames per beat of the music. I have also been practicing how to use final cut pro because i have no previouse experience with the program.

classwork - Mood Board

The Mood Board

The mood board you see on your right is a compilation of everything that has inspired me to create what I will be creating for the project.

classwork - Statement of intentions

Statement of intentions (draft)

My intention for the project is to create a formalist music video for the drum and bass track I made over the summer.

When in leeds with my family, I asked them to give me some idea's on what I could make my film about, here are some that i can remember.

• The boy in the striped pyjamas (prequil)
  
• Tramping (how to be a good tramp, top tramps. would of been fun but not exactly 'correct')
  
• stick figure fighting / dance (i would create a track, make them dance and fight to it using a pivot program)
  

Those are just a few of the idea's we came up with.

The last idea was the one i decided to take through and think more about.

Yesterday, i met up with my other aunt, she has created films before and knows a lot about the animation arty side of things. I told her about my idea and we began to elaborate on it . Using a record player to project my idea on to would be fun. We then thought about a completely new idea of making a track (the drum and bass track i have already made) and then film a record player spinning around with ink and paint and any other things that would stretch with a centrifugal force. I would then record this several times with blank circles and adding different colours and objects. To then put it in time with the music i would cut it every beat(170bpm) and change between different ink spattered record players, the odd cross fade and random image should help tell a story but my idea is to create a film with as little story line as possible to create the ultimate formalist effect.

These links proved useful when thinking of an idea -

• ROBERT BREER: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHvYoaP5Od4
  
• OSKAR FISCHINGER: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC4Nvsceg1A and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jz9MlZA4LxY and a film inspired by him, can't remember who it is by: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etYgSaryuYs
  
• ERIC NILS HARALD: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70qecjGdOYs
  
• ALLEN CARROLL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umFG1O4bRSw
  
• CHUCK JONES: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGh97__-uLA this film won an Oscar (in 1965?).
  
• HARRY SMITH: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wYJ51nSXRQ
  
• LEN LYE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3y1offmJ4Y
  
• CALIFORNIA INSTITUTS OF ART AND DESIGN:
  
• http://film.calarts.edu/main/streaming/expanim20.html
  

I found that Oscar Fischinger came closest to the piece i wanted to achieve and his work with music was very inspiring. I am thinking about incorporating some of his work into my final product as a tribute to his work and dedication to the area. His work of making images flow in time was very inspiring and of course i don't have the talent to do what he has done but I would like to see a relation between my work and his.

Damien Hirst's spin painting also link to what i am intending to achieve. His idea of painting a picture then using a centrifugal force to let nature create its own image was very inspiring. He is possibly one of Britain's most famous artists and work like his 'shark in formaldehyde' is globally acknowledged.

To create quite an inspiring piece of work I am not only going to be cutting from image to image 3 times a second but also create a very vague story line with the use of images and short flashes of Oscar Fischinger's work. This, I hope, will make the audience think more about what they see than what the footage itself is telling them to think.

In the coming week I will be experimenting with different lighting, colours, speeds and images to see which things will work best and how I can best achieve what I would like to do.

My short film will hopefully fall under the category of extreme formalism. This is because what I intend to create is a swirl of colours, images, objects that almost directly links to both Damien Hirst's spin paintings and Oscar Fischinger's work.

After talking to my teacher and others that wish to remain anonymous, i have decided to give my piece of art some form of story line. As my piece of music has a 40 second break down in the middle i am going to tell the listener a story. My story is a about the growth of a rose and how everything that we do to the rose affects its outcome.

classwork - Analysis of Casablanca

Mise En Scene

This is used to bring about the classical genre of the time. Bar's, club's, cafes and police stations are all portrayed to look and feel very classy. The costumes are all very upper class, suits and long gowns and an over arching theme of stripes is used. The stripes seem to be used to either make the men and women seem broader than they actually are or it may just be used as motif and some kind of formalist editing (continuity editing). 

Lighting

The lighting in this film is definitely of a formalist film. As part of chiaroscuro the lighting creates a huge contrast between light and shadow

Camera Work

Sound

Editing

(UNFINISHED)!!!!!

classwork - Classical Hollywood Cinima

the 3 films that i would like to watch in class and i believe are key to the golden age of Hollywood. 

• Casablanca 

• The wizard of oz 

• It's a wonderful life

homework - Discuss the 5 areas of formalist film in 'Run Lola Run'

1. lighting - The lighting is used in such a way so that you are only really identifying Lola's bright red hair and possibly the surrounding bright yellow and red objects. Most of the lighting is natural and the odd indoor scenes that do occur don't contain any obvious spot or diffused lights. The bed scene that occurs 2 times in the film uses the over running theme of red as a filter to possibly draw you away from Lola's red hair and look more and the image as a whole. Or the red filter could be used to show death easily coming and going
2. camera work - Always centering the image on Lola's red hair is one of the key features of the film. To give any film a specific colour will always have the desired effect of sticking in the audiences memory. Another key element is the fact that when the scenes are repeated throughout the three different runs, the camera movement is identical which then builds a sense of dejavu in the viewers mind.
   
3. sound - The soundtrack includes many musical patterns, like the everlasting string chords, of 'The Unanswered Question' an early 20th-century ensemble work by American writer Charles Ives. Other
   
4. editing -Although most effects in this film would have been done through camera work and lighting. Making the red in Lola's hair stand out as much as it does would definitely have been done using a program such as final cut pro.
   
5. mise en scene - Run Lola Rim was shot extensively in Berlin, Germany and there are 18 confirmed locations in which the film was shot.
   

classwork - German Expressionism

1) What are the key features of german expressionism ?

Nosferatu: the spooky musical changes from horror to romance set the scene for pretty much all german expressionism as a key genre in formalist film. Black and white was of course the only way they could film the footage but I also believe that without the black and white the key lighting would not have been as effective and scary. The shadows at the beginning of the film are surprisingly effective as you don't quite know what you are looking at but you know even without seeing the creature itself its not a good omen. The subtitles, for me, are a pointless extra as you can understand what is happening without being told over and over again that there is a ' sudden fever'.

German Expressionism also depends heavily on mise-en-scene. Shapes are distorted and exaggerated unrealistically for expressive purposes. Actors often wear heavy makeup and move in jerky or slow, sinuous patterns. Most important, all of the elements of the mise-en-scene interact graphically to create an overall composition.

2. Where and where can the influence of German expressionism be seen in film history?

Even before German expressionism became well know, you can see signs of it as far back as the 1920's with films like 'The Golem' and 'Nosferatu'. Traits of such films have been seen throughout film history with 'Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde' and' the cabinet of Dr Caligari'

homework - Find an example of formalist film and identify features

White Base

After stumbling around wikipedia and other resource based sites, I found the link to the formalist film by Torrey Richards and Brad Hutchinson (white base).




Ive identified most of its key features and they are all what you would expect a formalist film to contain. Strange lighting, flashy effects and what I would call an 'imaginative' story line, all make a good formalist film.

In further detail...

• Lighting: mostly outside, but indoor scenes have no artificial light to build an spooky atmosphere from the light coming through gaps outside.
• Sounds/ Music: spooky out of tune violins and other string instrument build to a final climax of distorted sounds. This sound track is key to the films scariness.
• Plot: i don't think it is possible to ever work out the plot from a formalist film. This could be anything from walking school to the path of death. It just isn't worth the hassle spending hours upon hours trying to imagine what the writer could have been doing when he wrote this film. Just let the craziness of the effects make its own 'imaginative' story.
• Camera work: Personally, I think the choice of a wobbly camera was a bad idea and I think that if a still shot was used, the flashing transitions would have been more effective.
  
• Editing: This is probably the part in which the formalist bit of the film comes together. Changing all the shots into black and white is a very nice effect and the flashy transitions work very nicely with the soundtrack
  

homework - watch films and describe direct link to own work.

Watch films and describe direct link to own work

These are 5 short animations i have watched on youtube all with similar aspects I can take into consideration when making my own work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgJ-yOhpYIM&feature=related - Norman Mclaren

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70qecjGdOYs - Eric Harald

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGh97__-uLA - Norton Juster

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wYJ51nSXRQ - Harry Smith

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3y1offmJ4Y - Ian Iye

• All of these directly relate to what I want to do because they are all fairly artistic pieces of work and they are all done to music.
• Most of these have no story line at all with the exception of the line and dot which is one I thought about maybe adding a story line. But after watching a few more videos with no story line I realised if I left it to the viewer’s imagination to think what could actually be going on here?
• The work I am going to be doing is unlike any of these and I was unable to find anything like what I wanted to do on youtube anywhere.
• My final idea is to create a video which is just filming a vinyl player from above. The player will have a white disk on and this will spin. I will then gradually add inks and other objects and watch them move through the centrifugal force of the player. The music I have made is at the speed of 170bpm which is almost 3 bps and in each and every one of these beats I will chop and change between different shots of the ink covered paper disks.

ideaass

When in leeds with my faily, i asked them to give me some idea's on what i could make my film about, here are some that i can remember.

• The boy in the striped pyjamas (prequil)
• Tramping (how to be a good tramp, top tramps. would of been fun but not exactly correct)
• stick figure fighting / dance (i would create a track, make them dance and fight to it using a pivot program)

Those are just a few of the idea's we came up with.

The last idea was the one i decided to take through and think more about.

Yesterday, i met up with my other aunt, she has created films before and knows a lot about the animation arty side of things. I told her about my idea and we began to elaborate on it . using a record player to project my idea on to would be fun. We then thought about a completly new idea of making a track (which i am going to a sudio to do later today) and then fliging peices of paint, chalk, pencils, crayons, ANYTHING at a spinning record player, we would play around with cross fades into blank canvases, adding random peices of image and creating something very peculiar. My only concern is that this is not what i am supposed to be doing and also that i wouldnt be able to get the flinging of the item to be in rythm with the music. In theory i am creating an arty drum and base music video. Thanks.

Some links that proved useful - ROBERT BREER: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHvYoaP5Od4
OSKAR FISCHINGER: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC4Nvsceg1A and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jz9MlZA4LxY and a film inspired by him, can't remember who it is by: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etYgSaryuYs
ERIC NILS HARALD: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70qecjGdOYs
ALLEN CARROLL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umFG1O4bRSw
CHUCK JONES: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGh97__-uLA this film won an Oscar (in 1965?).
HARRY SMITH: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wYJ51nSXRQ
LEN LYE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3y1offmJ4Y
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTS OF ART AND DESIGN:
http://film.calarts.edu/main/streaming/expanim20.html

Gantt Project

Today i have created my first gantt project. This has helped me structure what i will be doing over the next year. I gave the project lots of flexibility and also gave me lots of time to do the tasks. I do not feel i will be in a rush to do anything.

For some reason when i try to upload my Gantt as an image it is really small and blurred.

My First Ever Blog

This is my first blog, ever. I will be recording my progress throughout this course, AS Moving Image.

The video below is one we watched yesterday in lesson.



The video above is one we watched yesterday in lesson.