Moving Image Arts AS Morgan Butterfield

Monday, 20 October 2008

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)!!!!!

Monday, 13 October 2008

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

Tuesday, 7 October 2008

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

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
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.
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
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.
mise en scene - Run Lola Rim was shot extensively in Berlin, Germany and there are 18 confirmed locations in which the film was shot.

Monday, 6 October 2008

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'

Wednesday, 24 September 2008

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

Sunday, 7 September 2008

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.

Tuesday, 12 August 2008

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.