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'