Its Friday!

This weeks theme, as I treated myself to finishing the essay with a film, will be films. Specifically the ones with extremely clever concepts. The one I happened to go and see being one of them. In Time, the new film starring Justin Timberlake, paints a picture of a world in which Time really is money, and besides a few obvious puns such as the protagonist running around with stolen time, not to mention the over use of the expression "Wasting time", Director Andrew Niccol has done a great job. Definitely recommend it to anyone looking to kill some time, yeah, I said it.

The second is a film soon to be released called The Darkest Hour, which sees earth plagued by an invisible invader that devours energy. I can't say much other than that the trailer is awesome and it has Emile Hirsch, who is also awesome. Clearly on to look out for.

That all folks!

Its That Time of The Week, Friday Favourites

So today I thought I'd go for something classy, tasteful and artistic, so this caught my attention while I was looking through the BBC films website. It's a Short Moving Image piece by Graham Young entitled Still Life With Smoke and Mirrors and, for lack of a better term, thoroughly wrinkled my brain.

The next was just a viral one, I think I lost too many brain cells trying to work out Young's piece earlier so i needed something safe, so without further ado, Click Here.

That concludes this weeks friday favourites.

Final Pitch

 Right, due to the last two weeks of failure i have devised two pitches, which i have titled "Safety Net" and "Ambition". Safety Net, the top image, will consist of an extreme close up of someone's eyes and whenever they blink you see through the eyes of a homeless person, be it digging through trash for food or a dark alleyway to sleep in.I've decided to also keep the voiceover of a homeless person's back story as that provided much of the gravitas in my previous failed pitches.

The next storyboard is not much of a storyboard as embedding images in paint is damn near impossible and my laptop refuses to run photoshop. This idea is much the same, only more ambitious, innovative, creative and every other adjective its predecessors missed. The idea, suggested by Karl, was to have the close-up on the eyes but, rather than switch scenes, embed the alley/trash/feet footage into the eyes and truly see through the eyes of a homeless person, again keeping the voiceover. This was my initial idea, however when I went about trying this I wasn't exactly sure how to go about doing it and couldn't find anywhere online suggesting a solution. This is when I developed the safety net idea, just in case this one falls through.

The New Idea

After the failure of last weeks pitch I decided to abandon the Original idea and go with my second choice and modify it slightly.

The idea was to have the advert shot at the level of a homeless person, comparing the differences. The new idea is to have a 1st person time lapse from the perspective of the homeless person, with a voiceover, if possible performed by a homeless person, if not then an actor, reading on of the stories framework have.

I've decided, based on the 151s battery life & memory capacity, to shoot this roughly 30 minutes before dusk, so as to incorporate the sunset and give the greater impression of time passing. If not I was planning on shooting at rush hour on a busy street, to get the biggest crowd as possible to show the extent to which homeless people are ignored by the vast majority.

I was  planning on shooting it one of three ways:

A- Camera tilted up to show faces

B- Camera deliberately tilted in a way that doesn't capture faces

C- Camera not at all tilted so as to film from the waist down

With A the idea is showing the faces of the people who ignore homeless people, and showing how many of them there are. Many people see homeless people as faceless urchins on the street, however they see the people who ignore them.

B is shot in a way that does not show faces, to make the crowd the faceless entity and emphasise the girth of the crowd.

I liked C as a shot as it shows the level at which the homeless are put on, as a lower being. With the camera filming mostly feet it will show the contrast between the crowd moving around their day to day lives and how a homeless person may be in one place for whole hours of the day.

I plan on talking to framework to see if one of the people they help would like to tell his story for the voiceover, and if they are unhappy recording then i will get an actor for the voiceover instead.

Friday Favourites

It would appear my Friday post didn't work... but here it is, with halloween just around the corner

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzCzMZoQIH0&feature=youtu.be

"Say Something Political" 1st storyboard

This is the basic skeleton for my advert. I've thought about doing it various different ways, this is an odd hybrid of them. Idea one was to shoot it in black & white until the 8th frame, after then it will be colour. I know its cheesy but so are most of my ideas. Example, the second idea is partially visible here, with the introduction of physical words such as "hope" to give a nice effect. This all stemmed from my original idea which had neither.

Friday Favourites

Missed out on updating yesterday but what the hey.
First video I liked this week, old Jamesons one, still good.

The other was the new Avengers Trailer.

Sorry to be brief but duty calls

My "What In Tarnation" Site Of The Day

Whilst strolling throught the interwebs i happened across an interactive film in my journeys. Made by Chris Milk this film is a music video for Arcade Fire's 'We Used To Wait'. Not being sure how to explain it all i can do is ask you to close all your other browsers, stop what you are doing and set phasers to stunned... that came across a little nerdy, but nonetheless, click, watch, enjoy...

http://thewildernessdowntown.com/

Take off your socks...

Otherwise this video will knock them off for you.

http://gizmodo.com/5847467/is-this-the-most-amazing-time-lapse-video-yet

A Start on The Context 2 Coursework

Today has been a productive day, filmed all our MALac scenes, did research into my network and kept the momentum long enough to research the moving image presence of the Midlands. I had heard about the Bang! short film festival last year but hadn't paid enough attention to it, and may be something I'll be interested in next year.

Another film festival I'd been told about last year was Mayhem. I was really interested in this festival but couldn't make the dates. This year I definately plan on going, if not for the entire event then at least a day or two. It seems like a great way of meeting people in the industry as well as seeing some great work from the horror genre.

Its a shame that the deadline date for the LSFF (London Short Film Festival) happens to be today, but such is life. However, planning for the final project is under way, with an actress showing interest and an actor very keen to make an appearance. I have high hopes for this year.

Friday's Favourites

This'll be a weekly post dedicated to Videos and pieces of media I find interesting, a kind of "Ooooh, that was clever" dedication. I'll start off with a video I saw a while ago but just re-stumbled upon the other day. the Motorola Xoom advert. This was one of the featured 'Superbowl' adverts and done by the post-production company 'Absolute Post' where I worked for a summer.

The next is a one-shot music video directed by Dan Eckman (Mystery Team). 'Freaks and Geeks' by up & coming american rapper/actor/comedian/screen-writer Donald Glover aka Childish Gambino is a simply made video that shows one shot films don't need to be elaborate to make an impact.

For now that's all but I'll have more to show next week, keep watching.

First Context 2 Task

When I first thought about the existing "connections" I have to people in the multimedia industry I thought that it ended with my summer internship as a runner for Absolute Post, a Post-Production company based in Soho (http://absolutepost.co.uk/). But then I kept thinking and remembered that my aunt used to work for the BBC as a presenter/researcher. This could prove to be a useful source of contacts. Similarly my uncle is the Vice President & Chief Financial Officer for Electronic Arts's 'EA Sports' label. He's based over in Canada so its rare that I'd go over, however last time I went my brother and I tested a few of the games and met a large number of the designers, animators etc. One who stood out was Nick Gonzalez but everyone there was noteworthy. Apart from them I can't think of many more, however if I do I'll update this straight away.

1st DP3 Post

This is just a few shots of my basement, a location I thought may be useful when filming 'MALac'. The ceiling is very low and there's not much space but it could be possible to make it work.

Main room, for shooting.

If we don't mind the squeeze it could work nicely, may even give us some impromptu close ups.

Hello

Thought i'd just stick up a video i like, its really old but i found it goin thru my old youtube account, still amazingly directed, enjoy

And now we play...

The Waiting Game

***UPDATE***
Waiting game was lost

Some 3D Screenshots

Sorry for neglecting you, blog

...But i've been busy

First off, Interactive Media.

And also Virtual Enviroments

Moving Image Evaluation

Five weeks ago I was teamed up with Graeme, Katie, Yingxi, Frazer and Parastoo. We were given five weeks to make a 3 minute film based on a script by Jools titled "Ticket". At first the script was rather hard to understand as at points it seemed to just have two unrelated sentences juxtaposed. The other thing I noticed was that it didn't end conclusively, it just cut off mid-dialogue.

So once we had been given the script we allocated ourselves jobs, and with Katie, Frazer and Paras all competing for director/producer/editor roles I jumped onto lighting as I had done that in the one shot project. What differed between this project and the past one was that this time around everyone had different ideas on what we could make of this script, whereas last term there was generally a creative drought. None of us wanted to do a "sappy" romantic film, however after assessing the script over and over it soon became clear that it would be very difficult to stay away from the romance genre.

We all agreed that we wanted there to be a dark twist on the film, and i think it was Paras that suggested the idea about the book, and having a character come to life. The team decided that this would be a good story to tell and an enjoyable one to create and we started work on it immediately, with Graeme studying up on Cameraman tutorials, Katie contacting Nottingham City Transport and myself taking the job of adapting the script to fit what we were looking for.

We met up as a group two to three times a week to discuss how each of us were doing with our roles and it wasn't long before we had secured a bus to shoot on as well as actors to play our protagonists. The day of the shoot was a mixed bag of emotions to say the least, as when we arrived on location there was some debating with the general safety manager about whether or not we were permitted to film. However Katie stepped up to the challenge and solved it. The shooting itself went well as both of our actors were fun to work with and enjoyed being a part of the creative process.

 From there we went into editting, where we encountered a few problems with background sound as well as some of the videos. It seems we were a little ambitious to strive for shooting on the bus with green screen, however I'd argue that at least we tried it, and Frazer seemed confident that given a little extra time he could sort it out. As for the sound I brought in a friend to do the voiceover for Lisa, which went well.

Overall, I enjoyed working with this group on this script, it was a lot of good fun and there's very little I would change. I'd definately have gotten more shots on the bus though, as in the editting there were concerns that it wouldn't work out. However in terms of feedback everyone has reponded positively, saying that the narrative was very clear and the general idea was clever. Our best feedback appears to be for the location, the fact we managed to obtain a bus has been labelled as "an impressive achiement".

Quick update on filming

Okay, should've updated this earlier but what the hey.

On friday i tried my hand at screenwriting and rewrote the script to something which we, as a group, found more understandable.

That'd be this:

Ticket

Written by Julius Ayodeji

Adapted for film by Oliver Smyth

Blurb – read at bus stop

Lisa (v/o): In a city with a population approaching one million, each bus sees roughly 2,500 commuters a day. One of them must be the one.

On the bus – book open

Lisa (v/o): Adult. That’s what the ticket says. So I’ll act like one. I’ll act like an adult. I never understood why tickets are valid until half four in the morning. Do buses even run that late? And what good could possibly come from being out of bed and in a bus at such a ridiculous time? As if travelling on a oversized metal rectangle that claims to “fit 45 persons comfortably”, 83 on a double-decker, can be productive in any means. Not for business [short pause] or leisure [long pause] certainly not for romance. To even humour the notion is insane, meeting the man of your dreams in a shipping container on wheels. And how would that go exactly, to just turn around and he’ll be there with his [insert colour here] eyes and his cheeky smile. It’s not as if he’d even notice me, tell me he’d seen me before.

Sam: I’ve seen you before.

Lisa: It’s all very well saying that but why should I believe you?

Sam: You probably shouldn’t, this notion that another human would show any interest in you is absurd, isn’t it?

Lisa: you’ve seen me before, like what, watching me?

Sam: No. Well kinda, but not in a funny way.

Lisa: In a sad way?

Sam: That’s not it either. It’s just I’ve noticed you. You get on the bus, go round for hours, then get off at the same stop you got on.

Lisa: You don’t even know me, how dare you judge me.

Sam: I wasn’t try-

Lisa:                - wasn’t what? Expecting to work at carpet land for three years?

Sam: Huh?

Lisa: Recession hit hard, and your girlfriend might leave if you lost your job.

Sam: How do you know about- my girlfriend?

Lisa:                                        - Keyring.        (Camera goes to picture of keyring with girl’s face)

Long pause. Sam is speechless. Lisa looks smug, but then recoils.

Lisa (v/o): so even when someone cares, she scares them off. One by one.

She closes the book, Sam is gone

Lisa walks off the bus

Camera pans to Sam’s seat, there is a ticket

Yesterday we filmed at the NCT bus depot, a two hour shoot that made up the majority of the film

We also filmed at a bus stop frazer helped to find that was isolated as well as picturesque, so easy to film and what we were looking for.

The end result is currently in post production and requires the little finishing touches (piecing together, sound, credits, etc.) however a poster has been made. Ticket-Coming soon

Tuesday's work

Decided to add some props, a giant penny, a swinging pendulum and last but in no way least, a jack in the box
This jack in the box was 3 hours in the making and looked a little something like this.

However when i tried to save the entire program froze before crashing, resulting in 3 hours of my life i will never get back...

Haunted house update

Haunted House Project

I think for this i may try a Batman ride, maybe start in the Batcave and then travel around to fight crime in a cart designed as the Batmobile. However, i was thinking of going for a vintage feel, using the 1966 Batman movie as inspiration, and perhaps filling the Batcave with all of the strange equipment Adam West had to deal with. I also thought that, for villains, the joker would be an obvious choice, however rather than have a Jack Nicholson/ Heath Ledger Joker, go for in 1966 one as well...
More to come later

eXistenZ

This film officially wrinkled my brain for lack of better words, which I suppose was the intention of the director. However I doubt he intended for the film to be watched by university students capable of laughing at the slightest bit of deranged innuendo. Anyway, I'm not here to review the film, I'm here to discuss what the purpose of watching it was in terms of narrative, interactivity and convergence.

Narrative- The storyline is filled with plot twists, the largest of which is when the protagonists finish the "game" and leave eXistenZ to reveal that all of this was a different game, transCendenZ. This then rasies the question, how do we know that we're not in a game right now? When I left the lecture I immediately said to myself "40% Matrix, 50% Inception and 10% any film with Jude Law."

Interactivity- I think the best part of the film to express this would be when Allegra convinces Ted to keep playing, stating "There's nothing happening here. We're safe. It's boring." That's exactly why people play video games, because there's nothing better to do and they have the ability to take whoevers playing somewhere else, and I'm not saying they need to be as elaborate as the one in the film, when i was a kid I could play Crash Bandicoot for days and not get bored.

As for convergence I'm not entirely sure what it means...


Happy New Year!