Tuesday 15 December 2009

Evaluation Part 2

















Day 3

On day 3 I had to film Tom Funnel walking into the room. This scene was made to be a quick scene and the final peice of my movie. I wanted Funnel to walk into the room and then write down the word bye. Tom Eldridge would then walk into the room and read the word bye on a peice of paper then dissapear. Luckily the filming only took about half an hour to do which was prettey handy. After this I edited the movie, which I thought I executed very well. I wanted the editing to be simple yet effective and managed to execute this well even though I had very little time to do it. I couldn't put any sound on it because of royaltie reasons and I had to make my soundtrack. However I did not choose this option because it would have wasted alot of time. Instead I had no sound on the video. If I actually had a soundtrack to it then I think that it would have effected the emotion of the film in a different way to what the people who watched it felt at the time. I think that the emotion of the film would have been forced upon people rather than the people deciding for themselves.

Thursday 10 December 2009

My Evaluation

All in all I think I did a good job of the film. I have managed to produce a movie which didn't push the boundries but was good all the same. I used my creative mind to think up an idea of my movie and I wanted to show something meaningfull in my idea, not a half hearted mock up because I had to do it. I thought that the outcome was very good. I didn't know people would react by laughing and took it to heart at first but then after that I thought to myself during the weekend that it's an experimental video and this is what the meaning of experimental video is to make people react in a different way so after a little thought I didn't think it was something to be hurt about. I even got a comment from someone who thought it was brilliant. I think that I would do a different idea if I had to do it next time if i'm honest with you. I didn't like the outcome of it and I thought it was really boring. If the video was the original 14 minutes in length I reckon people would have been born senseless but luckily I edited it down to 3:21 but that was still a bit too long. I think that my video has been a great sucsess and I really enjoyed doing it. I even enjoyed the coursework side of it.

Wednesday 2 December 2009

Day 2 of filming

In day 2 of my filming I managed to film Tom Eldridge walking to school. It was a very grim and cold day but I liked this because it contrasted with Tom Funnels. This meant that Toms walk looked more lighter. The reason why this is a good thing is because it depicts that something good will happen to Funnel and Eldridge will get the bad thing happening. Even though it's a slight hint it is still very effective.

Thursday 26 November 2009

Day 1 of filming

Today I managed to film Tom Funnel walking to college. It seemed a little bit daunting at first but when I actually got into the filming "zone" then I was alright and really getting into it. It was a very sunny day but not that hot, which would be a contrast to when I would film Tom Eldridge. But I like this contrast though, I think that it makes the meaning of the film much stronger than if I was to film it on the same day I filmed it with Funnel. I also thought that Tom did very well and was patient with me, even though I was gathering lots of footage, and there was alot of standing around involved.

Thursday 12 November 2009

The reasons why I used the exhebition space.

The main reason why I chose my exhebition space was because I wanted to make the person feel singled out. Only one person at a time can see my video and all the lights will be turned off. They will be sitting in the room on there own. There will be no one else there in the room with them and they will be completely on there own. The questionaire will be placed infront of them, for them to feel that they have to do it. The room will be extremely cluttered and the chairs will be removed from the room, well not removed but put to one side. I will be standing there in the corner out of there view, this is an attempt to make them feel awkward. The central heating in the room will be turned off so it is cold, this is also an attempt to make them feel awkward.

Here are my questionaire questions.

Do you like my movie? if yes, what did you like about it?

How did the exhibition spacemake you feel?

What did you think the movie ment?

What did you dislike about the movie?

Thank you for taking my questionaire.

Monday 19 October 2009

Final Review of Contraction by Chris Hewitt & James Cambourne

Film Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/A55119864

This is the final film that I will review. The film itself is again very short. It shows a man laying down on the ground dead, and then a woman coming and doing a mouth to mouth, the woman then tries the resussitation method, as she is doing this, the ground is cracking underneath them. At the end of the film the man wakes up and the woman asks him "Where did you go". The man looks very confused. The main idea of the film is about rebirth. It was made to put questions into peoples heads about what might have happened before. Personally, I think that the man had fallen from the building becuase they film from the top of what looks like the top of a building. The backing sounds behind are very echoey. This makes it feel as if the man and the woman are both alone and no one else is around to help them. The man looking confused at the end could mean that he is reborn with a babies mind, and is completely new to the world again. I think this film is very thought provoking and effective.

Review of Eulogy for things left unsaid By Rob Chiu

Film Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/A46701650

Euology for things left unsaid is an extremely emotional film. The backing track is room music peice composed by Olafur Arnalds. It is a very short peice but is very effective. The backing track really sets the scene for the movie and moves you, and the peices that he films are widescreen landcapes. The film is based on the theme of lonelyness. I think that the feilds he films represent a place to escape becuase every person that is lonely dreams of escaping to the countryside. It shows a boy wandering through a path, I think this bit is ment to put questions into our head like "Is the boy walking relflecting about the lonely times spent at home?" or "Is he content with his life and is just enjoying a nice peicefull walk in the countryside". The film itself isn't a very long film, running just over 120 seconds, but in my opinion it is very effective and powerfull for what it is.

Saturday 17 October 2009

Review of Landing Lights By Graham Young

Video Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/A34265270

This video is an animated video of a plane going straight through a building. Unfortunately I didn't get to watch it all the way through due to buffering problems but I got the general idea of it. I think that it is about the haunting memories of our past, for example the twin towers, where haunting memories like that repeat in our minds over and over again. The video itself repeats over and over again. The film is extremely dark and gloomy as the colours are. They depict that this film is a depressing one, not a happy and colourfull one. Personally I think that it has a very eiry feel to it and it is kind of weird. But alot of experimentals are like this. It could be thought of as a modern interpretation of Koyaanisquatsi, with the plane going through the building, and it could be about the destructiveness of human nature.

Friday 16 October 2009

Chapter 3

Most experimental movies will have the conventional beggining and end but in a much differnent way to your usual movies. On your usual films you've got the beggining being something about some sort of broken family for example, and middle being something happens to bring that family closer together, and the end being that the family realised that they love one another very much and everything is all happy and hunky dory. This is only your typical Box Office movie as I said. Experimental films are very radically the film will make them ask more questions as will the end. In other words, the beggining middle and end needs to provoke alot of thought otherwise trhe artist will not have made the impact that they wanted to make. The ending could be extremely vague, leaving the audience to make their mind up about what the ending actually means. I do not think that it is important for experimental films to have a beggining and end because art galleries are not like cinemas. With cinemas people will watch all the way through right till the very end. With art galleries however, once people get the general idea of the movie they will walk away because the whole point of experimental movie is for people to get the idea of it.

Thursday 8 October 2009

Chapter 2

In this chapter I will discuss how the use of technology differs within the videos. In Koyaanisqatsi the video was vastly different from anything ever done at the time. Most people who saw it were in awe with the wide screen shots that graces most of the film. Also the soundtrack was very unusual, even though synthesizers were used in music alot at that time, most people have never heard synthesizers in the way they are used in Koyaanisqatsi. Nowadays the people that watch the video are less awestruck by it. What they don't seem to realise is that Koyaanisqatsi was the first video of it's kind to do that kind of shooting. Most documentaries nowadays are inspired off of Koyaanisqatsi and I think that we take this for granted most of the time. Doll Face on the other hand is very much modern and up to date. It is an animated movie and the soundtrack that is played sounds like it could be used in a Radiohead album or a downbeat electronic album similar to something Radiohead would do. The technology used is up do date animation software, possibly Blender. Even though this is used, it doesn't have the same impact that Koyaanisquatsi had when it was released. This is because there were already very many animated films created before Doll Face so people were not as over whelmed with Doll Face as they were with Koyaanisquatsi. However it does have the same meaning and pollitical impact as Koyaanisquatsi did, just on a smaller scale.

Chapter 1

In Doll Face by Andy Huang, it all seems computer animated, high tech and modern. There is a woman that looks like a robot and sees something on TV, the TV eventually goes away from her and she crashed down to the floor. This is basically saying that the Modern generation need to stop copying what they see on the TV because eventually they will all rot away. No one can ever copy anyone because everybody is different. This means that nothing has changed since the video the girl chewing gum, which is basically trying to make the same point. He films a street with people walking along the road and he pretends to direct it, he eventually reveals that he isn't directing what the people are doing and he is infact in a feild 20 miles away from the place that he is filming. Also the video Koyannisquatsi made by a russian director says something to people along those lines. These three videos are vastly different and each of them were filmed in 3 different areas. They all mean the same thing but show it in different ways. Koyaanisquatsi was very differnet for it's time and radically changed the way people watched videos and movies. It wanted to be different and really push the boundaries. Each of the three different videos are like this, they all push the boundries in a unique way. Doll Face is the only animated video of the three and the most up to date, Girl chewing gum is the oldest video out of the three. Koyannisquatsi is 2 hours long and has an operatic sound track, Doll Face also has a soundtrack which adds more of an emotional effect on the film than The Girl Chewing Gum does. The Girl Chewing gum is the least emotionally effective of the three, yes it is effective and thought provoking, but in a different way.

Monday 5 October 2009

Chapter 6

Art can be interpreted by the audience in many different ways. There are alot of different things that are used to make the audence think differently. For example it could be the use of space. Space means different things to different people. Some people are claustrophobic or agrophobic, therefore they view space in a negative way. Whereas others are neither of the two therefore they view space in a positive way and may not even feel anything when they go into a certain space. These people however may not even look at the video through the means of what the space is like, for example if the central heating is on full blast then they could feel relaxed, or some people could feel too hot therefore they will see this in a negative way. On the other hand the air con could be on too cold, therefore they could feel prettey awkward, or they could see the cold in a positive way. Also meanings could be interpreted in a different way. For example on Koyannisquatsi, people could see this video as an anti pollution video, but the video could also mean human life evolving and eventually decomposing. Or people could not view the video in a meaningful way at all, they could just see it as a bunch of random overview shots of the city and stuff.

Review of Gisele Kerozene dir. Jan Kounen

The video we watched today is of 2 men trying to grab some orb thing, then another man coming along and taking it. The main scene was a chase with broomsticks. At the end of the movie a man gets shot but the bad guy hands the orb thing to him. This could be interpreted in many ways. Personally I found it to be quite a humerous video and I had to try and stop myself from giggling at on point when the guy was on the wheelchair and he fell off. I think that people could interperate this video in many different ways, people could say that it has a meaning to it and that meaning could be that when you want something you may not always get it. I personally thought that the movie was very well crafted as it was filmed using stop motion. Personally I think that it is more craft driven then concept because it's not as deep and thought provoking as the other movies are.

Wednesday 30 September 2009

Experimental Video Ideas

Idea 1- A person in a room with nothing in it, there is no sound, no music. He is partying and having a good time. Taken from another video I saw at the tate gallery without the college. It was a video of an old man who was completely letting his hair down. There was no sound or music and you couldn't even tell that he was listening to a song or not. It made you really smile and this would be the effect that I would want on the audience, just to make them feel a happy emotions inside.

Idea 2- Starting from the ground floor, I will film the view from each window. When it get's to the 9th floor. I fill only film for 1 second then go straight back down to the ground again. The film will be called Treefingers, it's meaning is human life going through growth then basically decomposing. Essentually, nothing you do in life really matters, although it is fun. The idea was taken from Koyaanisqatsi, the russian movie where it shows life evolving then eventually decomposing.

Idea 3- I am going to film 5 people standing in a room for about an hour (obviously I will shorten it down) and just have them standing there against a wall. This idea is the most craft based of all my ideas, it is taken from a video that I saw at the tate when the woman who filmed it got 5 policemen just to stand against a wall. You get attached to one person who has a really bad itch or something. Obiously I would need some extra time for this movie, I think about 10 minutes would do it some justice. Please talk to me and tell me wether or not I can have this extra time, because this is the one that I most want to do.

Monday 28 September 2009

Koyaanisqatsi

Koyannisqatsi is a movie created by Godfrey Reggio. There are alot of things about Koyannisqatsi that make it different from your average film. There is no storyline, no speach, even no actors. Just images on a grand scale complimented with an orchestral soundtrack. The film starts off showing a cave and eventually evolves from a rocket exploding to skyscrapers to the skyscrapers to the rocket going up and blowing up.

I think the film has a lot of meaning to it, I think one of the meanings of this film is to show that human life will crush itself if we keep on building and evoliving. I also think the other meaning of this fim is to show how chaotic human life can be, and that sometimes we an be very selfish. The audio of the movie is non diagetic, the music starts of very earily at the start of the film, and eventually it evolves into chaos. I think the music is very much involved with the film rather than just being a backing track, i've already kind of explained what the music relates too.

I think the concept behind the film is about human life evolving. The natural world is no longer needed so we live through technology, and the more technology evolves the more that we no longer need technology therefore the more we will be artificial. The natural world only exists within the artificial world in which we live in. That is basically what Reggio wanted to show. He shows this by shooting different scenes of un-natural things. Like Bombs exploding, Skyscrapers being torn down to have new ones put in place. Lastly, I also think that the fact he released it in the cinema is a big deal because he wanted people to see what he thought the world was coming to and he wanted to make people think about how they would stop it.

Thursday 24 September 2009

Chapter 4Tate Exhebition

The video I saw was Rocky 1976 by Paul McCarthy, it was of a man, who was naked in a room as he was beating himself up with bocing gloves, and the second video was of the same man covering himself in cream. The two videos were projected on to 2 walls and instead of the projector being on the ceiling the projector was on the table, which already made me sense that there was something wrong. The room was white and spacious and the air conditioning was on full blast which made me feel very awkward. Infact the whole package made me feel awkward becuase the man was naked and you don't get naked people in public. It felt as if I was viewing something private that I wasn't ment to be viewing. It did make me understand the movie a bit more, I felt as if the man was angry at himself and the world so he wants to do something dangerous and controversial. The reason why I chose this video out of all the other ones I saw was because none of the other videos made me feel anything, this video really shocked me. The camera angle was filmed looking up on him which made me feel very small. I didn't see the end becuase I felt as if the movie was too much so I couldn't carry on watching it.

Tuesday 22 September 2009

Doll Face- Andy Huang

Doll Face is about a womans face that is colourless and lifeless. She looks at the TV Screen and sees another womans face in the screen with make up. She tries to copy the womans look by putting on her own make up. The screen moves away and she draws nearer to it, eventually she collapses and dies.

I think that the machine represents the general public who copy what they see on the TV like a machine. I think the movie represents how members of the public tend to copy the media. They do whatever the TV tells us to do and eventually we will collapse upon ourselves and get ruined with health problems. I think it also means that people are never happy with the way that they look. They always try to copy their favourite celebrity, even if they know they won't manage to do so. Even though the animation is simple, the work that has gone into it is emotional and alot of thought has gone into it. It shows how a simple idea can be made into an effective and emotional one.

Tuesday 15 September 2009

Hi I'm haydn

hello my name is haydn you are at my blog great one bye bye.

Haydn is trhe