Lets Start the Blog with a SMILE

1)  Framing and Composition – the orderly arrangements of elements in a scene.

• Static and Dynamic (as people move in the frame).
• Rule opf headroom, Rule of talking room, Rule of 180° (if broken called “crossing the line”) – can cross the line if show camera movement – can place camera anywhere on the 180° line, if we cross the line it looks like poeople switched sides, Rule of 3rds.
• Framing sizes – from very long shot to extreme close-up: Film – all sizes, TV – medium long shot to close up.
• Centre of Interest – establish and shift via focus and light. Focus – pull focus: helps audience understand the inportant element of each shot i.e. focus on person in foreground and background out of focus – then focus on background person and person in foreground is out of focus. Can alternate focus with light.

2)   Lighting

• Need higher light levels, especially digital videos, grainy if not enough light. Replace standard lights with high wattage globes.
• Lighting Instruments: Quartz (red heads).                  Red Heads
• White Balance: colour temperature
• 3-Point Lighting Set-up

1. Key Light (do first). 45° from camera, Half face in shadow Looks intense, bad guy.
2. Fill Light. 45° from other side of camera, Softens the shadows. However, want some shadow to add depth, either pull fill light back further or turn light around and use a reflector board.
3. Back Light. Creates a hair light or halo on top of a persons head.

3 Point Light Set-up:     

3)   Sound: Types of Microphones

• Omni-directional: picks up sound equally from front, back and sides, not good for film.
• Cardioid: picks up sound from front and sides, good for film.
• Super cardioid: pick up sound mainly from front, little from sides.
• Lav mics: small mic subject wears.

       Microphone Hierarchy

1. Boom is best.
2. Plant – placed in object, i.e. in the sugar jar on table when having a dinner party.
3. Lav – problem is can pick up sound of clothing, and everyone talking needs their own one.

Super Cardioid Mic on a Boom – best setup for movies

    Soundtrack – 4 Elements

1. Narration: actual character or voice of God.
2. Music: Extraneous (for emotion) or Practical (when characters hear music to).
3. Sound Effects: Foley artist, can use foley walking pits.  Hard: frame accurate, Soft: doesnt have to be in sync with screen i.e. applause.
4. Dialogue: either recorded on location, if not good quality can be re-recorded in studio using ADR.

4)   Editing Theory

• Continuity Editing: preserving fluidity of event but compressing time.
• Causality and Motivation: when and why we cut.
• Eyeling Matches.
• Cutting on Action: to disguise cut.
• Parallel Actiona nd Editing: tell multiple story lines at parallel times.
• Relational Editing: meaning and intention of shot changes depending on shot that precedes. i.e. Russian experiment that man felt proud, hungry or sad depending on whether girl playing, soup or ? was shown first.
• Thematic (montage): creates quick relationships.
• Guidelines: motivation, movement, entrance and exit guidelines: cut when eye sight leaves shot and 6 shots before eyes focus in shot. As soon as centre of interest has been dpne cut to next shot, if in doubt leave it out.

5)   VFX – Visual Effects

• Help us make imaginary happen.
• help to balance a particular shot.

Title Image from: blogs.indiewire.com    

Red Heads Image from: www.redheadlights.com

3-Point Light Image from: www.movingimageeducation.org

Microphone Image from: www.scotthandelvideo.com

2)   Visualisation & conceptualisation – Development phase

• work within limitations – characters, props and locations to a minumum
• be aware/stay informed
• coming up with an idea and making it viable, genre

3)  PLOT – series of imaginary events – like a wave, 5 essential elements    not like this wave

1.  believable sympathetic lead character
2. that characters urgent/difficult problem
3. attempt to overcome problem – lots of obstacles in the way
4. the crisis – last chance
5. resolution

4)  Screen Writing – script

• care about your story
• know your characters
• need to know beginning, middle and end, befor you start writing.
• Beware of dialogue, 1 pg screen play = 1 minute film, 120pg = 2 hrs.
• First 10 mins of Act 1 is the bite – can be the end of a previous film, to set the scene of our character.

Formula for screen play writing – Syd Fields 3 Act Structure          

I know this doesnt exactly look right, i am not particularly good with tables in word, but i tried

Screen Play – Formatting

12pt courier, double spaced, single side of page, decent margins

• slug Line: start of each scene, inside/outside, location, day/night.
• business: FADE IN, DAVID enters graveyard with a bottle of beer. There is a loud BANG. First time a character appears in a scene name is capitalised. So is visual or audio effects.
• dialogue: whenever a character speaks name is capitalised. Dialogue takes place in a column in the middle of page.                                                                                                              FADE OUT
• No camera movements in a spec script
• Camera movements in shooting script

5) Story Boarding: communication tool, based upon the shot list.

6) Production Design/er – head of the art department

• look and feel of the film
• involves significant amounts of research, costumes, sets, props.

7) Scheduling and Budgeting

Items 3,4,5,6,7 – Pre-production Phase

Syd Field Pic from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syd_Field

Wave Pic from: www.oc.nps.edu

im an old fan of keanu’s from way back in the pump up the volume days, but I found this movie eerie!! but maybe that feeling was enhanced because i was already nervous about doing my video presentation!!! i thought the special effects were used well – they enhanced the movie rather than take away from it. But i can see where visual effects could sometimes be not so good. When the visual effects become the stars of the movie, they can takeaway from the actors (characters) and the story line, I think they can also mean that actors don’t need to be as good any more, a bit like lip synching in singing, where as long as the person looks the part the computer editing can do the rest! but i also think that this can work the other way to, whereby it can make actors better, by having to act in a scene – possibly talking to aliens or dodging shooting bullets – with the things that arent really there would be hard. On another positive note for special effects, pictures speak 1000 words!! meaning that a special effect can show in an instant what would take heaps of dialogue to explain, like in this movie when the girl is upside down on the roof, i instantly knew she was possessed, or at least evil!! overall i think special effects generally are used to enhance the pleasure of watching movies

Here is a clip of special effects used in Constantine

Image from: http://www.movieposter.com/posters/archive/main/25/MPW-12589

Movie from: http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=Uuezxna_5ms

my favourite movie as a kid   

Movie Pic from: http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=C0atWApqMF0&feature=related 

What an intense movie!! I only got to watch the first 40 minutes, but i think war zones would be a terrible place to be!! And i also can see that as horrible as the leaders of the marines are, they have a place, in that in a war zone you need to be able to respond quickly to an order, without questioning!! what an awful life

I thought the editing of this movie was really effective. I think they used continuity editing, where they compressed time while maintaining continuity. There wasn’t any parallel editing, as they were only telling the story from one persons perspective.

The pacing worked well. In one scene, the pace picked up when the guy was shot at training, lots of short shots and intense music. This built up an intensity that was required to understand why he risked his life to stand up. Then the next scene slowed right down, i think this helped slow my heart rate down so i could relax and continue to enjoy the movie.  Other scenes that showcased how pacing is used was when they showed the trucks moving through the desert, they used lots of long shots but in quick succession to give the impression of moving.  Another time was when they moved through the first 62 days in the desert, they showed all the activities they did, with a voice over going through it, and used lots of quick shots repetitively, indicating that they were doing the same things over and over, then at the end had the words ’62 days in the desert’.

On another note, i also noticed that it broke the rule of thirds when they were doing the interviews for the cameras. In these scenes the people being interviewed were directly in the centre of the screen. I think this was effective though as that is what news reporters tend to do.

Title image from: www.thezreview.co.uk

On a couple of technical notes, I do notice the rule of thirds!! It’s amazing how nearly every shot does follow these guidelines, I’m constantly (and annoyingly) looking for the cross points to see if they are using them Also when something exciting happens I will think about plot points, or think ‘ahh that’s a pinch’, just trying to keep us interested, not exactly necessary for the movie. Whereas I use to think ‘what is that there for? It has no purpose to the story line’.

On a personal level, I struggle to believe anything I see now. Even sunlight I now know can be faked by using HMI lights!! Is anything real in a movie?? I guess not, I can be soo blonde, it’s a movie

However, it has helped me to enjoy movies that I never use to particularly like, such as action movies. By giving me other things to focus on, like lighting, plot points and framing, I can enjoy the boring bits

It has also increased my general knowledge. I was watching the simpsons the other night, and Lisa was making a movie of her family.  They had created a foley room, where people were punching a boy while in the movie marge was banging on the bottom of a tomato sauce bottle, i would never have understood this without having done this course.

On a final note, I live with my grandma and she constantly picks movies to bits, saying things like “as if that is real”. This use to really annoy me and I would usually end up snapping at her and replying “if you don’t like it don’t watch it, but let me enjoy it”. Whereas now I find I am doing it to!! Picking movies apart, how very annoying!!

Got to love Arnie!! i think this movie would have been crap if not for Arnie, somehow he manages to pull it off. I’m not  a big fan of action movies, especially when they involve children, but that is prob the mother in me coming out. There really wasn’t much dialogue, so if you aren’t that interested in the gun fighting then there really isn’t much else here. I also found it interesting how in 11 hours it managed to go from day to night to day!!

Now as for the lighting:

there was a lot of night shots, now this may have been achieved by shooting during the day but using a blue filter to give it the look of darkness.

 Blue Filter to simulate shooting at night time

There was many shots where it looked like they didn’t use a fill light, making lots of shadows, this gives a sense of danger!! There were a few shots where they used a back light creating a silhouette, one such scene was when the daughter was running around the basement, she was in shadow but the basement was lit enough to see clearly.

well once again i’m not sure if i’ve captured exactly what i’m meant to, but i have tried

Title pic from imdb: www.movieposter.com

Blue filter light pic from: www.reefphoto.com/images/daylight.filter.jpg

Elephant!! not quite sure what to make of this movie!! it was very slow, but i think in a way that enabled it to build to its brutal ending unexpectedly. i believe the slowness may have been done this way to symbolise the fact that these shootings in schools are done to everyday boring people, anyone of us!! Quite scary in its realness!!

i think the lighting was very natural. this helped to create the realness that was evident in the movie. but after reading the lecture notes on ‘lighting’ i think they could have used HMI lights which look like sunlight, as there were many shots where i noticed sunlight on the peoples faces.

 HMI lights

there wasn’t much music in the movie, which helped to create the feeling of realness, and the small bit there was helped to create the eerie feeling that something was going to happen, i was on edge throughout most of the movie waiting for something to happen, as it was very slow. there was often a flute playing when characters changed.  the music was all ‘extraneous’, that is the characters in the movie couldn’t hear it. There was a lot of background dialogue, as in a real school, but im not sure what category this falls into, either ‘practical’ (as its noise that the characters in the movie can hear) or sound effects (naturally occurring background noise, a ‘soft’ effect). there were lots of ‘hard’ sound effects, namely with footsteps and with the shooting of the guns. These were created by foley artists, as they are not real. 

Not sure ive made much sense, but ive tried to utilise the information from the lecture notes with the movie

Title Pic from: www.impawards.com

HMI lights picture from: www.ramojifilmcity.com/…/lights/hlwffb.jpg

To check out the script of elephant go to: http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/e/elephant-script-transcript-sant-columbine.html 

wow!! i love this movie!! as we have established i’m not a movie buff, but this movie is special. i’m not a fan of violent movies, ha ha, but i think this movie taps into the emotion of everyone who has ever loved and lost!! the feelings of betrayal and revenge, it can compare to romeo and juliet as one the most tragic love stories of all time, i wanted to cry at the end, but being a tutorial i refrained!!

as for favourite scenes – the whole movie but i must admit i like kill bill 1 better for special effects. i liked the start, when she is driving along and setting the scene for what is to come, and its just her face, composed as a ‘big close up’, speaking so matter of factly. another favourite is when elle and beatrice kid both grab their swords at the same time in the caravan, and who can go past the scene where she walks through the door and bebe and bill have fake guns pointed at her, fabulous

as for the various rules of framing:

there is a scene towards the end of the movie when bill is talking to bebe, and he has no speaking room as bebe’s head is filling the space, but i think this scene still works because he is talking to bebe and its not for long.

Another scene is with Pie Mae, when it is just his face centred on the screen, but as jules pointed out, his eyebrows sit on the 2 cross points.

 Pie Mae breaking the rule of thirds!!

There were probably lots more, but i forget to look for things when i am watching the movie, or i notice when they do follow the rules

I really enjoyed this movie. Mainly because i spent a month in Hawaii inbetween semesters this year and it was filmed over there, so as i watched it i could say “i’ve been there” it was your classic romantic comedy with a corny ending though!! very disappointing. i think that is one thing i love about 50 first dates, the ending wasn’t predictable, one of my favourites!! i’m going to have a go with the plot points, not sure it really had any though, certainly nothing exciting

Act 1: WHO: Sarah Marshall and her boyfriend (i’ve forgotten his name!! so for the sake of this i will call him John). Sarah is made out to be a bit nasty, as she leaves John after 5 years together for another man. John is the lovelorn rejected male that we are meant to feel sorry for. However i thought he was just pathetic WHERE: Hawaii!! yay!! at a resort in Waikiki, very beautiful. WHAT: left wondering if they would get back together.

Plot point 1: they both end up at the same resort in hawaii, except she is there with her new man.

 Sarah Marshall and her new man

Act 2: Pinch: John starts flirting with the receptionist, which appears to be reciprocated.

 John and the receptionist

Halfway point: Midway through Act 2 they go a double date with the new man and the receptionist, this is very uncomfortable and funny for all, ending up with them both having sex in adjoining rooms and they try to outdo eachother with the pleasurable noises they make

Pinch: Sarah’s new man leaves her and she declares undying love for John, and starts trying to seduce him.

Plot point 2: John tells receptionist what happened with Sarah, she tells him to leave, he is devastated!!

Act 3: John tries to give receptionist space, but invites her to his opening night of a new play he’s written about love. She comes and they live happily ever after, like i said – Corny!!

Title Pic from: www.reelmovienews.com

1st Pic from: www.starpulse.com

2nd Pic from: www.ew.com