Some digital sketchbook pages for The House on the Horizon 

Where is Cameron’s industry?

Primary network: family: mum, dad, brother, grandparents. Close friends.

Secondary network: friends, lecturers, course mates

Digital network: acquaintances and digital friends, social media followers

Industry network: people or companies in industry I may want to connect with

Tests and development for stereoscopic visuals

With the character’s point of view a theme in my 301/3, shown with numerous POV shots, as well as their own in-world camera, I decided to incorporate an idea I’ve been sitting on for a while. The idea is to overlay footage from two cameras placed side by side, with the subject singular and in focus, and the foreground and background blurry and doubled up. evoking eyesight.

A picture I took as I was first thinking about this effect. Shot on one phone just approximating the angles and getting a wonky image in return. But the idea was there. 

This is a still from the first video test I did. There was no camera or subject movement because it was shot with the same camera twice instead of two cameras at once. There is also no foreground which needs testing. 

I ordered and received a two camera rig, although I think it is intended for a camera and a flash. I can now begin to experiment with camera and subject movement. This is sure to present more of an editing challenge but I will see how it goes.

Negotiated Project: shelved ideas

The Last Three Nights. Experimental, test footage and photography on stolen computer

When I moved into my new student house in September, I soon knew I wanted to make a film set in there. I loved the strange layout and open spaces.

When I first moved in and nothing was in its place

Over the first few months I began to develop a project with the working title The Last Three Nights, set over three nights, with three different characters and three different stories, each somehow connected. Each was to be set in the same room, but decorated very differently each time.

When it came towards the end of the year and the negotiated project module began, this was initially the project I wanted to work on, however, a couple weeks in, the iPad that had a whole year of notes (I do still have a physical notebook full of ideas for it though) on this film and other ideas, was stolen on a train. Rather than frustratingly trying to recreate the photos and ideas that were on there, I decided to start fresh on something new. I will work on this idea again, though I will be living and working in a different space, hopefully I can adapt it and make whatever changes are necessary to make it work.

Excess Essay: thoughts & background research on Alejandro Jodorowsky

Alejandro Jodorowsky was born in Chile, 1929 to Jewish Ukrainian parents. His father was an abusive, Stalinist merchant, and Alejandro grew up without any positive relationships within his family. From a young age he began to use art and poetry as a means of expression and escapism, publishing his first poems at sixteen. He became interested in anarchism, and studied psychology and philosophy for two years before dropping out. He worked as a circus clown, and his own theatre troupe in Chile called Teatro Mimico gained over fifty followers, before he moved to Paris in 1952. There, he studied mime with Marcel Marceau, eventually joining his troupe before starting his own movement with Fernando Arrabal and Roland Topor, Mouvement Panique. Mouvement Panique, or Panic Movement, was intended to shock audiences, they thought surrealism had become too mainstream, and embraced absurdism as a means to get an active emotional engagement from the audience. It wasn’t until 1957 that Jodorowsky began working with film. He made a twenty minute adaptation of La Cravate, almost silent, with mime performances and starring Jodorowsky himself. His first feature length effort was Fando Y Lis (1968), which started riots at its Acapulco Film Festival premiere. It was around this time Jodorowsky became a disciple of zen Buddhist monk Ejo Takata, and thereafter, his films, as well as his personality would become heavily influenced by eastern philosophy. Jodorowsky was also likely influenced by third cinema, saying he makes films for the joy of creating, rather than to make money, entirely rejecting the Hollywood model. 

The brief was simple: create a thirty second advertisement for department store Harvey Nichols shot with 16mm film. Harvey Nichols gave us complete creative freedom, giving us no real prompts or direction other than to do whatever we liked. We found ourselves a great location, worked with a couple actors from Marjon, one of whom a few of the crew had already worked with on Screencraft, and we enjoyed a well organised shooting day.  However, before we got the footage back, we were told the camera we used had already been filled by a couple other groups, and we likely only had thirty seconds maximum of recorded footage. As a group we decided to do a reshoot, unfortunately this time we were lacking the location, actors, and most of the crew members. Just before we began shooting this second draft, we were able to watch back what we had from the first, and personally I am glad we had the opportunity to have a second go, as I was in charge of lighting and most of the lighting in the first shoot is awful. I was able to learn from my mistakes of shooting on 16mm for the first time and create a much better lit scene in the second. The location changes and working with a much smaller crew were the biggest let down for me going into the second shoot, but apart from that I think the second is much better. Above are comparisons between the first shoot on the left, then the second on the right. 

Second Year Introductory Lecture

As an exercise intended to get us back into thinking about and voicing our opinions on various aspects of cinema, we were presented with a series of intentionally controversial statements. The following are my summarised responses.

“All films need a huge budget”

Some films and franchises do undeniably require huge amounts of money. Large scale cgi films for example, such as Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame, could not be made without a budget in the hundreds of millions. However, many independent film makers have proven that artistic, compelling films can be created on a relatively small budget.

“The MCU needs to stop”

This is presumably in response to the aforementioned Avengers: Endgame. With this in mind I am almost inclined to agree, as the film would serve as a fitting, satisfying ending to the ten year run of the MCU. However, even if the series continues, Endgame still is an ending of sorts. As the Russo brothers put it, it is the ending of a “phase” of the MCU, certainly it is the end for arguably the two main characters. Personally I would gladly see the MCU continue, if it is held to the same quality standard, as technology and audiences change with it.

“There’s no point making original films, it’s all been done before”

No matter the art form, it will never have “all been done before” there will always be new ways to tell a story, new technologies for artists to experiment with. People have been saying everything that can be invented has already been invented for over a hundred years. If art hadn’t developed since then we would definitely all be bored by now, so why stop today?

“Reboots and remakes keep cinema fresh”

Reboots and remakes more often than not keep cinema stale and formulaic, as they are almost always an attempt at money grabbing. Different to a sequel - something intended from the beginning by the studios and/or filmmaker involved in the franchise - a reboot will take a lucrative, but already “finished” series. Often without the involvement of the original creators. In order to keep cinema fresh, studios should focus more on original, creative projects, however, these are not as marketable, and are a much bigger business risk.

“Production design is a waste of time”

There is not a single aspect of filmmaking that is a waste of time when it comes to producing high quality cinema, least of all production design. I think many people assume that the difference in “feel” between an amateur production and a high quality professional film is all down to the expensive camera equipment, however, more often than not it is the talented production designers, creating the immersive environments that really sell the audience the illusion of whatever setting it may be.

Film 102 Sketchbook Film Transcript

Character Development

https://youtu.be/L8CxZWazgxY

In this scene from 2003′s Coffee And Cigarettes, by Jim Jarmusch, the audience is engaged and entertained by little more than the dialogue between two characters. This is only a short clip, however the entire feature length film consists of other similar scenes in which there is nothing more than a set, and at least two characters having a simple, and importantly natural conversation. I chose this scene, titled “Cousins?” in particular to talk about, as the two actors are playing themselves, or a characterised version of themselves. We as an audience are already familiar with Steve Coogan and Alfred Molina’s public personas, and therefore feel like we know the backstory, or some of the personalities of these characters, in turn we can get a better feeling for the things they leave unsaid. 

So an audience’s understanding of a character’s backstory is important, but a writer will also find that they can write much more convincing and compelling characters if they have a greater understanding of their backstories, even if they aren’t always shared with the audience. This is because we as writers can empathise with these characters and find what their experiences would lead them to do, making them feel like a deeper, more human character, rather than one who makes empty inexplicable decisions just to further the plot. For example: Game of Thrones. In the latest episodes, the character Daenerys turned evil. This would not be a problem on its own, and in fact as a stand alone film to an audience with no prior knowledge, The Bells would be a good episode, however we know of this character’s story too, and the writers disregarded eight seasons of backstory for almost every character, as they make decisions and take actions that don’t fit their personalities at all, just to rush to an ending.

In our 102 film we had an admittedly minimal backstory for the characters past what was shown directly to the audience (such as the cheating flashbacks). However, in the most dialogue heavy part of the film, which is the car scene, I think we achieved natural sounding dialogue very successfully. This is in part due to the way the actors shout over eachother rather than take it in turns to speak. This was included in peer feedback, and after a few takes became less and less scripted, in turn becoming more and more naturalistic. 

Although neither writer nor audience knew the characters long term backstories very well, we did not need to for this to be a convincing and natural scene. This is because it they don’t say or do anything we couldn’t imagine ourselves doing in that situation, so we don’t need to question if they’d really act that way.

BCOP100 - Reading the Image

The difference between looking and seeing is that to look at something is passive, and to see something is active. Say you’re looking for something, you look until you see. You don’t see until you look. They are not interchangeable actions. Every day we encounter images from all types of media which we have learnt how to read. 

SEMIOTICS is the study of and philosophy concerned with how people create meaning in both linguistic and non-linguistic ways

BCOP100 - Semiotics

Maps intend to teach about the world, however, our understanding of the world is forever changing. Old maps of the world are often very wrong, and perhaps in another thousand years our modern maps might look wrong too. A big problem for cartographers is trying to convert a round object to be presented on a flat surface. This makes getting the proportions right pretty much impossible. 

Different ways of doing this, known as projections, can show the world in very different proportions. For example, one of the most commonly used projections is the Mercator projection, and it shows the northern hemisphere as far larger than it should be, just to avoid stretching other countries out of shape. Monmonier said in 1996 “...maps, like speeches and paintings, are authored collections of information and are also subject to distortions arising from ignorance, greed, ideological blindness, or malice.”

Maps don’t have to represent real, physical places. As well as maps that represent fictional worlds, maps have also been made to represent the path of life itself.

Maps can be used to build an otherwise false sense of nationality. After all, what is a nation other than a shape on a map. There are no real borders between lands or people. In his 1978 book Orientalism, Edward Said said that “The Orient was almost a European invention, and had been, since antiquity, a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences.”  Many artists and polititans, for thousands of years until today, have changed how we see other countries by their representations in many forms of media, including maps. Races have been used as villains, and their countries reimagined.

J.R.R Tolkien used the orcs, his own invention, as he said “When you make the races up, you get to define who they are and what is true about them” although it had been shown you can do that with real races. For example, Native Americans were presented as savages so that Europeans could keep invading America. The same was done to the Jews, and countless other cultures throughout history.

BCOP100 - You, Me, And Context

This first lecture in the series was an introduction to the concept of context and an explanation as to why it’s so important. Context is inevitable- we do not create in a bubble- we create in the context of our environments; everything we are inspired by was created in it’s own historical, social, formal theoretical etc framework.

Remember to ask questions about your own and other’s work, for example:

What is it?

What have others said about it?

Who created this? And who for?

When, why, how and where did they create it?

This can help you start to understand the context of something, this is necessary to understanding the thing itself.

This session also came with a task to bring an object which represented some of your own context, something that got you here. I chose a DVD of We Need to Talk About Kevin, as without it I wouldn’t be on a film course. However, I have already posted about this.

I made this film based on the story of the eponymous song, written by Jack White with the advice of Bob Dylan. Dylan told White that his story should be vague, especially the ending, as this would make people listen again - and listen carefully - to try and find any details that would give them hints. I chose to keep this philosophy and made my film open ended.

I wrote rough notes and storyboards before making the actual script 

https://drive.google.com/a/pca.ac.uk/file/d/10l8_63H_s1RB4L6nd-OOnLCira4DhyJO/view?usp=drivesdk 

Space

The idea was to change what a space is. However, though this implies a more literal interpretation, I chose to change what a space is in a different way. A park is a place to relax, enjoy nature, go on walks etc.. It is a safe space. This film changes what a park is by turning it into an unsettling and even rather scary space.

Manifesto

The rules:

The camera must always be on a tripod

The script can’t be written in the intended audience’s native language

No musicals

The most important rule is the language rule. This was added because in my opinion, foreign languages always make dialogue sound more mysterious and make a mundane sentence sound like poetry. I chose to write my script in German, as it’s the only other language I know anything about, however, the actors I had did not know how to speak German at all, and although I taught them how to pronounce their individual words and what they meant, their delivery was unnatural and I should have taken this into account before writing the script in such a unique language.