310/311MC Web Blog

This is the End of 310 December 17, 2009

Here is my blog for the research module 310MC including the three artefacts I have been asked to create and the research behind them, I have also included my five ideas for the final major project. If you could please start with the first post and work up, and please leave any comments on my work then this would be appreciated.

Many thanks

Sam

Final Thoughts December 17, 2009

This entire university course has been a battle with me to try and understand it from its mainly artistic view. I feel that without my college course I would not have had the technical experience to get through the course and this I find is a little frustrating. The course is an artistic course and I would say that I am not necessarily an artistic person. This is something I feel for the first time I have really embraced on this module. The module has pushed us to produce films every two weeks, which is something I have wanted from the start of the first year but it has also been a tough because we have had to produce this to something so different and open to interpretation in the way of the three main module artefacts Power, Spectacle and Memory. This is a very different way of working for me and I feel it has vastly affected my ideas in the filming process and the idea for the final major project.

For the 311MC module I would like to work with the team I have worked with through the whole of the second year, we work well together and have been able to create work to a 1^st and 2,1 mark consistently though three four modules last term I would like to work with Daniel Lavery, Marcus Essberger and Adam Carvell for the final major project.

The Theory

The theory side of this module has been hugely beneficial to both this module and to the module 300MC, both of which have given the same sources but with a broad scope on all of them. I feel this has helped a lot and would like to produce work which is both affected and related to some of the theories which have been discussed. This has been an idea which I have had to get used to as the theory have been very different to the theory at any other level and everything is open to interpretation and works such as Society of the Spectacle I have found hard to work with. I feel that this has also like the obstructions on the project meant that I’m able to grow as a film maker and can make an FMP which is something I am really proud of.

The Obstructions and Projects

The projects or artefacts we have had to produce are different to what we have been asked to do in all other modules, this has allowed us to go out and be creative whilst focusing on theories that are new. The obstructions which I have been a bit rebellious within the past I can say have followed to the T. The projects have all been created to showcase how I have interpreted the artefacts power, spectacle and memory and how I can manipulate this into a video to show in an experimental way what this means. I feel I have done well in the artefacts and how they have been created. I would have liked to have better obstructions on the power and memory projects as I feel after the 12 frame shots obstructions, they seemed a bit tame.

What Went Wrong

• The Power artefact was late and the video took a long time to finish.
• I feel that the artefacts have not influenced the final project as much as I would have hoped it would.
• The work on the memory artefact wasn’t exactly as adventurous as I would have hoped.
• I don’t think I gave this as much time as I think it deserved. This is something I would like to address with the FMP module.

The Future

Over the next three months and till the end of the academic year is going to be the hardest time at university but it’s also going to be one of the most fun as it was in previous courses working on a piece we have free roam with. I want to work with a team that I feel completely comfortable with and with which we produce good work. I feel this is going to be a project that will either make us or break us. I think that with our skills we can all work well to get this project the best grade we can achieve and an artefact that we can all be proud of and use in our portfolios and distribute to a wide variety of sources.

311MC: Final Major Project idea 1 December 17, 2009

Causality

A Film with Feeling

This is my favourite idea as it can be applied to a variety of different ideas but also linked with the main idea I want to move forward. The project is based on the Observatories idea of manipulating the audience but I want to do that through film. I want to affect the audience using a variety of techniques using happiness, joy and scenes depicting this and move to shock, horror, and fear to create a world in which the audience hates. To put it simply I want to build the audience up in this secure safe world and then bring it crashing down upon them.  The observatories affected people through the use of smells and subliminal messaging to affect people and although I would say I’m a person that isn’t that easily affected I was affected by the experiment. This can be applied to films as in how much you may distance yourself from a film there are still effects which can draw you into this world and this reality.

The storyline I was looking at is a couple, student house or a family to link it to an audience specifically, they will then be subjected to a hellish experience by a group of people and eventually over the night the attacks become bigger, more aggressive, and eventually lead into a situation where their lives become at stake. I would like to work on a level of improvisation to see how people would react in the situations. This could give an end the idea of the characters inside a horror film always making the stupid choice; alternatively it could show that until we are in that situation we can’t know what we will do until we do it. There are ideas which have been passed around in the group with this idea with the filming techniques of paranormal activity, [REC] and horror films in the film industry. This could give us a good background of filming techniques on a variety of formats from using the JVC700 camera to handycams for more handheld action to camera phones for some of the realistic reactions of how certain things may have occurred in real time, this is very similar to the uses in the film The Fourth Kind showing what is thought to be real images alongside the images filmed by the film crew whilst in reality all footage was done by the crew.

This idea is my favourite as it is the most effect by the current module and the film is not so much intended to be about the storyline but more the idea that the audience can be affected by the media. This is an idea I would like to move forward with and to create a production piece that can showcase our ability and our ideas.

311MC: Final Major Project idea 2 December 17, 2009

Dementia Documentary

This idea came from a project Dan O’Sullivan based on a form of dementia Alzheimer’s.

The idea is something I want to expand on and incorporate the dementia disease as a whole. My Nan suffered with dementia for a long time before she passed away and my Mum cared for her then moved into the council becoming a carer support officer for people with mental disabilities over 60 so there is a wealth of resources I could tap into on this project. The main thing I want to get across is how people with dementia live and how this affects the people around them. I would also like to include industry advice on how to help people with dementia and all the types of services which are available to them from local councils such as bold colours like red, yellow, blue being the last colours to fade from someone’s memory and is now being applied to dementia wards in hospitals and homes to help dementia suffers remember their way through the halls and rooms.

The style of the documentary is an expository documentary with interviews with people with dementia, doctors, people living with dementia suffers and social workers. The other side of the documentary will place the audience into the shoes of both people with dementia and people living with people with dementia. This can be done with first person filming and engaging in a more experimental feel for the film. The other way to do this is to link get actors in to give the audience an idea of the constant questions which get worse over time, eventually dementia suffers can forget who they are, who their friends and family are and even become violent because of this. I would like to get across that there are some things that can help people and show that they are not the only ones living with this and that there is help out there.

I have begun a love of documentaries since doing documentary production in the second year. This has lead to this idea as I feel it’s close to me and that it’s something I can do and make into a good production piece. The other thing I want to look at is the possibility in showing this as a two part with an observatory documentary part and an exploratory part. This way I can get across how living with dementia can effects many people. The second part would focus on the help that is available and how people with dementia can be helped by the social services and National Health Service without being simply placed in a home. I feel this idea is a good one and is different from what I would have expected me to want to do back in college.

311MC: Final Major Project idea 3 December 16, 2009

Murder Mystery

This is the first of the ideas I have had which has been influenced by this module. The plot revolves around a murder that occurs and the how and the why are important for the group of police, victim’s friends and family and the witnesses involved, finding out the identity of the killer before he or she kills them all. They have to find the clues and work together looking at every angle of the case before the inevitable happens but the plot twists as they start to see signs and signals of the killer being one of them. As they become more and more distrusting of each other the clues require them to work together.

There are two different ways I want to go down with this film. One is an idea based on memory, the other based on power.

The idea based on memory will end with a recap of all the clues thus far and end without revealing the killer, this will then mean the audience would have to go away and figure out for themselves who the killer is. This is how I would like to end this project but in the interest in making a complete film there is also the possibility of ending it and then one month after releasing on a website the final part of the film accessible by typing the killers name into the page. This would be another medium as it would be using the web and still require the audience to do the leg work to find out the information. The other idea for this piece would be to have an interactive disc and the audience would have to make a choice between the characters remaining. This would then play out a possibility of results based on the choice the audience makes similar to the ending of the power idea for this murder mystery.

The power idea for this murder mystery revolves on the audience having the power to decide on an interactive film how the story plays out. At certain parts of the film the audience gets the chance between two choices and at the end they will have to choose between who they think the killer is. This would mean that showcasing the film will be more difficult as on YouTube it would have to have a linear non-interactive version, the interactive version would require its own space instead of being able to be screened in the lecture theatre due to its interactivity. This would be a good idea to showcase the changes in media and the idea of books doing it already and now films will possibly being able to do the same thing. This has been done on a lower scale on the DVD of Final Destination 3 as an extra feature where the audience chooses whether they go on the ride or not. The interaction is very limited, and choosing for the characters not to go on the ride means that the film ends very abruptly using images from the film and no real unseen footage used.

The production values for this film will be more like the Zombie film we were shown rather than that of dancing shoes film. We want to film this using the new cameras, such as the Z5 and JVC700. We also want to use new equipment such as a jib crane, car mounts and the latest Apple editing software. We want to be able to use all these and we have on our team someone capable of using all this equipment with the exception of the JVC700. The same techniques as I have mentioned before such as hand held camera techniques mixed with tripod and steady cam equipped cameras. I also want to be able to use a variety of techniques to make this film look as good as it possibly can.

This idea is one of the ideas I want to bring to the group for the consideration of being done. I feel this would be very good as a film that is different from the norm by being interactive or not ending with a definitive ending showing a non-Hollywood style film by ending on a cliff hanger. This I feel is one of my favourite ideas but would have some problems with the size of the cast and the possible over ambitious size of the project.

311MC: Final Major Project idea 4 December 16, 2009

House of Horrors

This idea came from watching a really bad horror film and looking at the techniques of how they had created it. The film was Black Christmas and after watching it I thought of an idea for a horror film which would be able to shock the audience but using shock techniques and not shabby low budget gruesome effects. The story would be based on a house of students being terrorised by a group of people in which the members of the house are subjected to horrific ordeals all in the name of entertainment for the group of intruders. The techniques I have looked at have mainly come from my own experience of creating horror films and from a director I mentioned earlier who did the Dogme 95 film Troubled, Jason Impey. Certain techniques like filming underwater using a handy cam and a waterproof clear container, or point of view techniques to get across the difference between action scenes and story developing scenes could work well to showcase our abilities. This project is one I would like to fall back on but in the final major project stage I feel my strength would not be writing which is why we are working as a team to do the 311MC project.

This is another fallback idea but the main three is what I plan to bring to the table when we all discuss our top ideas in the process of coming up with a definitive idea for the 22^nd of January.

311MC: Final Major Project idea 5 December 16, 2009

Playground

The idea I have had for quite some long time ago. The idea is back from my college days and was going to be my FMP for the previous course of study I was on, until I decided on a more ambitious project. The film is based around a central character that is uprooted from everything he knows and placed in a new city, a new school and a new life. The main character is 14 and about to start year 10, the plot revolves around his troublesome time at school and at home. Eventually the attacks, beating and bullying gets worse all climaxing in the main character committing suicide.

The actors for this piece would be students from schools in Coventry to give something back to the community as well as using students from the Drama department and outside sources. The piece would be mainly a representation of camera work, storytelling and productions skill rather than to get across an ideology. This is an idea I would look at as a fall back idea but the skills I’ve looked at for what I need to create this can be applied to ideas that I feel the FMP for the degree would better suit, by the end of February we want to begin shooting as from this time onwards we will only have two months before the piece is needed to be finished.

The challenges to complete this proposed idea is getting a vast amount of actors to represent truthfully a school, a playground and the project as a whole. The action scenes could work really well and make for a beautiful piece of filming. This is also very topical with certain films such as Harry Brown and recent news reports on bullying in schools.

The Final Three on Spectacle, Power and Memory December 16, 2009

Here is the final artifacts for the production of the module Artifacts, Spectacle, Power and Memory

Here is my artifact on Spectacle

Here is my artifact on Power

Here is my artifact on Memory

Olympus Pen Advertising Campaign December 16, 2009

The first video I was introduced to of this campaign was Kevin Spacey on images hurting, the video is below

The video was created by Team Saatchi and directed by Duncan Jones the film maker behind the recent acclaimed film Moon. He is the son of David Bowie and along with the Team Saatchi brand has worked to create this advert which follows a trend of well thought out and produced advertising in recent years. This trend, stemmed from the creations of Jaguar, Audi, Guinness and many more revolving around products from cars to bread. (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1512910/bio IMDB.COM, http://www.advertolog.com/olympus/adverts/like-a-memory-kevin-spacey-571991/ Advertolog.com)

The piece is the beginning of a long-range of adverts some of which are at the end of this paragraph. The piece works on such a high level because it combines the use of a very simple advert format, a calm avert which can make the audience pay attention, when all you can hear is noise, silence becomes the unordinary, this coupled with the star system of using Kevin Spacey as the main character makes this advertising campaign one of the best currently on TV in my opinion. The colour of the background is very plain but not white already setting it apart from apple products which use white backgrounds. The background is very old-fashioned linked with the type of product going against the grain of more conventional cameras today such as a compact or an SLR. The beige or nearly yellow is very deceptive as its natural signifying it being natural, fitting in any world, it’s also the first colour to hit the spectrum of the human eye, catching it from what else the audience may be looking at. The slogan is “don’t be a tourist” giving the audience an idea of how this camera operates and also gives them the impression that the camera takes memories instead of photos, it takes a perfect image, it’s called the pen meaning it’s not a camera it’s a tool to create stories, it’s as important a creation as a pen.

The line that caught Steve Dawkins is “I love that. To take a photograph that hurts, every time you look at it. Every time you look at it”. This is a great line, using love and hurt in the same sentence  shows just a range of emotions possible by using this camera, it doesn’t matter what spec it is, or whether it’s got high mega pixels or not it’s just amazing, it takes picture so real, so much like a memory it can hurt every time you look at it.

The previous advertising campaign released back in July is the Olympus Pen Story by DSG and directed by Flo&Pete. The campaign is similar to the Oren Lavie music video and with other photo based stop motion. The video itself I feel doesn’t operate on the same level, it’s well done and looks beautiful but the simplicity and the detail it tells you about the camera I feel it doesn’t work as well as the Saatchi and Saatchi approach did. The video is below.

The thing I can take from this is the simplicity. The piece may have a deep cultural ideology behind it such as what we have been forced into in this module and through the whole uni course, but it shows it whilst remaining simple. The ideas we have can be conveyed on a deep level without becoming too complex. The production must look good, not have any mistakes in it, it must be flawless and simple, one of the things we have been told is whilst looking into a camera lens if it looks good, it is. I want this FMP to be an experimental process and for it to be something I can place at the beginning of my portfolio and say, that’s mine, I created that.

Oren Lavie – Her Morning Elegance December 16, 2009

I first saw this during the seminar whilst showing our memory pieces, went home and found this on Mike LaRosa’s blog. The actual video is very well done with high production values and a very unique, cheaper but vastly more time consuming. The music video initially looks different from most music videos, usually featuring someone singing, dancers, a sex symbol, graphics, a story and done on a large budget. This film has a sex symbol in the way of the woman in the video, she is in bed in the beginning of the piece and throughout she re-enacts all of the elements of the song through moving on the bed in stop animation. The video has a very Lord Privy Seal style working to it using the artist Oren Lavie and the actress to interpret   what is being said in the words of the song, the colour of the video is very pure using whites but with certain elements in striking colours such as a red scarf or Oren wearing black to contrast the actresses white.  The film lacks a clear structural narrative but follows the main style more of reiterating what the song is stating.

The video itself has risen to a form of stardom on YouTube with over 9 million hits, the production was directed by the artist Oren Lavie who apart from writing the song, performing it and directing the music video he has also directed several plays in his native Tel Aviv and in London before he moved to New York. The Grammy award winning video looks in my opinion stunning, it’s different but similar enough to relate to a large audience, the music helps it along and it may have done its job as I may get the song if not the album. The artist hasn’t released it onto any music station although the album has been available for 2 years now but the hits it has received on YouTube may give it rise to selling more albums.

In a statement by the artist Oren states

“I am not a fashionable man. And my music is, therefore, unfashionable. My songs don’t have an attitude which you could sell. I don’t have an attitude which I am trying to make you buy, not that I’m aware of. If I am any good, it’s because my songs are good. If I’m no good, it’s because my songs are no good. There’s nothing else to hide behind. For me A good song consists of a melody which surprises you, but pleases you, which carries an engaging story told in rhymes.
A good song is loyal to the artist’s truth of the moment. The song will remain good even when the artist’s truth has changed.”

This style of music making and understanding of it on an artistic level  appeals to me more now than when I just watched the video and listened to the song. It works on level with a statement from School of Saatchi

“For art to be art it must be pointless.”