I Like Sound :)

Today I watched Paris Je T'aime which is a film that is made up from 18 shorts set in Paris, one of which is made by notable directors The Coen Brother's. Whilst watching, one of the many shorts really appealed to me, directed by the genius behind Belleville Rendez-Vous Sylvain Chomet, this short applies the knowledge of animated sound design in to a motion picture.



This film made me reflect on the possibilities of sound, and things that could have possibly been achieved if I would have worked more on it throughout the production of Man Without A Movie Camera.

My Script... The 1st Draft

After developing the principle ideas for my script I have written a first draft for 'Hippophant' (which is here). The sad part of the story is that the script can be used by anybody else on my course to make as their final film of the year, and it will be hard to part with my 'baby'.

I feel that maybe I need to add more stylistic elements due to its obscure nature, which I have found difficult to do without directing the film. I am thinking of changing the end, to the protagonist in a police cell? Or possibly just back at home? So please read it and comment, telling me how I could possibly improve it or what you like about it!

Hope you enjoy the read.

Inspired!

After taking a look at these photographs from Christmas day by photographer Ian Vists, I know exactly what I want to do for Christmas next/this year, and it isn't eating turkey, how cool would it be to make a film on Christmas day in these conditions (Click for whole Album)


Looking through the album, has made me think how amasing it would be... Sorry Mum!

My Script... The idea

After racking my brain for hours about what the hell I was going to write my script about it hit me and now Hippophant is my latest project.

The title evidently being an amalgamation of a Hippopotamus and and Elephant, follows a broke taxidermist Konrad Abagnale (another amalgamation of two world famous fraudsters Konrad Kujau and Frank Abagnale Jr.) Konrad however isn't any old animal stuffer! He is what is known as a rogue taxidermist, who puts animals together to make new ones. In fact there is a chance that one of his associates made this.

After seeing an article in the paper of a man who made million off of a new drug that turns humans in to dogs (La Vie d'un Chien). Konrad has an idea and makes himself a new animal, The Hippophant takes some snaps and posts it all over the internet creating mass hysteria! Soon enough he is contacted by National Geographic who ask him to bring the animal for it to be unveiled and reward him with a cash prize! He goes along and everybody believes him, leaving him with what he wanted... But then the trunk falls off! Leaving him back at square one.

I feel that it works well as a story due to its linear narartive, but the actual element of rogue taxidermy may prove to be very difficult for the film maker to recreate. Also the ending is quite ambiguous, which I personally like, but may change.

Man Without A Movie Camera

So it took a lot of work, and then when I exported it, it came out with the colours whiter than expected. Editing on screens can be deceiving, and even when the whites are white, everything sometimes look a little bit washed out and cold, and I have experienced this from my last 2 edits. The editing for this film was pretty straight forward after I had practice from the short advert me and Gus made. In the edit we never had much choice for shots as we shot what we needed, this may have made it a simpler job, but next time I think I will try to get a wider range of shots.


I had some good fun filming this project. But I didn't get to do the sound design that I wanted to do for it, I found my time being taken up by covering other people in the group and I can honestly say without my input the film would never have happened. As I played a big role in constructing the script, the casting, the shot list/schedule, making sure everybody could make certain times and the whole of the edit. Meaning that in the pre-production and post-production weeks my time was filled with doing work for this film.

I was happy however to be a part of the script writing as I know this would help me in the future. I felt that this was a good collaboration between me and Luke, combining ideas that we had came up with in class with Gus to make a light-hearted script. This was a change from our initial dark ideas for desire, one of which being a pedophile wanting a child.

In hindsight I'm glad I made it as I learned a lot of production techniques that will help me in making my next film. However, I am still cynical about working with people that I don't know, luckily on our next project we get to choose! I can now put this all behind me, and take on from it what I need to. Anyway here it is, so let me know what you think!

The F Word

Today I have 2 'F' words, Final Cut Pro and Foot Locker!

This week me and Gus bought it upon ourselves to enter a Foot Locker competition on youtube. After developing an idea for the brief (which was simply "Make A Film About Trainers") and how we wanted to go about it we decided to get a some equipment from uni on Wednesday, film Thursday, and edit on Friday and Saturday. This all went to plan...

This was my first full edit in Final Cut Pro, which I though would be a good trial run to learn techniques before we started on our short. To be honest it went very smoothly, and if it wasn't for the tape corrupting, all would have been great! The one thing I did find a hold back, was my 13" lcd screen on my macbook, which made colour correction a nightmare, as although it looked good on my screen, this changed depending on what screen it was played on! From the colour looking washed out to looking perfect. In the end all prevailed, and looks pretty good, bar the odd tape glitch, and after getting an original soundtrack from one of our friends, the short was looking ready. Youtube on the other hand thought differently, and after our internet being out of service all of saturday, as I was uploading sunday morning it decided to tell me that there was an error the 1st 3 times I tried! 4th time lucky! BUT this resulted in missing the competition deadline, which we thought was midnight tonight... but was midday. F***!

Oh well, in the end it was good fun and I have learnt a lot on final cut. We have emailed, sent messages and made them aware of our problems to get it uploaded and asked if they will still consider our hard work! Fingers Crossed

Man Without A Movie Camera... The Production Weekend

DAY 1: Saturday 14th November 2009

When I arose after very little sleep from the night before planning a shot list and printing out call sheets for everybody on set, I was tired but optimistic. However, when I looked out of the window, I noticed the predicted storms had arrived! At 1st we tried to go out side and weather the storm, but it was all too much, everybody was more concerned with keeping the £3000 camera dry (as another group got the uni's only rain cover, invest people!) than getting the correct shots. The noise from the wind was also awful and for a while I thought that if this carried on the film wouldn't be film-able in these conditions! Luckily we had some shots to do in the interior. Luckily in the afternoon we were able to get down to business and filmed our group shots for Group A, and even though there was light rain and dark skies, it added to the look and feel that I had envisioned for this opening scene. However, the dark sky was a problem later on, as our CCTV scene in the alley-way there was not enough light for the camera to function to its fully capability, and our actor playing the 'security guard' couldn't make the next day.

After we had finished, we logged and captured the footage, and noted that we had to re shoot a pick up of the outside scenes of our protagonist running back and forth from the set to get a camera in torrential rain.

DAY 2: Sunday 15th November 2009

After the horrendous weather from the 1st day, none of us expected to be contemplating wearing a pair of these the next day. However, the sun meant that in comparison to the day before day 2 was a doddle. As a group we had a lot more fun, experimenting with tracking shots with the camera in the back of a car, and generally having fun on set. The bad point of the day had to be the unexpected no show of the actor Bianne organised to come to the shoot, as she never knew that he had to be there on the second day. However, we put our heads together and hatched and added that he was the man with the camera to the script. All in all this day was very successful and fun, far from the stress induced shoot that was day 1.

The car park scenes were hard for me to record sound, as for a lot of shots we were using the boom pole and the dead cat as props! Because the microphone is so sensitive to sound I put it in a coat sleeve to protect it, but when recording dialogue we made sure the microphone was out of shot to get good sound recordings of voices.

At the end of the day we went back to ours had a couple of beers, watched our footage back and watched a couple of movies and played computer games. Here are the rest of our photos from the weekend. For now I can relax after the stressful weekend, but not for long as we are all doing individual edits for next week.

Man WIthout A Movie Camera... The Tempratures Rising

Its is almost time for our filming weekend, and a lot isn't organised due to one of our team members floundering and not taking enough initiative, and is pushing for our filming weekend to commence a week late! This has led to me having to pick up the pieces, as we only had 1 of our 9 desired cast members. However, it is our main character which is helpful.

Luckily, after doing the rounds with a few phone calls, me and Bianne have managed to get a full cast and organised a schedule for them when they need to be there. As they had to be put in to groups I done this by evaluating who could make which days. My planned schedule is as follows:

Saturday:
Protagonist Montage: 10am - 1pm
Group A Shots: 2pm - 3pm
CCTV Scene: 3pm - 5pm

Sunday:

Group B Shots: 11am - 12pm
Car Park Scene: 12pm - 2pm
Pick Ups: 2pm - 5pm

Although me, Gus and Luke compiled a list of every shot needed for each scene we are yet to have a final shot list for the day, which I may have to do if it isn't completed by other members of the group by Friday, especially the director who I'm worried hasn't got a real feel for the film.

I do however have faith in our team as in a practice run in class we worked well together. But only time will tell, and with only 2 days until Judgement Day, everything will be ready.

Cannon 5D Mark II

I really Really REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLLY REALLLLY REALLLY want one. I have spent the last few weeks obsessing over how nice the picture it produces is, the slow motion it can produce because of the fps (frames per second), it being the size of an slr, the depth of field of one and the ability to shoot so well in low lighting. BECAUSE IT IS ONE. These high quality video slr cameras are the future. Heres a video of what Philip Bloom can produce with one without any post production effects, shot in 24p.

Sofia's People: Canon 5dmk2 24p from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

I just had to get it off my chest... Back to finishing off the shot list.

Camera Demo

Today I had a demo using the Sony Z1 camera's, which are regarded as lower end broadcast cameras, which do have the capability to shoot good video and perfect for our short films. Even though I was not the camera man on this particular shoot, I done the tutorial so that I would be able to get the camera out in the future.

The demo was a good reminder of how to use the equipment as I hadn't done since I filmed Doug Chamberlin's Mastering Hollywood seminar about six months ago. The one thing I did learn however, was to set up two shots and go between them using shot transition buttons.

As I will be doing the sound on my film, the most important part of the z1 to me are the 2 audio channels, which you can see on the left hand side of the picture. When filming is in progress, I am going to set one channel lower than the other so that if the sound peaks and distorts I will have a back up that I can use in editing. Also the settings on the menu have to be set to recording off of the XLR (which is where the microphone is plugged in) instead of the internal microphone.

In other news... We have got our favored car park confirmed!

Man Without A Movie Camera... Location, Location, Location

So with our script now completed, we have titled the film Man Without A Movie Camera, a homage to Dziga Vertov's masterpiece from 1929, Man With A Movie Camera (below), although it is nothing like it except for the title. So it was time for preparation. Although, I was eager to delve in to the script and pick apart what I could do in the sound department, locations were a must as we needed a car park for our film. Even though Mike (our teacher) had suggested against using one, due to problems with security in the past, we were determined to find one with a good backdrop that would look cinematic in our short.



Me and Gustav (Follow Him!) went on a look for locations near our house, with a list of the scenes, Gus' iphone, a pen and paper. We came back with good results, thinking about transportation on the day we kept everything within safe distance of our house, as we decided to use it as our base and a location. We now have 2 possibilities for car park locations, which we have to inquire about on Monday, as well as a computer shop on our road.

Pre-Production... The Start

After receiving a script entitled Shoes and reading it, our group decided that we didn't like it. However, as we had to base our film on it we decided to keep the concept of desire.

In the script a girl wants a pair of shoes and ends up stealing so that she can get them. To begin with we explored the darker side of desire, of which the most extreme was a pedophile lusting over children. Luckily we stopped ourselves, and brainstormed more light hearted ideas! This resulted in a concept about a film crew who don't have a camera, so the camera man has to go off to get one, bringing back cameras that aren't fit for the job, such as a web-cam and a Polaroid. Me and Luke then both wrote our own scripts, which came back strikingly similar in terms of plot line, except mine included an introduction of the characters.

We merged our scripts together, including the opening as we felt that it would build suspense which would create a juxtaposition from the rest of the light hearted film.

Team D & Sound

So far so good, Monday we set out our roles within the group that we are making a film. After doing sound on liquid soaps 1st 5 episodes, I felt that I would be the best person to monitor the sound, and make sure that it is good, as it is my biggest worry when making small productions, as of the sound is bad the film is bad, and has just as much effect on the audience as the images. For example, the trailer for A Serious Man...



I'M SOLD! and can't wait to see it at the Bath Film Festival in The Little Theatre.

Initially I wanted to be the director, and still may take on both roles as nobody else wants to do it, but we will see by next Mondays session as one of our group members was missing. We brainstormed many ideas for a plot, without making any advancements on starting the script yet but are planning on keeping the theme of desire.

Celtx... WOW

I find script writing enjoyable, but when using word processing programmes formatting is such a chore. I used to hate having to set the margins for dialogue, alignments for actions and cuts getting mixed up and buggy. The keywords being "USED TO". Now I have Celtx which can be downloaded FREE YES FREE from here it is very simple to use and pretty much a self-explanatory piece of software. You just highlight what you type and then select what it is, for every part of the script e.g character names, actions and dialogue. Its a great piece of software, which also includes writing scripts for feature and storyboarding! I don't know about other scripting softwares, just that they cost money, I may try a trial of Final Draft which I just read a review of but for now this is free and does everything you need! SO DOWNLOAD IT.

Short Film (For Real This Time)

1895, cinema began and for its first twenty two years of existence it only consisted of short films. The first ever to be recorded was by the Lumière brothers, titled La Sortie de l'Usine. The film, however much ground breaking, isn't very interesting, as it just shows people rushing the doors of their work place to go home at the end of the day. This period was ground breaking for techniques, seeing the starts of edits by Edwin S Porter, and narrative telling by George Melies.

Voyage a travers l'impossible by George Melies (below) is however one of the most remarkable pieces of the period in which he mixes animation with reality and uses a very creative narrative. The film follows the characters journey to the sun in a flying train, where they have problems of being too hot and then cold when they get frozen in some sort of freezer, before parachuting back to earth. The film is way ahead of its time (being 1904) with the most amasing aspect of the picture being that every frame is tinted to make the film appear in full colour.



David lynch uses this mix of animation and reality in his work, namely in Grandmother, which is a short film. It uses a reoccurring theme of growth, and what is needed to nurture growth, and argues that more than the ability to create another life is needed. This is done by showing the child growing a grandmother that can show him love, as opposed to his parents who "created him" but act like 'dogs'. In the end the grandmother dies, leaving him on his own, however when he goes to sleep at the end a plant grows out of him (it is a mystery to me what this represents, has he grown? Has he died? Is it a metaphor for hope? Or pain? I have no idea!).

1995 and a group of directors are given the 1st ever camera used by the Lumière brother to make their own film. Notable directors involved were David Lynch, Spike Lee and Michael Haneke. Michael Haneke's film documents the world in 1995, and events that happened on the news exactly 100 years later, in my opinion it is an interesting idea for the purpose of documenting history, but not the most interesting film. Spike Lee's film is just a close up of a black baby, I think a black baby was used purposely to document the time, as one of the Lumieres films from 1895 is a baby being fed, and it is white (and Spike Lee is an civil rights activist). David Lynch's on the other hand has a narrative, telling a story about a murder with surreal intermissions. Out of the Three I think David Lynch's uses the strongest direction as like the others it is all done in one shot but rather than being static it passes through many sets and uses cuts by burning paper (well... what I think to be paper).



Animation shorts are very popular, over the years I have seen a heap of short animations and other than Pixar's shorts my favourite has to be Muzorama (above). I found this while back whilst browsing Vimeo, and the film has some very peculiar ideas put in to practice in a fiction world, which are fun and very pleasing to the eye. The fictional world idea is fairly similar to La Cravate the first short film by Alejandro Jodorowsky, however La Cravate sets up a narrative at the beginning, which is humorous, and explores the idea of going to change your entire head instead of a haircut. The film explores the morals of this, by following a man looking for love and eventually finds it when a woman has his original head on her mantelpiece.

Pixar shorts are almost all brilliant creations, whether using characters from existing films or otherwise they are always fun to watch. One of my favourites is Burn-E which interlinks with the plot of the feature length Wall-E, and actually appears in the film! the story like most shorts revolves around one idea. This being the joke that Burn-E the robot trying to fix a light on the spaceship, but every time he does it breaks again. The joke is set up well with the repetition of him doing something over and over again and us laughing at his frustration and misfortune.

Humour is the main component in the most successful short films, as they make good viral videos. Occupations by Lars Von Trier is very slow paced and relaxed, as one man brags about his job to the man next to him at an opera, who completely changes the scene and kills the man next to him in a black comedy way, as we hate the man next to him. Similarly, Terry Tate: Office Linebacker uses slapstick humour and the advantage of viral videos being a major part of an office lifestyle by setting it inside one, as he lays down the law on all problems that are faced in office environments. However, this particular film is an advertisement for Reebok, so are all other short films all adverts without product? Are short films just undeveloped ideas? Is every video on youtube a short film?



This for example, uses a perfect narrative. A man who tries to do something but suffers pain trying to do it successfully (like an extreme version of Burn-E). Or does it not fit into the bracket as it isn't planned?

Many questions but no real answers, this is just short film at a glance. I have to go now as I have an important call to make, but I shall leave you with my housemate Ciaran O'Briens award-winning film.