Saturday Shoot

My first thought when I heard we had class on a SATURDAY was “nooooooooooo”. Anyway, luckily I was pleasantly surprised by the day and it turned out to be a lot of fun. We firstly helped out Gabby’s group which, whose idea was simple yet brilliant as it ran so smoothly. Incorporating the bee was a great idea, and at the end of their film the bee ended up chasing me so I’m sure I am going to look hilarious trying to bat it away and look scared... Acting is not my forte, but all the same, it was fun to be in front of the camera for a change!

On the way back from their shoot, our group gathered up some gorgeous petals that had dropped to the ground to include in our shoot which was based around a picnic. We took some inspiration from Andy Goldsworthy through the use of a set up of pine cones and petals around the picnic. We were ahead of time at this point which meant we had plenty of time to set up and organise ourselves. I felt we worked very well as a team together and had a lot of fun rehearsing eating our picnic! We got a few interesting looks from passers-by, and whilst we were rehearsing, three of my roommates happened to walk by... I think they are even more baffled by my Film degree than they were before, but I also think they are a little bit jealous! Whilst we were filming SOMEONE managed to somehow throw Emma’s phone in the river, which provided some extra entertainment for us all! I think she has now put it in some rice in an attempt to salvage it...

Obviously the footage in is black and white, which doesn’t show just how vibrant the set up was – a red and white checked picnic cloth, pink flower petals, red flowers, different coloured tea cups and saucers, a neon green parasol and so on. We took a few colour photos on Emma’s digital camera because it did look really cool.

Drying the film was hilarious. We did a few laps inside Kenan, before going outside to run around the courtyard whilst Barrett filmed us with the remaining film on the regular eight camera. It was a great idea to get some behind the scenes footage to remember the day by – if I had to do this activity every Saturday I would be happy, it really was so fun! I was also extremely hungover (my bad) so I’m glad we had this on as it made me forget to feel sorry for myself quite as much as I would have otherwise!  Great, great day and luckily our footage came out! From the first viewing everything looked pretty good. J

48 Hour Video Race

Ok - I have to admit, I only got back from Mexico last night, and I’m definitely still in spring break mode today... inspiration is sort of lacking. But I shall still make an attempt at this post!

Reading Emma’s post about documenting life as an exchange student is a really good idea... (dammit, why didn’t I think of that first?!) But I really liked the part about the interactive media such as Skype and email and could perhaps incorporate that into a story of my own.

When I first read the guidelines, my initial reaction was to use a cell phone as part of the film. If you think about it, cell phones really do construct our daily lives and we rely on them. As I mentioned earlier, I was in Mexico last week and once we arrived, we realised that none of our American phones worked, except mine which was absolutely no use because I couldn’t contact my friends if we got split up at any point (there were seven of us) which is not very good when you are in a place like Mexico. Cell phones can be used to arrange to meet friends or family, to look up something on the internet, to take photos or videos, to make a call to a friend and so on. The list goes on forever and is expanding all the time. However, the most important thing about a cell phone is that it makes you feel safe. You can get in touch with the police instantly, wherever you are (except in Mexico!) or if you’re out with friends and you get lost you can arrange to meet them again. They are vital to our everyday lives and therefore it feels as though using one for the 48 hour video race to perhaps document someone’s day would be a relevant idea for this film in the 21^st century.

It would be cool if we were allowed to scan in photos already taken to go along with any text or voice recording from the cell phone, as it would explain the narrative further and give it more depth. As I’m writing I have come up with an idea but it literally just came into my head... I could document my spring break holiday through photos already taken and excerpts from the diary I kept. It would also be good to use cameraless filming and paint sunsets or bright blues onto filmstrips to represent the sun and sea which could be used as backgrounds. If I did use this idea, the cell phone part may then become irrelevant but I could still perhaps incorporate it somehow. I’m not sure; my brain is still fuzzy... But the more you think about it the more ideas you get! So I shall keep my thinking hat on.

Experimenting

Camera less filmmaking was most definitely an exciting project. The first aspect I enjoyed was the fact that we collaborated on the project. I felt that helped to bring out each other’s creativity. It meant we could combine our different ideas to produce the best filmstrip possible. It was interesting to listen to Emma’s suggestions and experiment with them, because really, this exercise was an experiment. We had no idea what our film would look like on the projector. I had images of what I hoped it to look like but it was hard to judge, especially as far as timing goes. The first section of our film was the bleached filmstrip which represented air and was meant to look as though the film was breathing. I feel this was one of the most successful parts of the film, and a great opening sequence. It really set the scene. We found that the magazine transfers which looked great before putting them onto the projector, hadn’t turned out as well on the big screen. They appeared grainy and it was very hard to make out the images of butterflies and fruit which was a part of the film we really liked when putting it all together. For our fire section, we combined lots of fiery colours before leading into smoke. I felt quite proud of this section and I thought the sandpaper we used to scratch the film to create the image of smoke was very effective.

An Alchemical Christmas Carol: I enjoyed the fast paced feel of this film. The soundtrack matched up nicely to the quick movement on screen. It was nice to see the scratching at the beginning, as this reminded me of Emma’s and my film. It is a very effective technique, especially against the vibrant colours which the makers combined it with. My view has changed dramatically about this type of filmmaking since the start of this class, because before I had never really heard of it! When my friends see me working on projects for class they are fascinated and are jealous – I would be too, it is so much fun to be given the freedom to experiment this way and produce such interesting results. I remember watching Passage on the first day and being completely baffled by it. I did not understand it, or particularly like it, but I feel that if I were to watch it now with all this experience under my belt, my view of it would change radically. I have learnt to enjoy and appreciate camera less filmmaking.