The Influence

After spending an afternoon doing my first edit it occurred to me what I'd had in the back of my mind when working and what I was probably subconsciously trying to emulate. The cinematography and soundtrack/design in Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream are the perfect example. As far as films in general go there's little silence. Even in situations of calm one on one dialogue, if you actually look out for it there will usually be a few notes or chords here and there. What really gets my juices going are the beautiful synchronicity of sound and video; all the various quick, clean cuts and corresponding sound-bites. This film I feel has just as much been composed as it has been filmed.

My Cut

Here's my cut of our team film. Overall I'm quite pleased with the result. I had to edit out quite a bit of footage that would've made things flow better and more congruent because they didn't quite fit with everything else visually. I wasn't directing so couldn't have foreseen this.

Rough Cut

Here's the very rough cut of my team film. Basically all the shots I'm considering using in order.

Final Cut!

Ah yes finally! We come to a little something that I've been looking forward to for quite a while. I had used this once before to edit an animation of mine but only knew a few basic operations and I'd forgotten them all anyway when it came to our induction. In the space of a day I had got to grips with all the basic editing functions; insert editing vs overwrite editing, in & out points, cutting e.t.c. As well as that we were introduced to all of final cut's various filters and transitions and a few other useful functions such as cross dissolving. Below is my mutilated car commercial exhibiting the things we learnt. Yes I know its a complete hash but does show a few things.

Best Film Ever? Errrr..... yea

I decided to watch the Silence of the Lambs again the other day and I can pretty calmly say that its the best horror film ever made and probably the best film of all time. After seeing it again I saw clearly the features that make it such a masterpiece. These features are known as "Hannibal (the cannibal) Lecter" and "Clarice Starling" and together they are the ultimate villian and heroine combination.

Hannibal Lecter is the ultimate evil genius. Most psychopathic killers are just scruffy reprobates who were molested by their dads. Dr Lecter is more than that. From the moment we come across him, instead of prancing manically round his cell like a dervish, we find him calmly standing in the centre of the room, hands by his side looking demonically content. As Clarice proceeds with examining him, Dr Lecter has the upper hand and through his acute perception and combination of questions he comes across as nothing but powerful: pretty good for a man who's been trapped in a glass box for eight years. His placid nature and intellect make it clear that he is perfectly aware and accepting of his various evil tendencies which in a bizarre way I think kind of make one respect him. He is contrasted perfectly by Clarice Starling, a soon to be F.B.I agent who whilst slightly nervous is none the less both driven and fearless. When she is probed by Lecter she is on edge but boldly soldiers on whilst he continues his mind-games. What I feel really works is that she is a strong and attractive woman, without being a cliched sassy dame out of a film noir or Charlie's Angels. She is modest and polite all the way through and in short, gets on with her job.

Not really surprising then that the AFI chose Hannibal Lecter as the greatest villian of all time and Clarice Starling as the 6th greatest heroine!

Hardy the hard man

Saw this the other night! Bloody hell, best film I've seen in quite a while! Tom Hardy is at his very best as the lead, Charles Bronson. As I'm still a white middle class young man, the film obviously delivers on the prurient shock value front. Yes we may sit and stroke our chins with academic pomposity at films like A Clockwork Orange but I think a lot of us also watched that film to see a bit of good old fashioned screen contained violence. This film does exactly that. If Jackie Chan is one end of the spectrum this film is the other; simple fight choreography, maximum sadism. Anyway before you start to think I'm a Neo Nazi in the making let me mention what's important. The cinematography combined with the clever screenplay is absolute magic. The tale is told with a bit of first person narration (Bronson's) and is interspersed with numerous surreal shots ranging from Bronson covered in black paint fighting prison guards whilst naked, to Bronson addressing a theatre to tell his tale dressed as a mime in a tuxedo. The surrealism, ultra violence and first person narrative make for a number of Clockwork Orange parallels but other than than that I don't think this is in the same ball park. Doesn't really have much of of profound message or anything. Just a bloody good laugh!

What I was thinking of...

The racing scene in the greenhouse domes at the beginning of Silent Running are what I had in mind regarding our chase scene. The camera mainly keeps either nice and low to the ground or close to the moving vehicle and when it strays from these shots it goes into quite extreme and pronounced shots. There's also a good use of closeup on the drivers which I'm guessing one achieves with a snooricam. No music though. That's probably the one thing that this scene doesn't have that our scene will...

A Nice Amalgamation

After our story-boarder suggested a combination of the two treatments, I felt this would be a better option.

1. Whilst having a sunny Sunday afternoon stroll Jay & Robbie wander into a slightly dodgy part of town.

2. Jay & Robbie realize that they don't really know where they're going, stop and upon stopping seeing a rather shifty character in a tracksuit running towards them, they start running. This character is coming up behind them at about 8 o'clock roughly 30 meters away.

3. Jay and robbie decide to walk away briskly which soon turns into a sprint.

4. The character continues to run in their direction and Jay and Robbie are chased for about 200 meters.

5. Then Jay and Robbie run to a road and a car whizzes past and causes Jay and Robbie to stop dead. It's at this point that the character catches up with them, draws up along side them and then starts jogging on the spot; revealing that this was all a big misunderstanding and that the dodgy character was only out jogging.

7. Jay and Robbie then look at each other, acknowledging their stupidity.

High Speed

First day back and we play around with a high speed camera, the track & dolly and lots of hot lights. Here's me and my beautiful face. Everything was pretty straight forward. After setting up the track and dolly (which took a while) we were shown how to film using the motion studio software. At high frame-rates not a lot of light gets through so a lot of extra lights were needed.

Tetsuo

After the animator M dot Strange on his vlog, recommended that I check this out I expecting something wacky. For those who don't know M dot Strange is an American indie animator who's know best for is feature film length animation "We Are the Strange" and this recommendation of his came as a result of his rant on how up and coming film makers should push boundaries. As much as I propose on doing that I think "Tetsuo the Iron Man" has slightly too much of the avant garde irrationality in it. Hey call me boring, call me stupid but this film was just too incomprehensibly weird to strike any chords with me and that also goes for a million and one other films of this nature (naming no names). That said, whilst I won't be watching this film again I have had my inspiration fires stoked. The use of old black and white 16mm film fits the indie horror genre brilliantly. Anyone I think can also appreciate the exemplary costume/prop design of all those various metal bits and bobs. Lastly though I'd like to make a special mention regarding the animation. Whilst I'm not as big on the animation front as I am on movies, I'm a sucker for a nice bit of pixilation and this film knows just how to use it.

My Two Treatments

So it's my job to actually write what happens and I've come up with these two different takes on a similar theme.

The following scenarios are variations on a theme and take place over a five minute period on a Sunday afternoon in Leeds

1: Frantic, Sketchy & Confused

1. Whilst having a sunny Sunday afternoon stroll Jay & Robbie wander into a slightly dodgy part of town.

2. Jay & Robbie realize that they don't really know where they're going, stop and upon stopping see two rather shifty rough characters who appear to have just done something they shouldn't have as they are jogging and are regularly looking over their shoulders. These characters are coming up behind them at about 8 o'clock roughly 30 meters away.

3. The dodgy characters pass by Jay & Robbie yet Jay and robbie decide to walk away briskly (back the way they came) which soon turns into a sprint.

4. Upon seeing that Jay & Robbie are sprinting, the dodgy characters start chasing Jay and Robbie. At this point Jay and Robbie are about 50 meters away.

5. After a couple of seconds one of the dodgy characters stops chasing and Jay and Robbie are then chased for about 200 meters by the remaining dodgy character.

6. Then Jay and Robbie run across a road and a well timed car whizzes past and cuts the dodgy character off. It's at this point that the character shouts from the other side of the road "why are you running?"

7. Jay and Robbie then look at each other in a confused and quizzical manner suggesting that a. their paranoia could have unnecessarily created this and b. they're still not quite sure what the dodgy character's intentions were.

2:Funny, Surreal, Outrageous

N.B despite the "dark" subject matter this scene is entirely comical & light hearted. This is conveyed through music, costumes and overly stylized actions, a bit like Terry Gilliam moveis

1. Whilst on a sunny sunday afternoon stroll, smokin a lil doob, two guys see a character at right angles in a tracksuit moving quickly in their direction.

2. Their impaired vision combined with sudden paranoia (for obvious reasons) cause them to believe that the man jogging is out to mugg them/beat them up and so they start running away. The jogger still has no idea that the two guys are running from him.

3. Upon seeing the three men running, numerous bystanders from all angles along the way wonder what the three men appear to be running after and determined to find out, they start running after the jogger.

4. Eventually the two guys come to a road and a series of fast cars prevent them from crossing, the two guys cower as the jogger draws level and innocently stays jogging on the spot whilst waiting for the road to clear. It's at this point that the two guys and the viewer realise that the man they were running from was a mere jogger.

5. Then on a second glance back they see the huge crowd of people and are utterly bamboozled as why they're all there en mass at which point numerous members of the crowd ask the guys and the jogger "what are you running after?"