Film interpretations..

As I am starting yet another moving image project tomorrow (not my favourite area of work...) I thought I would look at a couple of the examples mentioned in the initial DP2 lecture associated with script adapation/interpretation to help with ideas for this project.

I love love love Tim Burtons so it's nice to hear I can use him as influence for both this project and the animation project this term. I suppose I could also with interactive media... Anyway! Alice in Wonderland by Tim Burton. Possibly the best remake of a film ever. I love the use of both dark and bold colours throughout this film and how he always gives film a dark more sinister feel to them effortlessly. He has also used intepretation by using scenes that weren't included in other versions of the film but link in really well with the narrative (proposal/garden party scenes). Love this film and everything about it to be honest. I am a bit biased towards Mr Burton though. :P



Another interpretation of the same story by Lewis Carroll is this example by Jan Svankmajer. He is also another director/animator I have looked at previously, whilst focusing on Czech animation. He also uses quite sinister styles but less intensely. For instance, his film uses much less special effects, but is very quiet and features odd props and character styles, adding to the general serious mood of the piece.

eXistenZ. As others have said... weird film indeed.

Strange film with fleshy games, umbilical cords and Jude Law. Yeahhh... ;D

 

Yes, the first lecture back into the new university term and we watched a film with Jools for Context 1 - eXistenZ. We have been given the task of writing about this film in terms of the three main multimedia threshold concepts. These are:
-Narrative
-Interactivity
-Convergence

"A threshold concept is like a portal, opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something. It represents a transformed way of understanding, or interpreting, or viewing something, without which the learner can not progress"   Meyer & Land (2003)

I must say this idea has confused me somewhat, but I can get a jist of what it all means. I think the main meaning of a threshold concept is a method of viewing a piece of multimedia, for instance, in a way that the viewer did not necessarily think of before or that was not available to them. It is pretty hard to get a grasp on.


So, eXistenZ.  How do these threshold concepts tie in with this film? How do the three concepts help the viewer to see things in a different light?

Narrative: The narrative of this film started with the launch of a revolutionary gaming system called "eXistenZ". (This was later found out to be a fake, virtual console. Confusing!) The creator Allegra Gellar is wanted dead by people who believe her games are deforming reality. She makes Law's character Ted Pikul have a bio-port installed (a hole in back to allow gameplay) to join her as a friend in her own game (eXistenZ). They carry on to progress the game, switching between game and reality, getting confused about which is which until the end, where it is revealed the whole story was a simulated game experience during the testing of virtual reality console "tranCendenZ" and the testers and creator are all the characters from the main narrative. Therefore, I feel there are multiple narratives all happening at the same time without the audience realising it until the very end. (see convergence)

Interactivity: In terms of interactivity with the audience, think this film is successful in involving the viewer through the confusion between games and reality throughout the narrative of the film. I feel this film's success, in terms of its plot and interest, relies very much on this interaction with its audience. For instance, if the audience knew exactly what was happening in each of the scene transitions throughout the film, it was not be so intriguing or interesting for them to view.

Convergence: I think the convergence of reality and fantasy in this film is one of the most successful concepts. As I have said in the other sections (they all seem to intertwine, hmm?), throughout the film the scenes swap between surreal, game scenes and the assumed reality of the characters lives. Towards the end of the film it is revealed that a lot of this "reality" was in fact fake like the rest of the film, and makes the idea rethink what is real and what isn't - a successful threshold concept indeed?

I probably haven't understood this very well but have given it a good go anyway.



p.s starting another one shot film project tomorrow. expect a lot of posts on my progress... and moaning. :P

Woo-hoo. :D

I did my presentation yesterday so that is a huuuge weight off my shoulders. It seemed to go rather well, Simon and Andrew said it was a good presentation I just need to be more confident... I always get told this, aha. I will bear this in mind anyway.

I have now finished Module numbero uno of my multimedia course and have a month off for Christmas. So, I'm guessing I won't be posting anything here for quite a while! You never know though, I might get bored and do some random animation or something :P So see you in a months time probably!


:D

One Shot - Rule of Thirds

Here are a couple of pictures I whipped up to demonstrate how the "rule of thirds" could be referred to in my edit of the one shot film. When filming, I tried to keep the focal point of the bench in the middle section of the view finder. I think I kept to this quite well, although the characters were slightly towards the left at the end of the film. However, this was due to the placement of the actors themselves, as the centre of the bench was still in the middle section. :)

My Final One Shot Film Edit.

So here is my final personal edit of our one shot film.

"A Suspicous Birthday" One Shot Film - Personal Edit from Samantha Freeman on Vimeo.

We decided to name it "A Suspicious Birthday" as it represents the subject well.

For my edit, I decided to use one of my earlier ideas of using a CCTV style for the serious part of the film. To do this I made it black and white and added noise both on the video and on the sound (white noise). I then dissolved to a more colourful image without white noise (as I zoomed in in the original footage.)

Towards the end, I added my own recording of party blowers as well as a clip of the start of Cliff Richard's "Congratulations" song as I thought it was appropriate and fitted in well with the build up to the change of mood.

I also think my use of titles fitted well with the moods of the film

Final One Shot Film Seminar.

Today was out last seminar for DP1. Wooop? :) Anyway we learned basics of editing in Premiere Pro CS4, and started to experiment for our personal edits of our group's film.

I have decided to base mine on a idea I came up with when filming our first idea - CCTV. To achieve this I will edit the first, more serious part of the film in black and white with added "noise" effect. I will also use an appropriate font on my titles near the start to fit with this style

Later on in the film, when the mood changes to "PARTY!", I will fade from black and white and then into a more highly saturated style to fit in with this mood. I could also add appropriate styles of font with "Happy Birthday!" perhaps?


Anyhow, here is our totally unedited film. The snow does distract from the main focus, I must admit. But we tried our best under the circumstances and it is looking a lot better from my editing so far.

Final One Shot Film - Unedited from Samantha Freeman on Vimeo.

Update on all sorts of stuff. BUSY, BUSY.

So, ive been very busy over the past week or two!

- Essay. I have completed this, sent it to Jools and in the process of responding to the feedback before submission.
- One Shot Film. We have filmed our final shot, but had a lot of trouble due to the weather! Stupid snow! :(

- Presentation for DP1. I have decided to do a HTML format of presentation and have started producing a lot of the pages.

One Shot.

I havent currently got the file for our one shot film as I haven't been able to get into uni since we filmed due to the snow. I doubt I will get in tomorrow either so will need to get one of my group to email it to me before my assessment and presentation. Anyway, we persevered with filming in the very short intervals where the snow wasn't very heavy on Tuesday (obviously protecting the camera at all times with an umbrella. What a nice job I had :L) We wanted to keep with our original idea and thought this wouldn't work in a studio, which is why we stuck to the same setting despite the weather. I haven't seen the finished product on a PC screen yet due to my absence (sorry team!) but will hopefully soon have a go at editing it with sounds and effects on Premiere to improve the appearance and quality of our film.

Will keep you posted.


Presentation.

I won't post too much on here about the presentation as it isn't really necessary, but here is a preview of the first of my HTML pages produced on photoshop, linked with notepad using hotspots. Next I need to complete the pages of my presentation, complete cue cards and rehearse my speech to last approx. 10 minutes. Tough much?