Documentary Viewing materials:

As one project is done another raises its head, this time it's in the form of a documentary, to be shot in Liverpool. To give us inspiration we've watched some short documentaries of differing styles and subjects:



Depicting life in Kabul, Afghanistan for a group of young skateboard enthusiasts this film is short and simple, showing an activity that many won't think of when talking about Afghanistan making the film feel unique, it uses this to its advantage, using juxtaposition of the fun loving children against a war torn backdrop, with soldiers, military equipment and derelict streets and surprisingly for a documentary it features likable characters that are distinct and grow on the audience. My only complaint is that it often feels too staged, with some of the things shot it is obvious that they couldn't have just done it spontaneously and some planning must have been required.



Telling the story of an aging man who is instantly likable from his first few lines this film made me want to hear more about what he had to say. Although slightly lacking in focus (a broad area is covered but not expanded upon in great detail) it is heart warming to see what happened during this man's life and although the film ends on a bit of a downer he doesn't seem to be too emotionally affected by it. This is a traditionally styled documentary that features composed interviews and no visable or audable off camera input.



Another film with an upbeat vibe to it; a man who holds the record for time spent laughing visits Britain's gloomiest town and tries to lighten the mood. The man tries to show that problems and difficulties can be overcome with laughter as this man has had some unfortunate events happen to him in the past. Although this film is trying to be charming and it makes most of the time it's given (3 minute wonder) I personally found it slightly odd how someone just goes around laughing constantly.

Experimental film: Just about finished.

Well, the experimental film is finally finished and ready to hand in. Overall I would say that this project has been interesting to say the least, working with somebody new and in a genre that is alien to me. However, with the project being of that genre I am unsure of how it will be received and critiqued. I also wish that the film was more technically sound, there is a problem with the aspect ratio due to the fact that the film was shot on two different cameras and an error might have occurred during the importing process (I feel ashamed of this as I think I should be beyond silly technical errors by now).
That being said the production process has provided me with more experience in working with others and I will learn from the mistakes made and critical analysis to make my future films more competent.

Some shots of the editing process:
- Cutting and speeding up the paper shreds to spell "The End" (not the most original idea but interesting none the less)

- Chroma Keying the footage to make the apple stay green while everything else is desaturated (in a similar style to 'Sin City')


After watching the film back again I think there is inadvertently a sort of 1920's silent movie feel to it, with black and white images, some jerky movement and music from that era. I also find it slightly freaky how the music and images seem to sync with each other (in the edit the track seemed to automatically sync with the footage we'd shot).

In terms of what roles we allocated ourselves for the production as mentioned before it was more difficult than I hoped to specialise roles as our group was a man short, that being said I had roles in:
- Camera operating (during day one of filming)
- Writing
- Producing
- Secondary editing (my partner did more than me)
I wish I could have specialised more and will try to do so on the next group project.

Experimental project: Shot list

The above item is the rough shot list that Jordan and myself conceived, so we'd have an idea of what we were going to shoot, as we thought a storyboard would be impractical and difficult to produce when we weren't certain what we were going to film, instead we got a list of ideas for shots we thought would look interesting when editing to change the motion whether it be slow, fast or reversed and worked from there.

We have also listed what editing techniques we could use later down the line in post production.

Influences for Experimental Film

Finding influences for a film that can be about as much or little as you like is more difficult than it sounds, and in the case of this film I have found it increasingly difficult to find influences for our 'motion' based film as the experimental genre to me seems almost alien and I find it hard to draw on films of that genre to influence what I do. That being said I have drawn on several films and in some instances just clips to help the project.



"Man with a Movie Camera" (1921) was revolutionary when it was first released, created by Dziga Vertov the film tells the story of a day in the Soviet Union using seemingly unrelated shots of static objects, people and daily life. At a time where realist filmmakers who believed editing was corrupting and filmmakers pioneering montage were in heated debates about cinema's future. Vertov disliked the idea of a conventional story, instead shooting this film in the style of a newsreel, this early example of Cinéma vérité is the influence for the non-continual editing style that our film has.



Seeing things happen in slow motion has always fascinated me, where something at normal speed may be mundane and something nobody would look twice at, it almost takes on another dimension and becomes interesting to watch (at least for me), whether a slowed down shot is to show an action in great detail, to let the audience marvel at the complex movement or to empathise an emotion slow motion makes almost anything seem like it has a rhythm to it, and make things that in normal motion are too quick or insignificant to register look all the more impressive.

One way of seeing movement that we'll probably never see without the help of editing software are things going in reverse; everything we do has a different look and style when going in reverse; water, smoke, eating and most notably breaking stuff, seeing objects repair themselves or someone throwing up the food in such a way is facsinating and is garenteed to make the audience react.
For example:




Fernand Leger - Ballet mecanique (1924)
Ballet-Mecanique has been the primary experimental influence on our film, as it features non-continual editing, a variety of different shots with the imagary ranging from conventional to just bizarre, the audeince never know what shot's coming next, if it's one they've seen before or whether it'll be a new one.

Garageband test

Recently we were introduced to a sound design software called 'Garageband', which can be used to make MIDI files and foley sound effects either not captured on camera or that need to be recaptured for quality reasons. We were given the task of rescoring one of the scenes we had been provided with, I personally chose a scene from the 2002 remake of 'Solaris' as although space is a soundless vacuum I like it because it can be interpreted in a variety of ways sound wise (such as the ballet music from “2001: A Space Odyssey” or the “Hollywood” interpretation a la “Star Wars”). I opted for a dark, errie and mysterious feel reminiscent of the later scenes in "2001" and in that respect I think it works well, having not seen the film prior (I have since seen the scene in its original form and at the risk of sounding arrogant I think my version is superior, considering what I was given to work with).

06/02/2012: Experimental Film report, teething troubles

Well, with just two weeks to go and several ideas being bounced around I think that my partner and myself (despite not meeting yet and communicating purely over Facebook) have settled on an idea: Making a film composed entirely of still frames or fractions of quick cut film, giving the illusion of a stop motion video. Perhaps experimenting into how a film plays out when there is limited animation between points of interest in a film or just trying out a way of filming which is new to us.

Maybe something like this:


With frames missing or running at a different rate a film can be interesting to watch and will probably be more interesting to try and make.

Also, here's our initial ideas sheet:

Another review: Four Lions.

When a film is set close to home there is automatically a novelty in spotting local areas, this is just one of the elements that makes 'Four Lions' one of the funniest films I have seen in a long time.

Set in Sheffield (or the "Islamic State of Tinsley") the film follows a group of inapt terrorists fighting for Jihad, over the course of the film the group are sent to a Pakistani training camp, plan attacks in several locations and fail miserably at making threatening videos.



These characters, despite their diabolical plans are very likeable and the whitty banter that goes on between them make you sympathize with them and you actually end up ROOTING for the TERRORISTS. Their silly plans for attacks and avoiding detection are accompanies by their occasional use of subtitles when calling eachother explixit names (whilst speaking in their language) which makes for some extremely funny moments.

What makes this film work is that it takes something that many consider a threat to society and not just makes a mock but also makes you care about what happens to them, making it all the more sadder towards the end of the film when they realise what they have to do. The localisation as mentioned prior added to the entertainment value, with Warp Films in charge of production several recognisable locations were featured, from local landmarks to small shops, the characters also speak with Yorkshire accents, again adding to the comedic value.

Four Lions is a fantastic film and a great modern example of satire.