That creative spark

So to get up to date with this blog thingy im just gona try and keep writing until my minds drained of all things related to the year of film related things and ideas.

So to kick this off, im going to start talking about thoughts aboput my life after tech which if very close seeing course is finishing this week and me being a third year and all this my last year of my degree which if you think about it, is kinda scary. I mean who wants to be out about in the real world with all that responsibility’s and stuff. It can become very daunting for some people after so many years being institutionalized, with a structure in place telling them what and what not to do. And everything become to uncertain and the fact that human nature is afraid of what they don’t know it can become a lot easier to just stay home and live off the benefit. The fact is its part of human nature to like stable. People don’t like change because change come with uncertainty and staying at home living off the benefit watching tv and playing video games. The only uncertainty is whether you want to play a shoot em up game or a driving game. but maybe us arty and creative people are deffirent. I mean why else would you spend so many hours on creating a painting or film as the creative head of the project if you didn’t want people to see it. The fact is and this might be a controvertial statement but I believe that  people. Especially someone who is creative the one thing we strive for is approval I mean why would I want to spend a few houndred hours on one of my paintings if it were just to be put in the back of the closet. We do it to get approval in the search that we seem wanted and that we have a place in this crazy uncertain world and that with us being here maybe were somehow making this world a tiny bit that much better. So aslong as I can hold onto that creative spark I believe that I wont end up as one of those many student who just wast their many years working on their degree to just sit at home become happy with a very retineius and boring job.

And on that note when I was on a short film up in Tekapo for a while unfortunately me being there allowed me to fall behind in a couple of assignments which led to me failing two paper which I will have to repeat in the first semester of next year so I will not be graduating at the end of this year. On the upt side through working on that job led to me working on a couple of other jobs with a camera AC who’s said to me that as soon as I’m finished with my studies to go up to Queenstown to work with him. The down side for the first we while it will be non-paying which means I have to find a part time job to survive off but on the up side Il be in Queenstown up skilling around professionals who actually know what their doing, and being able to network. The only thing is if I do get in with those guys. It will be hard and a very long procces of climbing up the ranks to become my long time goal of Cinematographer. seing there are already so many people with that role in mind. but it will allow me to experience and learn everything that happens around a proper film set and give me alot of skills. or do I continue with the indie films with the hopes that somehow I get noticed and get one of those career changing moments that all of the famous film industry profeesionals talk about I gues at the end of the day as long as I just do what Im passionate about and follow expressing what allows me to be creative it'l make me happy. and isnt that what this life is all about being happy and felling that your wanted.

Busy busy busy

So this week has been sooooooo! busy for me. ontop of trying to organise my film that I start shooting on the 21st of sept with multiple actors saying yes only to reply with, "sorry but im way to buisy atm", but im having to do the colour grade for "bones of Essimer" becuase the Vissual effects teamneed it to put the CG in the right colour space before their able to do any work. This means im un able to actually properly organise my film.

On the up side I'm enjoying working on the colour grade, becuas its allowing me to first, get more familiar with davinci resolve and what all it's capabilities are, aswell as a way of analysing the cinematography that I did on the Cinematic trailer. through grading the images I have been (in my head) coming up with alternative ways I could have light the scene's, so as the cinematography part is concerned its been a really good way of getting feedback of my cinematography.

not long now

So again its been a while since I have posted anything so here goes. My web series idea that I had come up with Has evolved into a short film. This is predominantly due to the fact that as this is my last year at film school and the aspiration of cinematography when I leave. I am going to use this project as a platform to launch my cinematography career, and as a Web series structure there will be too much story to cover, that consists of a deliberate and thought out reason for the cinematography. In a short film structure, there will be more available time to concetrate on emulating the specific shots that help advance the story.

So In my class we have scheduelled most of the films ad becuase my film consists of alot of vissual effects in the post procces I have decided to best the first that shoots, so my week available of shooting begins on the 21st of sep to the 27th of sep. I have gathered a couple of people in roles that need emmediate attention such as produccer Co-director and 1st AD for help in the pre production stage, such as accuiring locations actors call sheets and budgets. I have yet to confirm my art director but will shortly know if the person in question will be available for the role. Can't belive I start filming in less than 14 days!!!!!!!!

individual project

For the film paper we have to create an individual video project, that can be either, a short film, TV pilot (30 minutes), Three webseries episodes or a documentary. Before deciding on a format,  I was advised by my tutor to take into account my future aspirations within the industry.I decided that with the fact that I hope to go into the cinematography area I'm deciding to share the direction role with another person as co-director, allowing me to be the Director of photography. To showcase my cinematography the short film format is the best option in the fact that the less quantity of on screen time allows  higher quality with more time on set to compose shots.

seven phycopaths

For the short film I decided to pick an idea of a dark comedy about two hit men who kill the wrong man's dog by accident finding themselves out of their depths. as inspiration I looked at edgar wrights work such as Shuan of the dead and Martin McDonagh's film seven phycopaths.during the writing procces I have been struggling in constantly changing the idea back and forth.

48 chaos

so its been a while since my last blog post and have gotten up to heaps of fun things. on the 4th of April I was part of a team called "pretentious artholes" for the 48 hour film fistival, which we got into the Dunedin regional finals. The film was a strange breed in that it was about two stoner's kill their future selfs. this weird idea was helped by the way the competition is set up where within the chaos of the time restriction the film ideas are just mind vomited on to the page without any filtering and overthinking of the narrative, this allows the films that are made for the competition to have a distinctive feel.

this was my third year taking part in the film competition and hopefully not my last. this year was also my first year as the cinematographer which was an interesting test in setting up each shot quickly . this was a good test and practice for a proper shot where theirs no time farting around taking too long to set up each shot. another part of the procces was that becuase our team only consisted of three third years three 1st years and a second year animator, the other two third years roles were 1st AD and Director which meant i was the only one that was able and knew how to set up the lights and camera becuase the first years didnt know how to use the equiptment, so i was having to DOP, gaff, grip and AC. Hving to fill out all these jobs myself, did distract from the cinematography although I find it tricky verbally describing to other people how I want the shot set up which allowed me to have no confusion in what I wanted.
I was also the on line editor, which means I was refining all the cuts and changing out alternative shots for performance wise. the competetion finnished on the sunday evening at 7pm. at 1.30pm I showed the director (Adam Browne) the final edit and he gave the ok to moving on the to sound edit which nedded as much time as possible. when the audio was being ballanced and muci being put in I started onto the colour grade. at 5.10pm the colour grade audio and visual effects were finnished and put together, the film was redered off by 6.20pm and handed in.

speaks a thousand words

They say a picture speaks a thousand words, so with having a script it is now possible to start coming up with a vissual idea for the cinematic, so i have started to gather a sort of mood board in which i collect images that consest of the feeling and emotion that I am trying to capture within a certain character or scene.below are a couple of images from my mood board that do this.

 

Essimer:

 

the harsh brush strokes staand out to me and the contrast between shadow and light. and an overall blue tenge.

 

 

 

 

 

lead girl

I feel that shes is a very innocent character yet has a moster inside waiting to be released.

 

 

Bone Cultests

 

 

Ossiuses right hand man

this character seems like hes lost all that he cared about in life and became a lifeless monster without feeling of any sort.

 

 

Ossius 

 

as inspiration for the lighting im looking at rembrant in how he uses one directional light sources to give the scene or character a certain mood of what their feeling.

Hard decissions

I Just came back from a 8 day shoot up at tekapo. I made some awesome contacts that said they would try to give me a call if anything came up. Which is awesome but, both the people who said this were from two different departments. one of which is in art department and the other in the camera department. as I worked in both departments. This has kinda made me confused about where i want to go within film. after working with professionals in the art dept its opened my eyes to all aspects of it, especially the set building aspect. coming from an arty background as i mentioned in my earlier posts, this bring my painting side of me out after learning sooo much about building and painting sets. although I love cinematography especially the lighting aspect. so the confusion of which three departments to try to get into worry's me in that, I dont know what I want.

After thinking on this for a couple of days Iv came to the conclusion that having the interest in all three departments is a good thing in that they all compliment each other and understanding the theory of the three dept works in my favour to get a better product. So I'm going to stick with Camera, Lighting  and Art department, in that knowing how each three it will allow me to become a better cinematographer.

Oysters Oysters, Oysters everywhere

I watched a stunning 4 minute video about the past, present and future, of motion picture camera, with the evolution of new technologies, allowing otherwise impossible shot without them. But it got me thinking, with all this new technology, is it advancing the quality of filming or is it making it worse and more lazier.
with the invention of sound within movies the cameras had to be silenced from the loud noises that they often made from running the film, this often ment being put into small silent rooms with the camera opperators, which restricted the creativeness of the shots. This made made the cinematography much less interesting and able to use the cinematography to help tell the story. It wasn’t until much later when cameras became more silent and smaller in which allowed cinematographers to play with the shots.

 

And now it’s happening all over again, with lighting. With more and more cameras coming out with a higher native ISO. It’s allowing cinematographers to become lazy again but this time with lighting. The higher ISO cameras means cinematographers use Oyster lighting more and more, instead of using lighting. This is easily found within indie films, with being on a tight budget the DOP’s use more shots without any lighting involved (Oysters), which intern saves more money with working with a small budget. With comprising of mostly oyster shots thes film take on more of a documentary feel. Which unless that is the goal, can compromise the shots from having a “CINEMATIC LOOK”.

Killing baby's

during the week our group pitched ideas for the game cinematic trailer we are creating. While I was listening to these awesome and fantastic worlds and technical aspects that they were coming up with for the video game a clip poped into my head of a cinematography that I look up to Roger deakens, talking about how film has become more product orientated rather than story and content orientated. While thinking about this I noticed how awesome these pitches were set in but that they were lacking in the actual story and how the characters were affected by things, not focusing on writing a character, in making them easily relatable for the player.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zroANjaiZeQ

afer everyone gave tyheir pitches the team had a secret ballet to determine the two ideas that are going to be developed to one idea that well be choosen for the script. It ended up that my idea was one of the two ideas choosen, which im happy about but I realised how hard it was, in that everyone had different ideas for my idea. I understand that it happens all the time with script development and helps evolve the story but I cant stop thinking about the saying “killing some baby's” (in the metaphorical sense sense).

Writing with Light

So the group roles have been decided and I have been given Cinematographer and colourist (the two roles I was hoping for YES!!!!)  But, I’m left thinking. I understand what a cinematographer does in a traditional sense with the medium of film and television but what requires them through a video game and cinematic trailer? So I decided to search about gaming cinematographers and came upon a YouTube video of Eric Monacelli, Cinematographer of uncharted 3 and he says that his aim was to make sure that the gamers “became immersed in that game world” which got me thinking that their essentially exactly the same, in that with both roles, the aim is to “immerse” the gamer/viewer into the world through visuals to tape into their emotions depending on which ones are required for the certain scene.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2muRt__jynU

Through the week (still thinking about the role of cinematographer I decided to watch “cinematography style” in the documentary vittorio storaro appears in the darkness with a lit household bulb placing it in various positions and as he changes the position, he shows how it can also change the feeling and help “tall a story”.  As someone who struggle literately, Mr Storaro says something that catches my attention, he says how by deciding where to put the bulb, you can write with light. This statement forces me to pause and think. Being terrible with words and describing thing verbally I’ve never been good at telling a story, but I have always been interested anything and everything visual and with visual’s it doesn’t matter about being able to tell a story with words because I’m able to tap into the viewer’s emotions with pictures and write a story with them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eobw_x_ky2k

figuring everything out

So I am a Film student curently in my 3rd year of study for my degree. Today with being the first day back for the year. my fellow classmates and I, were told that throuout the year we needed to keep-up a blog (posting each week) that we can write our thoughts and feeling, into as a way of analysing what we have learnt, through the journey of two majour film projects, that we are attempting this year.
The first major project that is being done in the first seimester is a Film trailor to a video game, of which we are creating. our first task was to go away and think about a potential idea that could be turned into a video game. as someone who isnt really a big gamer and no clue of the idea of srtucture within video games and character archs, im deciding to start with analysing what makes a good video game. is it one that is highly addictable and needs a highly refined gaming technique such as "League of Legends" or is it one that anyone without alot of refined technique and able to pick up the game and within ten minutes being a pro, such as angry birds.

In thinking of the plot for the video game i cant help but notice that a majourity of the most popular games are those that are completely different to normal life such as "Halo" where your a futuristic soldier fighting Aliens on other plannets or "Assasins creed" killing high value targets from 500 years ago. plots that in which make me think. are video games a way of exploring a life in which is completly contrast to our normal everyday BORING lives. in thinking about this i realise that as humans we have always had this fascination of imagining our life differently (the grass is greener on the other side). before video games we explored used novels as a way of this. in when reading the novel we vissualized through our imagination living such as a pirate. and when reading the novel imagening us inside that world as that character.

So with a first look of the world the game is taking place, i realize that something which is desireable and eassily able to imagine your self within as a way of separating yourself from the boring day you just had wanting to relax within this game.

Onions.