Radiolab and NPR Present Words

Our class viewed this a few weeks ago, but I still find this a remarkable video.

There are transitions in each shot, from word to word. But when we watched Graphical Film Editing in class, there were also connections between the visuals as well.

Each shot only lasts a few seconds long, but convey so much and connects to the next. This was cleverly created, and when there seemed to be no connection with the words, there was one with the visuals. An example would be at around the 1 minute mark, there's a man who splits a piece of wood from the word 'break' and the next visual is of a girl doing the splits. It smartly uses the visuals and connections in order to introduce the next word.

Words is such a vague idea of meanings. What made this such an interesting and strong video is the different interpretations of each word that can connect to each other.

2B03 Sound Exercise

In-class sound exercise

Joris Ivens - Regen (1929)

With my recent search of examples of poetic documentaries, I came across Regen by Joris Ivens made in 1929.

Regen is a documentary about the rainfall in Amsterdam as people interact with it before, during and after it. What I do love about this documentary are the angles taken and the variety of different shots. Some of them are interesting to see, especially when you have different angles of the same object or when you see it through the eyes of a viewer inside a bus and you see it as someone peering from under an umbrella Another thing I like about this piece is how the music and the scenes seem to flow together very well. At around 3:07, when the music is different from the first few minutes, the guitar strums seem to match the rain drops falling to the ground. It moves seamlessly as the first three minutes or so, there was the anticipation of rain coming, and when the music change, you could tell that the rain had come.

This documentary has many scenes that don't tell a cohesive story, but at the same time, the theme of showing the rain is the same. This is non-linear and helps me develop an understanding of how non-connecting scenes can create a story. It will be interesting when Lisa and I create our documentary with this type of style in mind as it allows us to open up to the possibilities of different scenes.

6 Types of Documentaries

For our final video project, Lisa and I decided to do a documentary. When researching information about them, I discovered that there were actually 6 types. Examining each one, I found that they were all very interesting and helped us narrow down what type we would like to do.

1. Poetic: appeared in the 1920s, it was against the content and 'grammar' of film editing and preferred images with association and patterns. Films like these are more impressionistic and are more fragmented. More non-linear than modern cinema today. Fairly abstract.
   
2. Expository: speaks directly to the audience, often arguing something and trying to prove their point of view. Rhetorical and sounds 'objective' as it tries to make us view the images a certain way.
3. Observational: like someone who merely observes someone else, this type of documentary observes life with as little intervention as possible. Viewing the human character in ordinary life.
4. Participatory: it appears to me, like the opposite of observational. The filmmaker alters and changes the events happening. We can also see the reactions of those that know that they are being filmed as well.
5. Reflexive: draw attention to the constructiveness of documentaries. How documentaries represent the world and allows the audience to question the authenticity of documentaries.
6. Performative: stress experience and emotional responses. They are personal and might include some poetic elements as well. There might be some hypothetical enactments.

(Source: http://collaborativedocumentary.wordpress.com/6-types-of-documentary/)

With this guide, Lisa and I were able to examine which ones suit our interest and help us develop our purposeful for the class. We chose poetic documentary because we thought it would be interesting to create something abstract, while at the same time, document someone's life and gain a representation of that in film.

Exploring Sound

Part 1:

Location: In my bedroom

Setting: I sit on my chair at my desk where my computer and books are; my bed is on the other side of the room and my doors are closed.

Sounds: humming of my printer, the TV from the next room, family chattering, a ball bouncing, typing on my keyboard

Response: The TV sounds were always heard with the occasional bounce of the ball as my brother is in the room playing. The printer is also a constant sound and the conversations always had a response. I didn’t notice that my printer actually made a sound when it was on because I was so used to hearing it and the keyboard is actually louder than I thought it was when I’m typing. The quality of the keyboard was exceptionally good as I am at a close proximity to the source of the sound. The sounds from the other room were a bit harder to hear because my door was closed and the TV was on, therefore I couldn’t really hear the conversations going on. I realized that a lot of the sounds in my room seems to be from some source of media, whether it is the computer or the TV. A lot of them weren’t very natural except for human voices.

Location: On my porch in the front yard

Setting: The door to my house behind me as I sit on the stone steps; a large tree in my front yard, a sidewalk and street in front of my house

Sounds: rustling grass, snow crunching, wind blowing, some birds, odd scratching on the tree

Response: The wind was constant throughout the entire time, even though it died a few times, it always returned. With that, the rustling from the grass could be heard, but every so often, there’d be a crunch from the snow. This was fairly prominent because it was so out of place because of a squirrel passing by. The quality of the sound was not as good as I was expecting as the wind caused it to be a mediocre quality to a fairly good quality. There are actually a lot more sounds than I expected, especially when the squirrel appeared, which helped create a bit more interesting sounds.

Part 2:

Location: GO bus

Response: Focusing on one conversation at a time helped me hear better and helped me take note of the different nuances in people’s voices as well as their different speech patterns. The loudness of the people helped me to hear clearly into their conversations as well. The higher the pitch of the voice was, the better I could hear the conversation.

What prevented me from hearing was combining the conversations. It became hard to hear which voice came from which conversation and what they were saying as they all merged together. Some voices also overshadowed others because of the proximity of the people to me. This created loudness, muffling out the others. There was much more difficulty hearing the lower voices.

Part 3

A sound that evokes an image:

• Train passing à concert band
• Wind blowing à summer
• Doorbell à school
• Pen clicking à shoes
• Train rumbling à dragon

An image that evokes a sound:

• Tree à cracking
• Soccer post à “ding,” as if hitting metal
• Bridge à river rushing
• Dog running à rustling grass
• Poster of The Lorax à spring-like bounce

A sound that provokes a feeling:

• Glass breaking à fear
• Bell/alarm à pain
• Dropping rain à anticipation
• Sneezing à sluggishness
• Zipper à coldness

A sound that provokes a thought:

• Repetitive, monotone drone – “I’m sleepy.”
• Shovel to the ground à “It’s too cold outside.”
• Yawning à “I hope they brushed their teeth.”
• Humming of computer à “I’m too poor to buy a new one.”
• Cell phone ring à Long distance call

A sound that competes with an image:

• A “Sale” sign and a stampede
• One chicken clucking frantically in a pack of wolves
• Construction zone and crashing
• Screeching and a petrified deer
• Dramatic classical music and a royal entry

A sound that works counter to an image:

• Racing noise and a turtle
• A bomb explosion and a flowery field
• Fast-paced rock music and a couple doing waltz
• Paper crunching and someone planting a tree
• A ball bouncing and a cat sleeping

The easiest to find was an image that evokes a sound. It was the easiest probably because I always hear a sound with an object/image. Often, I would also know what kind of sounds they make as well, or if I don’t know what the sound is, the colours, shapes and context of the image gives me an impression of what it should be like, given the details it gives me.

The hardest to find was a sound that competes with an image. This is because I don’t usually think that sound and images compete; I think they work cohesively together to create the final product. It was also hard because it was difficult to determine how a sound can compete with an image as depending on how you interpret it, they can usually work together fairly well.

Nobody Loves a Penny

The second assignment, creating a narrative with 5-6 shots. It was really difficult.

Assignment 2 Reflection

The other day, my partner for our second assignment for my video class, Lisa and I shot our narrative. The catch with this project was that we had to attempt each shot once on our tape. This turned to be incredibly difficult and time-consuming as we had to make each shot perfect, therefore, we had to plan each and everything before. This was part of pre-production.

I never realized how difficult it was to do the pre-production part of film making. We created a storyboard yes, but by the end of it, we had to get much of the lighting correct and in developing our skills, we had to make sure everything was on purpose, which was a lot to consider. I have found online a pre-production checklist that I wish I found before that would've helped me with this and would be helpful to anyone else: here. The list is as follows:

1. Make a Production Schedule: making notes on when to shoot and taking notes on the way and planning carefully on when to edit and such
   
2. Crew up: make sure you have all the crew members you need for this
3. Visualize your project's "look": the mood, tone and colours of your piece
4. Find and secure locations: make sure you have access to the location you want to use, especially on the day of your shooting
5. Casting: age-appropriate and decent actors (as I learned during our first project) makes your grade go up
6. Production Design: theme, props, set, etc. that have to be taken into consideration
7. Prepare costumes, props and set
8. Developing/shooting the script: the POV, what you want to establish, your "super-objective"
9. Floor plan/lighting plot for each location: this was IDEAL for our shoot. Franci mentioned in class that we should make a floor plan and she is very much right about it! It was so important for us to know exactly where the lights were placed and conscious of what can be moved and what cannot.
10. Make a storyboard: I can't go into a shoot without having one!
11. Make a Shooting Schedule: similar to the Production Schedule, but the actual shoot!

Having a list like this was vital and I will be making use of such in the future. Especially when you have such a short deadline, this is very helpful. Time is of the essence and in order for me to do my best, I need to organize my time and plan out each of the things on that checklist in order to be successful.

Establishing a Character

Just adding to my objection with Mamet saying that establishing a character isn't as important, I think this advertisement from Coca Cola proves the opposite.

What I like about this ad that made it successful (in my eyes at least) is the characterization. There are two others, but I wanted to use one that used the puns to make it humorous. Each character, the Eye, the Tongues and the Brain are given a character based on what they are -- the Eye can easily spot that the Coca Cola Zero is not actually the original and the Tongues taste it and can't read the label, indicating that it is the same. The Brain comes in with the humorous, "You're giving me a headache." which fits it's character very well. The characterization is important for the Brain because it gave threats to the Eye and the Tongues because it is in control, like our brains are typically in control of us.

I feel that something like this would help with scriptwriting as we reach to the stage of developing our narrative video in a short amount of time. For me, character and plot has always been important, even in film. What was so successful about this is that they were able to establish such in a short amount of time, less than the maximum our second assignment is supposed to be. This makes me wonder how I can make my video effect with a developed characters (or character). With this ad, they used a literal representation to get their message across along with things only those literal objects (Eye, Tongues, and Brain) can do.

Reading Response 3

A superobjective is what the objective of the main character is. Mamet tries to explain this by giving a situation and asking others to think of a scene for it. In the case of On Directing Film, it is a student trying to earn the respect of a teacher. That is the superobjective and the concept of the scene. Establishing the character does help the superobjective, as the character is what is of pursuit of the superobjective, but it doesn’t need to be established all the time. As long as the protagonist wants something, the audience will want it as well.

By ‘cutting’ in different parts of a film, typically changing shots, the film can create a sense and climax to the audience. The example used by Mamet is the House of Games when there are two guys fighting over a gun. The next shot, or cut, is of professor looking on with the gunshot in the background. We don’t actually see the two characters fighting and the hot, but it is implied what happens through the eyes of the professor. This gave the sense of helplessness to the audience as they watched on while something major happened.

In the section “Where Do You Put the Camera?,” they came up with a variety of shots for one main concept. Each one of those shots was trying to convey the same meaning, but at the same time, there were many that portrayed different meanings when they proceeded along. I realized that you have to be careful when planning your shots because of how many different meanings you can take from one scene.

The concept of clichés popped up in the reading as well, especially using the clock to indicate earliness and time. Clichés have been used many times in the film industry and are a lot of times, unavoidable. Mamet mentions that you shouldn’t shy away from clichés, but try to make it better. I agree with this, but then again, it would be hard to determine what is ‘better’ considering clichés have been around us for so long and used many times.

What struck me the most in the reading was on page 24, when Mamet says that narrative weakens the film. I actually disagree with that, along with how he said that you don’t really need to establish the character. What keeps me paying attention to a film is the narrative and how well the characters develop through that narrative. I feel that it’s an essential part of creating art work, especially if you intend to have some sort of storyline. If you do not have a decent storyline or a character that can grow, there’s not much you can do with the film and, in my opinion, it can turn out to be a boring and maybe even cliché.

Source: David Mamet's On Directing Film