Script Frenzy

It's April and that mean's that it's the month for Script Frenzy. For more information, check it out here.

The main purpose of my advertising of Script Frenzy is because on the site, there are some good guides to writing a script or at least starting. They talk about formatting and I would just like to summarize some tips that they have for screenwriting:

1. Support the Draft: Write and re-write. A draft is a draft, a rough. You can eliminate things you don't like and add things you do.
2. Start Reading Movies: Not just on the screen, but on paper/digital copy as well. Finding scripts of movies you love and look at how the scenes were described and how they were delivered. Read a script that you haven't seen on the screen before and try imaging it in your head.
3. Choose an Idea That Excites You: Not necessarily something you know all about, but something that will get you going and you won't stop thinking about.
4. Plan, Pitch, Previsualize: Decide the flow of your story and recite it to a companion of sort. As you're talking, realize what excites you as you speak about it and then imagine what your script will look like.
5. Get to Know Your Characters: Flesh your characters out and decide how they act in response to their situation, according to their personality. Ask yourself what they wear, how they speak, etc. to make them memorable.
6. A Gazillion-Horsepower Engine?: People would be sitting and watching your film for 2 hours or so. Remember not to dwindle because that isn't a lot of time for you to get your point across and get the important things in.
7. Embrace Change: Change helps create a character and conflict. Does the character change and develop?
8. Action: Write a Blueprint: What is said in the script is going to be interpreted in the visuals or sound of the movie.
9. Dialogue: Listen to people in real life talk and interpret that in your script. In movies, the lines can be snappier and more to the point.

The site goes into more detail about it, but I learned quite a lot from these few tips on screenwriting. It is something that is not easy to achieve, but this is just a start.

Call to Dinner

Recently, I went to the McMaster Museum of Art to the exhibition they have there called 125 & 45: an interrogative spirit. One of the most prominent paintings displayed was "The Call to Dinner" by George Agnew Reid.

The painting consists of oil on canvas. The colours are quite cool and pale, the skin of the woman even had a bit of a greenish tinge. The only colours that stand out amongst the painting are the scarf and the hat, both of them warm colours and much bolder than the rest of the painting. Reid obviously wants our eye to draw to the woman character as the colours contrast so much, but one needs to question why. Is she such a prominent figure? Why is there a lack of other people? If there were people, would she still be the focal point?

The woman is also composite in the foreground of the picture, bringing her closer to the viewer. This shows that she must be important as it brings our attention to her even more. She is searching for something and based off the name of the piece, she is perhaps searching for her children to call them for dinner.

This painting was featured prominently in the art gallery. Not only that, but there is also a large chalice of sorts in the stairs as you are going up to the exhibit and displayed inside, if you go up the stairs high enough, you will be able to see this painting carved inside.

The Danish Poet

Another animation I enjoy. The Danish Poet is by the National Film Board and helped launch Torill Kove's career as an animator and director.

The style of the animation is very simple and reminds me of traditional animation. Kove hand drew it with pencil and paper, scanned it and digitally edited it. It brought forward the theme of the story, of coincidence and retelling the narrator's origin. In my animation class last term, I used a tablet to hand draw my final animation project and found it incredibly tedious. I cannot imagine hand drawing it first, scanning and then digitally editing.

There are little quirks in this 2006 Academy Award winner from the little cows in the back and to the ridiculousness of the main woman growing her hair out to an unrealistic length. The narration added much to the film, something common in film making and with the mere quirks, make it very endearing.

Count the ones you know!

WARNING: Includes violence, swearing, and sexually suggestive material.

Logorama was created by a collective team of French animators. In 2009, it won the Academy Award for best short animated film.

This entire animation is about branding and how much it overwhelms us. There were so many different brands that I either recognized or didn't, and what I liked about this film is the creative use of each brand, whether it is a building, or the dropping of liquid to make 'Nickelodeon.' Although we pass through our day with brands around us, we aren't usually aware. With this video, it shows people that are equally unaware, but to us, it is prevalent.

Something about the animation that took be surprise was how light coloured the film appeared for it's darker and dramatic scenes. This made the brands visual and recognizable. What really made the film stand out was as I mentioned, the use of the brands in their everyday life and the creativity used to put them in unexpected places, like the X-Box logo for the crack in the earth.

Reading Response

What I found interesting was the distribution of a film and creating it. It was interesting to learn that films aren’t the same format the entire way through and parts of it can be quite different from the ones in distribution. Perhaps it’s because in our class, I’ve gotten into the habit of using one particular format for filming and then presenting in the corresponding one as well, so it hasn’t really occurred to me that it was possible. For bigger film projects, I would expect that change the format a bit, but I never thought of changing the format for mine. It also depends on the viewing you want as well, such as HD or not. Also, it never occurred to me that they shot in different formats by how smoothly films usually are in the editing process.

It was interesting to read about the difference between film and video since people often associate one with another. Film doesn't necessarily have to be expensive to get good results and for a larger group, video is best. I'm using a little cassette right now for a small group and I think it's quite good so far. Sometimes though, video has an advantage, especially when I'm the type of person that doesn't stop recording when it's not time to and I waste a lot of film and have a lot to upload and go through.

Something I learned from this book was that slow motion was the only option for shooting. It baffles me as now, we don't need to shoot with slow motion because of how our cameras work. As discussed in the text, they needed to shoot many frames per second because film cameras could only achieve these frame rates. From learning a bit about this, I want to be able to experiment with slow motion as we are so spoiled by the smoothness of film now. Even some cirical slo-mo shots are done in film, as mentioned in the book, which proves that it's still quite effective, in cost and in technique.

The Joy of Books

I've always been a fan of animation. Last term, I took an animation class and enjoyed learning more about it. One of the most meticulous types of animation was stop motion. Stop motion, as I learned, takes such a long time to do, having to pay attention to each and every detail in every shot you take. Although exhausting to do and often annoying to know that your 3 hours of photo taking is equivalent to only one minutes, it was rewarding to see the final results.

This video, the Joy of Books is a stop motion piece that I've admired. I first discovered it in an article in the Toronto Star earlier this year and became quite interested. It takes place in a bookstore called Type Books in Toronto and illustrates an imaginative world after the store closes.

It was produced by Sean Ohlenkamp, an associated creative director at an advertising agency. To help with this project, he recruited students from Mohawk College's creative advertising program.

In the world with computers and eBooks, it was refreshing to see the diversity of movement a real book can have. Through this video, you are in awe about the time and effort (especially since I went through the same thing on a smaller scale) spent on the animation and it made me remember the imagination I often grasp from reading a book.

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.