Jarmans Garden

I've recently listened to Jarman's Garden produced by Sherre DeLys, it is a piece about the late Derrek Jarman who built a beatiful garden in the last years of his life. the piece is very calming and relaxing, it explores the atmosphere of the village in which jarman lived as well as the garden itself. silence is used to show the that there is a change of location which works very well as it also shows passage of time. the soft sounds that can be heard throughout strengthens the calming atmosphere. Personally i do not like the piece, even though i think the devices it uses work well it's not the type of thing i'd choose to listen to. in my opinion the last 5 minutes of the piece are the most effective. even though it is simply the sound of the ocean on the beach. it emphasises how peaceful it was there.

shots and equipment list

 We finally wrote out a shot and equipment list. these were basically to do exactly what their name intends, a list to make sure we had remembered everything for the day and so as not to forget anything. We had originally planned on me taking my climbing harness and a rope to strap myself high in a tree to get the high angle shots of the forest. however this didn't happen because we could not find a rope that would support my weight (that we could afford.) 

Storyboard

The next step was storyboarding, for this we drew out the main shots we thought we might need, and decided to get a few different versions of every shot as to add variety. we start with a title and moved on to an establishing shot of tree's or a forest (this would show immediately what the theme was) we then moved on to many different shots such as high angle shots, pans, tilts etc.. we tried to add as much variety as we could think of. this storyboard made the filming stage a lot easier.

tree's representing emotion - mind-map

We next decided to mind-map our chosen theme (tree's representing emotion) for example the different things that we might see on screen that can trigger emotions or may resemble emotions or mean different things e.g. lighting, space between tree's, camera angle, distance from camera etc.. We did this so that when it came to story boarding we would have a very clear idea of what we needed to include.

Ideas

After the mind-map, we discussed some ideas that we believed as a group were "do-able" or "achievable". we listed these ideas and what would need to be seen to portray what we wanted to show.
the four main ideas we came up with were: Physical representation of the contrast between open and enclosed spaces, tree's representing emotion, emotional journey represented in a physical way, decay of nature.
out of these we thought that "tree's representing emotion" would be the best idea, We discussed what type of tree's would represent which emotions such as: Upright and Straight = happy, strong and proud, groups of tree's close together = frustrated, entrapped and angry.

Mindmap

We were set the task of creating a 3 minute long video, the project was called "portrait of place". we had to work in pairs. i worked with Luke Parker and Brendan Harper (there was an odd number of people so we worked as a three.) we started by getting together and mind-mapping everything that came to mind when talking about "place" the things we though of included: physical place, walls, buildings, trees, mental place, sadness, happiness etc. we did this so we could gain a better understanding of what our options were.

Editing Exercise

In class yesterday we did a quick editing tutorial, we were given the task of editing together some shots of Aikido, this is what me and luke came up with... hope you like.

Realism???

After todays lecture on 'Realism', i have some ... thoughts. although i understand the point of realism, i can't really agree with it 100%.. and I'll tell you why. The whole aspect of realism is to "represent reality within a film", but who is to say exactly what reality is? because reality is within the eyes of the beholder, everyone perceives reality in a different way. for example, someone with a "mental disorder" such as Alzheimer's or anxiety disorders or Psychotic disorders involving hallucinations, drug addicts, alcoholics i could go on and on and on, my point is that these people obviously see reality differently than say you and me, who's to say that you and me don't see reality different. because if you think about it... could people having separate opinions technically be classed as seeing reality differently? or even someone not being affected by the cold as much as the person next to them is someone seeing reality differently than someone else. So really if you think about it, isn't a realist film... or a film representing reality, really just seeing reality as the filmmaker see's it??

Salaryman - Jake Knight

Another film i watched today, this film really hit home with me, and I'll explain why at the end.
basic blurb - A Japanese man wakes up to find he has lost his memory of the past few days, so he rigs his camera to automatically take pictures throughout his day. 4 days later he reviews his pictures to find that everyday is exactly the same and he is living a completely repetitive life.
This film was very effective in the way it used it's shots. sticking mainly to wide shots to show the emptiness of the rooms around the main character. all the walls were bare and plain white, there was such a lack of identity within the character and spaces that he was a part of. there was no music and very little sound used in this film apart from a voice over, which exaggerates the lack of excitement in this mans life.
When his photos are developed, and he discovers what he does during the day. the question is posed, did he really lose his memory or was it simply that his days are exactly the same so he doesn't think he can remember, but actually he can?
the reason this film "hit home" for me, was because one of my biggest worries is that I'll end up having a life like this, no excitement, no creativity, no anything. could you imagine that?

Highrise - Gabrielle Russell

Watched High-rise by Gabrielle Russell, it's a very interesting short film. First impressions I'd say the film theme is poverty and desperation. It shows a mother and her baby living in a small claustrophobic space. from the very start the expressions of the mother show resentment towards her baby as she watches a game show on the tv, a connection can be made between the two here, the mother feels as though the baby is holding her back in life and because of this she resents her responsibility.
In the next few minutes the Gurgling sounds of the baby and the sounds from the tv get louder and louder, at the same time the shots get closer and closer towards the womans face - this is probably to represent her annoyance at the situation and also to show her confusion with everything thats going on around her. eventually the baby throws its doll, that lands on the sill of an open window. when the baby moves toward the window to retrieve the doll the mother does nothing at first. then she suddenly moves, falling to the floor and knocking over the babies milk bottle. for a moment the shot is focused on the milk bottle as it slowly drips milk to the floor. i believe there is something in this shot that is extremely relevant to the story, maybe the milk bottle represents the mother in some way, i have not managed to work it out. Then in the most shocking part of the film the mother gets up and leaves the room. shutting the door behind her she waits in the hall. i think this is the part of the film that would get the biggest emotional response from an audience - and the response would be disbelief that a mother would put her baby in that much danger. This is the point that shows desperation, the mother is so desperate, for either money or just a way out that she is willing to let her child die!! everything goes quiet, then a babies scream is heard and the mother rushes back inside the room to find her baby on the sofa playing with a different toy (emotional response - relief). the mother moves to the window and looks out to see the doll smashed on the pavement below, this shot simply represents the severity of the situation and the real danger the baby was in.
I found this film extremely powerful, in the way it uses shots and sound to convey emotion. the game show represents her longing and her poverty. it was definitely successful in extracting an emotional response from the audience.