When using the studio it is extremely important to follow correct health and safety procedures to prevent any damage to yourself and equipment.
When using the studio you need to ensure that all doorways and emergency exits are marked clearly and are not obstructed.
Make sure no food or drink is in the studio at any time. This is to prevent any from being split as it can damage equipment, cause electric shocks or cause a potential slip hazard which could lead to injury to yourself and damage to the equipment if you were to fall onto it.
Make sure all wires are secured neatly away (no lose/hanging wires) as this could lead to tripping over wires, unplugging them, electrocution or even having wires tangle around your neck.
Keep hands away from the bulbs as they get very hot and could cause burns.
Be careful when lifting heavy equipment, always have someone to help you.
Only people that are needed in the studio should be in there, this is due to the studio being a confined area and other not knowing the correct procedures of the studio could cause injury to others or damage to the equipment
For this 4 hour film challenge we had to find/record footage and edit it all together to the beat of a song, so the could be a cut or something happening within the shot on the beat.
The song I chose was Mr. Blue Sky due to it's 4 to the floor beat and how it would juxtapose my footage of people getting hurt.
In total this took 50+ clips to edit into this and they're all unique which made the editing process that bit longer. Personally I feel as this challenge went better than expected as it was just something funny and goofy however I feel as some of the clips could have been a bit tighter with the beat and some critic I got was that there could have been some rhythmic variation throughout my edits.
I used speed ramping from the techniques I learnt to help keep clips in time with the song as well as unlinking audio to the video to have the impact noise at the same time as the impact happened. I had to do this due to the fact light travels faster than sound but having them both at the same time added more impact to the beat.
The brief for this 4 hour film challenge was that we had to use an usual perspective. We came up with two ideas to chose from, an usual perspective on men where would interview woman about the "typical male" and then over exaggerate what they say through acting. Our second idea was to record from the perspective of a pesky wasp that kept following us through out the day/our trip into town.
This idea left us with the freedom of camera angles to be whatever we wanted as wasps are able to fly which let us use a handheld camera and let it be shaky and in obscure angles. During editing I tried to have a fly eye effect on all of the shots but I couldn't find a tutorial but I still wanted the shots to be distorted in a way so I used the warping tools to create a weird effect across the screen that humans wouldn't see naturally. The issue with recording outside were that some shots changed from being over to under exposed to due to moving in and out of the shade on a bright day. I also added a "voice over" to the wasp which was me saying "buzz" in many different tones and lengths which is what many people said had "made the video". During group crit it was said that this could have been improved by adding subtitles to what the wasp was saying and also having a scene where the wasp was bouncing off of a window trying to get outside. But Billy said and I quote "I don't know if this is shit or genius"
The brief we were given for this 4 hour film challenge was that we had to use a door and match on action shots. This could be as simple as someone walking through a door, recording it from two different angles and then matching up the angles in editing to have the person seamlessly walk through the door.
Our initial ideas ranged from someone changing moods every time they walked through a door, to every time they walked through a door they ended up in a different locations. We scrapped these ideas as they would be too time consuming. We finally all agreed on to have someone who has no idea how doors worked as this would be easy to film as well as comedic. When location scouting, we wanted somewhere with a glass door so we could see all angles on the action no matter what side of the door we were on. We also wanted a long corridor for the actors to have a long run up for the door as well as to be able to have a wide range of camera shots and angles to choose from. The idea for it to become a silent film was a happy accident due to the lack of dialogue we could think of for this short film. Although this worked out in editing, during group critic we were told the pass of the editing could have picked up as the film went on just like it would in the short films, they would walk unusually fast because the tapes were sped up which would have helped with our comedic approach.
I was proud of a lot of the camera angles, the rule of thirds and double framing. The only issues discussed within the group critic were that a couple of the match on action shots could have been tightened up a tiny bit more and the intro shots were slightly out of focus. One the I picked up on myself was the framing of when I have the door hit me in the face whilst opening it. The camera should have been aimed down a little lower or zoomed out a bit more as my head was coming of the bottom of the shot.
American New Wave is a term used to refer at least three generations of American filmmakers. First emerged in the 50s in New York. Concerned with realism and a truthful depiction of American society at the time. The second generation is the Hollywood Generation (60s). Influenced by French New Wave. The late 80s and 90s last generation work outside the studio system and openly in debt to Nouvelle Vague and New Hollywood. All three generations wanted to work independently of a studio control and have a belief in cinema as an art rather than mere entertainment. In 1919 four leading figures in American Silent Cinema (Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith) formed United Artists - the first indie studio. Their aim was to better control their own work as well as their futures. After WWII major studio companies had limited power due to The Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers combined with portable cameras lowering in price allowed indie filmmakers to compete with the major companies. Hitchman, S. (2013 http://www.newwavefilm.com/international/american-new-wave-1.shtml) A History of American New Wave Cinema [1] New Hollywood was a movement in filmmaking from the late 1960s through the 1970s The movement started with 'The Graduate" and "Bonnie and Clyde" both released in 1967 They both influenced the future of movie-making These films saw less influence from their production studios and more influence from their directors. New Hollywood resulted in commercially viable pictures that explored previously taboo subjects in innovative new ways. New Hollywood isn't so much a style of filmmaking as it is a movement and a period of time. Saporito, J. (2016 http://screenprism.com/insights/article/the-filmmakers-handbook-what-is-the-new-hollywood-movement) What was the New Hollywood movement? [2] The American New Wave featured films that shocked the sensibilities of studios and audiences alike. The movement ended abruptly and draws skepticism among views today. By 1969, when Easy Rider proved an unlikely hit, the American New Wave could be said to be the dominant force in American filmmaking. the moniker "New Hollywood" suggests how mainstream these eclectic, challenging, and youth-centric films became for the next decade. Incidentally, Roger Ebert's review at the time for the seminal Easy Rider captures much of the movement. Ebert points to three items which characterized films of the American New Wave. Sudden generational disjunction captured in the difference between Henry Fonda's career and Peter Fonda's new film. The reworking of popular genres such as westerns and motorcycle films. Rejection of straightforward storytelling. American New Wave films tend to fixate on character action and scenes with intense thematic resonance. Dialogue frequently feels unnecessary and gives way to scenes of violence and high-speed pursuits as in the case of Easy Rider. Ironically, many of the American New Wave directors became the system they had successfully bucked. Jordan, S. (2018 http://facets.org/blog/exclusive/lists/essentials/the-new-perspectives-in-the-american-new-wave/) The New Perspectives In The American New Wave [3] The 1970s was a cultural revolution in many parts of society. Music, literature, politics, sex, and race were all heavily impacted by during the decade. One area which missed out on the party was film. This was mostly attributed to the structure of the studio system at the time. It is slow to recognize change and even slower in implementing it. Esterkamp, J. (2014 https://medium.com/@jtesterkamp/new-hollywood-why-the-70s-were-the-greatest-decade-in-america-cinema-c42676e2170f) Why The 70's Were The Greatest Decade In American Cinema [4] Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda did not write a full script for the movie and made most of it up as they went along. They didn't hire a crew, but instead picked up hippies at communes across the country, and used friends and passers-by to hold the cameras, and were drunk and stone most of the time. Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Jack Nicholson were actually smoking marijuana on camera. LSD, however, was not actually used during the acid scene, as Fonda has stated. It was one of the first films to make extensive use of previously released musical tracks, rather than a specially written film score. This is common with films now but was quite unusual at the time. Peter Fonda got the idea for Easy Rider after seeing a picture of himself and Bruce Dern on their motorcycles. He got Dennis Hopper (who was planning on quitting the acting business and becoming a teacher at the time) involved when he promised he could direct the film. The cocaine scene was only fake due to the fact they couldn't afford real cocaine. Some of the weird lighting effects in the LSD scene came about because a can of the film was accidentally exposed when it was opened before being developed. Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson were huge fans of Italian Director Michelangelo Antonioni, invited their idol to the first screening of their film. Antonioni was sufficiently impressed to cast Nicholson in his next feature film, "The Passenger" (1975) IMDB (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064276/trivia?ref_=tt_ql_2) Easy Rider (1969) Trivia [5] "the biggest reason to be careful when pointing a camera toward the sun is that the lens of the camera can actually act as a magnifying glass and focus the rays of the sun into a very small area on the shutter of the camera. If left in place long enough, this can burn a hole in the shutter or aperture mechanism of the lens itself" Highton, S. (https://www.vrphotography.com/data/pages/askexperts/basics/pointatsun.html) Ask The VR Photography Experts [6] Taxi Driver was a huge departure from typical Hollywood and exemplified what New Hollywood wanted to achieve in a number of ways. The non-traditional narrative combined with the unique aesthetics of the film truly set it apart from its conventional Hollywood predecessors Disjunctive editing was one of the cinematic practices favored by New Hollywood. In opposition to the traditional continuity editing of Hollywood, disjunctive editing further distanced New Hollywood films from their predecessors and served a number of purposes – from forcing the audience to actively be engaged in the film to disorienting them for artistic, ideological, or psychological purposes The editing used in this scene, as well as the non-diegetic sound of Travis’s voice-over, all disturb and disorient the audience, in addition to mirroring the paranoia and delusions occurring in Travis’s head. Zoons, A. (https://amylaurenzoons.wordpress.com/2013/03/09/how-taxi-driver-defied-traditional-hollywood-and-exemplified-the-new-hollywood/) How Taxi Driver Defied Traditional Hollywood and Exemplified the New Hollywood [7] In her book, Hollywood Renaissance, Diane Jacobs discusses the innovative editing and camerawork present in Taxi Driver, saying: “While the camera’s pacing accelerates as the film progresses, it is as restless as its character’s mind from the very start” (146). [8]
Editing is a key part of moving image, it can set the tone of the genre and set the narrative of the text being able to film scenes out of order and then edit them together to "make sense". Before editing in the 1900s film makers used to have to shoot each scene in the order it would appear in the moving image.
Lev Kuleshov, David Griffiths and Sergei Eisenstein are the main the film makers that experimented with editing techniques that are still used in the editing world today.
L. Kuleshov believes that the construction of a film is vital for it to be successful which is usually done through editing where the way two shots interact with each other matter more than the way two actors interact with each other. The "Kuleshov Effect" is his very own method of film making. This is where through the use of editing an audience can tell how a character is feeling with a close up and a cut to what the character is looking at.
D. Griffiths is known to have created parallel editing. This technique is where there is an alteration of two or more scenes that are happening simultaneously but in different locations. The conclusion of this occasionally ends up with the two parties meeting each other in a single place.
S. Eisenstein believed that montages were a way to create meaning to a scene and also show a progress of time. He was a student of Kuleshov, but they went separate ways due to conflicting opinions.
To edit before, film makers used to have to physically cut the film with a razor blade. This method was massively time consuming but was the only way to do it until 1924. This was when the Moviola invented by Iwan Serrurier was brought into action. This allowed editing within film to become much easier and more precise.
In the 1930s when the Flatbed was invented by Steenbeck and K-E-M (Keller-Elektro-Mechanik) the Moviola became less popular however the Flatbed didn't become mainstream until the 1960s as they were much smaller and easier to use.
Until the 1990s linear editing was the only way to edit moving image using two video tape machines and a video monitor. Non-linear editing computers were introduced in the 90s the first being the CMX-600. Non-linear editing is more widely preferred today over linear editing. Non-linear editing is computer based, you upload footage from a camera into your editing software and you choose how you want to edit from there, the possibilities are endless from cuts, transitions and effects which are all built into the editing software.
When using the studio it is extremely important to follow correct health and safety procedures to prevent any damage to yourself and equipment.
Make sure no food or drink is in the studio at any time. This is to prevent any from being split as it can damage equipment, cause electric shocks or cause a potential slip hazard which could lead to injury to yourself and damage to the equipment if you were to fall onto it.
