Angeline's Paradisiaque Palaise

Archive for May, 2009

He is just not that into you – an excellent plot

He is   just not that into you – an excellent plot

With the hot topic between guys and girls, dating, marriage and relationship.

With smashing words, to make the whole film more sparkling.

And the narrative is very great: it seems simple, but it has five relationships between those characters, and also some characters are related into 2 or 3 relationships, which makes the topic of  guys and girls more complex. Everyone can be interconnected in the   story, that is amazing to watch. They are all trying to read the signs of the opposite sex, and hoping to be the exceptions to the “no-exceptions” rule.

The film starts from a young girl’s curiosity about relationship -thinking about guys’ thoughts. And then several montages come from different perspectives and with different cultural and social backgrounds

But within the same topic: I am sure …he is into you he got crash on you he cares about you , he likes you ….

“Why do we say this to each other?

Is it possible that because that we are too scared, and too hard to decide one obvious truth that scares everyone’s face?”

This is good method to start the story with several questions, which leads audience to find answers from what happens next. And here there is “we” that makes closer to the audience (especially female audience). This movie makes me think of a sentence: “what’s in a name, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet?  “

“If a guy doesn’t call you, he doesn’t want to call you. Always.”

” everything  has its exception , not the rule…the exception is the rule”

“Maybe happy ending is not always about “live happily ever after”. Maybe it’s about freeing yourself up for something better in the future.”

Girls are taught a lot of stuff growing up:
If a guy punches you, he likes you.
Never try to trim your own bangs.
And someday you will meet a wonderful guy and get your very own happy ending.
…and your commitment to each other.
Every movie we see,
every story we’re told…
…implores us to wait for it.
The third act twist:
The unexpected declaration of love.
The exception to the rule.
But sometimes we’re so focused
on finding our happy ending…
…we don’t learn how to read the signs.
How to tell the ones who want us from the ones who don’t.
The ones who will stay from the ones who will leave.
And maybe this happy ending doesn’t include a wonderful guy.
Maybe it’s you…
…on your own…
…picking up the pieces and starting over.
Freeing yourself up for something better in the future.
Maybe the happy ending is just…
…moving on.
Or maybe the happy ending is this:
Knowing that through all the unreturned phone calls and broken hearts…
…through all the blunders and misread signals…
…through all of the pain and embarrassment…
…you never, ever gave up hope.

Analysis on three scenes of my favourite TV series

Before our real shooting day, Paul suggests us to pick one scene of  our favourite drama and  analysis technique methods of it.  I picked Gossip Girl , not only because it is my favourite ( I do love it actually), but also it is similar with the script we gonna film tomorrow. Anyway, Good luck to all the group members!

1.

first part

1st shot: foreground : CU of Chuck: moves from left to right

Then Blair’s voice comes first, then Blair comes(M to MCU)—2nd short  (left to right) connected to the next shot .  3rd shot : Blair’s face to the screen, Chuck opposite as foreground but out of focus

So we can see this scene Blair is the important part , because she is on focus, got more light on her face, sound is louder than Chuck’s (maybe not in tension)

4th and 5th shot are similar with 2nd and 3rd shots, but camera moves towards the characters, which makes audience more into what is happening between them.

6th  and 7th shot : MCU of  B and C, similar with d4th and 5th

8th Blair moves towards to C, movement continues , then cuts to 9th,  quickly cuts to 10th(but at the other side)

……   14th : B”I love you” , CU of B and C. fast cuts to CU of C, at the same time, camera tilts (right?)  up a little bit in a smooth movement. It shows the C’s reactions and he is not like looking down , so means the situation or the inside of the character changes. (15,16 ) 17 th CU of C , out from screen

18 car leaves

19  MCU of B ,looks to the right side

2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh-58mP0o-8

I love the colour of  B’s dresses, also matches with V’s  dress. Both delightful, works with the candle’s light and window’s sunlight.

3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDe2rLhbbF0&NR=1

1st scene: dark exposure, classical cuts for two people’s conversation . depends on the atmosphere.

2nd   strong contrast with the 1st scene: bright dinning scene, lighting on people’s head, hair and background

3rd: I like the position of this conversation scene : lighting is balanced by comparing previous two shots ,  S walks to R ,  camera quickly moves from S to S and R.    And several smart quick cuts follows of two people’s eye lines.

When S comes to D’s room, Camera moves smoothly follows of D’s eyeline : from CU of Dan to the door -→ Door opens, S comes in.

Last shot may be useful for our ending scene shooting :   CU of S and D, cut, outside view of them (shadow, light)  , camera moves away .

we can make our video ourselves

industrial environment and flicker

In this tute, we discussed the industrial and post-industrial influenced on Internet media. So we need to think about how we design the interface. What we need to consider is the economic element. That means how do we make money in this online environment, e.g facebook. Flicker, youtube)

The software system is also valuable. What need to be considered more is to value the social contenet.

Then we learnt how to use flicker. Like set account, and put flickers into our blogs. I can put pictures in flicker, so they automatically come to my blog, it is like my blog talking to the flicker.

The next we need to do next is to produce creativity.

Humour

To build the video awareness, we can make it more clear to think about our

critiques on my manifesto project

The I do not want to talk about is that:

I got my shit mark from the manifesto project.

However the comments I found is very useful:

Here is the the problems and suggestions of my manifesto projects:

1.There is video in the project that has not been compressed, or if compressed not properly. Eg
http://raws.adc.rmit.edu.au/~s3207456/manifesto/angie.media/M1066.MOV which is aqt 30 fps and has a data rate of 1600kbits/s (when around
200-400 is recommended and at max 24 fps). In this example the file is 28MB in size for 2 ¼ minutes.
Screen 2, play video does not pause it. on most screens text is too hard to read, there is not enough contrast between background and text.

http://media.rmit.edu.au/projects/wiki/index.php/CompressingH264

it it the link which teaches us about how to compress the right QuickTime video file. And

2. give the whole thing more space, make the project quite a bit wider.

3.“it is informal and personal” the sense of personal that Sherman describes is not personal in the sense of being about me but personal in that it
comes from an individual’s experience and point of view. Like a blog is a personal form of wrirting, even if you don’t writing something
explicitly personal about yourself in its.

–Actually I disagree. You cannot understand  not means it is not. Maybe because the videos I added is not attractive, but it still can be personal. I just want to suggest the freedom of personal video shooting. Not for the showing the artistic beauty.anyway, I ll re-shoot the videos, because I am not the marker.

4.URL to blip should be a link.

— I know, that was a stupid mistake. I will correct it, and will be aware of this in my future project—check carefully before submit.
“

5.While this seems to be a manifesto that is about everyday or everywhere video the propositions don’t say a lot, and there appears to be no additional explanation, commentary or investigation via your blog (which is outrageously thin). If you made works following what you’ve said,what would they have in common? They basically say: shoot whatever you like, whenever, however.”

—I guess it is the my proposition’s problem, which I should refer my ideas clearly.

Notes on Cinematography

Notes on Cinematography:

The Zoom:

Lens angles: distance, and details.

The Iris:  controls the amount of light entering the camera, brightness-can be adjusted via CCUs(camera control units) from the studio control room or OB (outside broadcast) van. -not recommended on the automatic iris

High Speed Shutter: increase the shutter speed, increase the speed of action , which you can capture clearly

Confusing Buttons: high speed shutter and manual iris control

Gain: the gain allows the camera to electronically boost the brightness level of the signal it[s processing.

• Auto focus: do not use when : reflective surfaces; little contrast,;slant way from you ; quite dark

• How to focus: zoom in -→ eyes/mouth-→turn the focus ring until the image is as clear as possible→ zoom out

• Fixing a Back Focus : make certain the subject clear focus→ zoom out all the way and turn the back focus ring until get the sharp picture

• Macro: close-up lens

• Focus on more than 1 subject: refocus on each subject

• Focus emergencies: zoom out immediately and stay in side angle until the person settles down into a new position

• Push-auto focus

• Depth of Field

• Colour temperature

• Filter wheel

• White balance: manual mode→ zoom in on a white care (under the same light as the subject) → hold hold the white balance button down till conleted ; can be creative

• Black balance

• Filters

T=Tripod

F=filter wheel

A=All auto is off

N-Neutral density is off

G-Gain

P-power

A=audio

S.S=shutter speed

F=frame/focus

W=white  balance

E-re-check frame /focus and record

L.L-logging and labeling

task6 : like air

The content is very important to finding the subjects we are going to film. And the parts they need have the same thing between each other (inside meaning or outside shape or colour)  The role of audio is to bring the sound characteristics of the subject, and the video is focused on the visual properties.  All the things have its special characteristics.And online video and audio are more like attracting people to listen to or watch by creating the sense of reality. But narrative is not the only way.

Does the personal equal the confessional?–I think it depends. Sometimes personal works also can cheat our ears or eyes.

Here Adrian reminds us  to read about Vernacular Video.

And rethink of  the distinctions to makes our work worthy, I  think a good work is have to make us learn something or experience new things or feelings.

The projects with a specific theme can be made as being serial. Also the each part can not move apart from others , because they are connected to each other , which makes each of them necessary and meaningful.  And each of them has better impacts in the series rather than being single one.

(Think of how a blog develops a texture, a history, a voice, its own fabric, through time because of the posts that happen, this is because there is more than one post, yet we often don’t approach our use of video or audio online in this way. Why not?)

And this one is a hard one, we have to link our video task to the opinions on blogging.   All the post seems like less power than it works well with other posts, they seems get into a group which has a strong theme, the voice will be much stronger than there is only one post. And now i think it is better for us to use more video and audio to describe something.  because they are along with popular elements and also the way of using them is efficient.

Lenny No2

This is the Lenny 2, which it is the first time I worked with my group members.

During the editing , I found there are  a lot of problems , like the contiuety of the differents shots–the different actions and positions of the actor may be noticed by audience.

task5: like water

In this task, I choose the river of moomba show , the lighting was beautiful. It shows the beauty of water.  And another one is the river in a park, that is nature of water.  And the image of oyster, seafood which related to sea,— a form of water.   The last one is the footage that I filmed after raining.  The road is wet, the texture of water.

This task helps me to learn to think about more related things around one theme.  And pay attention to the quality , patterns  and characters of the content.

Requirements:

The fifth constrained task is to make a video or sound work about water. It can be of water, or the idea of water. Think about a key quality you feel that water has. Use this as a starting point and then make a list of words that you associate with this key quality, or images that you associate with it. Your video is this collection of ideas made visible. It can have edits, but must be:

This task is inspired by the famous Dutch documentary film maker, Joris Ivens, and his film “Regen” (”Rain”) which is a 12 minute silent poetic study of a rain shower (well sort of).

Now, as an example. I might think of water and think of ‘flow’ as a key quality. Then I might quickly list things I associate with flow: wind, traffic, roads, rivers, down the drain, fabric. Then I might use these six simple terms to film a catalogue – several images of traffic, rivers or a creek, water going down a drain, coming out of tap, being poured, fabric in a breeze or slipping over a surface, clouds, leaves blowing.

The object of this is to begin to think and make work that thinks about the relations between parts (the shots and where they should be edited) as not just being about narrative, or driven by what happens to the story, but by certain patterns and qualities in the image itself. The same applies if the work is presented in audio.