Character A to B development

I have this idea of shooting two characters, again one female and one male. I like the dynamics between one female and one male better as opposed to a coalition of characters of the same sex. I have a pretty simple idea for a story line. It’s basic in the way that it’s a typical problem that happens frequently to people our age. I feel like this is a common scenario and will be easy to find in terms of shooting. It’s a Friday or Saturday night. The two characters, lets call them boy and girl, have just received news of this huge party that is going on later in the night. I want to have boy and girl go through a variety of obstacles before they finally reach the party in the end. I have in mind that I want the resolution of the party scene to look like what is shown in the snapshot above. I want to film a car from a cropped angle and have a bunch of people filter in and out of it so that it seems like there are a million people getting out of this one little bitty car. When I think party I think lights, drinks, cell phones out, hipster clothing, lots of drinking, etc. I want to capture this on film so the setting seems appropriate. I think the obstacles the two characters will encounter can be fairly basic. The girl wakes up Saturday morning and spends all day trying to find the right outfit, informing her friends to attend. The boy wakes up and finds out he has no money. He spends all day mowing the yard and making coffee at a local cafe to earn money. Then he spends the rest of the evening finding and buying alcohol, whatever, something like that etc. The end everyone toasts and has a ball. Its will be a good night.

Extra Credit-Russian Ark

Russian Ark- A film by Alexander Sokurov

If you have not seen this movie, it is a must. I was completely blown away by this, I have never seen anything quite like it. It ran for 90 minutes and was recorded with a hand held steady cam. The entire movie was shot IN ONE TAKE and had a cast of over 2000 extras. I was also surprised to find out that this movie was shot in 2001. I thought it would be older, maybe that's because of the time period that they were referenceing, but I'm not quite sure what that time was either. The costumes and imagery were stunning. The film was shot in 33 rooms at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia and after 4 takes, the shot was a success.

    In the film we follow around  an unnamed narraor that is behind the camera who implies that he has died in some horrible accident and is a ghost drifting through the palace. In each room, he encounters various real and fictional people from various time periods in the city's three-hundred-year history. He is accompanied by the Marquid de Custine who represents the nineteenth-century traveller  who visited Russia in 1839 and wrote a widely-read book about his visit.

In the end, the narrator leaves the building through a side exit. The building is represented as an ark preserving Russian culture, and floating in the sea.

Critique

COVERAGE! COVERAGE! COVERAGE!

There were a few problems with my edit. First off, I need a tighter edit; the sequence was too long, it ran over 4 minutes. Also, I need way more close ups. The entire "film" was shot at awkward angles, some of the props/objects have more of a close up than the talent. I was also right about taking the whole first shot from outside completely out. It would be better just to leave the sequence as a collage of images, almost like a process, as in Ameli'e. I also need to consider my framing better and move more with the camera, while changing up the perspectives from first to second person. I need to plan where I place the camera in advance, and pay attention to the edges. Lastly, there is no ending.

Where the Wild Thingz are & Christian Joy-Los Angeles

In honor of Where the Wild Things Are, Christian Joy—most well-known as the designer behind the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O's crazy costumes—created five monster suits based off of the Wild Things and Max. All costumes will be on display and for sale at Space 15 Twenty, with a percentage of the proceeds donated to 826 Valencia.

Here, he gives us the low down on what the costumes are made out of...

"Everyone knows the way Max looks like, and I wanted to stay within the realm of what a kid's suit would look like. But I also thought that the rest of the Wild Things were already looking like a glam rock band, so I thought he should be a little bit rock n' roll. I found this weird silver fabric, and we made the paws and crown out of Mylar, and then the tail is like a found piece from a fabric store."


Photographed by Clarke Tolton

Janet Koplos

Janet Koplos came to my professional practices class today. Cynthia had us prep some questions for her in advance. In addition, she also gave a lecture last night at our school. This woman is genuinely funny when she speaks, and reminds me of my high school art teacher and BFF, Mary Kay Vangieson. This was funny too because Mrs. Vangieson was at her lecture. Anway, I got a chance to ask Mrs. Koplos some questions. She is a critic for a craft magazine< Art In America. Most of us cringe when we hear the word craft, us art school snobs. But Mrs. Koplos stated that she didnt care to write about some one like Matthew Barney, she "wanted to write about some one who has not been written about". She said that craft is enetering a fascinating, modern, and exciting time right now and the way she views craft is very similar to all other art. She observes it from the 2 dimensional and 3 dimensonal plane. She also stated that the minute craft becomes fashionable and a sell out, she's moving on. Later at her lecture she showed examples from artists that range from every protean part of the world. She gave anecdotes about a Japanese schizophrenic artist she met while in Japan and then it made sense to her why her work was so chaotic. I enjoyed this woman alot, who said she was "tricked into writing about art".

The Memory Project-Retraced

I have to say shooting film takes an exceptional amount of patience and with that a drive to make things interesting and fascinating appear on film, and having inspiration that is to keep you working until you achieve your long term goal. There was a definite problem with my previous concept for the film. Obviously the lack of having access to children....BIG SIGH.............................
HOWEVER,
   I had to come up with a new way to convey my idea, quick. I knew exactly what I wanted to convey with the memory project-it's about nostalgia. I wanted to take memories from my childhood, some thing simple and construct it in a way that's fun to look at and capture on film. My inspiration for the project came from the film Amelie' about Amelie Poulain by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. There is a sequence that Jeunet shoots in the introduction of the film where he takes the little girl that is to portray the later character, and has her do simple, nostalgic, playful things. I.E. peeling glue off your hand, putting rasberries on your fingertips, etc. So I decided to make up for the lack of access to children for my previous memory/dream idea with having my talent recap on some of their favorite games/ activities they enjoyed as a child. My talent that I used were two close friends who did great. They were patient and focused for both days of the shoot. That may have something to do with taking them to dinner and a movie.The first day we shot outside in natural light for an hour and a half total to film a minute of film! I had them playing cards outside and discussing what they were to do for the summer-I wanted to reference time. This establishing shot was to prelude what was to come. One problem I had was the blaring noise cicadas make. I had to balance that sound against the dialog of my subject. Also, I had them playing Egyptian Rat Screw on a glass table. When they slap the cards, the mic picks up a spike. I had to adjust the levels. Afterwords, I treated my talent to a film, the one night premeir of Cigarette Girl per my current internship at Indie Memphis. The tix were a costly 12 bucks a piece for a film that was less exciting than it's meaning. Whatever.
Day two was more intense, we filmed the remainder of the sequence for the 5 minute segment. A works worth of 5 hours. I filmed indoors, in my parents dining room in Germantown. The dining room has glossy wood flooring and it gives it a yellow nuance. All the rooms in the house are white anyway. I took a total of 6 shoots, they are as follows:
1. playing w/ dominos
2. blowing bubble gum
3.  sucking on a spaghetti strand
4. playing with string
5. making shadow puppets on the wall
6. blowing soap bubbles
It can look really shitty when filming indoors if you do not know how to use proper lighting. I did not take time to review the positioning of the lights for set up, I feel that would have saved me some time in pre-production. Instead, I took and hour and a half last Friday night to set up proper lighting. When the talent arrived and I had to change in between shots, that took extra time. My biggest concern is the continuity of the lighting. Shooting in a white room can make things appear flat on camera if you dont know what you're doing. Often times I found myself turning the key light and the fill light up towards the ceiling, other wise they cast glares on my subject. I thinks this was the hardest thing to do on set. I aim to achieve the "Rembrant Patch" for next time.
      I aimed to shoot this five minute film in its entirety. I wanted to shoot as it were to be viewed naturally, before editing, so that I would have as little editing as possible to do for later. I dont want to rely on computer effects as much, although I have to admit it's a pretty fun part.
....Storyboards to follow....-X Leni
***Ellen Rogers Photography***

The character lighting project

We had to make adjustments for our character lighting project. From the beginning, we all wanted to focus on tense/thriller/scary lighting for our character. We decided to meet at Jen's work, via Holland Studio. Jen saved the day on this one. When we got there, two of our bulbs went out from the Lowell Kit. That meant we only had one light to work with. The space was pretty appropriate and we had the convenience of using other random lights we found in the studio. However, these lights were overhead lights and did not serve the same purpose. We were missing a fill light and back light! 

For our first scene, we had our talent walk down a hallway with a bunch of rooms. We used a drawing lamp that we set up in one room and opened the door so light wold flood the hall way. Then we used our  only key light in another door way and aimed it at the hallway. When our talent walked down the hallway, we had her stop at the second doorway (same place the key light was) and she came into focus. At the same time, Jen used a projector/strobe like lamp with a clicker that she clicked so the light would shutter similar to that of a flash on a camera. This was for our long shot. For our medium shot, we illuminated out talent from a dressing room. We had the key light placed in the same room and used the white umbrella to create a soft white balance. We used the drawing lamp as an attempt to replace the fill light and lit up our talent's face from the door way. We also used a reflector to cast interesting lighting effects on our subject. For our last shot, the close up, we placed all the lights we had in a room and filmed from outside in the dark hallway. We had our talent open the door just a crack and let the light flood her face.