Home Grown Cinema: Shifty

Synopsis: Shifty is a fast pace film of the urban genre, about two friends who grew up on the outskirts of London. Years later shiftys life had changed dramatically now a crack cocaine dealer trying to survive, out smart rival dealers and eventually change. Chris, Shiftys childhood friend returns home years later, finally facing the mess he left behind. It's the most action packed 24hours of their lives.

The effects of sound on the moving image, to create 'meaning' through sound design

"Sound has a great power but is a conditional power. I places the image in a physical and emotional context, helping us to decide how to take image and how it integrates  itself into everything else".- Walter murch

Diegetic- narative, sound from within the scene. Non- diegetic- music to tell emotion, sound outside the scene.

Meeting Jeremy Thomas

Fortunately due to my wonderful teachers , I was given the amazing opportunity to meet, the very famous, proud to mention British film producer Jeremy Thomas! Some of the films he as produces are as follows: The Last Emperor (1987), Sexy Beast (2000), Rabbit Proof Fence (2002) and The dreamers (2003).
 Son of Gerald Thomas, so he grew up in the film industry which soon became his passion. Given a start in life, he was a rebel at school and dedicated all of his time towards film and making them. He was a very determined young boy who climbed his way to the top. He had won an Oscar for The Last Emperor, in total the film wining nine! It is a remarkable achievement one which everyone passionate about film making can only dream of!
 Listening to him speak was intriguing, simultaneously inspiring, you could almost feel his passion for films. He seemed very understanding towards being young and interested in film, he was down to earth, naturally poetic and as he said through his years of experience he was full of helpful quotes, he compared life to a journey in an air craft -" The plane takes off, you travel through the clouds where much doesn't seem clear, then finally you get through the clouds, and everything becomes clear again".Another quote he sheared with us speaking of life was as follows- "You drop a leaf into a river, and it (you) drift down the river meeting obstructions (and people) along the way".

The production chain

1. The pitch, finding someone to give money for the film.
2. Development, film scripts putting ideas together
3. Principal photography, filming, first day on set
4. Post-production, editing colouring etc
5. Sales agent, finds distributers
6. Distribution, the people who find exibeters- exaple: universal.
7. Exhibition, cinemas

Examining how light can be used to express meaning.

 " Light is everting. It expressses ideology, emotion, colour, depth, style. I can efface, narrate, describe. With lighting, the ugliest face, the most idiotic expression can radiate with beauty or intelligence." - Frederico Fellini, Director.

Today we were taight in depth about, reading lights. What we can tell from a scence by the use of lights. Light is used for the representation of ideology etc. Certain lighting aluminates the meaning of the scene and sets a particular tone, to help the audience understand the narrative of the film.

We also breifly touched upon a Feminist film theorist, Laura Mulvey.

Edgar Allen Poe

Stimuli for a horror, Poetry. This poem is a poem, about his beloved young wife who had been ill for a long time, and who had finally died from TB. The poem had clear emotion as this subject was the cause of Poe's depression and his heavy drink and drug problem, also his obsession with tainted love as he yearned for somebody to love and look after him. I beleive this would make a good starting point for a horror film!

In the greenest of our valleys
   By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace-
   Radiant palace- reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion-
   It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
   Over fabric half so fair!
Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
   On its roof did float and flow,
(This- all this- was in the olden
   Time long ago,)
And every gentle air that dallied,
   In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
   A winged odor went away.

Wanderers in that happy valley,
   Through two luminous windows, saw
Spirits moving musically,
   To a lute's well-tuned law,
Round about a throne where, sitting
   (Porphyrogene!)
In state his glory well-befitting,
   The ruler of the realm was seen.

And all with pearl and ruby glowing
   Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
   And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty
   Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
   The wit and wisdom of their king.

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
   Assailed the monarch's high estate.
(Ah, let us mourn!- for never morrow
   Shall dawn upon him desolate!)
And round about his home the glory
   That blushed and bloomed,
Is but a dim-remembered story
   Of the old time entombed.

And travellers, now, within that valley,
   Through the red-litten windows see
Vast forms, that move fantastically
   To a discordant melody,
While, like a ghastly rapid river,
   Through the pale door
A hideous throng rush out forever
   And laugh- but smile no more.

Méliès

The first director, also the accidental creator of film trickery. A trip to the moon, his masterpeice.

A Trip to the Moon / Le Voyage dans la lune - 1902

Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (The Lumière Brothers, 1895)

Moonrise (Frank Borzage, 1948) Opening Scene

Using the opening scenes of the film, I am starting to get a better knowledge of how to create a successful opening to a horror film. What makes this successful is the music, it sets the tone alongside with the darkness of the shots. In the scene the men are walking slow, immediately this creates a suspense. The pathetic fallacy also gives us a clear indication of what the film is going to be about. The baby crying in the opening scenes also tells us perhaps he can sense something, like naturally if a dog barks we know somethings up. These are somethings I can think about when starting to plan my film. The use of shadows in the film are very effective, there is always somethings scary about shadows, they are dark, mysterious. Sometimes in life if we see a shadow, we might skip a heart beat this I also will take into consideration when making my film. In the 1:53rd minute of the film, the happy upbeat music juxtaposes the scary music played just before, this heightens the mood set. I believe this is a very successful opening. (NOTES ON THE FIRST TWO MINUTES OF THIS CLIP).

An Illustrated History of Horror and Science Fiction Films

 I am currently reading this book, as i have decided that i would like to base my end product on horror, I am Reading it to get a little bit of background knowledge on horror films, also I enjoy reading and found this book in my living room. It will be an educational and fun pass time.

My first media lesson with Mr. Hady

In my first lesson with Mr. Hady he summarised, what we would be doing for the rest of the year. The aim of the lesson was to outline, the coursework aspect of the module. We will be working in groups of four, to create the opening two minuets of a feature film. The genre will of our choice, however within group (not the group i shall be working in) we unanimously decided the genre of choice would be, horror. We came to this decision for a number of reasons, firstly Mr.Hady informed us, that it would be the easier choice; secondly our creative juices were flowing already.
  Towards the end of the lesson, we were shown two end products of last years AS class. The first one made absolutely no sense, the scenes didn't seem to fit, the sounds added had no connection to what was actually happening in the scene. The sound of the actors speaking was crackly and, fuzzy as if they hadn't made any sound checks. Little was good about the product.
 The second video shown was much better, the colour of the film was black and white, and the scenes made sense. The music in the background set a particular tone, it indicates the the audience already that it was a horror. Personally my favourite  bit was when the actor looked at his watch, then it cut into a shot of his watch. Overall it was put together with thought and, above all  teamwork, and it was clear. They achieved what they were aiming for.
  It was a short but productive lesson, now i have a clear idea and a better understanding; of what i should be aiming for, also what i should not be aiming for.

The Acid House Trailer 1998

Also a trailer to the film The Acid House. Although i do think its a good film, its full of dark humour simillar to the humour in Trainspotting (both books share the same authour, Ervine Welsh). Typically the trailer makes the film look much better than it is. I am curently reading The Acid House by Ervine Welsh, the film is a brilliant portrayal of the book!

Human Traffic (1999) trailer

Today for home work, i had to write about a trailer of a film i have seen. It was a fun bit of homework and, reminded me, how much i actually love the flim HUMAN TRAFFIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Heres a link to the trailer...

My first post

Today in media studies i learnt how to create a blog, evidently. Also i learned how to follow people on blogger, what makes an interesting blog and, what makes it boring. At the moment my blog is pretty plain however, i am going to keep a record of my progress. I learned about the blog world because, until this day, i still didn't know, what a blog was! I know UNHEARD OF, I'm a little behind on social networking. Facebook is about as far as I go and, until now, was all i was interested in. If you think that's bad you should see my phone, technology in its simplest from! (to be continued)