Synopsis.

I plan to do a music video. The song i am using is 'Lily, Rosemary and The Jack of Hearts'. I chose it because of its strong narrative line.

It will all be shot in black and white, possibly with a scratchy-style effect too. I have decided to set around the 1920's in a cabaret theatre.

In the story there are four main characters:

Lily - the attractive, popular, Cabaret girl who is married to Big Jim. she is described in the song as a 'princess, fair skinned and precious as a child'

Big Jim - the richest man in town. described with 'body guards, silver cane and every hair in place'.

Rosemary - A mysterious, member of the cabaret, who is quite unpredictable and in the song it says she 'She had done a lot of bad things, even once tried suicide"

The Jack of Hearts - A criminal who travels around and visits the cabaret on occasion to have affairs with Lily. He is a smooth character and quite mysterious

Gantt

The Chart that freaks me out.

Statement of Intentions.

The aim of my project was to create a music video. I wanted to make one with a strong narrative and well-developed characters.

I had to chose a song with a narrative and ideally one that I could play myself so as to avoid using one track of sound that I hadn’t edited at all. I had the idea of:

‘Minnie the Moocher’ – Cab Calloway – Strong narrative, good characters and good atmosphere, but I couldn’t play it myself.

‘Postcards From Italy’ – Beirut – Easily played and recorded by me and good atmosphere but vague narrative and characters.

‘Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts’ – Bob Dylan – Very strong narrative and highly developed characters. Also it was feasible to play and record myself.

Understandably I have stuck with the latter option. I then studied various Director/Filmmakers to explore different styles of film and the conventions of music videos. I liked Charlie Chaplin and decided the i will put a black and white, old-style quality to my video. I liked how, with the absence of sound, expressions of characters and visual atmosphere can be heightened to great effect. This made me want to put emphasis on the expressions and appearance of the characters, as well as the mise-en-scene and atmosphere of set in my video.
Watching some music videos by Johnathan Vardi (jonathanvardi.com) I liked the scratchy quality he uses in most of them, especially in his video of ‘Somedays’ by Regina Spektor. I think to have black and white and scratchy effects on the screen will give a real atmosphere of old film. Since the mise-en-scene will be themed around 1920's america the old effect will reinforce this idea. I have decided to add to this even more with an idea from Johnny Cash’s video ‘Personal Jesus’ which uses blurred or ‘soft’ edges. This made the old-style effect even better. These soft edges should narrow the audience's field of vision and will hopefully focus their attention on the central action of the shot. The scratchy effect, black and white quality and soft edges combined will hopefully unite to create a vision that is quite hard to make out, mirroring the ambiguity of the song.

Another big influence is the short film ‘The Forgotten Circus’ by Shelly Love. The big influence of this was the mise-en-scene. I love the carnivalesque atmosphere, costumes, set and theme and as my video is to be set in 1910’s/20’s cabaret/music hall. I think I will incorporate this into it. I have a scene in my video now that takes place backstage in a dressing room and it will be heavily influenced by the costumes and characters in shelly love’s ‘The Forgotten Circus’. What i liked about the costumes when i watched this film was their flamboyance. I felt they give a great atmosphere of drama and theatre. I will use many aspects of the make-up too which is all highly exaggerated. I think these make-up effects (e.g. totally white faces) give the performing vibe too.

I have decided to combine these old-style effects and this atmosphere with a conventional music video edit style (cuts in sync with the beat of the music, lines relating to lyrics). I want this to make it different and hopefully unique.

Doing my Production exercise was very useful because it allowed me to try out the lighting and other practicalities. It helped me to sync the sound with the beat of the music which will be a necessity when it comes to the real thing. I also got a taste of directing which I think I will warm to.
I will storyboard every shot in the video rather than just the keyframes because this will make filming a lot easier.

I will record my own version of the song and put into Soundtrack Pro, this way I will use multiple tracks.

I also had another idea from the video ‘Beat It’ by Michael Jackson. In the video, the music doesn’t start for about 20 seconds. During this time there is a little bit of live action of two men walking out of a bar. I liked the idea of not starting the music video immediately but having a short passage of live action that leads into it. I also had the idea of doing the same at the end of the video. I think I will have footage of some people putting on a film on a projector – the music video, and after it has ended, them laughing about it and talking. I think this will be good as it will give my music video a context.

Casablanca

Casablanca

Mise-en-scene

The Mise-en-scene in Casablanca is fairly Realist. the costumes, set and props are all realistic for the time in which it was set (World War II). The only formalist aspect of the mise-en-scene is the reoccurring theme of stripes, which appears in mise-en-scene (the clothes of the characters) as well as in chiaroscuro.

Lighting

The lighting is quite formalist in that is fairly chiaroscuro. There are lots of carefully placed light/shadow stripes the fall across the bodies and faces of characters during scenes.

I see this to symbolise Casablanca as a prison, because although people went to Casablanca to escape, it was also very difficult to get out of. Other than this, the lighting isn't particularly remarkable, although certain character's faces seem to get illuminated more than others, such as ilsa.

Camerawork

There isn't anything particularly formalist about the Camerawork. No fast tracks/zooms or pans or any odd angled shots. In fact the camerawork is pretty straight forward consisting of three main shots: long shot of a room or outside (e.g. the night club or the plane taking off), mid shot of a few characters talking (e.g. Laslo and Blaine doing a deal) and a close up of a character's face (e.g. Ilsa crying).

Editing

There is a fair amount of continuity editing. Although to be honest, this is a convention of Film in general and Hollywood cinema in particular, and because there isn't a particularly large amount of it, this doesn't identify Casablanca as particularly formalist, or more formalist than other Hollywood classics.

Sound

The Sound in the film isn't very formalist. There are no particular sound effects of voiceovers. However, although it is a convention of a feature film having a track of music in the background to a scene is formalist because it's not something that you get in real life. Especially not the kind of dramatic orchestral stabs that are used in Casablanca at points of tension. There isn't anything formalist about the speech in the scenes. No repetition of scenes or anything.

Last Year In Marienbad

Features:

Enigmatic - you don't know what's a dream/flashback and what's a reality, you don't know what order the scenes should be in and what's in the past or anything else. Relationships between characters is unclear.

Repetition - Scenes and dialogue/voiceovers repeated several times throughout the film so you don't know when the real event took place.

Sound & Video work against each other (e.g. slow, mysterious pans of hallways in concert with manic organ music)

Sound and video not always correlating - sound continues as video freezes and then resumes.

Influences - the Surrealist Art Movement - moving Surrealism from art to moving image.

The screenplay was written by alan Robbe-Grillet who was a leading figure in the 'Nouveau Roman' movement in french literature. This was an extremely experimental movement focussing on disregard of novel conventions like plot, narrative and characters. This is a very clear influence in the screenplay.

Hollywood Film Golden Age.

Wizard of Oz

Singing in the Rain

Casablanca

Several elements of Classic Hollywood Cinema identify it as conclusively Formalist.
The narrative is formalist in that it comes in small pieces and doesn't stay with one scene or character. This is not like 'reality' and so is seen as a formalist device. 

Use of Continuity Editing is a big factor in the formalism of classic Hollywood cinema.

Eyeline Matches (shot of a character looking at something off screen, followed by a point-of-view style shot of whatever they were looking at.)

Cross-Cutting (when there are cuts between two situations which are happening at the same time in different places but are linked in some way. This creates tension.)

Match-on-Action (when something happens, e.g. a building collapses, and there are several cameras on it, so when it comes to editing you can show the 8 seconds that it took for the building to collapse from several different angles without repeating any footage.)

Directional Continuity (when the camera angle changes, but stays within 180 degrees of the previous angle so it looks like the subject is moving in the same direction as in the previous shot.)

The unlikely happy endings to the plots of classic Hollywood cinema are also formalist because they certainly aren't like 'reality'.

Run Lola Run! I won't say it wasn't fun...

look at editing, camerawork, sound, cinematography/lighting and mis-en-scene.

to what extend is run-lola-run a formalist film?

Run Lola Run! was a formalist film in many ways.

the plot and narrative was formalist because the same series of events happened three times but with different choices and outcomes.

the camerawork is formalist. There are split scenes, which is unrealistic. There is also a part which goes into cartoon which is formalist too.

the editing was very formalist. the way some scenes were repeated exactly the same three times in the film. Also the fact that the film was three stories in one.

At certain points, the editing went into very quick slideshows showing people's future lives, this was totally unconnected to the story and quite abstract and formalist.

the cinematography was formalist in the scene in between deaths.

everything has a red filter on it and it is quite hard to make out what's happening.

the mise-en-scene is pretty naturalistic apart from the fact that alot of things seem to be red. more than would normally be... the bike, the phone, lola's hair.

it is the plot and editing though, that determine Run Lola Run! as a definitively formalist film.

=)

The Miracle of German Expressionism

What are the key features of expressionism?

• large use of symbolism
  
• surrealism used
• artistic but physically unrealistic and absurd sets (due to lack of budget)
• lighting effects achieved by paintings representing light on walls and celling of sets
• themes usually include madness, insanity betrayal and evil

Where can the influence of German Expressionism be seen in film history?

German Expressionism influenced two genres greatly: horror and film noire. But it also has effects on Sci-fi (with films like bladerunner, which has clear influence in its dark atmosphere and style) and even mainstream popular cinema (Batman Returns shows clear German Expressionism in its set – the angular cityscape design of Gotham City)

Great Class Formalist Film. It's Great!

Wow, this is amazing!

the whole class are working together to create a formalist film.

we have each been given a role in the production of the film and are responsible for making that particular area of the film formalist.

These areas include Lighting, Camerawork, Editing and Sound.

i was part of the editing.

to make our part of the film formalist, we decided to play the whole thing backwards, and to put in title's that were difficult to fathom.

we speeded up certain parts and slowed others down. 

it was fantastic.

it made me happy.

What I Did Today!

Today, we worked on our gantt project.

i improved mine by putting tasks into parallel and editing the lengths of the tasks into more realistic lengths.

i did a presentation on my gantt project, where my decisions were questioned by the people whom i was presenting to.

this was helpful, in that it made me think about it from an outsider's, and therefore impartial view.


I Just Love Blogs.

More Than Summer.

Josh's First Great Blog Post.

Blogs are Beautiful things. Don't you just love 'em.