My brother recently showed me this trailer for a documentary two of his friends were planning to make, but unfortunately ran out of funds and had to abandon the project. However, the trailer is still a great example of ways to grab people's attention and make them want to see the film -
Here's their website for some more information, and another longer (but maybe even more intense!) trailer - http://www.siamesecrocodiles.com/
My brother also showed me this pretty cool stop motion animation another mate of his did -
http://www.pebbleandhoof.com/louiemczap/
Good stuff!
Thursday, 15 January 2009
Friday, 9 January 2009
Film Ideas
I've been thinking of some ideas for the second term project, and so far have come up with a few vague starting points. I've been trying to think of ways to achieve the fantastical and outlandish on a student budget, rather than just thinking of a basic story. This may prove to be too ambitious and more of a hindrance, but here are a few ideas (more for my own benefit than anything else) anyway :
- A zombie film! More an urge to fulfill a childhood dream than a fully fledged idea, really. A few props and a little imagination could go a long way here, although there's a always the danger it could just look way too crude and rubbish, haha!
- A sci-fi spoof? Still not entirely sure on this one, but I had an idea that basically involves some guy that plays a role in a TV series like Star Trek or something, with really terrible looking sets and effects, then goes home after getting off the set one day and is abducted by aliens, who then steal his body and go to his place of work and then, erm....do something. With hilarious results. Needs a lot of work if it's gonna be a worthwhile idea, but it'd be fun to film a really poor looking sci-fi show (along the lines of 'Garth Marenghi's Darkplace' or something similar), and then contrast this with more understated, mundane looking 'real-life' aliens. I dunno, I'll give it some thought.
- The use of basic props to convey different time zones or eras, for example 'Planet Of The Apes', a replica of the statue of liberty gives the impression of the absolute desecration and destruction of planet earth. I'm not entirely sure yet how this could be used to my advantage, but it's a good thing to start thinking about. Maybe a film about cavemen would be good fun, or a primitive race in the future finding remnants of our civilization. In fact, how about a film where someone is chryogenically frozen, wakes up in the future, and finds the earth totally devoid of mankind's influence apart from a few select artifacts? I dunno, that's an idea that just popped into my head whilst typing this, haha!
- A film that drifts between someone's conscious and unconscious thoughts, like reality and dreams. To create a dream-like atmosphere wouldn't be too hard to achieve on a small budget. 'The Science Of Sleep' achieves it through the use of stop-motion animation and some fairly elaborate props, but Chris Morris' 'Jam' manages to get a dreamy, delirious feeling simply through editing, relatively simple effects in post-production to manipulate the footage and audio, an ambient soundtrack and the sheer surrealism of the sketches.
I'll keep thinking through ideas, it would be silly to build the plot around an idea for a special effect, but I'm really drawn to the idea and challenge of making something bizaare on a budget. I have a few ideas for simple stories too, but I'm not really too happy with any of these at the moment, so they'll need a bit more thought. I'll post them up on here within the next few days if I can think them into anything relatively solid.
- A zombie film! More an urge to fulfill a childhood dream than a fully fledged idea, really. A few props and a little imagination could go a long way here, although there's a always the danger it could just look way too crude and rubbish, haha!
- A sci-fi spoof? Still not entirely sure on this one, but I had an idea that basically involves some guy that plays a role in a TV series like Star Trek or something, with really terrible looking sets and effects, then goes home after getting off the set one day and is abducted by aliens, who then steal his body and go to his place of work and then, erm....do something. With hilarious results. Needs a lot of work if it's gonna be a worthwhile idea, but it'd be fun to film a really poor looking sci-fi show (along the lines of 'Garth Marenghi's Darkplace' or something similar), and then contrast this with more understated, mundane looking 'real-life' aliens. I dunno, I'll give it some thought.
- The use of basic props to convey different time zones or eras, for example 'Planet Of The Apes', a replica of the statue of liberty gives the impression of the absolute desecration and destruction of planet earth. I'm not entirely sure yet how this could be used to my advantage, but it's a good thing to start thinking about. Maybe a film about cavemen would be good fun, or a primitive race in the future finding remnants of our civilization. In fact, how about a film where someone is chryogenically frozen, wakes up in the future, and finds the earth totally devoid of mankind's influence apart from a few select artifacts? I dunno, that's an idea that just popped into my head whilst typing this, haha!
- A film that drifts between someone's conscious and unconscious thoughts, like reality and dreams. To create a dream-like atmosphere wouldn't be too hard to achieve on a small budget. 'The Science Of Sleep' achieves it through the use of stop-motion animation and some fairly elaborate props, but Chris Morris' 'Jam' manages to get a dreamy, delirious feeling simply through editing, relatively simple effects in post-production to manipulate the footage and audio, an ambient soundtrack and the sheer surrealism of the sketches.
I'll keep thinking through ideas, it would be silly to build the plot around an idea for a special effect, but I'm really drawn to the idea and challenge of making something bizaare on a budget. I have a few ideas for simple stories too, but I'm not really too happy with any of these at the moment, so they'll need a bit more thought. I'll post them up on here within the next few days if I can think them into anything relatively solid.
Friday, 2 January 2009
'The Host'
I saw a really good film the other day called 'The Host', a 2006 Korean monster movie about a bizarre amphibious creature.
The film begins with a member of the American military pouring over 100 bottles of formaldehyde down the drain, which leads to Han River, which is how the creature in question comes to be created. Several years later, the creature runs rampage by the Wonhyo Bridge, capturing a slow witted man named Park Gang-Du's daughter, Hyun-seo. Park believes her to be dead, until he gets a call from her and finds how that somehow, she's survived, and is stuck in the sewers, right in the middle of the monster's lair. However, the Korean government are holding Park for tests, as they believe he's become infected with a virus as he was in direct contact with the monster.
Without giving anything away, 'The Host' has an awesome plot with enough twists, turns, and evil fish monster action to keep you gripped from start to finish. There's a healthy amount of satire and political commentary in there too, with both the US and Korean governments coming under fire. There are also some really funny moments, as pretty much everyone in the film has moments of absolute incompetence, which lends it a slight element of bumbling slapstick occasionally which works really well. Unfortunately, the monster is mainly all CGI, which sometimes looks a little unconvincing (especially when he hops back into water), but still looks better than a lot of CGI creatures and seems to have been designed with the same kind of care and attention a lot of the old puppet/animatronic/some-guy-in-a-suit monsters were created with, so this is a pretty easy thing to look past.
I'd urge you all to give 'The Host' a watch, even if for some strange reason you're not into monster films, as it's a pretty unconventional one!
The film begins with a member of the American military pouring over 100 bottles of formaldehyde down the drain, which leads to Han River, which is how the creature in question comes to be created. Several years later, the creature runs rampage by the Wonhyo Bridge, capturing a slow witted man named Park Gang-Du's daughter, Hyun-seo. Park believes her to be dead, until he gets a call from her and finds how that somehow, she's survived, and is stuck in the sewers, right in the middle of the monster's lair. However, the Korean government are holding Park for tests, as they believe he's become infected with a virus as he was in direct contact with the monster.
Without giving anything away, 'The Host' has an awesome plot with enough twists, turns, and evil fish monster action to keep you gripped from start to finish. There's a healthy amount of satire and political commentary in there too, with both the US and Korean governments coming under fire. There are also some really funny moments, as pretty much everyone in the film has moments of absolute incompetence, which lends it a slight element of bumbling slapstick occasionally which works really well. Unfortunately, the monster is mainly all CGI, which sometimes looks a little unconvincing (especially when he hops back into water), but still looks better than a lot of CGI creatures and seems to have been designed with the same kind of care and attention a lot of the old puppet/animatronic/some-guy-in-a-suit monsters were created with, so this is a pretty easy thing to look past.
I'd urge you all to give 'The Host' a watch, even if for some strange reason you're not into monster films, as it's a pretty unconventional one!
Friday, 12 December 2008
Pre-Production!
Here are some of the documents we used in the pre-production of 'Daddy's In A Band', beginning with our proposal -
Daddy’s In a Band
Proposal 12/11/08
Daddy’s in a band is a four minute documentary following a day in the life of a single father as he juggles the troubles of caring for his young son, whilst also dealing with the stress of becoming successful in his rock band.
The documentary will be set in Raunds, a small town 20 miles from Northampton, where our character Tom Robbins and his 4 year old son Liam live.
Our story will chronologically record an average day for Tom and his son. We will be documenting the highs and lows of their every day lives whilst observing from a ‘fly on the wall’ perspective. We propose to film this documentary on the 19th of November 2008.
Starting in the morning, we will film the routine of getting ready and the walk to school. During the ten minute walk, we will film him talking and joking around with his son, using long shots as well as close up profiles to give the audience both the wide and the finer perspective. The audio will be gentle morning (walking music).
This opening sequence will be used to demonstrate that our story is about an everyday father-and-son so that we can build upon this image as the film progresses – which will later be contrasted by a substantial amount.
In the next sequence we will be following the private time of Tom as he goes about his daily rituals of household chores and composing music. This is the point where we get to know him better through a series of informal questions, finding out about his past and how he came to be in the current situation. We will then learn his hopes and fears as we move on to discuss his views on the present and the future for both himself and Liam.
As he goes about his song writing, we will be finding out details of the band and the contrasting side of his story. This is one of the ways that we are going to build up the overall energy of the film.
We will be using a talking head style of documentation allowing extra cutaways for post-production. This sequence will be done mainly with medium shots with close ups on his face and his hands (for cutaways and to demonstrate his abilities in creating songs and playing guitar etc). The mask of the contrasting side of the story will be slowly unveiled to the audience from this point. This, we feel, will also display the emotional depth of their relationship. The bond the Father and son have is an immense dependence. Something that we can hopefully pick up on, this will again increase the energy of the film.
As it nears the end of another school day, we set off to pick Liam up from his class – however due to the complications with filming at schools, we have decided to have Tom and Liam walk through the front door with them in the same clothing they did in the morning to show that time has passed. The audience will accept this cutaway as natural as nothing ‘new’ has been shown. This will not only save hitches with filming at school but also practically speaking, moving the crew around. The next shot will be the pair leaving the house with, setting off to the park for a bit of father-and-son time. The subsequent shots will follow-on from the park playtime to dinner, which will be in the park with chips on a bench somewhere. The style will be similar to the morning scene in which the more emotive side of the story will be further investigated. However, we will start to build up the other side of the story at this point – by perhaps switching the style of audio to something a little more ‘upbeat’.
The succeeding sequence will be the pair once again returning home to get ready for Toms’ gig – during which we will be able to interview Liam informally and alone, finding out about this amazing 4 year kid. Further questions will enable us to gain insights on his thoughts and views on daddy and his career. This will be a build up towards the other side of the story too. When they return to the house we want to have a few clips of Liam sat behind his own miniature drum kit and answering some simple questions, if we include this into our documentary we will be able to get another view on the situation that the father and son are in. As the questions are directed to Liam we know we will get an honest account of his thoughts due to his age and our audience are likely to be moved by this approach.
We will then attend the gig with two cameras, one onstage and one downstage. We will film Tom at his gig whilst Liam is sat backstage/within the crowd to watch his father.
This part of the film will be the ‘gem’ showing the contrasting side of his life. Most of it will be long and medium shots to show less attachment (series of close-ups conclusively leads the audience to feel more personally in-touch). However close-ups will be included during the shooting stage to ensure enough editing material is available for post-production.
We may want to pursue this bit as if he is out there rocking the world, far beyond reach of his child to enhance the contrast between the emotive and the supposed-to-be successful detached side but somehow deep down Tom and Liam knows that there’s something special they have and nothing will change that – and that is what we are trying to show.
We find this story unique and exciting. We feel in most peoples’ minds the idea of a rock star and a gentle caring father simply can’t coexist. We wanted to investigate how this is possible and most importantly, we think it’s a heart-warming story with a twist that’s worth telling.
At the end of this, we hope the audience will be able to hold back prejudice against single fathers and the general perspective of ‘single parenting is bad’. Although we are only students, we feel that this is an important part of the society that is often misinterpreted and under-valued – hence the making of this documentary, to show the public even with such an ‘extreme’ career, a good father-and-son relationship can still be maintained. We think that it is important to put this message across as there are so few single dads in the UK. In 2004 there were 254 single fathers as oppose to 2829 single mothers, Only 2 percent of families had a single father. This shows that Tom is in a fairly unique position and yet he manages to juggle being a good father with trying to become famous.
Here are some of the storyboards we drew up -
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Daddy’s In a Band
Proposal 12/11/08
Daddy’s in a band is a four minute documentary following a day in the life of a single father as he juggles the troubles of caring for his young son, whilst also dealing with the stress of becoming successful in his rock band.
The documentary will be set in Raunds, a small town 20 miles from Northampton, where our character Tom Robbins and his 4 year old son Liam live.
Our story will chronologically record an average day for Tom and his son. We will be documenting the highs and lows of their every day lives whilst observing from a ‘fly on the wall’ perspective. We propose to film this documentary on the 19th of November 2008.
Starting in the morning, we will film the routine of getting ready and the walk to school. During the ten minute walk, we will film him talking and joking around with his son, using long shots as well as close up profiles to give the audience both the wide and the finer perspective. The audio will be gentle morning (walking music).
This opening sequence will be used to demonstrate that our story is about an everyday father-and-son so that we can build upon this image as the film progresses – which will later be contrasted by a substantial amount.
In the next sequence we will be following the private time of Tom as he goes about his daily rituals of household chores and composing music. This is the point where we get to know him better through a series of informal questions, finding out about his past and how he came to be in the current situation. We will then learn his hopes and fears as we move on to discuss his views on the present and the future for both himself and Liam.
As he goes about his song writing, we will be finding out details of the band and the contrasting side of his story. This is one of the ways that we are going to build up the overall energy of the film.
We will be using a talking head style of documentation allowing extra cutaways for post-production. This sequence will be done mainly with medium shots with close ups on his face and his hands (for cutaways and to demonstrate his abilities in creating songs and playing guitar etc). The mask of the contrasting side of the story will be slowly unveiled to the audience from this point. This, we feel, will also display the emotional depth of their relationship. The bond the Father and son have is an immense dependence. Something that we can hopefully pick up on, this will again increase the energy of the film.
As it nears the end of another school day, we set off to pick Liam up from his class – however due to the complications with filming at schools, we have decided to have Tom and Liam walk through the front door with them in the same clothing they did in the morning to show that time has passed. The audience will accept this cutaway as natural as nothing ‘new’ has been shown. This will not only save hitches with filming at school but also practically speaking, moving the crew around. The next shot will be the pair leaving the house with, setting off to the park for a bit of father-and-son time. The subsequent shots will follow-on from the park playtime to dinner, which will be in the park with chips on a bench somewhere. The style will be similar to the morning scene in which the more emotive side of the story will be further investigated. However, we will start to build up the other side of the story at this point – by perhaps switching the style of audio to something a little more ‘upbeat’.
The succeeding sequence will be the pair once again returning home to get ready for Toms’ gig – during which we will be able to interview Liam informally and alone, finding out about this amazing 4 year kid. Further questions will enable us to gain insights on his thoughts and views on daddy and his career. This will be a build up towards the other side of the story too. When they return to the house we want to have a few clips of Liam sat behind his own miniature drum kit and answering some simple questions, if we include this into our documentary we will be able to get another view on the situation that the father and son are in. As the questions are directed to Liam we know we will get an honest account of his thoughts due to his age and our audience are likely to be moved by this approach.
We will then attend the gig with two cameras, one onstage and one downstage. We will film Tom at his gig whilst Liam is sat backstage/within the crowd to watch his father.
This part of the film will be the ‘gem’ showing the contrasting side of his life. Most of it will be long and medium shots to show less attachment (series of close-ups conclusively leads the audience to feel more personally in-touch). However close-ups will be included during the shooting stage to ensure enough editing material is available for post-production.
We may want to pursue this bit as if he is out there rocking the world, far beyond reach of his child to enhance the contrast between the emotive and the supposed-to-be successful detached side but somehow deep down Tom and Liam knows that there’s something special they have and nothing will change that – and that is what we are trying to show.
We find this story unique and exciting. We feel in most peoples’ minds the idea of a rock star and a gentle caring father simply can’t coexist. We wanted to investigate how this is possible and most importantly, we think it’s a heart-warming story with a twist that’s worth telling.
At the end of this, we hope the audience will be able to hold back prejudice against single fathers and the general perspective of ‘single parenting is bad’. Although we are only students, we feel that this is an important part of the society that is often misinterpreted and under-valued – hence the making of this documentary, to show the public even with such an ‘extreme’ career, a good father-and-son relationship can still be maintained. We think that it is important to put this message across as there are so few single dads in the UK. In 2004 there were 254 single fathers as oppose to 2829 single mothers, Only 2 percent of families had a single father. This shows that Tom is in a fairly unique position and yet he manages to juggle being a good father with trying to become famous.
Here are some of the storyboards we drew up -
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Thursday, 11 December 2008
Editing Mayhem!
I managed to upload some earlier versions of the edit at uni today, and here they are!
This first one starts with a shot of Liam at the top of the stairs in silence, as Adam had a song in mind to play over the top of it. It's a good opening shot, and the music fit really well with the footage (unfortunately it's not present in this edit) but eventually we made the decision to use just Tom's music in the film, which I think works a little better.
This is only the first minute and a half or so of footage, and there are some moments where Tom hesitates, repeats himself, or says things that weren't really important enough to make the final cut, so a lot of it had to be trimmed down.
This second edit starts with the opening we used in the final edit, albeit in a much longer and silent form. The film is starting to take shape a lot more by this point, but it's still too long and there's a lot of unnecessary footage and clutter.
The interview with Tom's flatmate and band member, also called Tom, was cut entirely as we all decided what he says doesn't really add much to the documentary and used up time that could be used to show the relationship between father and son in greater depth.
By this stage the film is way past the embryonic stage, and almost ready to stand on it's own two legs and take it's first formative steps. The intro now has music (but still no titles!), but we had to cut out a major chunk towards the end as I noticed Andria actually wanders into shot in the lower left hand side of the screen. I'm not sure how this glaring error had passed under the radar for so long, so we got rid of it! The first few shots were left pretty much untouched in the final version, apart from a few short snippets of audio for the running length. We also chose to discard the footage of the empty playground when Tom talks about childhood, as the shots seemed a little out of place with the rest of the film and just took up valuable time!
The interview with the other Tom has been replaced with more audio of Tom talking about his relationship with Liam and some shots of him, and a lot of the audio has been trimmed down to remove moments for Tom pauses for more than a few seconds or repeats himself. It's also the first time the shots of the band have been included, and is pretty much representative of the final product apart from the lack of credits.
This first one starts with a shot of Liam at the top of the stairs in silence, as Adam had a song in mind to play over the top of it. It's a good opening shot, and the music fit really well with the footage (unfortunately it's not present in this edit) but eventually we made the decision to use just Tom's music in the film, which I think works a little better.
This is only the first minute and a half or so of footage, and there are some moments where Tom hesitates, repeats himself, or says things that weren't really important enough to make the final cut, so a lot of it had to be trimmed down.
This second edit starts with the opening we used in the final edit, albeit in a much longer and silent form. The film is starting to take shape a lot more by this point, but it's still too long and there's a lot of unnecessary footage and clutter.
The interview with Tom's flatmate and band member, also called Tom, was cut entirely as we all decided what he says doesn't really add much to the documentary and used up time that could be used to show the relationship between father and son in greater depth.
By this stage the film is way past the embryonic stage, and almost ready to stand on it's own two legs and take it's first formative steps. The intro now has music (but still no titles!), but we had to cut out a major chunk towards the end as I noticed Andria actually wanders into shot in the lower left hand side of the screen. I'm not sure how this glaring error had passed under the radar for so long, so we got rid of it! The first few shots were left pretty much untouched in the final version, apart from a few short snippets of audio for the running length. We also chose to discard the footage of the empty playground when Tom talks about childhood, as the shots seemed a little out of place with the rest of the film and just took up valuable time!
The interview with the other Tom has been replaced with more audio of Tom talking about his relationship with Liam and some shots of him, and a lot of the audio has been trimmed down to remove moments for Tom pauses for more than a few seconds or repeats himself. It's also the first time the shots of the band have been included, and is pretty much representative of the final product apart from the lack of credits.
Monday, 8 December 2008
Edit Sweet!
We just recently managed to sort out the internet connection at ours, meaning I'll be able to post things on here much more frequently now!
I'm currently beavering away with the editing for our documentary, which is going really well. Premiere is a cool programme, which is pretty easy and fun to use. After making an initial attempt at an edit, then scrapping it after group feedback, I got stuck into the actual edit which ended up at a whopping 5:38, and wasn't even totally finished! We've since trimmed it down to 4:38, and need to shave off about another minute or so to fit in the final part of the documentary. This shouldn't be too hard, as there are a number of shots that either don't quite work, have bits of us or our equipment in shot or simply don't serve much purpose in the documentary.
I've been trying to render the different versions, but currently each time my computer's perished before it's actually finished! I'll try doing it in the Waverly building at some point so I can put them all up here, I've still got each significantly different stage of the edit saved so I can revisit them at any point.
I'm currently beavering away with the editing for our documentary, which is going really well. Premiere is a cool programme, which is pretty easy and fun to use. After making an initial attempt at an edit, then scrapping it after group feedback, I got stuck into the actual edit which ended up at a whopping 5:38, and wasn't even totally finished! We've since trimmed it down to 4:38, and need to shave off about another minute or so to fit in the final part of the documentary. This shouldn't be too hard, as there are a number of shots that either don't quite work, have bits of us or our equipment in shot or simply don't serve much purpose in the documentary.
I've been trying to render the different versions, but currently each time my computer's perished before it's actually finished! I'll try doing it in the Waverly building at some point so I can put them all up here, I've still got each significantly different stage of the edit saved so I can revisit them at any point.
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