Week 8 - Real or No Real?

This week began with a brief class looking at and comparing Generation Kill and Wild at Heart. Neither interested me much, but for different reasons. Generation Kill clearly displayed very high production value and was well made but the constant bad language and rude references became wearying and ruined my enjoyment of it. There is quite enough of that in real life. Wild at Heart was almost the complete opposite. It was very safe and definitely more enjoyable but I was a bit frustrated by the melodrama, predictable characters and poor acting. However, it was a helpful class and we were given an assignment to come up with our own Sunday 8pm family drama for next week which was a lot of fun.

My first real assessment in Technical involved setting up and de-rigging a camera and lights, to light a subject using the basic three-point lighting system, entirely by myself. It went extremely well. I wasn’t really worried about it at all so I just took my time and enjoyed it. I’m hoping the shot turned out okay (Ray informed me that I’d passed as soon as it was over) and I am proud to say I was the first to have completed the assessment within the designated time.

Richard was “called away this week” so Screenwriting involved watching The Shawshank Redemption and analysing it, particularly for structure. I think what this film does best is to give the protagonist a hidden goal that is not actually revealed until the end; to escape Shawshank. There are little set-ups scattered throughout the story which of course are obvious only after having seen the film before. This is an idea I would certainly like to try in my own writing. Tuesday was also the day for submitting our re-drafts of the chosen three-minute films. Then it was a case of waiting to see which would be picked to go into production this term…

On Wednesday lunchtime we had a long and indecisive production meeting discussing what to do next in the effort to allow DFTV and TPA to collaborate. As far as I’m concerned it’s worked. I’m well into pre-production with a project involving an equal number of DFTV students and TPA students and I’m looking forward to being involved in another, one which Murdo pitched at this meeting. This is, I am aware, very self-centred of me because the idea was to get everyone collaborating, not just a specific group. However, I think this is the start. Something needs to be done to forge those links and open those doors which will then allow others to step up, follow on and get involved.

In Andy’s class we started by researching the ITV profit-drop and all the effects that it will have and then continued by looking at the representation of males in television advertising. We watched a documentary called Washes Whiter which contained some very amusing adverts from the old days. Back then they weren’t worried about being arty or vague; they just told the male consumers what the product was and told them to buy it!

We were discussing the Golden Age of cinema on Thursday morning and I went for 2001 as being the best year in Hollywood. I’ve said it before but it seems like Hollywood just aren’t delivering like they used to. Since Return of the King no film has been a ‘must-see as soon as it is released’ for me and there is none in the foreseeable future that fit that category either. I hope Hollywood is planning another Golden Age soon!

On Thursday morning we had our first Mobile/Web Content class where we looked at the definition of Mobile Content and things like User Generated Content. It was all fascinating and made more compelling by the knowledge that this is new, uncharted territory in terms of filmmaking. There are no answers yet, no business models, so we are, in a sense, pioneers. We touched on the unexpected phenomenon that is YouTube. I think the reason for its popularity is that people long to feel part of something, to belong. That is what motivates them to spend their lives at a computer, as part of a Global (but Virtual) Community and in doing so forget the importance of the real community around them. We can be who we want to be on the Internet, can’t we? It’s an alternative existence, a better one, where we can feel popular, important, respected and even loved. But it’s not real. Deep down, in the centre of our humanity, we just want to be loved. We want to be accepted for who we are and that’s why we indulge in this semi-reality and virtual world where we simulate acceptance and love and become a person that we like. We do this on the Internet because it isn’t always possible in real life. Sometimes we simply aren’t who we would like to be, and we aren’t accepted, and we aren’t loved. Yet, we can be. This is exactly what God offers. He knows who we are, he accepts us, and he most certainly loves us. We long to feel part of something, to belong, to be popular, important, respected and loved because God made us to be in his family where we are all these things. He doesn’t require us to be on a computer to be part of it, we simply have to ask. It’s our choice.

Stagecoach was a little bit disappointing. I haven’t seen many Westerns but I’ve seen enough to have fallen in love with the genre. They’ve got everything needed for a great movie and Stagecoach, as the defining film of this genre, supplied just about everything too. However, for me the beauty comes from the setting. Wide open plains, thick yellow sand, red sunsets, empty horizons; the romance and lure is in the cinemascope and colour, both of which were missing in Stagecoach. That said it was still an enjoyable film with a good story (almost a road movie!), interesting characters and some exciting action.

No Abigail this week unfortunately so we watched Double Indemnity with the third years instead. It was good fun and my first taste of Film Noir. It was basically a murder mystery but told in a more interesting way from the murderer’s point-of-view. Apart from the slight over-use of his match-lighting mannerism I thought it was an excellent film.