Unusual Perspective 4 Hour Film - Disconnected First film we were asked to do for the first four hour film challenge was to film an 'unusual perspective' film. We were asked to film and edit this within four hours which is challenging as we have to think of a narrative, get actors/actresses and also film and edit which can be tough. During out studies at the moment we have been looking into the 'New Wave' era, this really influenced us on our idea to film and produce what we did in this sense, it has lots of new wave elements such as no real narrative and also you make up the plot line in your head as it's hard to comprehend and label it a narrative itself.
(cant insert film - link broken) I believe my film worked well because we used an unusual perspective (as the brief was), we had a different use of colour and the themes and values of our film were really different and out of the ordinary, the shots were in fact in really good focus however we can see in some shots that the definition and focus is really blurred but we found out that this is only due to the colours when they were placed onto the camera caused a type of block of the definition giving it a slightly blurred look. Doing my film again I would definitely decide to sellotape the colours red/blue together as we had someone holding them up lat time which caused them to be constantly moving/not still. The filter impacts the definition too much in my opinion, they worked well but really changes the whole focus of the film, to change this for net time I would probably add the filters on photoshop instead of holding them up onto the actual camera. I would also film a bit more to make the context a bit more understandable (it was meant t be unusual perspective so the narrative doesn't necessarily need to make perfect sense however I would like it to have more of a clear element to it). Illusions 4 Hour Film - Wii In this 4 hour film challenge we were given the idea to create a film using illusional aspects, in this one we decided to create a stop motion type of film of the world-renowned wii theme tune song so that on each 'beat' we had each of us change position or shape of something within the scene was different as well as all of us having to be completely still when something has been moved so that it created the illusional aspect to it.
I believe that the film worked specially well, I think it was entertaining and grabs the eye of the audience as it's using a very classic song and has elements of humour to it. It's got that random and quirky aspect to it and in a way it's extremely satisfying to watch that on every beat something within the scene changes. The placing of the camera was very good as it doesn't move throughout the whole film which is a good technique to only use one person on the camera (as it could potentially move if more than one person was to be in charge of filming. It was very time consuming to edit as you have to get it on exact beat and some were long and some were very short so I believe that it is done very well. I also think watching it back quite frequently the beats are mostly on time which also adds to the illusion. I think if I were to do it again i would have made it a lot longer as it doesn't actually finish to the whole wii song, or instead of making it longer bring it to an end in some way by either adding some of the and the camera is actually slightly out of focus in most shots so i would probably change the settings to make it more defined if I had personally filmed it. Other than them few minor details I think it has a really good and grabbing narrative.
1920'S 4 Hour Film - RUN For this four hour film challenge we were asked to compose a film that would fit into the 1920's era. the 19020's era was full of silent and black and white films that had a narrative as such and actors making really big exaggerating moves (as there was no sound). In the expressionism way in which we had to film was obvious and I added things such as the classic silent film music and the overlay in black and white to make it look like the very early 1900's films.
I think my film went well as within the group it was my original idea to film the footage we did (the narrative) as well as being a main actress in the film, it has the scenic style and signature look of a typical 1920's film. It has a playful element to it which is entertaining for the audience, the different choices and varied shot types worked and the narrative makes sense and is all in a specific order which helps the audience to understand it more. If I were to film it again however, I know I would now add a lot more varied angles, maybe close ups of faces with very big expressions, a lot more planning to it and planning of the shots, I would also add a few more title screens to carry the narrative through out with the chaser saying things like 'I have something for you' etc, to keep the narrative in play. I would also play about more with the effects to add a bit more of a stop motion type feel to it as the cameras in the 19020's had slight jolts. Overall my film works well in the 1920's theme but if I were to redo it I would now have a better idea of the more stylistic composition of the actual frames and how the film was going to work. Music Video 4 Hour Film - About You
For this four hour film challenge we were asked to compose a music video from the song About you - XXYYXX (Sina Sadeghi Remix). We could interpret the song however we wanted and the challenge was to use a lot of stock footage to make the video.
I was inspired heavily by the works of Koyaanisqatsi who uses beautiful scenes of the environment and then compares them to the city scenes now and how evolution of the world is ruining these beautiful climates. All of my footage was from the website pexels and I created the illusion using the different footages how man has changed the landscapes by creating these environmental damages. I think my film works well in the scenes it shows a drastic change and i created an illusion that changes on the exact beats. If i were to redo this challenge I would probably create more interesting slides to look at with more words as all of it is mainly just similar types of stock footage. I love the transition from each landscape where its got a kind of glitchy delusion feel.
-The term 'New Wave' exists across a different range of forms. There are new waves in painting, fashion, music, literature and theatre as well as film.
-New waves are cyclical; often becoming conventional, so eventually in turn challenged by a new style.
-New waves, which appear at different times and places and in different artistic contexts, are always about criticising what has gone before and trying to create a new form to replace it.
-Therefore these movements tend to be associated with youth, experimentation and the rejection of the values of a previous era which is often perceived as boring and conventional.
-It is for this reason that the new waves are often controversial as they are(or are perceived to be) an attack on traditional forms and values.
The French New Wave
-The filmmakers of the French New Wave have influenced cinema in two ways:
-As critics of the film journal Cahiers du Cinema they developed the auteur theory
-as film directors they challenged the established conventions of filmmaking in form, content and institutional practice.
Authorship Theory
-The key directors of the French New Wave - Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer - had been film critics for the French cinema magazine Cahiers du Cinema
-This was the first film journal to treat cinema as an art form and to discuss it in an academic way.
-In the early 1950s, this group of critics developed an argument through a long series of articles which became known as 'la politque des auteurs' (auteur policy)
-Taken up by American critics in the 1960s these ideas became known as the auteur theory or authorship theory.
- This is problematic, as it suggests that the Cahiers critics were putting forward a theory which would explain the way existing cinema should be interpreted and this is often how it is used now
-Auteur theory was originally developed as a policy - a statement of intent - in this attack on the French cinema of the time but more importantly a statement of intent about what film should be like.
POLEMIC:
-A Polemic is a subjective, a passionate strongly worded argument usually against an individual, a group or an idea.
-It is very controversial and political, challenging established conventions.
-It is useful to think of 'la politque des auteurs' as a polemical argument specifically about the present and future of French cinema which was translated into a theory about cinema in general.
-In their writings the critics argued that film was primarily a visual medium rather than a literary one and that the director was the author of a film in the same was as a writer is the author of a novel.
-In one influential essay 'Le Camera Stylo' ('The Camera Writers') (1945), Alexander Astruc argued that the film director 'writes' a film with the camera as if he was an artist with a paintbrush.
-Rather than film language being used for the adaptation of a script, it should be the visual language which is most important.
-Therefore, the director is the true auteur of a film because the visual language is the language of the cinema; the script is the literary, a different language entirely.
Cinematic New Waves provide an excellent subject for understanding the way that creative media productions are influenced by social and institutional factors. They highlight how filmmakers must work within the constraints of national cinematic institutions and contain distinctive styles/elements that have led to changes in production values as a result of the impact of their reception. Kitchen sink realism (or kitchen sink drama) is a British cultural movement that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in theatre, art, novels, film, and television plays, whose protagonists usually could be described as "angry young men" who were disillusioned with modern society.
A Taste of Honey
A Taste of Honey is the first play by the British dramatist Shelagh Delaney, written when she was 19. It was initially intended as a novel, but she turned it into a play because she hoped to revitalise British theatre and to address social issues that she felt were not being presented. The play was first produced by Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop and was premiered at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, a small fringe theatre in London, on 27 May 1958. The production then transferred to the larger Wyndham's Theatre in the West End on 10 February 1959. The play was adapted into a film of the same title in 1961.
A Taste of Honey is set in Salford in North West England in the 1950s. It tells the story of Jo, a seventeen-year-old working class girl, and her mother, Helen, who is presented as crude and sexually indiscriminate. Helen leaves Jo alone in their new flat after she begins a relationship with Peter, a rich lover who is younger than she. At the same time Jo begins a romantic relationship with Jimmy, a black sailor. He proposes marriage but then goes to sea, leaving Jo pregnant and alone. She finds lodgings with a homosexual acquaintance, Geoffrey, who assumes the role of surrogate father. Helen returns after leaving her lover and the future of Jo's new home is put into question. Film reviews
When the blowsy Helen (Dora Bryan) says she never knew that her misfit daughter, Jo (Rita Tushingham), was talented, Jo retorts, “I’m not just talented, I’m geniused.” There is a touch of genius to Shelagh Delaney’s 1958 Manchester-set play about Jo’s inchoate yearnings, her brief interracial romance, and the safe zone she creates with her only friend, a tender gay man (Murray Melvin). Jo is a flighty character with a bitter earthy streak, and her conflicting energies—expressed in sometimes edgy, sometimes fanciful dialogue—make this a near-classic of postadolescent confusion and longing. The director, Tony Richardson (who co-wrote the screenplay with Delaney), didn’t find a visual style to match the verve of Delaney’s language, but he cast the film superbly, and in the best scenes Walter Lassally’s photography and John Addison’s score help him achieve the perfect blend of poignancy and insouciance. - Michael Sragow
SHELAGH DELANEY'S "A Taste of Honey," which justifiably drew theatregoers like flies, to London and Broadway, is more memorable on film. The British-made drama, which was unveiled at the 'Paris Theatre yesterday, has been given specifically effective scope in the movie medium. Freed from the constricting confines of the stage, the shining honesty, the trials, the disenchantment of the drama's low-born Lancashire principals have become all the more striking and true. The dedicated producers have concocted a bitter "Honey" that is rare and travels well."A Taste of Honey" obviously is a labor of love. Tony Richardson, its producer-director, and Miss Delaney have been a team ever since it was staged here. Miss Delaney, it will be recalled, wrote the play when she was an astounding 19 years old, out of conviction and the perceptions of an artist. Mr. Richardson, no less an artist, treated the work with appreciation of a shining and unusual talent. The result is a fittingly unadorned, sometimes drab, vehicle freighted with meaning and compassion that is universal despite its seemingly restrictive locale.They and their sensitive cast have cleaved to the original story and to Miss Delaney's wry style. "A Taste of Honey" was and is less of a formalized narrative than it is a restrained, circuitous manner of presenting moods and moments of living. As such, Miss Delaney's slice of life evolves whole and with impact. It bursts with vitality against the sleazy environs of a North, Country city slum, its dirty flats, dank docksides and the kaleidoscopic sights and the raucous, tinny sounds of Blackpool's fun fairs.Having evoked complementary drama from a variety of sites, Mr. Richardson collaborated with Miss Delaney to keep her original lines intact Her wide-eyed but worldly wise teen-ager, who is constantly fighting loneliness and seeking affection she never gets from her manchasing mother, meets an equally lonely Negro sailor and, after an idyllic interval, finds she is with child. After his tender departure for other ports, our heroine is a the more confused, frightened and unloved, especially when her brassy, roving mother marries a loud, free-spending type who plainly abhors the sight of the girl.Since she is a resilent sort, she gives understanding and sanctuary to an effeminate youth from whom, for the first time, she receives tender care and tacit affection. But, as a realist, Miss Delaney finds life not only real and earnest but also hard. And, when childbirth is imminent, her mother, who has come to a parting of the ways with her spouse, returns to drive her delicate companion away. While she nominally takes up her maternal duties, a viewer is left with the idea that the daughter may yet be lonely and lovelorn.As in the play, Miss Delaney is not compromising. One has the feeling that she chose abnormal characters to accent more forcefully society's indifference to its disenfranchised. They are neither angry nor lachrymose and they are, on occasion, a happy lot ready to laugh at themselves. Though they are involved in sordid circumstances, they manage to tug at the heart without breaking it.Call it fateful or a matter of professionalism, but Mr. Richardson has been fortunate in finding Rita Tushingham, a 19-year-old newcomer to films, to portray Jo, the daughter. A plain Jane, she uses her saucer-eyed visage subtly to convey the pains and joys of her predicament, and her North Country accents, which may confuse some, beautifully transmit her humor and her self-protective cynicism. Mr. Richardson had a hand in shaping her performance but she is, nevertheless, a wondrous discovery.Murray Melvin, who is repeating the role of the homosexual he created in the British play, handles this difficult assignment in muted but effective fashion. Like Miss Tushingham he is flesh and blood and not a caricature. Dora Bryan, a veteran of stage and screen comedy, is equally real as the hard and footlose mother. Paul Danquah in his movie debut as the Negro sailor, is gentle and subtle in a small but demanding role and Robert Stephens is properly brash, vulgar and oafish as Miss Bryan's husband.With the aid of Walter Lassally's expert camera work, which caught sooty, canal-lined Manchester exteriors, as well as grubby streets and happy, grubby, singing kids, Mr. Richardson and the company, who acted as though they lived there, have given a new dimension to an already sobering view of life among the lowly. In being transported out of the theatre, this "Honey" has been enriched.
Saturday Night Sunday Morning
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is a 1961 British drama film directed by Karel Reisz and produced by Tony Richardson. It is an adaptation of the 1958 novel of the same name by Alan Sillitoe, who also wrote the screenplay adaptation. The film is about a young machinist who spends his weekends drinking and partying, all the while having an affair with a married woman.
The film is one of a series of "kitchen sink drama" films made in the late 1950s and early 1960s, as part of the British New Wave of filmmaking, from directors such as Reisz, Jack Clayton, Lindsay Anderson, John Schlesinger and Tony Richardson and adapted from the works of writers such as Sillitoe, John Braine and John Osborne. A common trope in these films was the working-class "angry young man" character (in this case, the character of Arthur), who rebels against the oppressive system of his elders.
In 1999, the British Film Institute named Saturday Night and Sunday Morning the 14th greatest British film of all time on their Top 100 British films list.
Arthur Seaton is a young machinist at the Raleigh bicycle factory in Nottingham. He is determined not to be tied down to living a life of domestic drudgery like the people around him, including his parents, whom he describes as "dead from the neck up". He spends his wages at weekends on drinking and having a good time.
Put working-class life on screen, bluntly and without condescension.” Rob Mackie, The Guardian, 2009
“Don’t let the bastards grind you down. What I want is a good time. All the rest is propaganda.” When no-nonsense lathe operator Arthur Seaton (Albert Finney) voiced his world view, British cinema had never heard anything like it before. The pithy dialogue in Nottingham writer Alan Sillitoe’s adaptation of his own novel remains eminently quotable, but it’s the diligent and sympathetic direction by former documentary-maker Karel Reisz that creates an authentic atmosphere for the story of a would-be rebel forced to compromise.
Four decades later, Nottingham provided the setting for the films of another chronicler of British working-class life, Shane Meadows, including TwentyFourSeven (1997) and This Is England (2006). Reviews
The gritty cinematography and coarse characterizations of "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" are an exciting jolt, but the film's central plot -- a hotheaded factory worker (Albert Finney, in a star-making role) impregnating married Brenda (Rachel Roberts) while also wooing the more glamorous Doreen (Shirley Anne Field) -- seemed a little thin and ordinary. Given the harsh setting, I expected more issues of money, employment and housing, and not a story based so squarely on mere dating conflicts. Finney blisters in what's inevitably labeled an "angry young man" part and signals an actor with a long career ahead. Field seems miscast, however, and is so elegantly beautiful that she belongs in a whole different film. At the very least, the stylist could have given her a more flawed hairdo.
Fifteen-year-old Billy Casper has little hope in life. He is picked on, both at home by his physically and verbally abusive older half-brother, Jud, and at school, by his schoolmates and by abusive teachers. Although he insists that his earlier petty criminal behaviour is behind him, he occasionally steals eggs and milk from milk floats. He has difficulty paying attention in school and is often provoked into tussles with classmates. Billy's father left the family some time ago, and his mother refers to him at one point, while somberly speaking to her friends about her children and their chances in life, as a "hopeless case." Review of the film by someone Towards the end of the Woodfall era a new figure, Ken Loach emerged on the scene with early works such as "Kes", that were to carry forward the spirit of the British New Wave from the late '60's to the present day, a body of work without parallel in its consistency in our native cinema. "Kes", the story of an unloved streetwise adolescent, Billy Casper, living in Barnsley breaks dramatically away from the cinematic tradition of cute kids in much the same way as Truffaut had done in "Les Quatre Cent Coups". Billy, grubby and not beyond the odd bout of petty pilfering, lives in a council estate with a single mum and a loutish elder brother. School is a drudge to somehow get through each day. It's a place peopled by largely unsympathetic teachers who keep the kids down by barrages of verbal abuse and the odd swish of the cane. Somehow Billy holds his own. In the meantime he finds his inner strength and salvation in training a kestrel from the wild. When in the closing scened he loses the bird through the uncaring machinations of his brother, the effect is nothing short of heart wrenching. I would not quite go along with those reviewers who consider this to be Loach's finest film. It is somehow too loosely focused and concentrates a little too much on peripheral social issues such as the parlous state of education in a Northern secondary school and unsympathetic career guidance. The football match in the middle, although gently funny, goes on for rather a long time, deflecting our interest away from Billy. Loach was later to develop his vision of the human condition more single-mindedly and to greater effect in works such as "The Gamekeeper", "Ladybird, Ladybird" and what I believe to be his greatest work, "My Name is Joe", which is not to diminish a film with many wonderful moments provided mainly by David Bradley in his unforgettable performance as Billy Casper.
Reviews
We didn't come from a very filmy family. I'd only seen two movies before Kes. One was The Poseidon Adventure – all I can remember is going in my pyjamas (I was ill) and being cold – and the other the film of Steptoe and Son. It was a friend's birthday, and I think (my memory might be playing a sick trick here) Albert Steptoe takes a bath in a tin tub and I found it weirdly thrilling.
Then came Kes. By now I was 12 years old, and at a special school, Crumpsall Open Air – or, as we pupils called it, Crumpsall Open Air for Mongs (no, I won't attempt to defend that). The pupils were an unlikely mix of juvenile delinquents, chronic asthmatics, kids with learning difficulties, cerebral palsy, Down's syndrome, and those who had rare diseases.
I was never sure why it was called an open-air school. But we certainly spent a lot of time in the open air – every afternoon playing football outside except for when the weather was too bad. One day it was pissing down, and we were forced inside. The teacher put on a film to keep us quiet. This was 1974, and the movie was already ancient (five years old); it had been made by a man who called himself Kenneth Loach. Didn't sound promising.
Kes Photograph: Woodall Films/Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar Collection
But there wasn't a squeak. We'd never seen anything like Kes. Based on the Barry Hines novel A Kestrel for a Knave it is about skinny Billy Casper (brilliantly played by David Bradley making his screen debut) who lived in a northern coal-mining community. Billy hated school like we did, he messed about and felt isolated like we did, and wondered what the point of everything was. Then he hooked up with a kestrel, learned to train it and love it, and discovered not only a purpose in life but an ability to communicate that he had never had before.
None of us had kestrels, but we all related to the film. Most fictional kids we'd seen on the telly were posh and public-school, like Tom Brown. But Kes wasn't about privilege – just the opposite. Working-class boys speaking in working-class accents, and sometimes muttering so much that you couldn't make out what they were saying. The language was colloquial, the film was lit like the real world, the actors didn't look like actors.
Back then, I didn't know Ken Loach was a radical film-maker with a complete cinematic philosophy of his own: that he made people mumble deliberately, and only used natural light (the cameraman was the brilliant Chris Menges) and non-professional actors alongside professional actors to make things naturalistic. Nor did I know that he didn't tell the actors or non-actors what was going to come next, so they were as shocked or as delighted (shocked, normally – after all, this is classic Loach) as we were when it happened.
Kes, football scene Photograph: Allstar Collection/WOODALL FILMS/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar
There are so many great scenes in the film – training the kestrel, Billy's inspirational talk to the class, his brother's terrible betrayal – but my favourite is the football. It could have been us playing at Crumpsall Open Air. Brian Glover, the games teacher who thinks he's Bobby Charlton and takes every free kick and blows his whistle when any of the kids tackle him, looked and acted like the benign bully Mr Reynolds who took us for games. This was life as we knew it. When Billy was stuck in goal because he was a useless outfield player, I understood how he felt. They stuck me in goal too, but I had a very different approach to Billy. Goalkeeping became as significant for me as the kestrel did for Billy. I flung myself at Doc-Martined feet, dived on gravel and bloodied my knees every day in my desperate attempts to prove myself to the hard kids at school.
Now I know that you can look back to the Italian neorealists and the Czech new wave, and find the roots of Kes in the genius of, say, Roberto Rossellini and Jiri Menzel. But that didn't make any odds back in the 70s when I first saw it, and doesn't now. What matters is that Kes is a brilliant film, and one that still shows the best movies can be about everyday lives.
Evaluation of my Research
I believe my research is really good in preparation of my new wave video and essay, by watching all three films and evaluating them critically by using the different elements and most importantly by comparing them to each other really helps to analyse and understand how and why they were made. By knowing before watching the films all the background information on them and by watching interviews of the characters themselves to help understand their intake on the film and what they enjoyed about making it helps to comprehend everything on the new wave. I liked watching the films as they were different to anything I had ever been shown to, they were different in the fact they made you think of people you knew, they lived in ordinary houses and played ordinary lives, they had normal jobs like any of your own family and they really showed you the social realism that hadn't been shown in cinema before the British New Wave. The books that I had read in preparation of the essay were Studying British Cinema: The 1960s by Danny Powell and Best of British Cinema and society from 1930. I believe they were not as helpful as I'd have hoped, The book by Powell didn't contain many elements of new wave however helped to identify the top films from that era in that time period.
I also read many reviews on each film to get an intake of other people's opinions and their intake on the film and comparing to my own. By watching the videos on youtube involving the main actors and also other very famous actors including Timothy Spall, gives you an incite on what the films had been like in the world of cinema in the celebrity eye - which is ironic as the films are made for celebrity's to view a socialist and hyperreal view. The youtube videos I would put as most helpful as they helped to decipher people's actual thoughts about the film - as I only really had my own to compare them to and reviews online. They helped connote all the British new wave connotations which in turn helped me to write and plan my essay.
I've learned that my favourite film New Wave film out of the three was definitely Kes and by being a big fan of Ken Loach's work anyway and have already watching it before finding out the genre and all the social contexts. It really stands out as being very well made by involving all the social elements a new wave film has and makes the audience feel an array of emotions as Loach provides us with a perfect set of unknown people who he creates to be actors.
New Wave Film Brief
In my New Wave film I'm going to use loads of long takes, not much verity of shots, the camera angles will be basic and if i decide to have communication it will be shot-reverse-shot to distinguish the reality and the common.
I'll use minimal camera movement such as tracking and panning and try and outline a very basic narrative surrounding basic people and it could possibly show the troubles people go through in today's society and how they are very similar to how they've always been. I wont use very many actors as all the films I have watched in preparation seem to have one key main character. I'll try not to use dialogue as I'm not sure I will have the actors to make it seem realistic. By using an overlay of music and the actors I have to use more expression with what they're doing to make it narrative obvious. I will use real locations such as train stations and parks, corner shops etc to make it obvious to the audience that the film genre is New Wave and social realist. Unfortunately I do not have the choice of professional actors so the actors I will have anyway will be using normal average clothing. I may look into the element of using black and white to create the saw raw effect of early British Cinema even though times have changed and the use of black and white now is very rare.
Frame rate (expressed in frames per second or FPS) is the frequency (rate) at which consecutive images called frames appear on a display. The term applies equally to film and video cameras, computer graphics, and motion capture systems. Frame rate may also be called the frame frequency, and be expressed in hertz.
ISO
In Digital Photography ISO measures the sensitivity of the image sensor. The same principles apply as in film photography – the lower the number the less sensitive your camera is to light and the finer the grain
Shutter Speed
In photography and digital photography the shutter speed is the unit of measurement which determines how long shutter remains open as the picture is taken. The slower the shutter speed, the longer the exposure time. The shutter speed and aperture together control the total amount of light reaching the sensor.
Aperture
Aperture refers to the opening of a lens's diaphragm through which light passes. It is calibrated in f/stops and is generally written as numbers such as 1.4, 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11 and 16.
Three Point Lighting
The Three Point Lighting Technique is a standard method used in visual media such as video, film, still photography and computer-generated imagery. It is a simple but versatile system which forms the basis of most lighting. The technique uses three lights called the key light, fill light and back light. REFERENCES https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_rate https://digital-photography-school.com/iso-settings/ https://www.nikonusa.com/en/learn-and-explore/a/tips-and-techniques/understanding-maximum-aperture.html https://www.webopedia.com/TERM/S/shutter_speed.html https://www.mediacollege.com/lighting/three-point/
