Showtime!

It’s finally time to see what we’re made of, and needless to say, the nerves are starting to set in. As of Thursday night, I will abandon my place among the honors students of UCA to step into the roll of motion picture camera man. Earlier this week, a few members of my film crew and I took a tour of various locations around town to determine the setting and order in which we will attempt to shoot each shot. Using a digital camera, I took some placement snapshots so that we could construct a more detailed storyboard of our film and determine the placement of the camera for each particular scene. It seems that the schedule for me and my crew is more complicated that I initially thought, and I feel like it’s going to be truly difficult to get everyone in the same place to get the project underway. Anything I can do now to make the stressful process flow more smoothly could mean the difference between the success or failure for my group.

One thing I have noticed about this entire situation is the fact that, even though our group only consists of five people, it is extremely hard to find things that we all agree on. I’m not sure if the teachers thought about the repercussions of throwing five highly intelligent, opinionated teenagers on a project and giving them the freedom to create anything that came to mind. It took my group hours to produce an initial draft for the script, but even it isn’t complete, because we couldn’t agree on a few key aspects that function to tie the storyline together. There were only three group members present, counting myself, when I began to take snapshots for our storyboard, and even we had some trouble reaching a consensus on simple things like the amount of extras in the shot or the placement of the camera.

It’s odd to see how much each person’s personality is portrayed in the decisions they make and the ideas they offer. Some members in our group are perfectionists. They strive to make the film a memorable cinematic experience by putting all of their energy and resources into creating new and exciting scene structures. Other members of the group are passive and don’t contribute much to the project overall. They don’t really care about the small details of the film that a tuned critic will notice, and they aren’t really picky about the way that the plot is developed or any other choice that must be made.

Because I am one of the perfectionists, I don’t really know how to go about shooting this film. I want the shots to look like they came from an actual film. I can’t stand the thought of turning in something that looks like it was thrown together by some amateurs. I hope that I can give my editors something to work with.

The Player

Last week in class we screened the motion picture, The Player, from the early 1990s. Prior to class, I’d never heard of the film, so I didn’t really know what to expect going in. The opening scene was one memorable continuous shot. Because I didn’t really know what was going on in the shot and the content was kind of cluttered and random, I found myself focusing on the film making aspects used. I think that the director of this motion picture definitely pulled out all the stops when it comes to film making techniques. The dramatic close ups of the main actor are some of the most captivating I’ve seen.
The wide shots and odd shooting angles helped make each scene unique from the last. I just kind of sit there wondering what would come next.

I enjoy the way that the director uses his particular art media to point out and illustrate his views of the world. What other reason is there to produce art? If you’re not infusing your creation with some small portion of yourself to share with the world, you’re pretty much wasting your time. I may not agree with his cynical approach but you can’t argue with its effectiveness. Not many people can say that they came away from the screening Thursday without taking a moment to reconsider the way our culture functions. The corruption portrayed in this film focused on writers and small sections of the motion picture industry, but they are not unique to those areas. We inhabit a despicable world. If justice, fairness, equality, or and other moral I can name actually extended past the words on my page and meant something today, the world wouldn’t be such a harsh place. We live in the world’s greatest society and we’re still bombarded with images of people struggling and going without. America, the land where dreams come true, chews people up and spits them out. We really don’t have a chance.

The closer we get to kicking off our film making projects, the more I find myself scrutinizing film and television clips for their shooting styles. There seem to be endless possibilities for setting up and capturing any particular scene. I love the fact that the exact same, well developed screenplay will turn out unique from one director to the next based on their personalities. Our most undiscovered and subconscious character traits are illustrated in the art we create. Perhaps, when this semester is over and I look back on the film we turn in, I will be able to discover some aspect of myself that has gone unnoticed. Perhaps I’ve stumbled upon the real meaning of the project. Am I supposed to be learning something about myself? Is there some aspect of my psyche that’s been left overturned? I’ve reached the point in my life that all people struggle with at some time or another. I’ve really found myself struggling to keep going this semester. I don’t know what it is about the collegiate situation that bothers me so much, but I don’t believe that life is supposed to be a routine. I’ll never be okay with laying down to sleep and knowing that I’m going to wake up tomorrow and have to do the exact same thing that I did today. I hope that the week spent behind the lens of a camera will open my eyes to the world. I strive to find my niche. Where do I belong? Where am I meant to be?

A Short Tour of Film

This past week in class, Eric screened a few short clips on various topics that correlate to the act of film making. One particular clip, by an upstart company whose name I can’t quite remember right now, showed how we could go about making a corpse from inexpensive objects that you can usually find laying around your house. I’ve seen other episodes created by that group and I have always found them interesting. I’d like to try one of the projects they outline, but I’ve never been any good at that sort of thing and I’d rather not waste the money and make a mess trying.

Eric also screened a couple of college humor clips to demonstrate what you can pull off with a few minutes of footage and a couple dozen bored people. We watched a short documentary style film from the director of Desperado discussing the techniques he used to pull off the special effects shots in his movies. It’s odd to see the spontaneity of the whole process. If asked about my thoughts before class, I certainly wouldn’t have suspected that a major director created his effect shots as the scene was being set up. It seems like a risk that few people would be willing to take.

After screening the various short film clips, we split into our film groups to work on our plotlines and overall layout. I didn’t have much input in the group this time, because as I keep seeing all these examples of short clips, I’m starting to doubt that we can pull off something as epic or memorable, and that thought is lingering. I don’t think many people in my class would say that they are used to setting their mind to something and not coming away successful. We have spent our lives working towards the position we are in now and, to this point, everything has worked in our favor. I know that, because of this, I am going to stress over this project until the moment we turn it in. I know the expectations that I have placed on my group, mentally, and I will not be satisfied unless I can use my camera to bring those expectations to life. Eric wants us to have fun on this project but I don’t really think our personalities will allow that.

The Illusion is Over

It seems like this semester’s voyage through the long, evolving history of motion pictures runs parallel to life. We are born (in my opinion) with a clean slate. We know nothing of the world around us. We do not understand that there are things happening outside the range of the landscape captured by our eyes. As a young child, there is only hunger, fatigue, and the wonders of an unknown world.

As we mature, we naturally begin to question the world. For some strange reason, parents take it upon themselves to shield us from the world and create this fragile facade of an environment teeming with joy, love, and compassion. We believe that we are safe from harm; that no evil acts befall the citizens of the world and, when it does, everything turns out okay in the end. This is the same way that I view the film making styles in the first few decades following the introduction of motion pictures. The films that we have seen from that era are cheerful and full of song. The settings, themselves, teem with color and a joy so vibrant that is almost contagious. The good guy always comes out on top. Love always finds a way. The sheriff always catches his man. It’s almost nauseating to witness such a naive and optimistic representation of the world.

Then the teenage years come along, and that old viewpoint gets shot to hell. We gain first hand exposure to terrible realization that the world just generally does not give a damn. Through peer pressure and rated R movies, we witness the effects of sex, drugs, and rock and roll and, oh god, is it exciting and frightening. We realize that those old noises we heard were fights. Our parents get divorced. We read accounts of war and famine. We wonder the streets and take notice of the filth. We see the homeless man on the corner. We get our hearts broken. Parents wonder why we’re an angry generation; why we rebel and lash out. The anger stemming from the collapse of a decade long façade leave a kid hating life. Teenage rebellion should be known as teenage awakening. Blow Out represents the teenage years of our semester. The Technicolor is gone. The streets are bland and the colors are dull. People die. People cheat. People cry. Nobody cares. We walk along the street not realizing that a lady is being strangled in the ally just five feet away. We march up the stairs of the stadium not noticing the girl struggling against a captor in the corner. The accident plastered all over the news wasn’t an accident at all. We get rushed with more media than we can manage, and the person we become in life is a direct reflection of our interpretation of that media. The film industry came to a crossroads with the rebellion of the 1960’s filmmakers and I’m anxious to see the way that it evolved in the wake of that rebellion.