7 Deadly sins…

Photo shoot/Photo album of the 7 deadly sins. This wouldn’t be just 7 photos, but it would be the 7 sins in different scenarios. Perhaps it could be put into a hardback book, or even put in an exhibition.

Above is one of my ideas to take into final production. I do really like this Idea and I may, at this moment want to take this into production. However, doing this I don’t think would be enough to do to get a good grade for this module, which is what I want. So to boost up the grade, I had the idea to do a documentary on the making of the photo shoot. But then this leaves me with the question, how do I direct a documentary and do a photo shoot at the same time.

I have had some ideas for this dilemma. They are shown below.

• Try and direct the documentary while taking the photos.
• Ask someone from university, preferably who do photography, if they would take the photos.
• Ask a photographer outside of university to take control of the photo shoot.
• Forget about the 7 deadly sins Idea and do a documentary on someone else putting together a shoot.
• Ask someone who is doing photography and who have experience putting together photo shoots to help me with putting together this one and to give advice on how to put on an exhibition or making the album into some sort of hard back book.

The idea that I like at the moment is the last one. Of someone who has an expertise in photography helping me in what I need to do. I know someone who goes to Bournemouth University and a close Friend in someone called Giovanny. I was thinking that I could ask him for some pointers, or maybe even if he would help me with the project.

This could be a problem though as he is also in his 3^rd year at University so I am not sure if he would have time to help with all of the project, but I am certainly sure that we would put me in the right direction and of course if I did need help I am sure that we would me more than willing to help.

Obviously this been my final project, it is very important, so I don’t want to do anything that I have not done before because I want to do something I know to get the very best mark. I do want to do something I have not done before but I would like to use a media form that I am use to and good at. I have done some photography before and I am happy doing it. It is just producing the hard back book and an exhibition that I have never done before and I would want and need some help and advice with this and I am sure I will get the advice off the tutors and people I know which will help.

A reminder about the 3 Ideas I have decided to take forward!

1. Photo shoot/Photo album of the 7 deadly sins. This wouldn’t be just 7 photos, but it would be the 7 sins in different scenarios. Perhaps it could be put into a hardback book, or even put in an exhibition. Along with this I would like to make a documentary type film about the making of the photo shoot.

2. A very slow paced short, maybe about a man’s life. It goes through, and it creates suspense but  then its a let down and nothing  happens. Maybe this  happens a few times, but then near the end something  happens which you just don’t expect coming. This is all I have  for this but I am interested in what I could get out of this idea.

3.  Cause and effect  - Everything has a cause and effect. I am not quite sure about this but it is the one I am leaning more towards at the moment. I have done a little research on it already (See post on ‘George Orwell’ in research)

These are the 3 ideas about going to be looking more into. But in order to develop them I am going to talk to people about my ideas and see what they think and how they could improve the idea. This is what I have done in 310 and I found it to work very well and it helped me with my 3 artifact’s that I have made.

Break over!! Start of 311MC

Today is the start of 311MC and the end of my Christmas break. These posts that lead up to the presentation on the 22nd will be research into the 3 ideas that I am looking into.

So far, I have 3 very vague ideas and the next week will be very important into developing in these a lot more. I will be trying to be creative and artistic as possible with them and I am going to do this by lots of research and talking to people about more Ideas about how I am going to take these ideas forward.

Final Reflection

Well this is going to be my last post before deadline day and isn’t it late? Probably because I’ve been working to try and really improve my mark.

But, every module deserved a final reflection and here is mine.

Overall, I have really enjoyed this module and I put a lot of hours into trying to make it as good as possible, so much so my social life has gone down the toilet! But it has been fun, and this has been because of the obstructions we have been set. They have really freed me up and made me be more creative, which I set out to do at the start of the year! So that has worked wonders.

I could have done a lot better with the research, however apart from memory, it has gone on, I think, particularly with Power it has improved. It is certainly better than my last year and I can tell you for certain this is going to stand me in good stead for my final few months of University.

My artifacts

I can honestly say, I am really really happy with my final artifact’s that I have produced. They have met the deadlines and I have think they have been more creative then anything that I have ever done. This has given me a lot more confidence to go into my FMP and really do well, which is what I am going to do. From peoples reactions to my artifact’s I can say they have gone down very well, which I am also very happy with, however to be honest, they haven’t been for an audience, they have been for me to try and see if I can be creative, which I think that I have done. The fact they were well appreciated has just been a very nice bonus.

What went wrong?

My research hasn’t been at times the best of quality but that is something I will be working on in the rest of the module. I think I have really improved from my 2nd year researching now and I now really know the importance of research and practical work, which coming into uni, and even into my 2nd year of uni, I didn’t understand, but you know what they say, better late then never!!

The Future

I am now going to take a few days off, and enjoy my mates Birthday, before the work begins again. But, with the amount of worked I have put in, I think I deserve it. Then next week, I will be coming back strongly, doing my 300mc essay, in which the question I created came from this module and then onto my presentation and final 3 ideas.

I will be working hard over Christmas to boost my mark (30% for a presentation could really do this) and get the best possible idea for my final piece at University, which thinking about now, is actually really scary stuff! But like I have heard a few times this year, we’re no longer students, we’re media practitioners! Which I think is true. This is the most important few months of my life, which will determine not only my mark, but I think if I can get into the Media Industry. And this is how I am going to be treating it. I will be working hard to get the best possible outcome from University, as I am sure everyone else in the 3rd year will be doing.

Auteur Theory

In 1954,  François Truffaut wrote an essay entitled A Certain Tendency in French Cinema. And in this piece of work, he said, “There are no good or bad movies, only good and bad directors”.

This is something I have really taken on board. Because next hear I want to be directing my work, but I want to be doing it well. This term I don’t think that I have reached my potentiality. But next term, my final term, that is going to change. I am going to research properly, think carefully about ideas, think carefully about developing them into reality and think carefully about how I want my final Idea to come out. And all of that is going to be shown in my research for it!

Other British film makers!

This is a film that comes from Britain. I have only had a chance to watch the 1st 20 minutes though. It’s a film by Clive Barker. I really like how dark it is. It’s very glim, which is natural because it is a horror (A horror is something that I wont be making!!) but depending on if I make this, and if it is a dark take I make, I will be making sure that the lighting is going to be dark.

The sort of lighting I am talking about is like in scrubs. When it was in its 1st and 2nd season the lighting was very dark, because it was showing the transition from medical school to an intern and how hard this can be, especially how they are treated, like below.

This shows how dark it is, but it is the 2nd season. Below is one of season 6.

Its quite obvious the difference I am talking about. This is what I will want to do with any of my projects. On a light subject, light lighting, on a dark subject, dark lighting.

I have just realized though, i’ve put the title other British film makers, and talked about scrubs. I just thought it was a good example of what I was trying to say. But on that note, When I have time, I will be going back to ‘Dread’ to watch the rest of it as it is very good. (And that is coming from a guy who hates horrors because they scare me!!)

‘The Decent (Above) also describes my point about lighting, but that is not why I am putting this in my post. I first think that James D Coe, Director of this film, is a very good director. The film focus’ a lot on suspense. Which of course with you reading my ideas you will know this is something I want to create. Not using horror music (Like I did with my spectacle piece) but with other music which I am yet to find.

In this, the main way suspense is created is with the sound. It has that horror type feel of sound to it.

Everything has a cause and effect!

Everything does have a cause and effect. You drink to much water, you need the toilet, you eat, you get full up, you drink to much alcohol, you get drunk. One of my ideas that I want to do about is to show this, but how? Ideally I would like to use moving image, and maybe put some photography in there too. But I’ll need to think about this a bit more as this is just a very basic Idea so far. For some more information and research on this, see another post in my blog, which is titled: George Orwell. And there is a great clip from ‘Matrix Reloaded’ in there which explains Cause and Effect fantastically well. (I’ve just realized that I said earlier I haven’t really been influenced by anything, when thinking about it, I actually have been!)

But, I was talking to Jonathan a tutorial and he mentioned a show called ‘Crash’, which I had never heard off. But I went and looked it up and couldn’t find anything. Then I remembered what he told me what it was about, and I remembered my mom talking about it. It’s actually called ‘Collision’, which was a 5 part series for ITV. Below is a short clip of it.

This is basic cause and effect knowledge. If you don’t drive carefully, you crash!  But, the main plot of the story is when you saw the guy taking a video of the man in the other car, and he saved his hands, everyone thought that he was a paedophile, but he was just trying to get a bee away from him and so all of the cars clashed.

Obviously I am not going to do something like this, I mean I wouldn’t have that type of funding. But there are many shows out there like this. In terms of short movies, at the moment I would want mine to be good quality like this. I mean who wouldn’t. I do like some of the shots of looking at others in their cars, kind of like looking into their lives.

Sliding doors

This is one of the most common films of cause and effect I think.

The plot of this is quite simple really. When she gets the train, she gets home and finds her boyfriend with another woman but meets another man who she falls in love with. When she misses the train, she goes and gets a cab, but gets robbed and hits her head, ending up in hospital, oblivious to the fact her boyfriend is cheating on her and she then falls pregnant with his child.

The two scenarios go parallel to each other. The cause and effect of getting and missing the train. I can use this as inspiration. Not creating this story again, but it will certainly help some of my ideas that I come up with.

In some scenes, the split screen effect is used. I am not sure I like this effect though. When I watch a show, I like to concentrate on what’s happening. When there is two screens I find it quite annoying, apart from some picture in picture effects which are sometimes briefly used in shows.

Run lola Run

Now this is a film that I enjoyed. It’s so energetic. Based on cause and effect, only in more then 1 scenario. And this is something that I would like to do. In whatever I do I want to show it more then 1 way because I think that would make the project more interesting.

I love the energy and pace of this film, which comes down to the editing. I think its really exceptional. I would also like to make whatever I do very fast paced, as I have never done this before but I think that pace in moving image is very good. If it has no pace, then the audience can become bored and you have to fill their needs in other ways.

Something hit me that Jonathan said in my tutorial. He said “What about the cause and effect of social networking”. And this is something I am intrigued about and I am going to look more into this over Christmas about either doing something on it or incorporate it into my final project, if I go ahead with this project.

‘Scrubs, My Butterfly’

Above is the scrubs episode ‘My Butterfly’. This is one of the first things I thought of when I came up with the cause and effect Idea.

It is about something slightly happening to change events drastically. In this episode, a butterfly lands on a woman’s breast, which sets off events to leave a patient to die. (This is a very short summary). It goes on before the advert to show how this happens. Then after the adverts it goes back to the same event only this time the butterfly lands on a man’s breasts. This again leads to events, only different to the ones before, but with the same outcome, the patients death.

I like the way both events have been separated to the two parts of the show. I think that this was done well. Also having the same out come at the end I thought was a really nice touch.

I think that all scrubs episodes are really nice quality, which any film maker wants out of his film and that’s something I will be looking to do.

If I do this project, then I would like to add all of these kind of things into my work. I think that If I do this then my work will be a lot better and I will get the most out of my work.

Short story with suspense

A very slow paced short, maybe about a man’s life. It’s a very boring life. It   goes through, and it creates suspense but  then its a let down and nothing  happens. Maybe this  happens a few times, but then near the end something  happens which you just don’t expect coming. This is all I have  for this but I am interested in what I could get out of this idea.

This is one of my ideas. I wasn’t going to take this idea any further until I remembered a show I love watching, called ‘It’s always sunny in Philadelphia’. It’s an American show which is quite unknown in the UK.  The only problem is that I can’t seem to get a clip to put on here, I’ve saved it, converted it, can’t youtube it and can’t seem to do it. I can’t even seem to find a clip of it online. So I guess your going to have to take my word for it when I talk about it in a minute.

I’ve tried converting it again, but it didn’t work, again. But I’ll just explain the clip now.

It’s off 3 guys and a girl who run a small bar, and they come up with the stupid idea (All the ideas are stupid in this show) to let anyone, no matter what age come in and drink and just let anyone do whatever they please. But giving their loser father (Danny Devito ) this kind of power is never good, but still they give him the basement, which soon turns into a crazy betting place full of Chinese men. Near the end of the show, they realize upstairs in the bar is getting a bit crazy and they put a stop to it, they then go downstairs to the basement to tell the father, only to find that they are playing a game of Russian Roulette. The Chinese man puts the gun to his head with the shouting coming to a stop and he pulls the trigger, with him losing and putting a bullet though his head. And that was the episode.

My influence from this was simply to have a short film of a man’s life happening, maybe things like getting the bus, being at work, having dinner alone. But during this things happen that builds suspense among the audience and then its a let down. Then at the end, something happens which they just don’t expect and the reaction would be something like, what the hell just happened. This could maybe be something like, going to an underground betting scene, like in ‘ it’s always sunny in Philadelphia’ and playing a game of Russian Roulette. I’m not quite sure about this but it’s an idea.

This is a video that we was shown in the 2nd last lecture. It was a 10 minute clip but I really enjoyed watching it, and it kind of relates to my idea. This film, although you can’t really see it in this trailer, relates a lot on scenery with not mush dialogue. I tried getting the clip from what we was shown in the lecture but it is now saying that it has been taken off youtube by the user.  But in this 10 minute clip, it was very stop start, focusing more on visuals than audio, which is what I would like to do. But it also creates suspense. On the opening bit of this trailer, its showing the two men doing heads and tails, what one doesn’t realize though, that the audience do realize, is that he is actually playing heads and tails for his life. This seems quite normal in the film but to the audience it is creating so much suspense , and when he wins and he doesn’t get to take his life, then the suspense has gone. This is something that I want to do. I can’t think of any ideas about it as yet, but I am going to look into situations like this that can create so much suspense among the audience but no real action on screen. It’s so cleverly done.

People in order!

This video is one I got of Nina’s blog and it relates a lot to one of my ideas that I had, although it is one that I am not going to be taking forward. But I thought I’d put this into my blog anyway.

I love how it goes  from background to background and from different people of ethnic backgrounds and  the different ages. It also ranges with energy. At the start they have loads and then it dies down a bit but you get the odd one later on in the piece who has loads of energy in spite of their age.

In everything about this video, it shows life. Which was what I wanted to do. It shows how kids have energy but as you get older most lose that energy, apart from a few of course, which is again shown in this. It doesn’t just focus on particular types of people though. There is a range of people in it, which shows all type of life.

This is a different sort of idea to my one, though it is the same sort of principle. But I still stand my decision not to carry this idea forward.

3 Ideas I am going to look more into….

From looking at the 6 Ideas I came up with, I have now chosen 3 which I believe are quite realistic to do. Below are my ideas and why I have either chosen them or dumped them

1) Photo shoot/Photo album of the 7 deadly sins. This wouldn’t be just 7 photos, but it would be the 7 sins in different scenarios. Perhaps it could be put into a hardback book, or even put in an exhibition.

This I think is a very realistic project that I could do and I think that there are going to be many ways in how I could make it. So I have decided to keep it and look more into it. You may have noticed in some of my other posts that I have liked this idea and it could come off well. Something that I have had a thought about is doing some of these shoots, and then make a documentary on how the photo shoot was done and how the project was put together. This I will look more into later.

2) A very slow paced short, maybe about a man’s life. It’s a very             boring life. It   goes through, and it creates suspense but  then its a let down and nothing  happens. Maybe this  happens a few times, but then near the end something  happens which you just don’t expect coming. This is all I have  for this but I am interested in what I could get out of this idea.

When I told Jonathan about this idea he wasn’t too keen on it because he said if you build up the audience’s expectation and let it down that is how they will go away feeling let down. And I absolutely agree with this. But I have thought of a programme which I have been influenced by (which is probably the 1st time its happened in this module, trust it to come on the last day of blogging!!!!) and the show is called ‘It’s always sunny in Philadelphia’. I’m not sure if you have heard of this but it is a fantastically funny show but I will go more into this later.

3. Cause and effect  - Everything has a cause and effect. I am not quite sure about this but it is the one I am leaning more towards at the moment. I have done a little research on it already (See post on ‘George Orwell’ in research)

As you can see above this is the one that I am leaning more towards because of the input that I can have on it and the amount of ways that can go about doing it. I can even use different media forms, like photography and moving image, different genres, like a documentary or a shot film. I think the possibilities could be endless with this. I am trying to be more creative, as I told Jonathan in my Skills audit, that is something that I struggle with but it is something I want to try and improve and I think that this project could really help me!

So these are the 3 ideas I have went with. Below is the ideas that I dumped.

1. A documentary on Alzheimer’s. (See research/memory project) Again I haven’t really thought about this that much as a final piece and I don’t know how I would do it. But if I was to do it I think it could be quite powerful. It would have to be powerful if It is going to be a success.

I have decided to dump this because I don’t think that it is a very realistic project to do. I am not talking about just time limits here, I am more talking about the subject. I really enjoyed making my memory artifact, and I thought it was good, and powerful and it met me the obstruction, but to do an FMP on Alzheimer’s I think would be a mistake because it is to sensitive a subject and I don’t believe I am mature enough to cope with it, and If I can’t cope with it then It would be a failure. And if I was to do a project like this It would have to be good and powerful because of the subject.

2. Subliminal Messages  - This was Sam’s idea, but I am really intrigued about it. This is all my thoughts on it for now though as I haven’t got a clue how I would go about it, or even if I would want too.

This is a good idea of Sam’s, but it is not my idea, and for my final piece I want to to do one of my ideas so I have got the passion for it. Although there could be a few ways to do it which is good.

3. Photo Album of a Woman’s or man’s life. This would be like the 7 deadly sins. Maybe done for a hardback book. It would start from a birth, or young age, to the death, whether it be young or old.

When I came up with this idea I was quite excited about it. But it faded. Jonathan and I was talking about it and we came up with some major flaws in the idea. Like….if it was archived what would my creative input be into it. And to be honest there wouldn’t be much. Or If I was to take the pictures, every age I change to would have to be different and the continuity would have to be extremely good other wise it wouldn’t be very good, and this continuity would be very hard to do.

So there you have it, the 3 ideas I am going to look more into and the 3 ideas that I am going to leave out. I am happy with it at the moment.  But over Christmas I may get some more inspiration from something else in which an idea is created, then I will look more into that then.