AICE Media Studies

Here  is my Creative Critical Reflection!

Carmen  is complete! Before posting this final edit, we got some peer reviews from our fellow filmmakers, and for the most part they were exceedingly positive! On the whole, most of the viewers praised the atmosphere that we managed to create, citing the music choice and low-key lighting and editing as factors. The only real criticisms that we received were concerned with the plot, and focused on the lack of an overarching structure and the open-endedness of the last few shots in the opening. After reviewing these criticisms, we decided not to change the structure of the film, because we thought that, although these criticisms would definitely be valid in the context of a full-length film, since its a film opening this openness was more than acceptable as more complicated plot details would be addressed in full over the course of a longer movie. Additionally, we wanted to keep the air of mystery and intrigue that this wealth of interpretations provided, and so we decided to maint...

Mamma Mia! A rough draft of our fully realized concept for a film opening? On MY blog? It's more likely than you think!   It's done! (For now)

We filmed  a short clip after we finished our first editing session outlining what we accomplished and set up a brief outline for our future efforts on the project. Then,  we put together a short little interview with Mickey, our Creative Director (and resident film noir expert) showing how we hoped to maintain aesthetic clarity and directness of vision throughout the editing process. During the second editing session we discussed what order we wanted the clips to play, we worked on color correction and basic grayscale conversion of the color footage, as well as transitions between shot to shot. All that's left to do now is fix the music, incorporate our voiceover, and review to ensure our plot, tone, and mood are all cohesive!

Well, we finally did it. We got all of the footage we needed, and now all that needs to be done is throw it together in a somewhat cohesive manner, and voila! That's a little bit harder than it seems, much to my chagrin, and we spent our first editing session doing not much beside figuring out the exceedingly  complicated editing software. That being said, we did of course manage to get some work done, and primarily focused on the more practical elements of the film - like the title! Kiley and I debated endlessly over which font style to use, going between some dozen or so fonts before we finally picked the one that we both liked and thought fit the tone of the piece well enough to use. Too creepy! Too fancy! Just right! After that was figured out, we explored a few options for sound and audio beneath the yet-to-be-created voiceover, decided on responsibilities to be allocated before the next meeting, and adjourned our first editing session with anticipation for...

We came back to the Ave. fresh-faced and ready to create a masterpiece. Kiley -who will NOT be shown here to maintain suspense -was dressed to the nines in a borrowed blazer, a loaned belt, and some slick shades. We modeled her after a hypothetical combination of the two biggest film noir archetypes: the grouchy, cynical private inspector meets femme fatale. Here, we were able to film the most important shots, demonstrating her actual character arc, showing her motivations and establishing the very beginnings of a storyline as the camera follows her from  her car along to a crowded, cosmopolitan boulevard. Of course, since the finally footage is going to be in black and white, we decided to film in a slightly lighter setting than the film will actually take place, since we can always lower the exposure and raise contrast in post. I was the primary cinematographer in this case, though we all contributed, and we brought two cameras and a dozen ideas to the scene this time around...

When my group and I first started filming, we didn't really expect to get much usable footage out of it - we were mainly location scouting, physically checking out the places we had discussed and getting a feel for some of the shots we might decide to utilize in our final project. We had decided on filming some of the more cosmopolitan areas of downtown Naples, after coming to the conclusion that industrial cityscapes were, in fact, pretty boring backgrounds. We headed out a few hours before sunset, when we were all free at the same time, and got some good shots that fit and expanded upon our initial storyboard. Mickey, our principal photographer, is shown here getting some good establishing shots of the stairwell we were later going to use in our establishing shots! Overall, we got some good landscape and interior footage, and at the end of the day as the sun began to set we decided to meet again next week, assemble our costume, and get some good old-fashioned private di...

Actors: We haven't concretely decided on an actor to play the main role, but we have decided that the role is going to be filled by a female. While we are constructing a narrative within the film noir genre, we aren't as eager to play into some of the more problematic tropes associated with the genre, like casual misogyny and classism, so we're approaching from a different angle and we definitely want the main character, typically a jaded, cynical man to be played by a woman. Costumes: We're going for a private eye, Carmen Sandiego but less flashy look for the main character, incorporating a trench coat or similar garment and some kind of fedora to complete the look. Props: The private eye's desk, associated miscellanea, and whatever we decide to incorporate in her car during the driving scenes will have to be accounted for during filming to make sure that there aren't any continuity errors. Locations: We're going to filming in the downtown Naples are...

Our group created this storyboard last week. Mickey was the talented artist (I sourced the collage) and together along with Kiley and Miranda we brainstormed the sequence of shots for our opening shown above. After the first few shots, the driving sequence will be in a sort of montage style, with each shot interspersed with jazz music in order to build viewer interest. There will be some dialogue in the beginning, and likely voice-over during the latter half.

Watching the sample film openings with my group gave us some good ideas for where we wanted to take our own opening! Particularly "Lost & Found" showed us that making high-quality, well shot footage is not at all outside of our reach, and we brainstormed how to create footage with the same level of quality - coming up with things like using a gimbal or a tripod, making sure to smartly color grade, and using a good camera. We also brainstormed a bit with some of our other influences, citing things from classic noir films, to Phineas & Ferb, to modern music videos as inspirational, and we took notes on aspects that we liked about each piece of media and how we can incorporate them into our own opening.

My group and I decided to create a film opening loosely set in the film noir genre. My groupmates and I are all fans of historical movies in the genre, like The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, and Laura , as well as more modern takes on the genre like Blade Runner  and Drive . We've decided to take inspiration from a loose interpretation of the generic standards, focusing on a mystery and utilizing the aesthetic and conventions while ditching some of the more dated, problematic aspects of the genre, like the romanticization of substance abuse and the rampant misogyny. Personally, Laura  is one of my favorite movies, and I've watched it maybe a dozen times since I first saw it in my childhood. The movie opens abruptly, narrated by a gruff man who immediately introduces the conflict of the film and keeps viewers hooked: "The night Laura died, a silver sun burned through the sky like a magnifying glass." The language is slinking, evocative, and intriguing. The viewer i...

Kiley Hartman, Mickey Poling, Miranda Webb and I are going to be filming a movie opening in the film noir genre!

In the extract of Agent Carter , the eponymous character is a member of an intelligence agency known as the Strategic Scientific Reserve. Throughout the course of the short film, Agent Peggy Carter is shown to face sexism and workplace discrimination indicative of the period of the film, which is set in the 1940s. The 5-minute extract uses various elements of cinema like editing, camera angles, and mise-en-scene to create meaning for the audience. The opening shot utilizes editing and sound to imply to the viewers that the action happening is a flashback, as the self-sacrifice of Captain America is described, with emotional music indicating that the event was in some way important to the main character. Within the context of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this flashback sequence provides context for the one-shot and places it chronologically after the events of Captain America: The First Avenger,  and allows for viewers to understand what is happening even without any prior knowled...

In order to analyze mise-en-scene, I chose to use the first episode of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina , "Chapter One: October Country," on Netflix. Following the cartoonish and creepy introductory sequence, which takes inspiration from the comics ( Chilling Adventures of Sabrina , by Archie Comics) that the series is based off of, the first episode opens to a voice-over describing the town of Greendale as the camera focuses on the exterior of a retro-style movie theater. It's obviously fall in Greendale, as leaves are shown swirling down the street in a brisk wind, and the colors of the theater's neon signage is over-saturated, lending a surreal, 70s-inspired atmosphere to the scene. This atmosphere adds to the strange mood of the show, and helps to establish the aesthetic early on. The camera then draws into the theater to show the title character, Sabrina, unaffected by the horror movie playing on the screen while her boyfriend is visibly frightened. In this sho...

Working with the audio of a piece of film doesn't seem like it would be a particularly daunting task, until you realize that even a simple change can affect every aspect of the narrative sequence. For this week's project, we added sound to our Five Master Edits project from a few weeks back, and  this video is the result of that. 1) Post Synchronization Dubbing: We added the "Inception noise" to the Leitmotif section, which plays every time Josh and I dab. In doing so, I realized how useful Post Synchronization Dubbing is - it doesn't really matter if you forget a line or a sound effect during filming, because you can just add it in afterwards. It's actually a really versatile tool, and I'll definitely be using it in the future. 2) Music: For the Parallelism shot, we wanted to create an academic mood, and we also wanted to get rid of the diegetic sound (Francisco was being very loud!) , and so we decided to add music. We ended up going with a them...

Mickey and I partnered up for this week's project, co-directing a short film showcasing the various editing techniques put forth by film theorist and director Vsevolod Pudovkin, which can be found at the link below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIYSuFS-TiI Leitmotif: For our leitmotif, Mickey filmed a guest star and I performing a popular dance move today, the "dab," which acted as the recurring theme, or motif, that the leitmotif capitalized upon. Parallelism: For our edit utilizing parallelism, Mickey again acted as the cinematographer, and he filmed the parallels between Josh and I as we each wrote in two separate situations. Our actions are parallel, but the contents and context of our actions are different, demonstrating parallelism. Simultaneity: In our simultaneity edit, I finally got behind the camera and filmed a suspenseful shot, cutting between Josh and Mickey walking towards each other at the same time until they finally crash into each other in the...