Research/ inspiration for documentary

    

        When it came to brainstorming what we would feel passionate enough to make our documentary about, one of the main inspirations came from a documentary our teacher showed us in class called " Exit through the gift shop". This documentary was directed by a famous street artist named "Banksy", who aimed to reveal the complicated world of street art, specifically through the footage captured by a French artist named Thierry Guetta. 

        One of the main things that stood out to me about this documentary was how unconventional it was to the idea I had in my head of what a documentary usually looks like. I have only watched ones throughout my life about tragic or historic events, which all held usually similar layouts. The documentary Exit through the gift shop included a lot of wry humor in it, making fun of Guetta and his eccentric ways, as well as shaky footage archived from his thousands of hours of film on his camera. The documentary managed to raise an extremely complicated question to the viewers, of what actually constitutes art, while still being a funny and entertaining story. One of my favorite parts of the documentary was the beginning and end, which was a montage of photos with the song "Tonight the streets are ours" in the background. I thought it introduced the many aspects of the world well, such as running from the police and climbing on buildings to spray paint, with a fitting song. 

    Inspired by this documentary, we decided to also make a documentary based on the world of street art, specifically graffiti. We had a subject from our school in mind, who is a friend of ours that has been doing graffiti for years now. Although we obviously don't and can't completely copy the Banksy documentary, we decided from the start to take inspiration from the interview style, specifically how they interviewed Banksy in a room with graffiti around him and artistic lighting, and the footage of art being created. 

ANDDD I'M BACK

 Hello! I'm back and better then ever, ready to blog it up now that I'm in A level of Aice media studies. Welcome back, and please enjoy. 

Film opening

Without further ado, please enjoy this film opening titled "Cycles" that me and my team have spent the last 8 weeks creating. I hope you enjoy!!

Creative critical reflections

 Here are two videos where I answered important questions regarding to my film opening in my own little way. The first Creative critical reflection is done in the form of an interview, and the second is my own informative Youtube video. Enjoy!

Interview

Youtube video

Reflection

     Wow blog. We have finally reached the end of this long, confusing, fun, stressful, and enlightening process. I honestly can not believe this is finally over, since the past many weeks of my life have involved working at making this film opening. It's hard to believe how much work went into just two minutes of a film, and it really made me think about how much of a meticulous process quality movie making is. 

    From finding different sound bites, to color grading specific parts of the film, setting up lighting and cameras, and blogging the whole experience, I feel like I fully immersed myself in the art of film directing and production. I've finally learned how to set up and use a camera, which I have been wanting to do for the longest time, and can now confidently do it on my own. I also learned how to use graphics, color grading, sound layering, and so many other techniques in editing that I had no idea about before. 

    Besides how much I learned in such a short amount of time, one of my favorite parts of creating this opening was working with my team. I went from being almost complete strangers with two of the girls to creating a solid friendship simply from having to come together and create a product that we were all proud of. We had to spend time outside of school planning our script, editing together, filming, and not only did it feel good to be producing our own creative work, but we had an absolute blast doing it.

    Since this is the first project I have put this much time and effort into in the world of film, I can't wait to see what the future holds for me. This has really awakened a lot of different ideas in me that now seem so much more achievable due to my new knowledge and experience that I gained through the making of this film.

Credit scenes

 One of the final parts of editing our film opening is including a credit scene, which we were taught about in the beginning of the year. Credit scenes from the beginning of a movie differ from those at the end of a movie, so let's talk about it. 

Credit scenes are used to appreciate the work put in by contributors to the movie. The reason for putting them at the beginning is because not everyone is going to stay around to the end of a movie, so putting them in the beginning gives people the credit they deserve. 

"Today’s screen credits are almost an art unto themselves—more than a simple list of names"

This stuck out to me, because it will help me keep in mind that incorporating the names into the film is going to be more complicated than just inserting them. They have to be put in in a cohesive, yet noticeable way. According to this website I researched on that shows a full guide on film credits, there is a known order in which film credits are typically put in.

1. Producers/production company

2. Film title

3. Lead cast

4. Supporting cast

5. Casting director

6. Music composer

7. Costume designer

8. Assosicate producers

9. Editors

10. Production designer

11. Director of photography

12. Executive producer

13. Writer

14. Director

The font and movement of these credits is especially important in opening scenes to establish the mood and emotion for the rest of the film. For example, in the 2011 movie "TinTin" by Steven Speilberg, the credits slowly appear throughout different parts of the opening and match themselves to it with font color and movement. For example, the name of the producer appears in the shadow of a doorway. This makes the credits blend in with the movie but still be noticeable, as well as establish the immediate mood for the movie. 

TinTIn opening

CCR part 1

For my first CCR, I decided to go with an interview format. My sister was the perfect candidate for this, since she is visiting from college right now and not only has a lot of free time, but loves being in front of the camera and "acting". I needed someone who was not afraid or embarrassed to act like a host or an interviewer, so this worked out perfectly. 

I started by using my dining room table to set up what I thought was closest to an interview set.

Inspiration:

The first thing I noticed is that in a lot of interviews, both people seem to have some sort of drink or matching cups. I decided it would make mine more realistic if I added this to my set. They also have minimal decoration, and everything is kept neat and close together. The tables are matching, and there is a table in between them. Here was my final set:

I have two matching mugs on each side, and a simple centerpiece. I decided to add the camera because the interview is related to film, so I thought it would be a nice touch.

The hard part of this interview was coming up with my script to answer the questions. I did not want to rant for too long, because that would make the interview boring, and I wanted to not only answer them creatively, but I had my sister switch up the wording to make it less stagnant but still fully answer the question. Here was my final script:

I didn't memorize it word for word, which you will see in the final project since I switch some things up, but it was a general outline of what I wanted to say and it helped me out. My sister also did me a favor and got me a little microphone off of amazon that plugs into phones, which made the audio quality of the CCR amazing. We each had it clipped to our shirts throughout the interview, which I also think added to the realness of it. 

For the framing of the shots, I put my sister in the right third of the camera, and she put me in the left third. This made it obvious that we are having a face to face conversation.

Throughout the video, I used VN, the same editing website I used for my film opening, to include light background music, as well as clips from my original project to add context. I did not add many other images, since this is an interview style video rather than just me talking to the camera. However, when I was talking about different inspirations, I added small images of the movies and genres I was talking about during the question. Filming this was a really fun experience, and not only helped me to reflect on my overall project but taught me about filming interviews and informing an audience about your overall process in a creative way.