Monday, June 14, 2010

Commentary on Friday Night's Screening

It's excruciatingly painful to have to go through 12 weeks of pre-production work, filming, and editing only to come out the other end to have everyone say something along the lines of "what a shame about..." Unfortunately for our group, this  was the exact case for our film Under Control. We knew sound was going to be an issue from all the things that had gone wrong last week during post-production but to be honest, I wasn't expecting it to be as bad as it was. From that obvious popping during the MP3 clips, to the out-of-sync dialogue, to the sound at the end just being way too loud, it really was a shame that our entire project had been completely screwed up by one tiny decision. I am seriously considering a short course in music production for film now as a result so that I don't make the same mistake again next time.

Anyway, other than that, the rest of the night was relatively pleasant. I had to admit by the third sneaker spastic, I was nearly ready to throw something at the screen but that had nothing to do with the films - I was slightly hungover and had only had 2 hours sleep and in general, hate watching the same narrative more than once in a year. It's why I don't watch the same film twice if I can avoid it. I think the entire semester would have been more interesting if a rule had been put in place to limit the number of a times a film could be made. Yes, I will concede that some scripts that were better than others but that did not dictate who made which films. In  fact, only 5 out of the 10 of the scripts on Christine's Top 10 List were made with 9 of the 20 films being made from those 5 scripts. Personally, I wondered what these production groups could have done had they been forced to make another script rather than a variation of one already being made.

Regardless, I did come out of theatre with some favourites. They included Neurotic Meets Normality, The Last Shift, and Lucky Game.

Whilst I am still a little confused over the motivation for the ending of Neurotic Meets Normality, I was absolutely blown away by its cinematography. The supremely executed extreme close-ups, wonderful use of colour and and all round good eye for detail meant the film just looked brilliant. I also loved the sequence with the voiceover counting the number of steps the man takes to work, simulating his thoughts. The timing was perfect and it was really such a powerful scene and to be able to literally get inside the head of that type of character, set up the scene in the elevator really well.

The Last Shift was another one of my favourites for cinematographic reasons but also because it had me on the edge of my seat the whole way throughout. I knew the script from reading it 12 weeks ago and did think it was a good idea at the time but a little clichéd at the same time. This groups version of it however, made me completely forget about the fact that it was a overdone story. Timing and editing were definitely contributing factors towards this and coupled with an excellent use of lighting, made the whole film really scary. I loved the last shot which although heavily overused in horror films, still got me.

Finally, my favourite film of the night: Lucky Game. At the beginning of this film, I had to admit I was really pre-occupied with the internal conversation going on in my brain over whether I had seen one of the little boys in a short film from SKFF but eventually, I gave up and got into the story. It's lucky I did because this little film was a beauty. I loved the concept of two siblings being in a power struggle with the underdog coming out on top, the reminiscent feeling you get of dealing with your brother or sister knowing we have all been in a similar situation before, and finally, the classic black comedy twist at the end. I think the film would have been heavily aided by some more color correction but the camera work and editing made up for this. All in all, this was my favourite film of the night and one that had me chuckling for a while afterwards.

In a final reflection, if I was to do this semester again, there would have been a number of things I would have done differently. Firstly, I would not have been afraid of change: I realise now its vital one can recognise when they are in need of some serious help and ego can not get in the way of this occurring. I am extremely grateful that Arthur offered to assist us with the camerawork because at the end of the day, I think that's what saved our film. Secondly, I would have been way more concerned with sound. It is the other half to any film and if you are not concentrating on both it and the image, then you are only doing half the work. Finally, I would have appreciated more time. This would have been available to us this semester had we not had all the issues with scripts changes last-minute and generally not getting off our ass quick enough to get into motion but I think in the time frame we had, things worked out OK.

This entire semester has been a complete rollercoaster ride for me from losing my laptop, iPod and wallet, to going through some ridiculously heavy personal issues, whilst attempting to maintain my work quality for all my other subjects, I think I only just survived. Having said that, I would do it all again. I've learnt many things this semester that I will be able to apply to my future career and my stint at the University of Florida next semester, something that has been getting me through the last painful 4 weeks. I'm looking forward to coming home next year full of new experiences, raring and ready to go for our final year. Until then, farewell my fellow filmbuffs.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Animal Kingdom

A couple of weeks ago I was fortunate enough to receive wind of a brand new Aussie film coming out that to be honest, I hadn't hear much about but was being shown at Cinema Nova as part of a Q&A session. Every fortnight or so, Nova hosts an evening where the directors, writers and some of the cast of a recently released film come along to watch the film with the audience and then hang around after to answer questions in a formal environment. I've been to heaps of them now ranging from Dean O'Flaherty's Beautiful to Adam Elliot's premiere of Mary and Max. Each one has been an absolute pleasure to experience and the sessions afterwards are without a doubt the best way to gain valuable insight into the Australian film industry. This session featured the now very popular feature by David Michod, Animal Kingdom. An Underbelly on-screen as some have named it, Animal Kingdom is nothing like its televisual cousin. The action is more unjust, more real; the characters are a lot scarier and you can not ignore the beautiful timing created by a combination of cinematographic moments and faultless editing.

Looking back on the Q&A session, I remember Michod detailing the excrutiating time he endured between gaining the idea for the film and it's actual release this year. It all began 12 years ago when Michod uncovered the tale of the Pettingil gang who reigned over Melbourne's underground crime ring throughout hte 80s. The characters are loosely based on the heirarchy of the gang and are emulated through Janine "Smurf" Cody (Jacki Weaver), Pope (Ben Mendelsohn), Craig (Sullivan Stapleton), Darren (Luke Ford) and their friend Barry Brown (Joel Edgerton). The film follows the entrance of Joshua "J" Cody into this family's crazy life when his mother, sister of Pope, Craig and Darren, finally O.D's. From there, it divulges into the family's sordid armed robbery crime history but as it is the turn of the century now bank holdups and petty cash thefts are a thing of the past and Brown attempts to convince Pope of this fact to no avail. What happens next is a rollercoaster ride through the ups and downs of being wanted criminals with an all too just finale.

I have to admit, Ben Mendelsohn is one scary motherf***er. His character, Pope, resembles that of a ticking time bomb that has you constantly on the edge of your seat and wondering when he will go off. But that is the beauty of Pope's character and Michod's writing in that this rarely happens. Instead, Pope is juxtaposed by Craig's character, a constant smackhead who's paranoia sees him acting completely irrational and violent at many times throughout the film. Of the times when Pope does decide to move, you know it's going to be bad.

I sincerely recommend the film to anyone who has their doubts about the direction of Australian cinema. Animal Kingdom is a perfect example of how we are a cut above the rest and we are getting better at what we do. The fact the film won the Grand Jury Prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival is testimony that alone.





Friday, June 11, 2010

True Blood

Recently, my roommate and I have been sucked in (pardon the pun) by the latest vampire TV hit True Blood. I once tried watching this show a couple of years ago when it first came out but the image of the decomposing fox in a time-lapse style seriously deterred me from watching anything other than the pilot. I have to admit, I regret not being more open to the idea of the show before. Having now watched Episode 4, I can tell the series really does have a number of good qualities about it. To give you a better insight into what I’m rambling on about, here’s a little run down:

Sooky Stackhouse is a paranormally affected young waitress who works at the Stackhouse Diner in Georgia. On a shift one night, she encounters Bill, a wandering vampire who happens to have acquired himself the unofficial land rights to his ancient ancestors. The small-minded folk in Forks aren’t happy with his presence and those close to Sooky don’t enjoy the attention he gives her. Her best friend, May, a sassy, slightly stereotypical, black girl, only has her best intentions at heart and doesn’t ever want to see Sooky hurt, a possibility that is always more likely when a vampire’s in town. Sooky’s boss, Bob, who’s had a secret crush on her for as long as can be remembered, is obviously jealous of the fawning Bill receives from Sooky who is utterly mesmerized by the fact that Bill’s a vampire. Finally, there’s Sooky’s brother, Luke, who hates vampires and anything to do with them and strictly forbids Sooky from attempting to reconnect with Bill after a violent night after work. Interwoven into this delicious mix-pot is the complicating mystery of a series of “vampire like” attacks on young women in the area. Vampires already have a bad rep in the area and these attacks only make things worse for Bill and his place in the town. What makes the film even more interesting is Sooky’s ability to read people’s minds, a gift she’s had since she was born. Living in a small town however riddled with secrets (it’s always the small ones that do), Sooky has to train her mind to shut off the thoughts from the people around her otherwise, things can get very messy if she hears too much. With Bill however, it’s a different story. In a reverse role situation from Twilight (In which Edward can normally read minds but can’t read Bella’s), Sooky is free to be herself around Bill because she is not worrying about whether or not she can read his mind.

The show has won heaps of accolades and praise from TV critics and theorists alike due to its ingenious storylines to its well-designed characters. I have to admit, having given it another go, I can see what everyone was rambling about now. In most series where there are a number of characters who receive a fair share of the screen-time, confusion over character motivations and actions can occur due to the lack of attention to smaller characters that are integral to the subplots but not the main narrative.

I’ve been thinking about this approach in relation to other TV series and how it is exactly that they manage to coordinate the development of multiple characters who could be taken out of the show at any time. Recently in Grey’s Anatomy, about 3 actors were killed on screen (meaning that their contracts had expired off-screen) who weren’t necessarily required for the main narrative but I was shocked at myself for caring about their imminent absence from the series future. I had no time for these characters previously and didn’t really like them if I was to be dead honest but now that they were gone, I realized just how important they were in my narrative of the show. Somewhere in my mind whilst watching the series, I had placed every character I came across into different pigeonholes ranging from “Important” to “Not Important”. Those who were important were the ones who’s story I was interested in the most, mainly the original characters of Bailey, Christina, Meredith and Derek. The “Not Important” characters were a majority of the hospital crew who had invaded Seattle Grace Hospital during the merger. It was these “Not Important” characters who were killed in last night’s season finale and I wonder how it is that the writer’s so cleverly managed to make these characters an important part of my story of Grey’s even though I didn’t like them.

All in all, I think this is the difference between good TV shows and bad ones. The ones that are able to make you care about every single character, even the ones you truly despise, are great because they are able to convince you subconsciously that you need these characters in Your telling of the story. Bad TV Shows however take characters in and out faster than Big Whoppers at Hungry Jacks to the extent where you don’t even notice they’re missing. I refer explicitly to Neighbors and Home and Away at this point. Ultimately, I hope one day I will be able to produce high quality television or film like Grey’s Anatomy and True Blood but until then, I’m content to sit back and give the ravely reviewed another chance.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

The End...

Well, I never thought I’d say this but it finally looks like we’re finished! Fin! Fini! Forever! Well, until next semester at least anyway.

Our end product I have to admit wasn’t exactly what I was imagining at the beginning of the pre-production phase. After having created extensive storyboards, shot lists and script suggestions for the film, I had a pretty good idea about how I wanted the film to play out during the post production phase but as always, there were a few set-backs that stopped that from happening.

The first was time. Our entire film (now The Director’s Cut) lasted 8 minutes and 43 seconds. Way over the 5 minute allowance. But the problem was the only way the film could be shortened was if we went through all the dialogue sequences and sliced out individual words - the scenes were just too important to take out individually. But then we thought about the opening sequence and looked at it realistically. All it did was establish setting and reveal some aspects of Grant’s character but ultimately, we realized that’s all it did. We then decided that we could take out the entire scene (which frustratingly was the best sounding, best looking scene) without affecting the rest of the narrative. So now instead, when viewing the film, it opens onto a black screen with music from the movie playing on the TV with the titles and then fades into Grant asleep on the couch. In a weird way, I kinda like this version a little better than the original. It confuses the audience a little over just who this character is and the importance of the TV is established with it being the first sound we hear. The link the audience makes between the sound of the movie and the opening image of Grant sets up the idea that inevitably, the two will interact, which is reestablished in the second shot when we pull focus to the TV behind Grant as he’s asleep on the couch.

The second setback we encountered was the bad recording of sound for one of our clips which had to be used for a good quarter of the film. The reason why the recording was bad was completely my fault. When I exported the movie that was to be played through the DVD player, I made two versions: one with sound, one without. The reason for this was because I was thinking at the time Luke probably won’t want to hear me saying his lines but I also exported the one with sound because I thought maybe he might read the timing off me and alter his performance accordingly. Unfortunately, due to a whole load of technical issues, we only had time to put one on DVD and for some reason I put the one without sound onto it. As a result, throughout the entire clip we have of Luke interacting with Lara on-screen, you can hear me nattering away in the background. And of course being the crappy A.D I was, I totally forgot to make sure Louise had recorded wild lines with Luke. As a result of all this, we had to get Luke to come in to re-record the entire scene. The obvious problem that arrises from this of course is firstly, the recording is not made in the same ambiance as it was originally and the other thing we didn’t think about was recording from a distance to simulate the distance between Luke and the camera on the orignal shoot. Because of this, the recordings all sounded like they had been recorded in a completely different location to the film, which they had but if you’re a good filmmaker, you try to avoid your audience noticing stuff like that. Unfortunately, the only thing we could do to fix the situation was employ Arthur’s brilliant skills again to assist us in editing the sound so that it had reverberation and depth added to it to simulate the sound we had recorded in the house. It’s still obvious but as many people have said, you get over the initial shock once the scene with the re-recorded material has been playing for a while.

Whilst there may have been many things that didn’t go right in the end for the film, I still think I’m pretty happy with the end result. The colors look great, Lara and Luke are brilliant with each other and film’s conclusion has gotten everyone who’s seen it so far. I just wish that those little things mentioned above didn’t exist but hey, this is uni and it is a learning experience so I hope that next time I just remember not to make the same mistake again.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Final Cut

Everything is on the line today. I mean that literally with every clip being on the FCP timeline and figuratively as today is our final submission date for the film. I spent 6 hours adding the finishing touches to the clips last night and attempting to fix that bloody sound problem but at 2am, I decided enough was enough and I’d just have to see whether everyone else could come up with some ideas.

Unfortunately, it appears that out of the 4 of us, I was the one with the most experience in Final Cut Pro so if there was anybody who would know how to fix the sound, it would be me. The others were helpful however in pointing out little parts that as a person who has been staring at a screen for hours on end watching the same clip over and over again would not have noticed. These included some of the timing on the synced audio from THAT scene between Luke and Lara, the start times for the music during the film, as well as choosing the last song to be played during the credits.

We decided earlier that it would be best to remove the opening scene in order to shorten the whole film a little more in line with the 5 minute limit and the rest of the film really does have a nice flow to it. We have still maintained the slow progression at the beginning of the film with the opening shots of Luke on the couch which develop nicely into the frantic final seconds when time is running out for Stacey to be released. The ending too works really well with it circling back to that slow, lazy pace that was featured at the beginning of the film, retreating the fact that whilst we don’t know what has happened or will happen to Stacey, Grant will go right back into his old life only slightly affected by his actions, not really knowing whether or not they actually happened.

I want to discuss now the film’s final shot. In pre-production, we decided that the end shot of the film should be of Luke raising the remote to the camera and pressing the off button. The idea for this was that in post, we would add the “TV Turn Off” effect over the top so that it looked like Grant was switching off a TV, our TV to be exact. The “TV Turn Off” effect is what you get with old CRT TV’s when the off button is pressed and the light from the bulb behind the screen goes out. As a result, the image compresses in on itself to the center with the black screen replacing the light. This effect is really hard to describe verbally as I discovered but watch the end of the film to get an idea of what I’m talking about. The reason we chose this ending was for two reasons: firstly, we thought it added a nice reflexive touch to the film with this being the only time Grant acknowledges the audience’s presence. Secondly, it almost reiterates the recurring theme of a screen within a screen which begins with Stacey on the TV. By Grant turning our screens off, the assumption is made on our part that he too is on a screen and yet he has the power to control his screen where Stacey didn’t.

These are all highly embedded meanings that many people will not gather from this final shot but when thinking about why the film should end this way, at least I have a reason to give people.

All in all, I wouldn’t say I’m completely pleased with the film but I am proud that we survived it. After changes in scripts, broken knees, stolen laptops, decisions about crew members and bad sound, I think at the end of the day, we came out on top for this film and I will stand up and say I’m proud to call this my film. I just hope to hell that it won’t be completely shot down at Friday’s screening.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

Wild Lines

What is it about that bloody Murphy guy? I mean, who does he think he is creating some law that says anything that can go wrong will go wrong. I’m a member of a democracy! Don’t I have some say in whether this law should be a part of my life? I have some local council representative in Parliament to drive it out don’t I? Apparently not.

Yes, it would seem just when you think you’ve fixed a problem, another one rears its ugly head. I’m referring specifically to the recent development during our last editing session regarding the poor sound quality of one of our clips. In a nutshell, we recorded Luke delivering his lines with me talking away in the background from the DVD of Lara’s performance. Bad! Bad! Bad!

To fix this, we decided to get Luke to come into RMIT to re-record all his lines. This would have been fine except for the fact that obviously, the RMIT editing suites and my house have two completely different sound environments! It’s really obvious that the recording we did of Luke at RMIT is much closer to the camera and in a much more controlled, enclosed environment then the original recording done at my house.

We tried everything to make them sound the same. Reverberation, echo, adjusting the pitch/tempo/bass, adding effects and finally employing Arthur and his whiz-bang Adobe skills but alas, nothing could be done to save the innocent scene. The problem was two things: firstly, we should have re-recorded Luke in a room that was a similar size and depth to the room at my house. Secondly, we should have recorded from the same distance away that the camera was to Luke in the clip itself. Obviously, it’s going to sound weird in a clip when the actor is standing 6 feet away from the camera when he sounds like he’s right next to the boom.

Unfortunately, it looks like there’s really nothing more we can do about it. If we had thousands of dollars to spare and time that had no continuum, obviously we would either have re-recorded the whole scene at my house or found an amazing piece of software which would have replicated the sound from my house. Either way, what’s done is done and we will just have to see how the newly recorded sounds work with the rest of the film.

Editing Sesh # 2

Editing Session 2

Crap! Crap! Crap! Crap! Crap!!!

Phew! Ok, breathe!!!!


…. And now let go….


Ok, I think I’m alright now. Apologies for my outburst above but I am seriously pissed off right now. I’m not sure how and I’m not sure why but for some reason, looking through the second tape of our fiming on the weekend, I just discovered we only have 2 takes of the clip of Luke speaking almost half the scene…with me talking over him in the background on the DVD. I don’t know why but I honestly thought we had filmed another shot with him saying the exact same lines without me talking so that we could easily place them over the top in film. Nup! Apparently I forgot to add that into the shooting schedule and also totally forgot to film it on the night. So, result? We have this awesome, essential shot of Luke and Lara responding to eachother about why she is in the TV (the most crucial part of the film!!!) and you can hear me nattering away in the background. Let me explain a little.

When we filmed Lara’s performance, we shot it all in one take. This was because we were only filming her entire performance from one angle and felt it would be better for her to get “in the zone” rather than stopping her every two minutes to film a different section. Also, fitting with the narrative, Stacey doesn’t stop to take a breath and Lara’s performance was brilliant in replicting this because we didn’t let her stop. However, obviously we needed her to respond off Grant to get the right facial expressions and movement and to do this, we decided the best thing to do was have me replace Luke for the purpose of her shoot. This idea was fine and in fact worked brilliantly. For some reason though, it seems I lost my head on Friday morning when we were frantically trying to get just one DVD to play through my DVD player with her performance bruned on it and I don’t know why, but I decided to use the one we had with my voice still audible in the background.

This was a typical case of me not thinking far enough ahead in relation to the film because if I had, I would have remembered that at some point, Luke would need to have his lines recorded with this DVD playing in the background i.e with my voice heard as well.

Ugh! It’s just so frustrating! I tried everything I could to work out how to fix the problem – taking out the entire scene (would lose all plausibility for both Lara and Luke’s oerformances), replace the sound with snippets of audio from other clips (totally out of sync and could only replace half the dialogue) or get Luke to come in and re-record his lines, something we should have remembered to do on set. Oh well, I will get hold of Luke tonight and beg and plead with him to come in to RMIT so we can re-record.

Friday, June 4, 2010

Readerly Reading of Writerly Texts - try saying that 10 times in a row...

I came across <a href=“http://www.jstor.org/stable/20119619?seq=2”?>an interesting article</a> during my research of Roland Barthes theory of the readerly and writerly written by John S. Brushwood regarding the readerly reading of a writerly text. This was an idea I wanted to explore in opposition to Barthes belief that readerly texts are so fixed, so “characterized by the pitiless divorce which the literary institution maintains between the producer of the text and its user” that they are not worthy of reception in our modern world.

I do not believe this to be true. To suggest and enforce this idea suggests that most audiences of literature, art or media are incapable of producing separate meanings from eachother because the text itself is so fixed. I know for a fact though that if I read Twilight and discuss the character development of Bella in the opening chapter with my 16 year old sister, her and I will have two completely different interpretations of the text: we will both produce different meanings of the text based on our opinions, values and personal past.  On top of this, Barthes claims that the Readerly text is also incapable of allowing any participation within the text itself, rendering the reader a consumer of the text rather than a producer.

Brushwood argues, “A sensitive reader inevitably participates in the act of communication that occurs when one reads a novel, no matter how “traditional, how logically structured the narrative may be”. He goes on to say that obviously “radically fragmented texts demand a degree of participation, on the part of the readers, that places them in an authorial position where, even though they do not really stand in place of the author, they are at least by the author’s side. This phenomenon, in effect, denies the readers the position of addressee, and places them in the position of sender. Therefore, the communication may acquire a feeling of inauthenticity, the sense that no real communication is taking place, or that, at best, the sender is addressing the sender, not the addressee”.

That long spiel is all relevant to my thoughts and feelings towards Barthes readerly and writerly theory. You can not deny that an entire global audience is incapable of finding multiple meanings within a “traditional” text; yes, I will concede that multiple interpretations of the narrative may be limited but ultimately, I believe it is the connotations that Barthes talks about that is more important to be received from a text than whether or not it produces multiple narratives. We are all different. We all have different value systems and opinions and all of this shapes our understanding of a text and the meaning we receive. No two people will navigate their way through a K-Film in the same way and if they do, it will be probably be by chance. The reason for this is because the human brain strives to produce meaning in its own way and as we know, no one shares a brain with anyone else unless they are conjoined twins.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Music Is The Answer

I have played some form of musical instrument almost my entire life. Starting with piano at the age of 4, I progressed into violin at 7, the drum kit at 9, the snare drum in a Pipeband at 11 and dispensed throughout the most of this, dabblings in guitar and voice. I do therefore, like to believe that I have a good ear for music. I’ve realized recently however, that there are two different ears that one acquires for deciding what is good music and how to produce good music.

I’ll explain a little further. When I play an instrument, let’s say piano for example, I am able to listen to a song and then play it out on the piano. I can “play by ear” basically. I’ve come to think over the years that this means my brain is highly tuned to the musical elements and is able to pick out a good song from a bad song. When it comes to choosing songs for film however, this theory never quite goes to plan.

I refer specifically to another film I made over the summer holidays about a girl who happened to choose the wrong night to drive down one of the scariest roads in Perth. The hardest aspect of the entire production was trying to find music that reflected the tone and emotional impact I wanted to evoke from the audience. No matter how hard I tried, it ws almost impossible to replicate the type of music I wanted and then enter that information into a search engine for copyright free music. I tried everything: looking on YouTube for “scary songs”, looking up copyrightfreemusic.com for “creepy music”, even attempting to create something spooky in Garageband. Nothing sounded right. I realized then and there, after giving up and just going with some crap I found the night before my film’s screening, that it takes a certain amount of talent to be able to find a good song for a film.

Whilst Louise was in charge of sound and did produce a good song for the climax, it just didn’t seem to fit the mood. It’s hard to produce something like that when you are limited to a bunch of crappy sound bites from Garageband. In the end, we decided upon a piece which had a steady bass beat coupled with a punching drum kit. The aim was just to reflect the increased tempo of the scene through the sound as well as the vision and I think in the end, what we used does work for the scene.

The end credits song however, proved harder to decide than anticipated. I wanted something cheeky and spunky but not cheesy. Unfortunately when you type “cheeky” and “spunky” into a music search engine, cheesy is the first thing that comes up. After trawling through countless numbers of crappy songtunes and Latin folk songs, we finally decided upon techno style beat which sounded a little sterile, reiterating the technology theme of the film.

I’m really considering undertaking some form of music production for film short course over the holidays or possibly looking into doing it as an elective during my exchange to Florida as I’ve realized from this production, sound is JUST as crucial, if not even more so, than image and to be able to manipulate it is an obvious talent.