Short Film Critique

A. Rationale:
The film we made was a drama that incorporated realist techniques. We made this film to present our theme that love blinds people from the truth, and that it alone is not reason enough to dedicate your life to someone else. In this film we experimented with realism because we wanted to create a compelling, yet realistic film that actually affected our audience of young adults. This film was poignant, and very frank which we hope conveyed our message well.

Your areas of responsibility on the film.
I was one of the editors for this film. Additionally, I served as a confidant with the director who always sought after all of the crew’s advice. Likewise, I aided him in casting actors for our film, and I helped him visualize a scene to perfection. First, I recruited the actress in our film, and the director casted the actor. However, our initial actress became unavailable for us, and so I had to cast another one who was less ideal than our first choice. Because she was not as qualified as our first choice actor, our film crew had to guide her acting meticulously which became quite time consuming. As editor, I knew that I would have to cut for continuity. Also, I knew that we needed an ample amount of shots to add coverage for our scenes. Therefore, I implored and advised both our director and cinematographer to film while being aware of these factors. Thankfully, we are very open to each other’s thoughts so they heeded to my concerns and addressed them when filming.

Problems and Challenges that arose in your area of responsibility.
Because we intended our film to embody realism, we incorporated several sequence shots in our scenes. Unfortunately, we did not notice errors in continuity while we were on set. We could not refilm these because of a lack of time, so it became my and my partner’s duty to solve them through editing. In the opening sequence we filmed in a bart station. Several extras were in the scene, and since we had no control over them they entered our shots sporadically. Instead of simply cutting between shots we simply inserted our opening text between the shots that had continuity errors. This way we created the illusion that our intro was coherent, and we were able to present the audience with the opening credits as well. Another problem in our film was that we lacked eloquent scene transitions. My partner and I had trouble trying to move from one scene onto the next. After much thinking we concluded that having the following scene’s audio begin while the current scene ends would allow for a smooth transition. To help us, our sound editor gave us several sounds to add realism to the film. For example, with the park scene there were ambient sounds such as birds chirping that created the scene transition. In other scenes we used our actor’s dialogue to create the scene transition.

Problems that arose on the film as a whole
The most malignant problem that our group incurred was that our actress constantly flaked on us. At first we understood that she had other priorities, so we tried to form our filming schedule around her own schedule. However, whenever our filming date came she would ignore both my and the director’s phone calls. For at least an hour, our film crew remained in awe wondering what she was doing. Eventually, she told us that she was incapable of filming for very unbelievable reasons. Of course, this pushed the production of our film several days back. Additionally, my partner and my time to edit was minimized because we wasted certain editing days due to a lack of footage. As the deadline drew closer and closer I implored my director to advise our actress of our commitment to our project. Fortunately, my director was able to finally convince our actress to continue to film with us. Unfortunately, we had to work off of her time schedule again, and so our final filming dates occurred past our deadline. This caused my partner and I to edit after school to make up for lost time. Additionally, for some of the final scenes, such as the train scene, I and our cinematographer remained at school editing so that our other two crew members could film. This allowed us to film and edit during the same day. Aside from our actress, we had no real detrimental problems. All of our crew members contributed equally to the film.

YOUR CRITICAL EVALUATION OF THE FINISHED PROJECT
Our final project came out well considering that we lost several days because of our unreliable actress. However, if we did not lose those days then our film definitely could have improved on its story telling and the acting within it. In pre-pro we had a difficult time trying to form a realistic story that could be well told. We believed that we addressed all of the plot holes in our final script, but as we began to film we realized that some points were a bit complicated. For example, it was difficult to convince our audience that our actress could have truly believed that John had been blind during their entire time together. In the script, I attempted to address by presenting our actress as a very ignorant person once she receives her eyes. Thus, her ignorance would cause her to accept that John had always been blind. Even though it was highly implausible. Unfortunately, our actress had trouble conveying the right emotions for our scenes. Typically, she said her lines with a happy tone which definitely strayed away from the meaning behind her words. Again, our lack of time with her caused us to cherish every moment we had with her. This caused us to sacrifice the quality of her acting in order to complete the film. Thus, in our final film her lines lacked much emotion, but they did not carry the same happy tone as before because our crew urged and forced her to show some sad emotion. That sad emotion was minimal, but its presence made our film better than her being happy while reading solemn lines. Because the emotion that our story needed was not fully there, the story itself lost some credibility because, again, her ignorance could not be conveyed through her emotion. In an attempt to add more drama to our movie we decided to include other previously discarded scenes. The first was the train scene in which our actress is forced to take care of our actor. This showed how bitter and reluctant she was becoming towards him because she was not used to having to take care of others. This scene definitely aided us in characterizing our actress as selfish. Also, we needed to show that the two were indeed in love. This love was the motive for our actor to donate his eyes, but our film’s script had no truly powerful instances that showed his love for her. To address this, I told my crew that we should add a park scene in which our actor is pushing our actress on the swings. This would show them having fun together even though the girlfriend was physically impaired. Still, our actor needed a powerful reason to sacrifice his eyes. This reason came in the form of marriage. Our actress told our actor that if she had eyes then they would get married. Marriage became our protagonist’s reason to sacrifice his eyes. This reason reoccurs when the girlfriend returns home to tell him that she was gonna leave his life. As she leaves the house, our protagonist tries to chase after her but falls and drops the wedding ring box that he bought for her. These critical scenes definitely made our film better. However, we should have planned them earlier in order to avoid a rush to film them. This shows that the biggest flaw in our film was our inability to plan it well. We should have realized our film’s storyline errors earlier so that we wouldn’t have to shoot them last minute which definitely stressed out our crew. Also, we should have casted our original actress earlier so that we could be aware that she was busy. If we planned earlier with her then perhaps we could have kept her as our actress which definitely would have given us a much more emotional female character. Also, she wouldn’t have flaked out on us like our final actress did. In the future, we will make sure to cast the most brilliant and dependable actresses and actors. Also, we will cast them early in our production in order to avoid any sudden issues such as unreliability and a realization that our actress had difficulty acting. Still, I believe that the effort that all of our crew members put into the production created an elegant film that had some problems, but overall was a compelling film that was highly original and interesting.

Advanced Editing Notes- Overview/Classical Paradigm

1. How would describe the difference in camera work: composition, angle, movement
In "Arrival of a Train" the camera is stationary throughout the entire film. Additionally, the camera is at a long shot of the scene in order to provide extensive coverage for the audience. This allows the audience to see what every person is doing using any given point in the scene. Of course, this camera technique reflects a realistic approach which is in contrast to "Damsel in Distress". The latter film incorporates several camera movements that amplify the emotion that the characters are feeling. This film borrows from realistic films because it uses several sequence shots to illustrate the scene. However, this film falls into the genre of classical cutting moreso than the realist genre because it cuts to continuity. This is done through several match action cuts which add fluidity to the scenes. This was done in order to first present the character's plight, and to then show the emotion that is evoked because of their plight. The camera does this by first showing an establishing shot which presents the problem, and then fluidly cutting close to the actress to reveal her emotion of fear. This is in contrast with "Arrival of a Train" because it forces the audience to focus on an individual character's emotion instead of allowing us to be able to choose who to focus on.

2. How would describe the differences in the edit?
In "Arrival of a Train" there was no editing. This was done to add a sense of reality to the film, and this was done of course because the film falls into the genre of realism. This is contrast to "Damsel in Distress" because that film has several shots that depict the character's emotion and the situation in the story. All of these shots are cut from one another to emphasize certain things at a time. At first, the overall problem is shown, then the scene cuts to a close up of the damsel to reveal her emotion. Also, this film incorporates fast pace cuts to add create tension in the film. This helps present the dramatic story and to force us to feel emotions of excitement and anticipation. This type of pacing differs from "Arrival of a Train" because that film is simply one long shot. That allows us to truly appreciate the scene and analyze it however we want.

3. How would describe the characteristics of the story being told/narrative?
In "Arrival of a Train" we are able to form our own story because the camera doesn't focus on anyone in particular. Thus, we can direct our eyes to whomever we want. This is in contrast with "Damsel in Distress" which forces us to see one story and form an opinion of it based on how the film is being cut.

Run Lola Run Presos Critique -- Story Analysis

I. Interpretation of the film as it related to your assigned section and use of film language.
I believe that the interpretation that we had of the film was highly accurate and well supported. We included an introduction of Tykwer's life so that we could relate the film back to his own style, thus adding validity to our analysis of the film. For example, we discussed time as a heavy motif in Run Lola Run and we discussed its influence on the film. In this film Tykwer showed the role of coincidence heavily in life. He presented us with 3 different plots that start in the same manner, the only difference that occurs is a time difference. Either Lola does something late by a few seconds, or she is early a few seconds. This time difference creates several different outcomes not only for her life, but also for the lives of others. That is presented through the flash forwards that we see of people whose lives intersect with Lola's. We believe that this analysis is very accurate and intelligent because it is a new type of view of the film, and it ties back with Tykwer's obsession with time so it can be a plausible analysis. However, I feel that we could have used much more film language to describe our analysis of the film. Unfortunately, we excluded a lot of film language opportunities because we forgot about that criteria on the IB Film rubric. Instead, we used film language only a few times, and had we used it more perhaps our ideas may have been articulated more clearly.

II. Strengths of your presentation
Again, I feel that our analysis was very intelligent and cohesive. We all reviewed our slides together and made sure that they all cohered. So, none of the ideas that we had were repetitive, but they were all fresh and somehow relevant. By doing this our conclusion of our presentation seemed much more interesting. That is because Daniel and Alexis's presentations all hinted to small motifs in the film such as the motif of coincidence. Of course, this motif could not have been deeply analyzed until we covered the end of the film. That is why i gave a more comprehensive analysis of the motif of coincidence. By doing this, we added tension in our own presentation because our audience knew that we kept mentioning coincidence in our presentation, but they were never given a full analysis of it which is what they wanted. Therefore, they became more interested in our presentation I believe. All in all, I feel that the content of our presentation was very original and interesting, and the way we formatted our presentation was also very effective.

III. Challenges and Areas for Improvement
Despite having great written format in our presentation, our actual presentation lost a lot of its flare because of nervousness. Again, I feel that Alexis and Daniel all had great ideas but at certain points during the presentation they became very nervous. Alexis's voice began to fluctuate as she became more and more nervous. Daniel became so nervous that he forgot to include some key points in his presentation. As i spoke i noticed that i moved around a lot and that may have distracted the audience a lot. The only way we can alleviate these presentation problems is by practicing more. We had plans to practice during an entire day, but Alexis unexpectingly became busy with her personal life so we couldn't practice. Also, we had a lot of plot in our presentation which i was aware of but felt was necessary. Since we were critiqued on it, however, I suppose that a lot of it could have been scrapped. Next time we will make our presentation more concise, and we will practice more in order to avoid nervousness during our actual presentation.

The Lost Brother -- Fall 2011 Treatment

A boy struggles as he does pushups. Sweat drips down his face. Still, in pain, the boy does one more pushup. The alarm goes off at 6:00.The boy becomes scared. The alarms rings again. The boy's face becomes more and more frustrated. The boy's hand slams it to turn it off. He sits on his bed, and there is a calendar behind him. It reads "6:00". The boy sits there with a blank stare on his face. There is a dark shadowy figure of a man standing in the doorway staring. The boy doesn't see him though. The lights go out. Long shot of the house with all the lights going off. We hear a loud scream. cuts to black.

It's a bright day outside. From a distance away we see two boys walking towards the camera. They skip around a few rocks to get to a cliff side. They boys start to look over the cliff. The younger brother pushes the older to the edge of the cliff [playfully], the older brother gets angry and starts yelling at his brother. Then the older brother pushes his younger brother towards the edge, but this time his brother goes over the cliff.

The boy is running from something. It's the same shadowy figure chasing him. The boy wakes up from his dream. We are in his room. His alarm clock readsis 6:00 exactly. His face his worried. As the older brother exits his home, a shadowy figure enters the garage, but he is unseen by the older brother.

The older brother runs away from the cliff, as he walks towards his home thoughts rush into his head. He doesnt know what to do; he doesn’t want to go to jail. “You were never with him” echoes in his mind. He returns home, and a week later “Missing” posters of the younger brother are posted all over the city.

We are back in the room. The boy does his daily routine of pushups. The boy stands up and turns to the mirror. He looks to the mirror to see the same dark figure in the reflection, standing outside his window. The boy turns to the window to see no one there. The clock reads 6:00. Someone is at the window. The door mysteriously opens. The man stares at the clock, and then looks away, as if time no longer has any importance. He doesn’t finish his final set of pushups, instead he just sits waiting for someone to enter through the door.

News report reports that bloody footsteps were found going away from a cliffside and to the main road. A month has passed, the blood testing is inconclusive. The older brother turns the TV off, and he tells his mother that nothing interesting was on. Then the older brother reflects on himself, and continues to live.

Pictures of the older brother appear. He has led a decent life, without much suffering or trouble. He got into working out soon after the incident. Him and his brother always wanted to be bodybuilders.


We are in the house. It is almost 6:05. The ticks get slower and slower. A shadowy figure enters through the door. The man looks up.

The house has no lights on, and it is dark outside. The man says to the shadowy figure [still outside of house] “I’m sorry, brother. I didn’t think you’d make it.”

A loud scream is heard from outside the house.

Broadcast Fall -- New Psychology Course

Pre-production:
We came up with the idea because I was interested in taking the psychology course myself last year. However, I did not want to give up my IB Film course so I decided to just learn about what the course would have been about if i had taken. Also i wanted to let others know what it was about since it is a new course at Capuchino. It was very easy to find interviewees because there was a plentiful amount of people that were taking the course that i knew. Our interview questions allowed the interviewees to answer personally instead of objectively so that our audience could truly feel whether or not they would be happy taking the course. The questions directed towards the teacher were more about the course itself so that our audience could know what they could expect to learn in the course. We did envision something special for the piece which was the format that we asked our questions. We incorporated unique camera techniques such as whip pans to make the piece more interesting to the audience.


In conjunction, our audience would be more interested in taking the course which was after all the goal of our broadcast.

Production: Quality:
We chose to film the teachers' responses in their classroom since that was where the psychology course takes place. The students we interviewed we filmed outside of the classroom and in various places to make our piece less repetitive. Unfortunately, when we filmed the teachers there was construction work occurring in the back ground and some of that noise was picked up by our mic. Fortunately, the noise was less apparent when we added a soundtrack to our piece. Our B-Roll typically matched what the interviewees were saying, however, at times we ran out of ideas for B-roll so we just showed the interviewees. Our most creative shots were the ones with the questions. This is because they were a bit surreal which made them very interesting and funny. We did take note of the background objects in our shots and we tried to avoid having anything very distracting in them. Also, because we filmed mainly on sunny days we had to continuously change the exposure settings to get a pleasing shot.

Our audio overall came out well because we used a boom mic. However, the final audio clip came out very strange for some strange reason. We could not refilm it because our actor became busy. Still, the audio was not too horrendous.


Script:
Our voice over leaded into our topic and it provided for easy transitions between interviewees. To grab our audiences attention we used interesting shot transitions, but to keep our audiences attention we kept our questions short and simple. Our segment was informative because it outlines what the course was about and it gave detail of how students were reacting to taking the course.

Our final closing voice over added humor to keep with the tone of our piece. Additionally, this gave our audience more reason to take the psychology course, or to at least research it more so that they can decide if the course is right for them.

Editing:
Our B-Roll accurately reflects the audio in our voice overs and SOT's to add coherency.

We did use transitions between shots so that our piece was fluid. The opening sequence of our piece involved the use of the application "Motion" because i wanted to create an animated sequence of words connected to psychology. We also used lower third titles to give our interviewees names and small back ground info [i.e. teacher or student]. The only effect that we added to our piece was a bit of color correction to the teacher interviews because the original footage came out a bit dull. So i added color correction in order to make the footage more exciting and alive.

There were no jump cuts in our piece because all of our interviews were taken in one take.

Overall
I like the entire piece as a whole a lot. I think our interviews are really informative and I love the transitions that we used because they are creative and it took me and my partner a good amount of time to come up with different ideas. The only flaw in our project was one interview with one of the teachers because she was not facing directly towards the camera. It did look awkward when she was looking to the side of the camera. This interview could serve as a lesson for our next piece because now i can see how important it is to guide the interviewee's eyes.

Character in Time

Age 1: Girl is sick. Parents cannot afford to buy her any medicine and the mother is panicking because she does not want her only child to perish. Late at night the mother whispers to her sick baby "one day someone will come to us and help us. I promise". The mother says this as her tears fall on the tiny girl's forehead and cool her body. The following day the baby girl awakes healthily.
Age 2: Girl is learning how to walk. The mother is teaching her meanwhile the girl's father is in a factory working in grueling conditions making pennies an hour. In the afternoon, as the men are away working the girl's village is raided. The mother clutches her little girl and they hide in a small trench. The mother tells her daughter to stay calm . . . that everything will be alright. The mother's tears of fear hit the girls forehead. The girl remains silent and the invaders leave their home untouched. That cannot be said for some of the other villagers.
Age 4: Little girl is helping her mother find vegetables in the fields. It is a tedious task but it has to be done so that the mother can make a complete meal for her small family. The mother and girl look up to see foreigners in large cars drive to their villagers. They claim to be anthropologists and they ask the mother several questions. The little girl keeps wondering if this is the day that someone will help them. The anthropologists ask to take the little girl's picture. The mother says yes and she receives a few cans of food. The girl's eyes stare through the camera to see the anthropologist's eyes. It appears that they will not help her. The little girl's eyes become filled tears, yet the anthropologists ignore her and return to their large cars. The little girl turns to her mother is walking back to her. The little girl realizes that only they can help each other. The mother and daughter return to picking villages in the hot fields.

Review for Camera Exam- Cinematography Focus

The film starts with a blurred shot of straight lines of white light. Soon a woman, the main character, rises and her head is in an extreme close up -- note that the camera has remained static. The extreme close up allows us to see the emotion that the woman is feeling. She is out of breath and appears to be confused. As her head rises the film cuts to a medium shot of the woman to reveal that she is in a confined room; this room is very gray and dull just like a jail cell. The film then cuts to a medium shot of the woman and it seems that she is wearing a hospital patient's gown. There is some blood on it. The woman is very lit up which contrasts with her back ground as it is stark black. Perhaps this is done to draw the audience's eyes to the woman and away from unimportant details in the room so that they can see the blood on her gown. The scene then cuts to her rushing to a small mirror in the room. Several match action cuts are made that show the woman breaking the mirror then picking up a piece of the broken glass to see where the blood came from. The glass reveals that there is sort of a barcode on her neck. A reverse shot then shows this barcode more clearly and then another reverse shot gives a close up on the woman's face and shows the horror that she feels. The woman turns around and then looks at a wall behind her. A rack focus reveals writing on the wall.

Actually, it is not writing but rather engraved tally marks. As the woman turns away from the wall the rack focus blurs out the tally marks and again focuses on the woman's face.

She is still confused and unsure of what is happening. Then a long shot of the room reveals how small the room indeed is. This long shot however has been edited to appear like a security camera shot in which the image is black and white and there is a time indicator on the bottom left corner of the shot.

The scene continues and several varied shots show the woman exercising in her room. After all what else can she do? Eventually the woman starts to look for weaknesses in the room's architecture. She discovers a large gun that creates "portals". Visual effects bring these portals to life and a mirror like effect shows how the portals work -- you can go into one portal and you'll come out of the sister portal.

The woman utilizes these portals to escape security and she eventually goes outside. It appears that she is about to be free but as the camera pans around the city the city becomes 2 dimensional.

In all honesty, this is one of my favorite shots of all time. The camera panned around the woman in 3D space and because it was in 3D space it became apparent the background of the shot was indeed linear and just a wall. It turns out that she can not escape and is confined in whatever building she is in. There is no escape for her.