lecture topic - May 15 2007 - narrative

More video watching - this time extracts from Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering's documentary about Jacques Derrida.

Specifically:

• you call this verite?
• Echo and Narcissus
• the sex lives of philosophers
• without even an ash

As a means of understanding narrative and film - try to get inside the mind of the authors (whom Derrida addresses often on the subject of whose story is being told by their editing decisions). Try to ask -

• when did the quotes get assembled? before or after the filming?
  
• why two cameras?
• what were the other people shown in the video at the end of the movie doing and why?
• would the narrative of the episodes we watched change if played in another order than the movie (ref Eisenstein etc)
  

Animation Class lecture - editing

Today we watched the end (New York onwards) of the magnificent 'Vision of light' DVD about Cinematography.

Then we discussed editing by contrasting the editing efforts in the car chase scenes of The Italian Job (1968), Bullitt (1969), The French Connection and Ronin.

Next week we will compare a scene from Luc Bresson's La Femme Nikita with the exact same scene from Assassin (Point of no return) by John Badham.

We concluded by examining how backburner can be of assistance in speeding up rendering.

Even (especially?) a Calatrava has neighbourhood issues

Calatrava unveils tower's latest twist | Chicago Tribune

This makes for a fascinating read - a spire in Chicago being 'sold' by the architect exploiting his artistic ability working with pens on an overhead projector at the meeting, but the most informative part of the newspaper story is the computer animation that was also played at the public meeting that is attached.

Animation and Story Boards - Digital Craft - 26 March 2007

First activity - watch first seven sections of Visions of Light - a DVD on Cinematography from the Film Institute in the USA.

Second - review the voice over commentary of the start of Citizen Kane - the importance of light and shade, plus the use of the lighted window to link cuts / fades in the intro.

Third - the start sequence of Blade Runner

Fourth - reviewed the videos produced by the students in 2004 and 2005

Fifth - worked through several storyboard examples to understand how to document the planned video

Sixth - explored the nature of the type of presentation to be produced at the interim hand in stage after Easter when we will be presenting our ideas to the Music School's composition students.

Seventh - examined the role sound / soundscapes / music plays in movies - diagetic / non-diagetic - cut on action - sound as the means of transition between scenes...

Animation class Lecture 2

The lecture on Monday covered some of the basics of film making. Ignoring these principles make animations about buildings very much exercise in non-communication. I presented a pre-cursor of the whole course by introducing the classic film maker's handbook: The Five C's of Cinematography'.

My suggestion is that understanding these principles will significantly alter what people want to render/represent and hence will alter how / what they animate. In the 403 course we are examining the notion that the Scene (the building(s) can be the Actors, rather than the backdrop...the scenery.

We watched

• an extract from Lawrence of Arabia - focusing on Omar Sharif and the interminable ride out of the desert to meet Lawrence that is, as I understand it his first Western feature
  
• a 'teaser' from a Walt Disney - Disneyland - presentation of the 'Plausible Impossible" - preparing people to answer the question that will be posed next Monday: find your own example(s) of plausibly impossible acts in movies
• a 30 minute doco on the Satolas station near Lyon by Calatrava - what works and does not work; what genres are being accepted by us when we understand the content of the doco
  
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