Commercial

Spring break has felt like a small commercial in my dramatic movie of a life.

But the last class we had, we started off by watching the film "The Last Summer" which was a thesis movie by Cory Womack. The film by Cory shed a little light on how much work goes into a small movie. He said that he has spent the past semester just on editing. I heard that and stepped back (figuratively). That was much more time than i actually expected that he put into it. I thought, only 16 minutes and it took a semester of editing??

In any case, if that was a lot of time (seeing how it is his thesis) it was still a little eye opening to see a peer go through everything.

After the short film, we looked into the effect that editing has on a movie. We watched videos on youtube that took a horror film and a family film and switched the genres completely in the trailer. "The Shining" a horror film, which i have watched in one sitting, is a terrifying movie. To turn this into a family film is a stretch, but the editing turned it to a believable family film. When someone next to me asked, "Is "The Shining" a scary movie?" I laughed, but then realized how effective the "happy trailer" actually was. I knew that editing was important, but it can make a film much scarier if it is a horror film.

To finish the class off, we split into our groups and talked about of film project. I won't go into detail here, so that it can be fresh when people actually view it, but i will say that our film has changed quite a bit from our first idea. We plan on having a small number of people actually on set during the filming as group 2 gave us advice on the amount of people that actually need to be present.

As the filming process of our short film project is getting closer, i am gaining confidence on how it is going to come together. Hopefully people will think that it is funnier than we try to make it and find something especially funny in it.

Until next week. Same website, same webtime, same yea...

This spring break really did go by fast too.

Iceland Schmiceland

"The Player" is the movie we watched in the Appreciating Film class this week. A movie about a screen-writer who has to judge every script that he sees on whether it is good enough to be one of the 12 movies his studio can do. The problem is that he is very rude most of the time, and for the thousands that he discards, the original writers are not happy. As the movie proceeds through, he slowly loses control of himself, and plunges into a kind of insanity.

The movie gave me completely mixed feelings... It is a noir film so that there isn't really a happy ending, but the ending just gave me the weirdest feeling. The woman i fell in love with, but the man... i wasn't very happy with. The man was a d-bag. Thats basically exactly how i feel about him. I feel like the woman has done nothing wrong, but the man is an aweful person. The contrast of the two love birds is the biggest reason as to why i feel that i am happy and upset at the same time with the ending. It is very wrong that he got away with the murder, and even though he wasn't married to his secretary girl - he still treated her like a dog.

I believe that he got worked up over the death threats...(((((SPPOILLLERRR))))) i wonder what happened to the real writer of the death threats... I wouldn't have gotten as crazy as he became. I would freak out a little bit, but i would not go nuts. One thing i would like to say is that i thought the detective that was spying on him was actually the crazy writer who wanted to kill the script writer who discarded his story.

I would like to say again, that i love the icelandic goddess in this movie.
The plot line was very good through the movie, kept me very interested throughout. Quite a few turns to keep me focused. I would watch it again, not just to see my icelandic goddess, but to catch small things that i feel i missed. The house at the end was pretty awesome by the way

Is the movie business really heartless? (SPOILER!)

I am thinking about the final scene of the movie we watched this week. The movie was "Blow Out" and the scream that was used for making a movie was the controversial subject. I don't think that it was heartless for using the woman's scream in the movie after what happened to her. He obviously showed that he cared about her by his expression when watching the scene involving the scream play through. I don't exactly know what i would do if i were in his shoes, but i don't think that people should immediately say that he is heartless and wrong for using her scream in the film he was working on. Is it completely permissable to use her scream? no. Is it completely heartless? depends on his use of it, and his mindset when using it.

To the plotline. The basic theme for this movie (SPOILER!!!!) is about political corruption. The lengths that people go through to ruin a man's attempt at becoming a public official are gigantic. People also using other people to get what they want (money 99% of the time) is something chimed on throughout the movie. There are definitely heartless people out there in the world (and some mindless psychos). I would like to believe the world is a great and faultless place, but it's impossible to be that way with the way people think and act. Selfishness. That is the main catalyst for the actions of people who perform these type of acts... If people were not selfish, the world would be an amazing place. It's kind of depressing. People are selfish, but I don't think we should jump to assume that people are heartless. Selfishness and heartlessness (to me) are two different things. Selfishness comes first, but there is a gap between the two. Heartlessness is much worse than just being selfish, not to say that being selfish is ok by any means. This is getting me upset. I am gonna take a 15 min break to relax.

Ok i'm back. Selfishness is the root of the actions of almost every actor in the movie (part from John Travolta and the woman whose name is alluding me at the moment). This movie (Blow Out) does shine a light on how selfish people can be. Not only selfishness but also how naive people can be. People were walking 10 feet from a woman getting pushed around by a creepy man, yet didn't notice it.

I liked this movie. I get to the point where i can't focus on the worksheet in front of me, and get too into the plot and action of a movie to do the work and see the transitions and techniques used throughout the movie. One scene that i did take notice of, was when the main woman was being forced upon by what was her friend who was also her partner. The camera kept rolling from being eye level, to moving to be directly overhead the two actors, which then zoomed out to reveal the whole scene. I thought that the scene was really creative and i wouldn't mind trying to use that type of technique in our short film.


That's that. Peace people.

p.s. Don't be selfish. seriously, it's not cool.