Week five of capstone

It's crazy to think that five weeks have gone by, and now the deadline is starting to creep up. I've been editing as I go along and I have at least five minutes of my film done but I have a long way to go. The toughest problem I've been faced with is finding time that suits the actors and actresses. It's been tricky but this week I should be able to get a good portion of my film done.

Some of the goals I want to get done this week are: at least five or maybe ten minutes more of film, start composing music and incorporating it in the film, and recording a voice-over for different parts of the film. These are some of the bigger things I want to accomplish. It's been a fun time, but its also been long days in the lab room.

Since I've been doing this film, I'm discovering things about myself that I didn't realize before. I have to become more of a leader and direct everyone in what they have to do. The first day was probably more nerve racking then this past week. Now I know what more preparation can do before shooting scenes. It makes it easier and everybody isn't trying to take control. There's one voice but I wouldn't be against hearing opinions though. I try to be compassionate but still putting my foot down when I decide on a certain aspect in the scene. I realized something else, my love for music. I always enjoyed playing trombone and I thought it would be neat to use it for the music in my film. So, its gonna be a little tricky trying to find which type of sound I want for different parts of the film. Another task for the week but one that I really enjoy doing.

This week will be a busy one and I need to get a lot done. Hopefully I'll have a little clip I can show next week to show some progress. So back to work then..........

Capstone week four

This past week has been another productive one for my film. I've already started filming and had a fun time as well. It was definitely a different experience and I had to be on my toes. 

If a shot I originally planned for wasn't the best option, I had to think fast of what the alternative shot I could use. The actors and actress I had, also had a great time. I wanted them to be relaxed and just have some fun with it. I noticed at first when we first started shooting, everybody seemed a little nervous. After a few minutes of filming, we settled down and start having fun. I would give them an idea of what I wanted  to hear from them and they did a great job too. One thing that helped make things go smooth was the pre-planning of camera shots and where to place the camera. This made the shooting go by easy and everybody did their part. I also did a voice recording for a phone call during the film. The actor I had, did a great job of giving me the voice I imagined for this character and even did more then I anticipated. This was great for me, because I could get an idea of what to expect during the showdown near the end of the film. This showdown consists of the main character and his so called "rival." While filming some of the scenes, I've been changing the script if something didn't fit right. 

This week I'll continue filming and doing some of the bigger scenes. As I go along, I'll start editing while filming. The next couple of weeks will be real busy for me, so I'll have plenty to do. Now to get back to work.........

Comics and transition

In every comic we read, there are transitions between certain moments of any story. In Scott McCloud's book Understanding Comics, he talks about six different transitions. They are; moment to moment, action to action, subject to subject, scene to scene, aspect to aspect, and non-sequitur. Here are some examples:

Moment to moment-  eyes open, eyes close
Action to action- baseball flying towards player, bats hit baseball
Subject to subject- runner gets to finish line, time watch stopped
Scene to scene- the beach, the city
Aspect to aspect- cigarettes and beer on a table, couple that is holding beer and cigarettes
Non-seuitur- two different frames that have no common area

Now the ones that are used more often in comics are action, subject, and scene. In Art Spiegelman graphic novel Maus, I've found three different transitions described by McCloud. One is on page 36, where the father and son are having a conversation, and the way the frames are set out it could either a moment to moment or action to action. On page 20, the girl is grabbing the man's foot as she doesn't want him to go. Then the next frame is him shutting the door, subject to subject. On page 22, is a moment to moment where the woman is changing her face expression in every frame. A scene to scene transition can be found on page 38, where one frame is showing people leaving the city and the other frame is soldiers going to war. Art seems to be using a lot of action, moment, and subjects to me. Which is common among most comics that are produced.

Learning about these transitions will help me decide which ones I can use for my comics. Definitely something I will look in a different way when reading comics.......

Classic

Capstone week three

Every week brings a new challenge to face and a solution that needs to be solved. The one problem I'm facing this week is a conflict of schedules among the members in the film. Some people are good on Thursday and some on Friday. So I'll have to find a happy medium with everybody helping out. I have finished the script and I have been revising it a lot in the last couple of days. I want to start filming this week if I feel its strong enough for it. I'll have to run it by my teacher and see if I need anything else done with the script. Some objectives I want to do this week; finalize script, actors/actresses, shot selections within scenes, and begin filming. My research has come along a lot faster this week.

Robin Hood

When people think of parodies, it’s sometimes viewed not as a serious film; when in fact it should be appreciated.  Most genres go through four stages in their life span; experimental, classic, refinement and finally baroque. The baroque stage is where the style of parody comes in. It’s almost a rebirth of whatever genre is being explored. Either the genre is; horror, science fiction, westerns, action-adventure, and etc. The genre I will explore is the detective movies with a splash of adventure.  This is what I’ll implicate in my film. One of the books I read, Film Parody by Dan Harris, described different techniques for parody films. The first one is called reiteration, where you establish the connection for a certain genre. Examples would be using horses for a western or a held hand camera for a documentary. The second is inversion, where the use of irony is used to flip situations on its head. The third is misdirection, where an example from "Scary Movie" the man talks about how his wife can't get pregnant and neither can he. The fourth is literalization, where they actually mean what they say. The example they use is from "Robin Hood Men in Tights" when Robin yells out to the crowd "lend me you ears" then they throw their ears to him. The fifth is extraneous inclusion, where adding doorbells on a teepee or pink slippers on a gangster. The last one is exaggeration, where a situation can be taken to the extreme. An extreme bomb from a toy box or a car that rolls and rolls still it stops and explodes. I plan to use a little of every technique in the film and make the film better.

As the weeks go by, I can't wait to see this come all together and see the end product. Another week of the film to be......................................

Capstone week 2

As I continue my progress with my short film, I will begin with my research on the genre of parody. Hopefully the library will have the books I ordered so I can get more into depth of it. Once I get my books, I'll incorporate some of the ideas I'd gained from my research and exploit them in my film. That's the plan for this week, also I already started writing the script for the film and plan to be done with it this week.

Pink Panther

I plan to watch other films that use parody in their films, as well as detective films to see what I can use for mine. One film that comes in mind is the Pink Panther with Peter Sellers. I found this film to very funny and I could easily incorporate some ideas into my film. I find myself watching a lot films and just a lot planning of what I want to in-vision. SO A LOT OF PRE-PRODUCTION IN OTHER WORDS.

I also been able to already get some actors  and crew members to help me out. I just need to find some female actresses, some said they would be interested but I need to confirm. I'm really trying to find people that fits the characters I see in my film. Sometimes I notice how they act and think, "hey they would be perfect." It's a work in progress, but it'll be worth it in the end I believe..........

Comic World

As I read more and more of Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, it was interesting to see how some comics are made different to others. One fact that Scott wanted to emphasize was the idea of seeing a face. Our minds is such a great tool, that when we see two dots and a line the first thing we see is a face.I find that crazy that we can think of that so fast, but Scott refers to this as a way that we are a self-centered race. We see ourselves in so many inanimate objects and sometimes we don't even know about it. One example he uses is when we drive our cars, if somebody hits a car we would say "he hit me." Not that "his car hit my car," we take the role of the car being an extended part of our own body. Even the design of the car is a face, two headlights and a bumper. This is just one example of how we see faces in everything in our life.

Cool cover

Another part Scott talked about is the simplistic drawing of characters compared to the background. The example I will use is from Maus by Art Spiegelman. Most of the characters are mouses and very simple with two dots for eyes, a distinguish nose and we can fill out the rest the face. The background is still very simple but has more detail in them compared to the characters. I did like one use of framing in the story, when two of the characters were going to two different places, it was very well designed. They had two frames that showed the action going in two different directions by putting the dialogue at opposite ends of each frames. These are just a few examples I found in this story.

After reading the comic from Scott McCloud, I definitely will look at comics in a different way. Most likely I will read more comics just to get a better idea of what I want to do for my comic that I'll make So let's see what happens.....   

Project Topic

As this being my last semester in school, I definitely wanted to do something fun for my capstone. I've been back and forth about if I wanted a short film or a graphic novel. I finally decided that I'm going to do a short film about this young guy who acts like he's a spy/detective. The film is going to be a comedy/spoof kind of deal. This main character always acts like this spy/detective on the weekends and his friend is always in the middle of it. The main character's name is Jimmy and somehow always takes situations to the max. In this film, he gets news that one of his friends has been missing. He believes that his friend is in great danger, but his best friend, Joe, tells him its probably not that serious. It starts from there and Jimmy's spy/detective mode turns on for the weekend. I'm still in the early stages of the film, but I have a good feeling that I can make it work.

Man in Suit

Some things I'm going to research is other detective/spy movies and see what I can use for my movie. What norms are used in most of these movies and what are realistic for me to use? This will be an important question for me pushing forward. Pretty much a lot of movie watching and reading articles on this topic. I've seen some consistent actions in these movies, I'll put a little twist on my film to make a change.

This will be an interesting semester for me. I have a lot of things to plan out and people to help me out with this film. I know that I have a few people that can help me out already, so the only thing I need to do is keep creating the story. Let the fun begin........................