North by Northwest is an action/thriller movie with a very well told story that is highly thought provoking. The story follows a man who was framed for murder and is forced to traverse the country to escape the police.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_by_Northwest
The movie was very entertaining for being shot in 1959 and the story manages to feel fresh even with today's films. This is most likely due to Alfred Hitchcock's directing skills that were so influential. Although the story elements are up to par with today's standards, some of the cinematography was often not. Shots often dragged on for too long and 9/10 of them were medium to wide angles. Some scenes like the one where Thornhill is being attacked by a crop dusting airplane were very long when there was no reason for it. This scene in particular lasts about 4 minutes. Despite it being too long, it still manages to be an iconic scene from the movie because of it's ground breaking cinematography with moving shots, quick jump cuts and first person perspectives. whereas most of the other parts of the movie felt like you were watching a play. (as a lot of films from that time did)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbpUcAI86MY
The story is told how Thornhill sees it and the camera goes where he goes. This allows a connection to take place with the viewer especially at the beginning of the movie. I felt as confused and disoriented as Thornhill himself.
It would be hard for me to find an element I haven't used from this film. By this I mean that the film was so influential that I use many of the elements without even knowing it. For example the cinema graphic elements such as the editing style and camera movement.
An element I have already learned and used in most of my films is the importance of good dialogue.
Hitchcock did an excellent job of conveying story elements and using ground breaking cinematography techniques.
It is hard to think of a way that this work could improve because of the time period it was made. But if it was made today I would have made it shorter.
Overall this was a quality film and I recommend you to check it out if you're up for something different.
Thursday, May 21, 2015
Friday, May 15, 2015
Yonkers Video
When we got assigned this project I was happy because the music videos I have done in the past were always the ones that my groups had the most fun with. We decided on the video Yonkers by Tyler the Creator and OFWGKTADGAFLLBBLSBFBN. We decided to make up our own lyrics to the song using the same form and lyrical flow. We created the song but decided it would be too difficult to lip sync to so we scrapped the idea. The final video you see is the original audio with the some censorship in the lyrics.
We spent an entire day just trying to get the lighting perfect and get the silhouette effect perfect. This extra time was worth it because it looks just like the original video. we used 3 large lights to light up the background and one to flip on and off when the silhouette was needed. once we got the lighting down we realized we needed to actually memorize the lyrics so we could sync them. we ended up writing all the lyrics down on a large whiteboard and trying to only glance at them when we absolutely had to. (This is very prevalent in Matt's part due to having no prior knowledge of the lyrics whatsoever)
One of the things that could have been better would be the camera movement, or the lack of it. The best thing we could have had to improve this was more people on set to control lighting, sound and cinematography so Solomon or I didn't have to do all of it by ourselves. something we would keep the same is the fact that didn't wait until the last minute to do everything :)
something that we learned that may enhance our next project is to not underestimate the Panasonic cameras. We were forced to use one because all of the DSLRs were checked out. As you can see in the video, the Panasonic did an adequate job.
I am happy with the way the video turned out because during production it seemed like it had a very high chance of being just mediocre. It really came together in the editing.
We spent an entire day just trying to get the lighting perfect and get the silhouette effect perfect. This extra time was worth it because it looks just like the original video. we used 3 large lights to light up the background and one to flip on and off when the silhouette was needed. once we got the lighting down we realized we needed to actually memorize the lyrics so we could sync them. we ended up writing all the lyrics down on a large whiteboard and trying to only glance at them when we absolutely had to. (This is very prevalent in Matt's part due to having no prior knowledge of the lyrics whatsoever)
One of the things that could have been better would be the camera movement, or the lack of it. The best thing we could have had to improve this was more people on set to control lighting, sound and cinematography so Solomon or I didn't have to do all of it by ourselves. something we would keep the same is the fact that didn't wait until the last minute to do everything :)
something that we learned that may enhance our next project is to not underestimate the Panasonic cameras. We were forced to use one because all of the DSLRs were checked out. As you can see in the video, the Panasonic did an adequate job.
I am happy with the way the video turned out because during production it seemed like it had a very high chance of being just mediocre. It really came together in the editing.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)