North by Northwest

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.

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.

Spoken Word

The idea for the spoken word project came pretty easily. The idea was to use the song "Time" by Pink Floyd and make it into a poem. We tried to incorporate the meaning of the song as much as we could in the video. The song is about how people forget to live in the present and it is told directly to you. some of the lyrics hit pretty hard...

"Time"

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say

Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
When I come home cold and tired
It's good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away, across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spell

     

     As you can see it goes through the life of a person from early childhood to the final moments of an individual's life.

     so we kept this kind of idea of time going by and included it in our shots focusing on deserted areas and things like sunsets or water flowing. In the end it turned out very well and we achieved the vibe that we wanted the video to have.

Holiday video

      The holiday music video project was an interestingly challenging one. It started out strange with some minor issues with the group I was in, but the project turned out excellent.

     The underlying idea was was to make a ridiculous rap video using a ridiculous rap song and that is exactly what happened. The song we wound up with was perfect. The pre planning was very minimal and we mostly relied on our on the fly wit and planning skills to pull this one off. This wasn't ideal but we wouldn't have tried if we thought we couldn't do it.

     One thing I would have definitely changed would have been the amount of time I had to edit because I felt pretty rushed at the end. Something I am taking away from this project is that I need to do more music videos because they always seem to turn out great. I have an original song that I just recorded that I think has potential to have a great music video, I definitely need to get on that...

Codecs

     Codecs are the ways computers handle files. Codecs can be used to compress files to make them smaller and easier to work with. They use complex algorithms to do so. some examples are: h.264, Prores, and DNxHD NOT .mov or .wmv, which are simply what hold the codecs in a video.

Chroma sub sampling: This method decreases the size of a picture file by selecting a box of pixels and forcing them all to use the different shades of the same color

Spatial compression: using a single frame, this method finds boxes in the frame that have almost the same color and makes them the same color, saving memory

Temporal compression: The inter frame method looks for similarities between the frames of a video and only changes the spots that change in the video. 

The more bit depth an image has the more shades of a color the codec can produce. for example, an 8-bit image can produce 256 shades for each red green and blue (RGB) whereas a 10-bit can produce 1024 shades for each RGB. this is because the number of shades for 8-bit is 2 to the 8th and for 10-bit is 2 to the 10th.

In general you want to shoot a video or a picture using a codec that captures the most information so that way you are not restricted when you want to change things like color correction. 

Montage 1

      When we set out to make our montage we decided to focus on cinematography more than focusing on story. We mainly did this because we didn't have a story that we felt would work well with a montage, which looking back at it now, we probably should have used a better story since I think that's what this assignment was about...

 Anyway here it is if you want to check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVzskNrzKJs

     If you watched it you can see, it's pretty but it lacks direction. The GoPro Camera shots looked way better than I thought they would. The color correction was a little over saturated but that was because of the fact we shot with more than one camera. If I could do it over  I would have made the original story we had more apparent (since it isn't at all).  

   

Plot, Names, and Story

        Think of a book or movie you just saw or are currently reading, and with that in your head, think of the story and how it evolved or is evolving. Think of the message or moral you believe they are trying to convey with it. focus on the major plot points and key moments that made the book or movie get to the place it is or got to... Things like these are most likely very vivid in your mind, and that is what is supposed to be. These things define the book or movie and are what you take away from them.

        Now think of a movie such as the Polar Express, a children's Christmas book that was made into a full length animated feature film. Chances are if you've seen it you know the story, you know some major plot points, and you know the "moral" that it was trying to get across. But there is something very interesting about this movie... something that no one ever catches or questions. This is simply the main characters name. What is his name??? I hadn't ever thought about it until I read this article about Story and plot. So I googled it and what I found was interesting. Not once in every single piece of dialog in the book or in the movie is the main character given a name. You also see this in Marilyn Monroe's debut movie the Seven Year Itch. Never does a single character in the movie says her name. With this said, I'm sure there are hundreds of movies (if you're anything like me) that you can't remember the main characters name even if they had one.

        so after making this discovery, I came to the conclusion that names are not as important in story telling than you might believe. The name of a character is a plot element. once you give a main character a name their is an instant disconnect with the viewer and that character. The story of a character can be told without a name very easily, as long as the interactions they have with other characters are well written, no one will even question what their name is because it won't matter. 

        What a name is to a story is what the plot is to a movie you saw ten years ago, forgettable. A name is simply a tool, a very useful tool, but a very unnecessary one. The plot to a movie you saw ten years ago is simply a tool as well, although it is very necessary, you still aren't going to remember it.

Story is what you remember, plot is the tool used to make you remember what you remember.