Day: April 9, 2010

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Chris Balcer’s Review of A Movie. Hidalgo, To Be More Specific. Yeah, It’s A Horse Movie. Wanna Fight About It?

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So I was eating dinner last night with the family, and my mom found a copy of Hidalgo, and said something along the lines of “I love this movie” and put it in the DVD player. There was nothing else on, so I figured that it couldn’t be that bad. I was wrong.

The movie starts out with this guy who owns a horse, who does long-distance endurance horse racing for a living. He rides a mustang, which is considered a piece of junk back then. (Late 1800’s.) Horse is named Hidalgo. What a surprise, right? So apparently, the guy is really sensitive about his horse, and he loves it, and so on. At one point, he has to deliver a letter to a bunch of U.S. troops occupying an Indian village. The orders say to move the Indians off the land, so they don’t rebel and attack the nearby towns and cities. They start disarming the Indians so there’s no chance of an attack, and one of the Indians doesn’t take too kindly to that. He attempts to shoot one of the men, but instead fails miserably. The troops open fire on the Indians, killing every last one of them. The main character feels responsible for some reason, and decides to drink himself into a stupor every day. Three months later, he’s working in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show (which is awesome), when suddenly a Middle Eastern guy shows up and demands that Hidalgo’s rider (his name isn’t ever mentioned, or not that I caught) have his title as the fastest horse rider in the world or whatever revoked. That can’t happen, so he goes over to the middle east and does this huge race across the desert for glory and cash monies or something like that.

I honestly had no interest in the film whatsoever, but I was determined to see it through to the end. The characters were hollow, the action was droll at best, and there were no special effects to speak of. The camerawork and audio were very well done, so that’s saying something, at least. I would give it 2 stars out of five, simply because the actual filming was done very well, but the actors and the plot were hollow and nonexistent, respectively.

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The Lovely Bones Review

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A soft blowing wind can sometimes resemble the sound of a distant voice, trapped somewhere.  Is this purely happenstance, or is there a possibility that there really is a person trapped in the “in between”?  This is one of the many questions asked in Director Peter Jackson’s newest release “The Lovely Bones” based on Alice Sebold’s 2002 novel.  
The plot’s takes place in the early to mid seventies and follows a naïve fourteen-year-old girl by the name of Susie Salmon.  Susie’s naiveness gets the better of her however when she falls into a trap set by the neighborhood creep.  This eventually leads to her death, and thus the real plot begins, as Susie gets trapped in the “in between”.  Now what is the “in between” you may ask?  Well it is a realm between Heaven and Earth, comprised of flashes to earth events and dream-like scenery.  She could easily go to Heaven, but she isn’t ready to leave Earth yet, so through a series of signals she sends to friends and family on Earth, she attempts to help them solve her murder.
Overall I would give this movie 4 out of 5 stars.  The scenery was beautiful and the overall plot adaptation was wonderful.  While some more character development would have been good, and some of the dark beauty of the novel was taken out, it was still a great movie, and worth watching.

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Encode Your Audio! With Audio Encoding Formats! Obviously.

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Hello, ladies and gentlemen (and I use both terms loosely), it’s time for another issue of “Interesting Internet Things That Help You Create Videos And Whatnot”! Yes, that is the name of this. Anyway. You all undoubtedly use different forms of audio files to enhance your movies. Sound effects, music and whatnot. If you don’t, you should. If you do, it would be wise to know the different types of audio encoding, so you can pick the right file for the job.

.WAV (.AIFF for Mac): This is raw, uncompressed, audio purity. There is absolutely no difference between hearing this and hearing real life (if you have decent speakers). It’s absolutely beautiful. However, there is a drawback to this- each minute of .WAV or .AIFF will cost you about eleven megabytes of space. This is an insane amount of space, and is obviously one of the drawbacks to .WAV and .AIFF. Go for this option if you don’t have a limit on how much disk space you can take up.

.MP3: This format is one of the most, if not the most, prolific form of audio encoding available. It is the standard for Internet files, seeing as how space is money on the Internet, and each .MP3 file is about 1/10th of the size of an uncompressed audio file. It’s supported by most audio programs, and you can select what rate you want the file to encode at, for a bigger, higher quality file; or a smaller, lower quality one. This is what you will most likely be using.

Ogg Vorbis: An open-source media encoding format, it seems to have some distinct advantages over .MP3. A 64kbs .OGG file will sound comparable to a 128kbs .MP3 file. However, because .MP3 caught on a lot sooner than .OGG, people are reluctant to switch, so it’s doubtful that .MP3 will be dethroned by this superior form of audio and video compression.

.AAC: This audio file was in relative obscurity until Apple came along. iTunes uses .AAC for most of its audio files, which means that the people who use iTunes (many) use .AAC. It supports more audio channels than .MP3, and has become a popular way to upload content to video sharing sites (like You-Know-What-Tube. Don’t even get me started on this, if you want to know why You-Know-What-Tube is evil, ask me in person. Anyway.)

.WMA: This is the audio encoding format for Windows Media. One would think that something that is as exclusive as that would be mostly unused, but .WMA files are surprisingly able to be read by many different programs. Xbox uses it, many computer video games use it, and some other unrelated programs use it for compression. The compression rate is amazing, but at lower bitrates, it begins to fall off in quality considerably.

FLAC: Free Lossless Audio Codec. It is compared to a .zip file for audio. It typically reduces file size by 30% to 50%, and it plays back like a .WAV file. It is uncompressed as the file plays, which is interesting. It is the up-and-coming audio file format, so invest in FLAC stock.

So yeah. A bunch of audio files for you to keep in mind. Use the right one for the job, and you’ll make a great movie. Choose the wrong one, and you’ll catch a venereal disease. Nah, just kidding. That’ll happen no matter what you do.

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Music Videos

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Music videos are a great way to highlight any popular song. They’re interesting, usually very visually appealing, and sometimes may even tell a story. 

Beginning a music video is actually very simple, but first you must figure out your Aesthetic style and logistics. Aesthetic style is how you will present your video and the artistic manners behind it. The logistics include plans for how your video will be made, such as where and when to film. Begin to brainstorm and find out how you will make and present your video. Do that and you’ll be ready to begin filming. 
The following ways tell how you can show your video. (1) You can always show the band throughout the video. Breaking their on-screen time up is usually a better approach than to just show them the entire video. (2) It’s always cool to see a video with a story behind it. Either about the band or artist itself or about characters relating to the song. Think of something creative and put it into your video. Relate characters to something or a part of the song. 
Music videos are like moving pieces of art. they can be just about anything. But make sure to remember when making your video that you don’t go over budget and still stick to other filming techniques such as lighting and camera positions. Do that and I’m sure you can make a great music video. 
Here’s the full article on videomaker.com

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Movie Review: Saw

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The movie, Saw, is a huge hit for anyone who likes suspense and general crazy. The movie starts off in this bathroom where two people are stuck, unknown of how and why they got their. They both don’t know each other, and eventually find a connection between the two of them. The movie then continues on this huge investigation that has a lot of twists and turns. Keeping the watcher on the end of their sits, and leaving the audience with questions. This movie series reminds me a lot like the television show, Lost. Leaving the audience in this state of suspense and thoughts going through their heads that just make you pay attention for the whole movie. For me, I have trouble watching a movie for the full length, without dozing off once or twice. But, for Saw, I was watching and interested from start to finish. All together, the Saw series is an excellent movie to watch if you don’t mind the nasty scenes and insane plot line. For someone who is use to watching human bunnies skipping through the flower field, then this movie is not for you. There will be some parts where you have to keep a strong stomach. Mainly because the movie is extremely disgusting.

-Awesome Plot
-Crazy twists and turns
-Graphically awesome but also disgusting
-Keeps you on the edge of your seat
4.5 out of 5

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Eagle Eye

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Imagine you woke up one day, your twin brother has been murdered and your phone rings. Mysteriously money has ended up in your bank account and weapons that you have never even thought about are being sent to you. The voice on the phone tells you that you must do what he/she says, due to the police being on their way. Actually this is what happened to Jerry Shaw, in Eagle Eye, Directed by D.J. Caruso.
Following an Idea of equal proportions to “Sniper”, Jerry must do what he is told in order to live, following directions and meeting up with a single mom who is also having these phone calls, to to the threat on her son’s life. Rachel Holloman.
Together in exciting and bold chase and action scenes, they make their way racing through city streets, hopping on a plane and eventually making their way to the pentagon. To make matters worse, the FBI has a tail on them no matter what happens and they must reach their goal to save themselves and their loved ones from the chaos released in ARIIA. The plan executed was that code named Operation Guillotine.
In conclusion, the move was great and full of action. With suspense and action going hand in hand well. I believe that the conclusion was nice and fluttery, however not my cup of tea. If you enjoyed “Sniper” you will LOVE this movie. 3.5/5 stars from me!

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Kool Aid vs Capri Sun fight to the death

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Transformers
Last night after I returned home from track practice. I thought i would “do” some homework and watch one of my favorite movies, Transformers.
The movie Transformers is about Auto Bots and Decepticons coming to earth in search of the “all spark” which is a cube that holds a ridiculous amount of power and energy. Sam Wikwiki is a human that went to buy his first car and it turned out being one of the Auto Bots. Sam’s great grandfather discovered Megatron in the Artic Circle. One thing lead to another and now Sam ends up holding the key to keep man kind alive. I personally suggest this movie to anyone who is a fan of crazy special effects or someone who just might want to see an amazing action movie.