Month: April 2010

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.

Anna and I have been working really hard on the Cabaret DVD and have been edited like crazy on top of homework, tests, practices, rehearsals and other commitments that we have to deal with. Due to technological issues, almost half of all the work we put into the project was erased and we had to re-edit all of the video… so we are behind. We caught up to where we were before the mishap, and are now working through Act Two. 

Watching a war movie was not what I thought was it going to be, a movie that was very sad in the end and slightly depressing. Within the first few minutes of watching Jarhead I was smiling or laughing.

The movie is a story of a boy, turned man named Anthony, nicknamed Tony who goes into the marines after trying to get into college failed him. It tells about how he becomes a marine and goes through training and becomes a marine sniper. It tells of how war gets announced and how he goes to war, but is stationed in the desert. All through the movie he has a girlfriend, and it shows how he is worried about his girlfriend cheating on him. The movie has a lot of humour, and shows how some guys really act with the immaturity that they show.

I thought the movie was good at the funny parts, but when the movie started to turn serious in some parts the seriousness wasn’t taken as serious as it could have been. I don’t feel like the tone was very good. The movie in general was good, and amusing, but when it tried being a bit serious, the seriousness wasn’t as genuine as it could have been. The ending didn’t make me feel a great amount of emotion to the characters, I had some friends of mine say the ending was sad, but to me it wasn’t as sad as it could have been. I just thought… he could have had worse happen? Overall in grace points* I would them 7 cookies.

(Note: Movie poster is link to IMDB & other picture is to the website)

* Grace points are how many cookies I would give the director/people in the film. If I liked the movie a lot, they get a lot of cookies, but if I don’t like it, then they might very little cookies, or I might even steal cookies from them (as in negative points).

This week I learned a lesson about communication. If you are working on a project with someone, it is a good idea to talk directly to them about it instead of listening to Spencer. This week, Evan told me that we had lost the cabaret file, and would have to start from scratch. Spencer showed me the file they had started, and I worked on it diligently until I had finished act one and was quite proud of myself. I announced this fact to Evan, and he told me that he had also finished act one and was starting act two. On a different file. So now we have two lovely cabaret act ones and no act two. If we had communicated, we would be done cabaret by now. Communication, communication, communication.

Although Joey Brennan and I are planning on making a stop motion film, with the aid of Patrick Flynn. I still believed that this would make a good article to read. In saying this How To Make a Slow Motion Video Clip, by Mark Montgomery. The major sections of this article were the basics of editing to create low motion and the use of playback and frame rates. Within frame rates is a simple concept of time, if you decide you would like an 80% speed reduction, then one would simply play back a thirty FPS clip in a twenty-four FPS time section. By doing this you do not drop frames, the extra six frames are simply broken down and added to close clips making each of the 24 FPS last 1 and 1/4 their normal time. Also the other option is to create a 40% reduction by recording in sixty FPS and playing it back in the same time as twenty-four FPS. Although this may seem a little hazy to some, there is an alternative route, this being… software. Software comes to the rescue, as always, to create a fail-safe way of creating slow motion without taking extra frames with the camera and slowing them down manually. With specialty programs, or even just Final Cut Pro, on can reduce the speed at which a section is presented by percentages, even reaching the ability to do 1% of normal speed, which may be used in a long transition piece where a constant decrease in frame speed is shown. All in all, this was a very interesting piece and it was neat to learn some of the history behind slow-mo and other options to receiving desired affects. Although I may not use this in my next film as it is a stop motion, I hope to use my new found knowledge to get out there and make better videos!

Memento
This movie written and directed by Christopher Nolan stars Guy Pearce, that will make you really wonder until the very end. The movie is presented in black and white and color. Guy plays a man, Leonard, who has anterograde amnesia and is trying to find his wife’s murder. Anterograde is where you can form new memories, so how he tries to deal with it is by taking photos and tattooing important things onto his body. The movie is in black and white while it explains part of his problem and how there was another man that had same problem, Sammy, Leonard worked with Sammy before Leonard came into his current state. The color scenes are show in reverse order starting with him killing a man named Teddy, Joe Pantoliano. The plot goes from the present to a few days ago with the color scenes playing through until he loses his memory again that is when it switches to black and white. It is a confusing story line because you see the second part of every part of the story. So it gives you B to A then Black and White then C to B. You soon realize what is going on and it becomes easier to follow. Eventually you figure out what happened and it blows your mind. Carrie-Anne Moss’s character, Natalie, messes with Leonard to get what she wants. Leonard has no idea what is truly going on so he follows his photos and tattoos religiously, believing whatever is written by him self. The movie is very well written and has a great plot and ending.
I am giving it a
4 out of 5 on the BigBerry Scale

With all the buzz about Script Frenzy and the idea that any individual can write a interesting script all their own I decided to research a few programs through Videomaker’s website, in hopes of finding a good review on an impressive script-writing program. Alas I stumbled upon an article reviewing Adobe Story an online script writing program. This program can be run through a browser such as… well anything but Safari. This means no download which can be great, however if you wanna run it offline, a download is available. The program has a rather classic user interface, which a lot of people will come to appreciate, and is sincerely useful when it comes to sorting projects with an “on the go” sidebar. Personally I believe this could be extremely useful for our Video Production class. We could fully produce a number of great films whether shorter or longer, by accurately planning out their scripts, and the fact that this program is incredibly user-friendly only makes it a greater class room tool. Overall I would give this program 3 and 1/2 out of 5 stars, for it is extremely useful, and simple at the same time.