Day: May 27, 2010

I have had the distinct pleasure to watch… District 9 on Tuesday. From the action packed scenes, to the underlying causes and overbearing feeling of everything being “messed up”. A movie based around the landing of an alien race on our planet in Johannesburg, Africa. The prawns mother ship has been disabled leading to the stranding of around 2 millions of these aliens, mixing with civilians, tribal gang leaders and the alien/area police.

This is were Wikus comes into play, a great actor in front of the green screen. He is found in one of his first movies and he had the talent to make me literally angry at him through the movies, as at first he wimped out and than began to only care for self-preservation. A serious and self-inflicted mistake lead to a total character transformation seen solemly to those of great acting skills.

Between Wikus, squad military leaders and the commanders of MNU, as well as the local gang leaders, the acting was top notch, considering that almost half of this movie was presented with graphic design and geen screening. Not to mention the concept of the characters and the zeal they present is top notch.

Peter Jackson and Neil Blomkamp ded a fantastic job presenting this story, the writing and directing of these two provided not only myself, but millions enjoyment and excitment in many ways. From cross species jokes to action and a mix of emotions, it has just the right mix.

In conclusion, this is a must see hands down. Although one would say the acting is somewhat low, imagine actually doing it all in front of the green screen, acting emotionally and physically to objects and aliens that arn’t even present! 5/5 In my books and if you have an X-Box, it is currently found on Netflix, through X-Box so go ahead and watch it, bag of popcorn suggested though…

The idea of planning just seems wrong in the shoes of a teenager, but as we begin to learn and expand upon not only our lives, but our video making abilities, planning is crucial to success. In “The Perfect Plan: Storyboard and Shot List Creation“It does not give us new knowledge per say, but reinforces what we know. From writing a script that is exciting, riveting and leads to character names and scenes that are neither generic or repetitive.

The major idea brought up, is the use of image with writing to allow for a more precisely found image and to create a final product more closely related to the visions of the creator. Neither sketching, nor writing is enough, color is also just as important. The writing brings an idea to life, sketching allows for the vision to be brought into a visible form, but color knocks it out of the park. With color and sketch, scripts can be taken to a whole other level since it allows for better understanding when looking for actors and shot locations.

In conclusion, one will expand and increase their proficiency while making movies or videos if the plan out their scripts, write and edit it, but also adding colored sketches allows for everything to fall quickly into place. From knowing what camera angles to take, what shots to do together and where to shoot increases the speed at which you can produce your film more accurately to the creators first vision. Lastly Julia Camenisch (the author of this article) restates the old saying that practise makes perfect and by heading these ideas, you can become a better film maker!