A Night at the Movies: From Art House to "Microcinema"

This article by Rebecca M. Alvin was very interesting but had a underlying sense of nostalgia.  Alvin starts off by explaining that most of the art houses closed by the mid- 90's as a result of videotapes and the ease of watching films in the comfort of one's own living room.  However, certain films that were harder to attain, like foreign and independent films, remained in the few art houses that were still open.  Alvin then talks about the difficulty of defining what is and is not considered labeled an "independent film."  Some major factors in the disappearing of art house cinemas are due to the financial issues that makes programming independent films risky, the grown of home entertainment systems, and the final is the intertwining of mainstream and art-house audiences.

Although a majority of microcinemas have disappeared, there are still "makeshift" theaters in many communities. Some are in cafes, basements, bars, or like the Aurora Picture Show, in churches! Even in Wilmington we have a few small microcinemas. Thalian Hall puts on "Cinematique" which has a older audience so it tends to be more "mainstream independent" films. However, James Kreul shows more rare independent films every Monday night in the second floor of a local bar in downtown Wilmington called The Opera Room. Not only is it not in a historic theater like Cinematique is, but it a makeshift theater where they simple put up a screen and close heavy curtains to block the sound from the bar downstairs. No matter where the independent art house films are being shown, the environment of watching and discussing them is what creates the full experience!

My Role in the Music Video Project

For our Music Video, we chose "Radar" by Apollo on Fire. My role is Cinematographer so I will, of course, be responsible for DP duties and camera operator. Chris (Director) and I figured out a killer idea for our video (not only for shooting but we planned our shots so that we can create the video we envisioned) and then collaborated on the storyboards. Since we only have about seven minutes of film with the Super 8mm, we discovered ways to truly utilize the little footage that we have for the coverage we need. In post I will be doing special effects and compositing. Our video will contain some camera trickery which includes some camera movement (tracks, pans, etc) and we also have plans for things like matting in post. However, I do not want to give too much away because we really want to keep it a surprise! :D

Chris and I figured out how to come up with an incredible video but not being too complicated or over ambitious. Our aspirations are high, but not overly difficult to achieve. In the end, this tactic will (hopefully) work out in our favor!

Inspiring videos:

I really enjoy "La Blogotheque" videos! They are just awesome and have a documentary feel to them http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDqppyzjPYQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvvQQHnpRfA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBO5dRGrubE&feature=relmfu

Some other good ones
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KrmxavLIRM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKXlgISd3iA&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIn1NECpV10&feature=relmfu

"Radar" Music Video Storyboard

http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/69665062?access_key=key-9huoyjxc5u0wgltr5ya

Self Portrait

When contemplating what to focus on for my Self Portrait the question of my future kept creeping up in the back of my mind. Similar to my classmates, I am at a point of life where “what to do next” is always sneaking into my thoughts. College students get bombarded with the “what will you do after college” question, more specifically, Film majors are constantly asked, “what do you plan to do with film?” Since those questions are constantly on my mind, and because that is the most prominent aspect of my life right now, that is what my Self Portrait will be. My plan is to use the birthmark that is under my right eye as symbolism of “my mark in this world”. When I was a child my mother always used to tell me that the birthmark was a kiss from an angel. Since faces are how we most commonly distinguish one another, and the birthmark is a very prominent part of my face, it will represent me.

I plan to incorporate the angel kiss story and allow that to lead into “my mark” which will then allow me to explore what is my mark is going to be, at least what I plan for it to be. I will include my love of film, more specifically documentary, as well as, my love of photography, which I will base the next phase of my life around. I am going to film my birthmark, and things like rolls of film etc. as well as incorporate some found footage. Ideally, the found footage will be old school ‘self help’ videos about choosing a career or something along those lines. If anyone has any comments and/ or ideas I would LOVE to hear them! :D

The Completed Sound and Light Project

For the final part of this project my group and I took the sound scape, "a hot and dusty morning," that was created by another group and manipulated images to go along with the audio. The images were complied by the entire class and made into a "library". Each group took one roll of realistic photos and one roll of experimental photos. If the first roll of experimental was not bracketed then it had to be redone creating two rolls of experimental which actually only added to our library anyways.

Once the library was complied into our project, my group (Colleen, Amy, and myself) went through the photographs picking out the ones that we thought would work nicely with our soundscape to create a eerie and somewhat uncomfortable short. After picking out the photos we wanted, we began to place them based on the sounds. Basically we listened to the section of the soundscape, thought about how it made the audience feel, compared that to how WE wanted the audience to feel and chose the photo that would best convey those feelings and emotions with the assistance of the audio. Once we had a bit of an 'outline' we started to manipulate the images. We changed the contrast, cropped them, reduced or increased the scale, moved the center point, played with effects that would "distort" or "stretch" the photos, and added a few silly video effects just for good measure! We wanted the piece to encompass emotions of morbidity and give the feeling of being very eerie so some images we simply enhanced the contrast and left it still, which can also be uncomfortable.

Overall, I was happy with my groups work. I allowed Colleen and Amy to do most of the driving and decision making so that they could get more hands on time with FCP but chimed in when necessary. They did a great job and hopefully feel more comfortable with FCP now!

I thought it was very interesting seeing everyones projects. Although we all had the same library of sounds and images, each project was very different and had each owns style incorporated into it. Jose made a comment in class that I thought was completely dead on and want to reiterate his point. It was absolutely amazing how different the soundscapes where once the images were added. The sounds really changed and, shannon is going to hate this but, they told completely different stories once the visual aspect was added on. It was a very interesting process to see first hand!

Response for Assignment 1B

For assignment 1b we were grouped with one other person and told to make a "sound scape" with the library of sounds that our class had recorded the previous week. After taking the .aiff files and making them into subclips, renaming them, and sorting them into the correct groups bins (sound effect, ambient, and voice based sounds) we then took the clips and made a two minute sound scape. The sound scape was not a narrative based project, however, they were centered around the specific line that each group picked. Celestial and I picked the line "His definition of a Hustler".

We decided that our sound scape would incorporate the typical sounds that a "hustler" would hear in a day. We started off simple, with a few sounds that worked together to create a smooth beat and tone, while using sounds that mirrored one another. For example, we used a clip of someone eating chips and then mimicked it with a clip of a piece of glass lightly scratching on cement. The sound of the chips crunching was very similar to the glass being scrapped so the combination of the two acted as an audio match. As the sound scape grew, we had multiple sounds that created a chaotic symphony. Sirens, squeaky bicycle breaks, foot steps, and voice based sounds flooded in. A large crash of glass breaking cut through the noises followed by a few beats of silence creating a dramatic situation within our sound scape. Celestial and I repeated short clips of voice based audio multiple times to give it a "skipping" effect as well.

As the sound scape started to wrap up, we incorporated a farewell conversation of two friends on the street along with a few high pitch, and quite annoying, sounds. The squeak from a fan as it spins around and around and the constant buzz of a transformer continue after the conversation finished and then slowly faded out concluding the sound scape.

We manipulated the clips by speeding them up, as well as, slowing them down, reversing them and putting audio effects onto them. Before this project, I did not know much about audio effects and what they do to the clips. We tried to play around with them as much as possible, however, I feel like they were not doing much to distort the clips. It is very possible that we were not applying enough of the effect to hear much of a difference though. Regardless, in the end, we had a sound scape that I am very proud of. In my opinion, it was unique and creative. I am very excited to see what the next group does with it by adding the still photography images!