- Cousins says that one of the leading directors for French impressionist cinema was Able Gance. One such film he made was ‘Napoléon’ or the offical title, ‘Napoléon vu par Able Gance’ which was a silent film about the French ruler Napoléon Bonaparte. In this film, Gance uses revolutionary filming techniques, such as strapping a camera to the side of a horse while it’s riding into battle, in order to give the audience the feeling that they’re in the action with the characters in the film. This was one of the first times the world saw what’s now known as a Phantom Ride, or at least it’s pretty close to being one.
- One of the famous Surreal directors was Salvador Dali, who made films such as ‘Un Chien Andalou’, which was a film with no connecting plot and random cuts to random actions. Such as, in the first minuet of the film, a woman random gets her eye cut open with a razor blade. As well as that, another director was Joseph Cornell.
Daily Archives: February 15, 2019
Filters
Photo tests
In these photos, I set my camera to manual focus and adjusted this to create a shallow focus. As a result, the foreground is in clear focus on the first image: blurring the background which keeps our attention grounded to the foreground. This concept is reversed for the second photo, where the background is in clear focus compared with the blurry foreground
Next, I experimented with the white balance to create several different hues and colouring of the same image. This led to the reproduction of the image, but with a slightly altered hue such as yellow or blue. This can be useful to create a mood or atmosphere, but also to signify indoors or outdoors
I lowered the ISO, which creates low-key lighting and generally darkened the photo
I used the manual focus to create the following photos. With the first image, I adjusted the focus so that the image was blurry and the letters were illegible. Next, I ensured that there was a clear enough focus to easily read the letters
The Story of Film an Odyssey part 3
1.) According to Cousins, who was the leading exponent of French Impressionist Cinema?
Abel Gance. He wrote, produced, and directed the french epic film Napoleon. The film is recognized as a masterwork of fluid camera motion, produced in a time when most camera shots were static.
2.) What is Surrealist Cinema and who were its leading directors in the silent era?
Surrealist cinema is a modernist approach to film theory, criticism, and production with origins in Paris in the 1920s. David Lynch was described as The First Popular Surrealist.
The Hollywood dream 1918-1928
According to cousins, who was the leading exponent of french expressionist cinema?
Abel Gance who wrote, produced and directed the 1927 masterpiece Napoleon.
What is surrealist cinema ? name 2 films with directors and dates.
Surrealist cinema is a genre of fantasy films which were often set on alternate versions of earth as the audience knew it.
An Andalusian Dog (Salvador Dali, Luis Bunuel) 1929.
Episode 2 The Hollywood dream
- Abel Gance according to Cousins was the leading exponent in French Impressionist Cinema.
- Abel Gance directed Napaleon in 1927 and is seen as one of the most innovative films of the silent era.
- Gance was worried the film’s final part would not have the proper impact by being confined to a small screen. Gance thought of expanding the frame by using three cameras next to each other. This is considered to be the most well-known of the film’s several innovative techniques.
- A modernist approach what originates from 1920s Paris. The movement used shocking, irrational, or absurd imagery to challenge traditional function art to represent reality.
- Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali were the leading directors in the surrealist silent era cinema.
- Luis Bunuel directed Un Chien Andalou(1929)considered the best short film of all time.
- Marcel Duchamp’s directed Anemic Cinema (1926)
THE STORY OF FILM: AN ODYSSEY EPISODE 2
The leading exponent of French impressionist cinema was considered Abel Gance who directed ‘Napoléon’, 1927. Shots are merged together in a unique way, which ensures verisimilitude. The camera constantly moves, which is something rarely done before.
Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí were the leading directors in surrealist cinema. Surrealist cinema was considered innovative but absurd, it involved the use of shocking imagery to challenge the common conventions at the time.
‘Un Chien Andalou’ or ‘An Andalusian Dog’ as it is known as in English, was the 1929 hit directed by Bunuel which really showcased surrealism. Dali collaborated with Hitchcock t create a surrealist dream sequence in the 1945 film ‘Spellbound’
melodrama
Melodrama
- The film will be framed using the proscenium filming technique where the camera is a distant observer of the action that is static, and this is keeping with the traditional silent films.
- I will also use title cards to make the film seem like an authentic film from the silent era as I want it to pay homage to the classic melodrama films of the early part of the 20th century.
- The style of acting will be over-exaggerated since the actors will not be speaking and they will have to communicate their feelings to the audience by using facial expressions and gestures.
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- A young man bumps into a girl who is running through a forest, she is knocked over and the man asks if she is okay, she says that she is being perused and she continues to run into the forest.
- A few seconds after the Girl runs away a man appears and he says that the girl is a Princess and that she ran away in order to escape an arranged marriage, the man asks if he has seen her and the man lies, he says that she went in the opposite direction and the man runs of after her. a few hours later, the man, who is the Princesses’ betrothed is seen dragging her through the forest and the young man comes up behind him and smothers him.
- The young man walks up to the Princess and apologizes for scaring her and he tells her that he hates it when people’s free will is forcibly taken from them and he tells the princess that he will take her to safety.
- An epilogue shows that a few years later, the Princess and the young man get married and live happily ever after.
Stills with Camera
To become more familiar with the camera and the settings involved I took some still shots of this hole puncher. I played around with the exposure and ISO to see what difference it made. As you can see some of the photos are more blurry that others this is because of the shutter speed, you can also see that some are darker than others and this is due to the ISO which controls how sensitive the camera is to light and colour.
film story ideas
Directing
Melodrama
- A young man bumps into a girl who is running through a forest, she is knocked over and the man asks if she is okay, she says that she is being perused and she continues to run into the forest.
- A few seconds after the Girl runs away a man appears and he says that the girl is a Princess and that she ran away in order to escape an arranged marriage, the man asks if he has seen her and the man lies, he says that she went in the opposite direction and the man runs of after her. a few hours later, the man, who is the Princesses’ betrothed is seen dragging her through the forest and the young man comes up behind him and smothers him.
- The young man walks up to the Princess and apologizes for scaring her and he tells her that he hates it when people’s free will is forcibly taken from them and he tells the princess that he will take her to safety.
- An epilogue shows that a few years later, the Princess and the young man get married and live happily ever after.
Influences
- The Cabinet of Dr Caligari
- Victorian melodrama e.g. Maria Marten, or the Murder in the Red barn
- Silent films.
Extra information
- I intend to make the film silent and replace dialogue with cards, like the Cabinet Of Doctor Caligari and it will be filmed in black and white.
Slapstick comedy
- Two women are sitting at a coffee table gossiping when a third woman turns up and shows them a gold ring that she found. The other women fawn over it and ask questions about it.
- A fourth woman turns up and claims that the third woman stole the ring and the second woman denies this and this makes the fourth woman angry so she slaps the second woman and the second woman slaps her in return, the second woman proceeds to pick up a cup of cold tea and throw it in the newcomers face and the fourth woman does the same to her and they continue to throw objects at each other until a man who is a jewel thief turns up and reveals that he was the jewel thief.
Influences
- Old comedy films e.g. the work of Charle Chaplin
- Monty Python
Extra information
- It will be filmed in oversaturated color
Editor
romance
- A young boy and girl meet in a diner and they start to flirt with each other, their parents hate each other so they are forced to keep their relationship a secret.
- The boy asks the girl to meet him at the beach and he is devastated to discover that the girl’s parents have arranged for her to marry another man, he asks her to meet him again, later that night and when she gets home , the girl writes a note and she goes to the beach and the lovers it is implied that they ran away together.
- The girl’s mother discovers the letter and she screams.
Influences
- Rome + Juliet (1996 Baz Lhurman)
- Breathless (1960, Jean Luc Godard) – the film had a sad ending
- French New Wave
Horror comedy
- In the 19th century, Rose Blythe was always kind to everyone, and she was one of the wealthiest women in the town, but she died in an accident when she fell down the stairs and hit her neck.
- Rose is buried but the people of the town don’t forget her – they continue to pass down memories of her and, even in death, she encourages people to be good.
- About a century after Rose’s death, her corpse is brought back to life by a mysterious force that tells her that she is still needed and she continues to walk the earth, helping people everywhere.
Influences
- Warm Bodies (2013)
- Shaun of the dead (2004)
- Zombie comedy
Writing
- Catharine Johnson is the granddaughter of a wealthy man called Lenard Johnson and she is going to visit him, but when she arrives, she finds that he has died under suspicious circumstances.
- The police are called, and Catharine is named as a suspect, even though she had arrived after the death of her grandfather, since she was left a lot of money in her grandfather’s will. Catharine loved her grandfather and recalls fond memories from her childhood when he took her in after her parents died. He has left her a plain wooden box in his will, and he left her a letter which says that the contents are “very important” and that she must only open it in the most “dire of circumstances”
- The police suspect Catherine of murdering her grandfather and Henry Hornby, the police chief is particularly quick to accuse her, and this seems suspicious to Catherine, so she looks in the box that her grandfather gave her, and she discovers that Hornby used to be Lenard Johnson’s business partner but he tried to swindle her grandfather out of his earnings and her grandfather cut him out of the business. This revelation causes Catharine to realize that it was Hornby that murdered her grandfather. Hornby enters and tells her that her assumptions are correct and that he killed her parents as well, he attempts to kill her to cover up his crimes, but she escapes, and Hornby is arrested.
Influences
- Film noir
- Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)
- Femme fatale
- Trope subversion – the femme fatal is not evil , she is a victim of circumstances
Extra information
- Black and white
Photo tests
This Images is me testing out my deep focus skills and my understanding of the technique. I set the focus to different levels for different images.
This picture shows my ability to understand the shutter speed of a camera and overexposure.