You have 48 hours...Action!

Twice a year a group of Seattle filmmaker form teams to make a short film - write, shoot, edit, and score - in only 48 hours.

The second 48 Hours Film Project of 2014 happened only a few weeks ago and the main genre was, of course, HORROR.

Friday, October 10th, 7 pm - it’s time for the 48 Hours Film Project to start.

The challenge always start on a Friday evening with the reaping of a specific sub-genre, a character, a line of dialogue, and a prop that MUST be incorporated into the story. Each movie crew draw a piece of paper containing their sub-genre. In the past challenge the sub-genres included: Sci-Fi Horror, Horror Spoof, Vampires/Gothic, Monster/Creature Feature, Demonic Possession/Satanic Stories, Mad Scientists, Found Footage, Psychic Powers, Supernatural Horror, Funhouse/Carnival/Freaks, Serial Killers, Gore/ Slashers or "Splatter" Film, Asylum/Insanity, Natural Horror (nature running amok). With the option of withdraw a wildcard: B-Movie Horror, Zombies, Ghosts, Witchcraft, Cannibalism or Cannibal Films, and Horror Musical.

With sub-genre, prop, dialogue, and character on the line it is time to get to work. At this point each team will decide their own schedule, as long as their movie is turned in at 7pm on Sunday.

Some teams start to shoot right after the reaping, and shoot throughout the night. Others will just start to shoot on Saturday afternoon or evening.

For this challenge the required elements were: Character - Val or Valerie Kiossovski: Musician; Prop - Avocado; Line of Dialogue - "I believe the science is still out on that."

Thomas Tierney, from Ticket Productions, normally leaves the meet up, writers the script, send it out to his actors and crew, and the action starts on Saturday morning.

Saturday, October 11th, 9am - Thoma’s crew meet at the location to start the shooting. For this challenge they picked up the sub-genre Funhouse/Carnival/Freaks. Not everybody is on time, but that's ok, there is a lot to get organized before the shooting starts. 

The first actor goes into the  the make-up room. The set is organized the way the director wants it to look. First actor is ready to go. Second actor goes into the make-up room. Rehearsal starts. Thomas gives some guides for the actors. Second actor is ready and the shooting begins. Actor 3 goes into the make-up room. They don't have much time, so while the other actors are getting ready the shooting is already happening.

"Silence on set." - Thomas asks, when he's about to start. 

The location goes mute. Nobody talks. Nobody moves. Only the actors. The magic of making movies has started!

The shooting goes on until about 5pm. 

"It's a wrap." - Calls Thomas. But now is time to edit.

Saturday, October 11th, 7:34pm - Thomas posts on his Facebook page: "Editing almost complete!! :)." Yeah, this guy is fast!

Sunday, October 12th, 6:30pm - Movie is ready, it's time to turn it in!

Photo: Thomas' Facebook

Talk time with Thomas Tierney:

When was your first 48 hours film project? And why did you decide to participate?

I was a big fan of the Sci-Fi genre growing up, with shows like Battlestar Galactica and the recently released Star Wars, Star Trek the motion picture that really fueled my imagination. I really wanted to explore model building, set design and costumes.  Life took over the closer I became an adult so I placed some of the things I really wanted to do on the back burner. When I decided to explore it again I came across Nils Osmar who was teaching classes and decided to take one.

Our first project  - Die Trying, I built one of the props – a nasty little device that was shoved into the skin and stuck there, I was hooked again. I took another class and built the robot costumes for it. Nils wanted to use the costumes for the next 48 Hour Film Project, so I attended, dressed the actors and got to see my costumes on the big screen.

What is more challenging about making a movie in so short period of time?

The more challenging aspect of a 48 HFP is locations and trying to tie that into the genre selected. When you have general locations and you select, say western, you might be pretty well screwed.

How do you think the 48 hours film project helps with the development of the film industry in Seattle?

The 48 HFP is a place for Networking, where budding artists can meet and develop relationships in the Seattle area. The more people you know the larger your talent pool becomes, it makes things easier when you have a list of talent you never knew existed.

If you could change something in the challenges that you have participated so far, what would that be?

Simply, if I could change one thing I would level the playing field by capping the talent on each team or by limiting the amount of money each team can spend on their productions. There are a lot of people participating, some with large budgets, some with no budget. The larger teams with larger budgets usually steal the show and to me, it seems to be an unfair advantage.

What are the Ticket Productions future plans?

The idea for Ticket Productions isn’t so much a company but a community that comes together, has fun, and produces something stunning with limited resources. It is a place for those interested to learn about film, film making and everything else that can be bundled in. Although we are a group that isn’t in it for the money the hope is to one day have a studio, an online channel that offers multiple types of entertainment, and a place for learning free, from some of the bizarre politics and clicks that tend to creep into some Seattle films.

Learn more: 
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1NU4F5kpLkxLbImuC341yTropSpFwe6kZlr_HEx3V-EE/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000
 
https://www.48hourfilm.com/

M & The Blair Witch Project

"Just you wait a little while,
The nasty man in black will come
With his little chopper
He will chop you up!"

We have finally moved out of the silent era, and this is the best week so far: HORROR week!

Even though M (1931) is part of our horror week, I think it is not a horror movie at all. Maybe back in the days when it was first released M might have been scary, but now it definitely is not. In my view it is clearly a thriller movie since it has all the elements: the innocent, good people disappearing, nobody knows who the bad guy is, the entire movie turns around of the looking for the bad guy.
  
M is a talkie, but it has no score. Besides dialogue the sound effects added are those day-to-day noises, like children playing, footsteps, wall watch, and of course, the whistle every time the killer is on screen or around.


Along with M I have decided to watch another very known horror movie (this one fitting in the horror genre) The Blair Witch Project. 

Blair Witch  is a psychological horror movie  released in 1999, and just like M it has no score, just the day-to-day noises. In this case having no score was totally planned since the whole idea is to make the movie looks like real life events. The entire marketing was based on "real footage recovered in the woods."

"It did it all with a unique hook and an ingenious marketing plan, creating a viral Internet campaign back in 1999, when most studios were still trying to figure out what the Internet even was. They promoted the faux-documentary as a true story, indicating that all of the characters had been killed (actors were prevented from doing publicity until close to release to keep up the illusion)." Dustin Koski, cracket.com

About half way through the movie the three "filmmakers" are sleeping in their tend and we start to listen some children noises (they are in the middle of nowhere at this point), the images are all messed up, but the children noises are very clear. This scene is far the creepiest in the whole movie.

The filmmakers did an incredible job in creating such psychological fear, and stress. Nothing is ever showed, not the witch, or the dead kids, but the actors show so much fear and stress that it ends up getting into our heads as well.

In Blair Witch, as in every other movie, we will find the good and evil. In this one, though, we never see the evil, like I said before, the movie is based in what you believe it to be. Obvious the witch is the evil, and it is construct since the beginning of the movie as the idea is to make a documentary about her myth. In the beginning the "filmmakers" shot some interviews with the people who live around the forest, and for this reason know more about the legend. The evil's back story is set up. But it grows every minute, especially when the "filmmakers" get into the woods and weird things start to happen. Like when they keep going back to the same place even though they spent the day walking in the opposite direction. Or when they woke up and around their tend they found three piles of rocks.

The Blair Witch had everything to go wrong, after all, it doesn't follow the Hollywood recipe of making movies, but it turned out to be one of the most successful horror movies, especially on the topic budget/box office. The movie had an estimated budget of $60,000 and only in the opening week it made $1,512,054 (only in the US), the total box office World-wide was $140,530,114 (by November 5, 1999), according to IMDb.

References:

IMDb

Koski, Dustin. 5 Classic Movies that Seemed Like Terrible Ideas at the Time.

http://www.cracked.com/article_19304_5-classic-movies-that-seemed-like-terrible-ideas-at-time.html#ixzz3HTnPrg8N

Lang, Fritz. M. 1931


Myrick, Daniel & Sanchez, Eduardo. The Blair Witch Project. 1999

Eisenstein Montage

Week 5, last week of silent movies, and Soviet Montage's week. 

When we talk about Soviet Montage we think about Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948) and Dziga Vertov (1896-1954), today lets take a ride in the movie Battleship Potemkin by Eisenstein and lets analyze some points of his editing theory.

In his theses Editing the Past: How Eisenstein and Vertov Used Montage to Create Soviet History Douglas Michael Priest points five categories of montage according to Eisenstein: 

"According to Eisenstein, there are five categories of montage which each manipulate film in a specific way. In brief, these five forms of montage are: 1) metric montage, in which the montage is based on the length of each shot; 2) rhythmic montage, in which different shot lengths are put together in montage to evoke tension; 3) tonal Montage, in which "movement within the frame impels the montage movement from frame to frame."; 4) overtonal montage, which Eisenstein describes as "distinguishable from tonal montage by the collective calculation of all the piece's appeal."; and 5) 12 Intellectual montage which deals specifically with the creation of meaning through "conflict-juxtaposition of accompanying intellectual affects."

Eisenstein believed that the editing is the foundation of the movie. In Potemkin Eisenstein uses lots of close-ups and wide shots to express the characters feelings or actions/reactions. 


The events of the shots we see bellow is part of The Odessa Steps Sequence a super famous part of the Potemkin movie. It is clear what Eisenstein is trying to show in this specific montage with open shots and close-ups capturing the reaction of the mother when she sees that her child had fallen down and now is being trampled by so many people.  During the whole The Odessa Steps Sequence Eisenstein mix close-up with long shots creating a chaotic series of scenes. 

  

References:

Priest, Douglas Michael. Editing the Past: How Eisenstein and Vertov Used Montage to Create Soviet History. 2008. The College at Brockport: State University of New York

Gazetas, Aristides. An introduction to World Cinema. 2008. McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. 

Eisenstein, Sergei M. Battleship Potemkin. 1925

Joan of Arc, Metropolis, and Dr. Caligari

The marathon of silent movies still continues... This week we had to watch The Passion of Joan of Arc, Metropolis, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. All three movies with incredible historic and artistic value. I think it is impressive that silent movies can still hold one's attention nowadays when everything is so fast and full of special effects.

In the movie The Passion of Joan of Arc, the director Carl Theodor Dreyer chose to show only her last days of imprisonment and trial, instead of showing her life and battles. Maybe the director's intention was to create a kind of documentary, since he even used the transcription of the real Joan's trial to create the dialogues in the movie. And I'm not the only one who thought about the documentary theory. In the blog White City Cinema, written by Michael Glover Smith he says:

"...his [Dreyer] style of filmmaking so pure and refined and the lead performance of Renee Falconetti so naturalistic that the first time I screened it in class, several students told me they felt like they were watching a “documentary” that had somehow been made in the 15th century."

Falconetti's performance in Joan of Arc still considered for many critics as one of the greatest in film history, silent or sound. The only thing I have to say on this topic is that I agree! She doesn't look like she's acting at all. I felt a huge agony throughout the film, even though I already knew Joan of Arc's story it was hard to not to suffer with her. Falconetti's expression is one of real pain and desolation.

From pain to craziness, one thing that really got my attention in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was the painted scenery. Some scenes looked like a mix of cartoons and live action. Impressive! In  my point of view the lights and shadows created in Dr. Caligari were intended to cause the impression of internal madness. In the article Use of Chiaroscuro Lighting in Early Cinema - Light and Shadow, the author says that "the lighting of individuals to draw attention to their inner emotions."

Metropolis also plays with light and shadows, one characteristic of the Expressionism era, the scenes on the underground world are always full of shadows - maybe to show the unhappiness of the people and the lack of hope for something better. On the upper ground scenes, in the other hand, lots of light and brightness, just like the scene in the garden - portraiting happiness and a life without worries.


References:


Dreyer, Carl Theodor. The Passion of Joan of Arc (La passion de Jeanne d'Arc). 1928

Smith, Michael Glover Smith. Blu “Passion” Flowers. White City Cinema.

Wiene, Robert. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari). 1920

Use of Chiaroscuro Lighting in Early Cinema - Light and Shadow http://homepage.eircom.net/~musima/lighting/earlylighting.htm#cabinet

The Birth of a Nation & Within Our Gates

The Birth of a Nation is a controversy tale about civil war and racism. The film focus in two families, from South and North. And even though fighting for opposite sides the friendship continue. In the movie Griffith show the Ku Klux Klan as the heroes who came in the rescue of the white people who were being terrified by the black troops.

Within our Gates after being abandoned by her fiancé, Sylvia goes back to Piney Woods to help to run a school for Negroes. When she finds out that the school is facing serious financial problems and is about to close for good, Sylvia decides to travel and try to raise enough money to keep the school open.

We can see many differences  in the ways Micheaux and Griffith deal with racism in their films. The one thing that really got my attention in Micheaux's movie was that he portrays the Negroes as dedicated. Sylvia travels to raise money so they can keep the school open, so the kids from her race can have a chance of education. In the other hand, Griffith portrays black people as rowdy. In The Birth of a Nation Griffith shows white people as poor, helpless souls being attacked by the villain and cruel Negroes. The Ku Klux Klan is in reality a group of valiant heroes who ride to the rescue of the white people who have being hiding in fear of the evil Negroes.

Talking about how  The Birth of a Nation influenced racial attitudes and behavior in the United States, the movie was a sensation and "...was also the subject of protest by civil-rights organizations and critiques by clergymen and editorialists, and for good reason: “Birth of a Nation” proved horrifically effective at sparking violence against blacks in many cities," wrote Richard Brody, on The New Yorker.

Even though the movie generated so much commotion it's important to understand that  Griffith is not the only one to blame. He made a controversial movie, yes! But it was for the people to evaluate and separate reality from fiction. You don't decide to fake your own murder after watching Gone Girl, or fall in love with your phone after watching Her.

"They saw only what Griffith wanted to say but not what the movie showed, and, upon seeing what Griffith showed, were ready to take up arms in anger. Ambient and accepted racism left viewers ignorant of the facts and prone to accept Griffith’s racist version as authentic—and denied other filmmakers the chance to appropriate and even to advance Griffith’s methods and make movies offering historically faithful accounts of the same periods and events." Richard Brody, The New Yorker.

The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) tried, without much success, to get The Birth of a Nation censured. The NAACP tried protest campaign and boycotts. When they realized that they wouldn't get the film censured they decided it was time to try something else:

" An April 17, 1915, letter from NAACP national secretary Mary Childs Nerney describes the NAACP’s efforts, largely in vain, to get local film censors to remove particularly racist scenes from The Birth of a Nation. The NAACP’s ongoing national campaign to censor the film had decidedly mixed results. Despite successes in Boston and Chicago in getting sympathetic officials placed on newly formed film censorship boards, by year’s end distributors could show The Birth of a Nation almost anywhere in the country (the exceptions included Kansas), though with several minor cuts in the film’s release print." - The Birth of a Nation and Black Protest, Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media.


References:

Brody, Richard. The Worst Thing About “Birth of a Nation” Is How Good It Is. February 1, 2013. The New Yorker.

Griffith, D.W. The Birth of a Nation. 1915

Micheaux, Oscar. Within our Gates. 1920.

The Birth of a Nation and Black Protest. Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media

Early Silent Films

When I think about old silent movies the first word that always come into my mind is boring. Yes, boring! I know as a movie student and film lover I should be excited about history and old movies, like all the others students and film lovers, but I am not!

I love action movies, with lots of explosions, blood, and curse words. But I have to admit that the movies we have been watching for this class are not as nearly boring as I have imagined they would be.

Of course that as a Film History student we are supposed to study more than just old movies. We also need to study the old studios and old star. But wait! Even though movies started to be produced in the late 1890 the stars only started to shine in 1909 with Florence Lawrence, one of the first movie stars. And why that is even possible? Well, I think that a lot of things happened to result a "no-movie-star-industry." Things like: no close-up were used for a long time on cinema, what made difficult to identify the actor. However, one very important factor was that the studios didn't sell the movies based on the actors. They would sell the movies based in new technology, innovation.  

As Ty Burr says in his book Gods like us "The early film studios didn't think in terms of star because the cinema was, in order, a scientific discovery, a novelty, a bust, and an industrial product aimed at a lower-class, socially undesirable audience."

Going through a quick view on the studios side, we had the Edison Trust - Motion Picture Patents Company. "The Trust was serious business, prosecuting perceived infringement - i.e., anyone else making a movie on his own and trying to get it seen - with lawsuits and hired goons" - explain Ty Burr, in Gods like us. This shows us that even in the beginning people weren't happy about competition. Did The Trust won the fight against Independent filmmakers? Burr makes a very clear statement about it: "Look to the corporate credits of almost every Hollywood movie we see today: Paramount, Universal, Fox, and MGM were all started by the men who opposed the Trust." 

Still looking at the studios the three most famous film producers were The Lumière Brothers, Edison Studios, and Méliès. And even with the industry so young we can notice huge differences on their way of creating films. The Lumiere Brothers are also know as the firsts documentarists. Their films were based in day-to-day activities. Méliès in the other hand used all his creativity to create fantasy movies, he became known as the first special effects director. And Edison created short entertaining pieces. 

In An introduction to world cinema, Aristides Gazetas points the differences between the Lumière and Méliès:

"Two contrasting and important cinematic practices flourished at this early stage of film history. Films shot in documentary style from 1895 to 1905 were not edited. Like the Lumière films, they 'rendered the world as it is' in their presentation of news stories of the day. Meanwhile, the development of fantasy films by Georges Méliès, with 'in-film,'stop-motion editing, enabled some directors to create a 'magic realism' for their  narrative. These films recreated the world according to the filmmaker's imagination. Both tendencies influenced other directors in film production as the demand to tell simple narratives held the interest of the audience and helped them to identify with characters in the filmed events."

 
Jumping from studios to their creations: the movies. One of the films we had to watch this week as a course assignment was The Great Train Robbery (1903), and this movie is considered to be a break-through film because it was one of the first movies to use editing.  As Gazetas says in his book An introduction to world cinema "With The Great Train Robbery, Porter's editing strategies were a turning point in the art of film narration, completely altering the power motion pictures would have in contemporary society."

References:

Burr, Ty. Gods Like Us - on Movie Stardom and Modern Fame. 2012. PANTHEON BOOKS, New York.

Gazetas, Aristides. An Introduction to World Cinema. 2008. McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Jefferson, North Carolina, and London. 

 Porter, Edwin S. The Great Train Robbery. 1903.