-30.4-

This week I started writing the script for my film. I have the summary written out, so I simply need to re-write it with more detail. Since the film is mostly silent, I feel that having a storyboard format would be more useful. I'll work on getting one together, too.

-29.4-

This week was the beginning of fleshing out an idea. I had been batting around ideas since last break, and I thought I'd want to do a action/hero's journey type of film, but I also liked the quietness of films we saw this year such as Gods and Monsters and The Lives of Others. Last month, while in NYC, I also had taken a few videos of walking in the city, which I thought I could use to contrast with the suburbs. At some point (probably because we were reading through the The Art Life), I also thought about a TED talk where the concept of Genius as being creatures was discussed, and I liked that idea, too. 

Since we had to base our films off The Illusionist, the concept of an action-based film didn't seem compatible to the quiet nature of that film, so I opted for the other idea about the Genius creatures. The film group agreed that we'd try to keep our films brightly colorful and mostly silent in order to keep to the style of The Illusionist and this fit well with my idea I had, so I played around with the concept of a mostly silent film about the creative process, using Genius creatures. At the end of the week I have a few designs for the Genius, the main character, and a basic storyline. Next week I'll have to fill in the details, my goal being to have a finished script+ storyboard.

-28.4-

The Illusionist:

I first saw commercials for  The Illusionist when it was in theaters, but I hadn't had a chance to see it until now.
The film was beautiful, and I liked the quietness of it. But...I felt like I couldn't quite connect to the story. Part of it was that the leading girl looked older than I expected her to, and that made it hard to gauge her relationship with the Illusionist at first. (It also may have been because I had little sleep the night before. I'll have to re-watch it.)

Things to steal:
-Color palettes of the various cities
-The scene where the Illusionist was crowded on a boat with all of the sheep
-A shot of the leading girl and her love interest exiting the shop (the sidewalk was slanted)

-A shot of the leading girl first meeting the Illusionist. The Illusionist could barely be seen through the open doorway

-The shot of the leading girl and her love interest in the rain (they only had a coat while everyone else had umbrellas)

-The lonely book's shadow almost flying

-The scene where the Illusionist "interacts" with his real-life counterpart Jacque Tati

*The lack of dialogue in the movie/mixing in of languages so it's more universal

-27.4-

Today I saw Only Lovers Left Alive directed by Jim Jarmusch (I had been anticipating it since two actors I really like are the main characters!)

I liked the movie, but it isn't one many people would like since it's very slow paced (about the speed of The Stationmaster), and had only one semi-fast action scene. There was a lot to analyze, and many allusions made, but the movie gave a very thoughtful look into the concept of eternal life. I'm not a fan of the current vampire genre, but this movie definitely didn't have sparkles. The vampires seemed more like erudite drug addicts than anything else.

The differences between the two main characters was my favorite part of the movie. The man, Adam, took eternal life as boredom and focused on the past (he stayed shut inside and used old technology). He saw people as "zombies" and wasters of the future. Alternatively the woman, Eve, viewed eternal life more positively. She had an iPhone, and seemed a bit more social with others (There was a nice scene where she chides Adam saying something along the lines of, "you could spend all this time helping others than thinking about yourself.")

Other aspects that stood out to me were the first scene, the darkness, and the humor. In the first scene of the movie, there was a cross dissolve between Adam, Eve, and a record playing. As the record went around and around, the actual sound in the theatre moved in a circular motion (Another decision to think about when directing!)

Other scenes that amazed me were scenes of the night sky (since the characters were vampires, the whole thing took place during the nighttime). I kept wondering how they shot those scenes, or if those scenes were CGI.

Even though all of the scenes were shot at night, and the movie had a serious tone, I was pleasantly surprised that there were quite a few humorous scenes. They balanced out the metaphorical bleakness in the lives of the characters and reminded the audience that the movie was fictional.

I'd definitely see the movie again, but I'd need to be in the mood to see it since it is in a slower style.

-26.4-

Directing Dalmation by Conrad Bishop was my first time directing a play. Before this, I was used to directing film (for both STAC and Chinese class), and the differences seem to me to be quite large. Theatre directing felt as if I was directing for a single shot that we had only one take to do, and I felt like I was repeating myself a lot.

What went right:
-Ashley and Grace were able to hit the important lines (and didn't point it out if they skipped a line)
-People laughed
-Most of the main actions were hit

What went wrong:
-I'm not sure if a dynamic really occurred between the actors...but I can't remember the actual performance that well since it was so quick and I was so (?) worried
-A significant action was skipped (Grace was supposed to push items off her desk and walk up so she was shouting in the audience's face)
-We all should have gotten off the script sooner (I ended up not even bringing it to rehearsals)
-Memorizing the script was an issue. We should have spent a day to break down the main points of the script and focused on memorizing then improvising around those main points
--We utilized the recording technique of rehearsing, and we should have started doing this sooner in order to get off the script sooner
-We should have taken more advantage and practiced more in the main STAC room space (we only had one rehearsal there, and half the cast/one person was missing)
-There are many ways of rehearsing (recording+only actions, only dialogue, recalling memorization+dialogue, improvising), and I felt like I should have stuck to one instead of experimenting
-It was a little worrisome when the day before rehearsal half of the cast wasn't in
-I should be more confident/firm when directing, and have done more physical examples of what I wanted the actors to do

What escaped me this time:
-How to create a dynamic between the actors (?)
-How to hit the key points of both action + dialogue
-How to talk about motivation behind the actions

-25.4-

Things I have done this past week, which I should have also talked about for my videoblog:

1. Competed for a scholarship at McDaniel college
2. Visited the American Visionary Arts Museum (in which I saw ok folk art and some cool mechanical art)
3. Planned and partially filmed a music video with friends (filming in public places such as the Highline was exciting!)
4. Became frustrated at iMovie's limitations
5. Rediscovered my love for Shimejis

-24.4-

Yesterday I watched a Bloomberg documentary on Chipotle, "Inside Chipotle." (It's also on Netflix)
Being Bloomberg, the documentary focused on the business side of Chipotle especially on how the chain brands itself as having "food with integrity."

The most interesting part for me, however, was the Chipotle's advertising campaign. Chipotle mainly seems to gain advertising through word-of-mouth and brand loyalty, but they've started to expand in the ad industry. The documentary showed clips of an animated short Chipotle created on the subject of letting farm animals run free; the short went on to winning movie awards and was even played in cinemas+TV! The documentary also mentioned a new mini-webseries in the works that follows the lives of characters who work jobs in the promotion of fast food/packaged foods. I found the concept of the highly multi-media advertising campaign open up new possibilities for advertising. I wonder if it'll work?

-23.4-

Recently I've been addicted to this online drawing site Iscribble. The site allows one to draw and or chat with others in real-time.

This is a painting I made that I'm pretty proud of. Iscribble's controls are simple (aka it doesn't have an undo button), and this is mostly on one layer.

-22.4-

I realized that I haven't finished my reflection on the acting workshop with James III, yet, so I will do so in two separate posts. One will be for the purely Shakespeare acting, the other will be for the improv workshop.
Shakespeare:
We moved on from Sonnets to small scenes. The actors that were in the musical did their scenes from The Taming of the Shrew, and the rest of us did small scenes or monologues from The Tempest.
Before all that, we did an interesting exercise on "O's." I think doing the warm ups was my favorite part of the workshop, but this was my favorite exercise.
For the exercise, we got a card with an emotion on it. We had to say "O" with that emotion, while the others guessed what we were acting out. I liked it a lot, because you could say "O" with such emotion that you could probably hold a conversation with someone just by saying "O!"
A similar exercise was when we said a line from a Shakespeare play in different ways. We all got a line, then James told us how we should say it ("Say it like there's a baby in the room, and if you wake it up, it will never stop crying!") I enjoyed both warm-ups. It was fun to really put yourself into your emotions.
Back to the Shakespeare. The people in the musical worked on a Shakespeare scene, and I was put into one of the Tempest scenes with Emily and Lex. We read through a couple times, and got the general part, since James explained it to us beforehand, but some details of the scene confused us (What is a moon-calf?)
Finally, we both presented. I tried really hard to let go, and I was happy that the others watching us got the plot (a success)!
Overall, it was an enjoyable workshop. I felt even closer to the "actors" in STAC, and I learned that sometimes you need to let go and focus on the feelings behind the words instead of the actual words themselves.

-21.4-

I was watching the new episode of Sherlock, and the sequence of Sherlock trying to identify a face (especially this shot) reminded me of Kontroll.

Maybe the director was influenced by Kontroll?