CLASS REFLECTION

Johnny Gibbons from UA, Telecommunication and Film on Vimeo.

Class Reflection:

Where to start, well, this class has been a huge eye opener for me in to the wonderful world of film. Ive feel like I have learned more in this class than I have in any math, science, or even history class that i have ever taken. Probably the best greatest eye opening thing that i have learned was that it is very hard to make your artistic vision come to life. The techniques like camera movement and shallow depth of field are important tools that i will definatly use in my career. Overall, i think that this class improved my knowledge dramaticly about viedeo production and help me find out who i am as a videographer. Its been a great class and one of my greatest college experiences and has confirmed my deep passion to persue a career in film.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Artist Statement of Johnny Gibbons

There are many things that I would like to accomplish both as a director and a cinematographer. Although I enjoy non-fiction and documentary film, my main goal and passion throughout my career in film is to make fictional films. My goal for all of my future films is for my cinematography style to bring you into and show you a fascinating and impossible world that will have you begging your logical mind to let you give in and throw yourself into it.

I want my shots to bring to life these mystical and enchanting realities and there are several ways in which I plan on doing this. The main way is my favorite and probably the simplest way to do this. This way is through the effective use of slow motion. Some people might think that excessive use of slow motion can make the film seem corny but I think that when used right it can thoroughly transform a movie. I’m not on big on action movies but when John Woo stepped in and directed Mission Impossible 2 I think that he made the greatest movie in that franchise. He change the mood of just another action movie into a beautiful piece of artwork by slowing down the shots and creating a steady, almost musical, flow of cinematography. He did all of this without changing the script.

I want my films to be an escape from reality for people. I am not worried about making them as realistic as possible; I will leave that to the documentary film makers. Even if the film I am working on is not science fiction or fantasy I want every element of it to exaggerate extremely from what would happen in real life. I think that most people come to the movies to get away from what is real and or to throw themselves into someone else’s life to take a break from their own. So why not make the story and shots as beautiful and fun as possible?

CAUTIONS OF LIGHTING

I have recently discovered that lighting for video is very hard. The hardest part for me is not invisioning what a want my shot to look like. That part comes quite easy. The tough thing for me to do is to figure out just how in the hell to get it done. The technical part canbe very frustrating. My first project in this class taught me that i should be very cautious a letting it get overexsposed. I have found that after i fix that part of the problem that it becomes much easier for me to create my vision. I operate much better is low light conditions!!!

BEAUTIFUL BACKGROUND VS. SHALLOW DEPTH OF FIELD

I think that there are two good methods that film makers use when filming actors. One is to put them in front of a beautiful background and the other is to drowned out the background with shallow depth of field. I think that both of these ways have there place. Being in this class has opened my eyes to shallow depth of field and i have finally learned how to use it. It is my favorite tool now and the only time I really would want the background to stand out in on of my shots of a character is if it represents the characters mood. Otherwise i dont really want the audience to be distracted by a "beautiful" background unless the background is what i am trying to show them. So haveing said all of that i think that it is best to use shallow depth of field whenever possible.

CLOSE UPS!!!!

I want to take some time to talk about close ups and how I think that the majority of the shots in a movie should be shot this way. When I say the term close up you should know that Im not really talking about the tachnical term for the a close up shot. I just mean that I think that a film looks best when all of the shot have as little excess room in them as possible. I think that there are exceptions to this of course like wide open landscape shots but I think that any excess space in a shot can be very distracting and keep lure the viewers attention away from what they are suppose to be concentrating on. Shallow depth of field is a great technique that you can use to draw them away from the excess space that you cannot get rid of. I love movies that excessively use shallow depth of field because sometimes gives the movie a kind of dreamy surreal look.

MONEY SHOTS

I think that there can be many types of money shots. It really depends on what you are going for or who you are trying to impress. If your trying to get a job for national geographic it my be a shot that shows how close you can get to wild animal. If your trying to get a news job it might be some of your past shots with news anchors. I think that the most important thing to remeber when your shooting your money shot is to try and create a shot that you have never seen before. Try and come up with someting new and original!!

GREEN SCREEN USE

It think that this guy did an awesome job useing a green screen.

Useing a green screen can be a great way to use special effects in your video. I think that it is really important to pick a good background that will be believable to the audience. In my opinion the most important part of effectively selling your green screen shot to your audience is to do a good job layering in post production.

The Director of Photographer that I chose to write about is John Toll. To me, it seems like his visual style is kind of big and epic with a lot of camera movement of shots of land. From viewing a number of his movies I think that his visual style is one that uses beautiful landscape as a back drop to get the shot that they need. This is evident in most of his films. I noticed that in a lot of shots, rather than using shallow depth of field he has a way of using the landscape in the background of alot of his shots to bring the scene to life. Whether it is mountains in Braveheart, the jungle in The Thin Red Line, or the city in Vanilla Sky it always seems like he has massive beautiful shots of the land where they are filming. Also, I noticed that in some of his push in shots he kind of hooks it to the left or right.

"What Makes a Good Reel?"

This is the reel that I was the most impress with. I think that the director does a great job of makeing the shots with large landscape in them look very cinematic. The music is a perfect choice for this. There are also some good examples in the reel of shallow depth of field. I think that this reel shows that this director is good at film serious dramatic films. It does a great job of showing what this particular director is good at. That is something that I believe is very important to acomplish when makeing a reel.http://nicholasbentgen.com/reel.htm

Here is another great example of a reel. This editor is very talented.



Although I loved the opening shot and there were some other great shots in this next reel, it is the one I have to pick as my bad reel. The reason is the sudden and abrupt change is music throughout the reel especially the first change. http://www.planetpoint.com/jackmessitt/jack1.html

Since that link is not working, here is another reel that I was not really impressed with. I thought that all the shots in this one were great but this reel does not really show any variety.Its mostly just close ups of random objects.

Camera Movement

I think that this clip from Heroes shows three good examples of camera movement. The first good example is the shot of congressman giving his speech. Rather than just slowly zooming in on the speaker the camera almost tilts forward and then starts to ascend. I think that this shot does a good job of relaying the message to the audience that this speech is very uplifting and groundbreaking. The second example is the way that camera shakes around when the speaker is shot. This brings out the complete chaos that is going on. The third example is towards the end of the clip when the shot starts at the top of a building and sinks all the way to the bottom where the nearly defeated villain sits.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrKnhOJ-R80

The short film that I have decided to write about is called "Black Button". It is a great production and I enjoyed it very much.

The first thing that I liked about this film was that they made great use out of the camera with very little props. The film featured an intense conversation between two men.

Another thing I liked was the shots of the man who had to make the decision. When the camera was on the older man it was perfectly still. But in the shots of the other guy the shots looked more shaky and realistic. I think this helped get the audience involved with his desicion makeing process and helped the viewer step in his shoes.

I also liked how as he got closer to makeing his desicion the shots became more upclose. This helped to show that it was drawing to a close and brought out the intensity of the situation.

This week I am going to write about the process of planning for a shoot and how important it is. First off, I want to talk about how important it is even when you are doing a small project to plan ahead and know exactly what you are going to do before you start shooting. I found this out the hard way while working on a small project for class.
The most important thing that makes shooting an easy process for me is having a detailed shot list. For really small two or three minute videos I thought there would be no reason for a shot list because I had what I wanted to do in my head. But as I began to shoot I found out how unorganized I was and found that I had no real idea of what I wanted the actor to do or how I wanted to set up for a shot. Having a shot list for this project would have even shown me on this particular project that the idea I had was no good and I would have done something else. That is why I believe that having a shot list is the most important part of Planning for any size project that you are doing.

For this weeks post I decided to use the suggested topic and find some shots that show "beautiful" light.

In this classic Twilight Zone episode with William Shatner this shot uses its lighting very well. Fully exposeing Shatners face and keeping the creature in partial shadow makes a great this a great shot.

The lighting in this shot of Tom Cruise from Collateral is perfect!

I love this shot from Thirteen Day of Kennedy with his brother and O'donell, played by Costner, in the background.

Shot by Shot

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBq8K-Y2B4g

For my shot by shot analysis I did the opening scene of the James Bond movie Goldeneye. The first shot is a master shot a the dam where Bond is about to base jump. You see a small airplane flying and the camera pans out to get the entire view of the dam in the shot. I think that the shot of the plane adds to the shot. If it had not been in there we would have just seen a boring dam.








The second shot is a very low shot of a man (Bond) running through a gate. I like how the camera moves with the actor in this shot and makes us feel like we are running with him.










The third shot confirms to us that the character is on the dam that we saw in the master shot.











I like the next shot because it is the first shot in the scene where we can see a full shot of the actor but we cannot see his face. I think they did this on purpose because it was Pierce Brosnans first Bond movie and they wanted to "tease" the audience in this first scene.










The next 2 shots are a crafty way of showing what the character is about to do without showing a full shot of him.



















The shot of the dam shows how large of a jump he is about to take.










This next shot says a few things. It shows a birdeye view of how large a jump he is about to take. It also shows enough of the character to tell us that is Bond but doesnt expose his face enough to give us a true look at the new actor.











In the next few shots of him takeing the jump I like how is face is blacked out completely by the light.

"Saved by Cinematography"

My topic for discussion this week is going to be how great cinematography can save a poorly written movie from being a total box office failure. It is my belief that if you have a movie with a sub par plot or that is just poorly written, above average cinematography can create an allusion that the movie is going to be great. Lets face it, when people see a 1 to 2 minute trailer cleverly put together of the kind of movie they would like to see with beautiful shots and their favorite movie stars in it that can be all they need to head off to the theater.

There is no better example of this kind of film than the latest X Files film.(by the way I promise not to write about them every week) But I feel that this movie is a great example of how cinematography was this films saviour. I tried to put a few pictures up that showed what great shots this film had to offer but until you see the trailer and a few clips from the film I don't think you will get grasp of how beautiful of a film this was.

The way cinematography helped this film so much was by creating the allusion to the general public that it was a huge Hollywood blockbuster movie. If you see the trailer you will know what I mean. The plot of the movie, however, was very bad. The creators of the show wanted to bring in new viewers that had not necessarily seen the show before so they created a stand alone story that had nothing to do with the shows myth arc. Although this was a major disappointment to many die-hard fans such as myself, I thought it was OK since many of the original episodes were stand alone episodes as well. Alot of these episodes were hit or miss though and this movie was definitely a miss. The amazing shots however of snow covered mountains and shots of Mulder and Scully made this movie worth coming to for any first time viewer. In this case the cinematography definitely saved the day! I would like to mention though that cinematography was not the only thing that saved this movie for the die-hard fans. For us there was some good writing. The story of Mulder and Scully's relationship was very revealing and a few throwbacks to the show like the pencils in the ceiling and Mulder's poster made for a great thrill!

First Journal Entry

This picture of Mulder and Scully from the X -Files can show someone who has never seen the show what the show is all about. The premise of the show is that Scully is a non believer in the paranormal and tries to prove that all of their cases have some sort of scientific explanation. Mulder is quite the opposite and believes that the cases that they work on have a paranormal explanation behind them. The priceless yet frequently shown look on her face shows her disbelief in the idea that Mulder is trying to force into her head. The look on Mulder's face is one of confidence and certainty that he has found the answer to their mystery. I think that the microscope is placed perfectly as well. It is right in front of Scully, showing that she is the one who takes the scientific approach while Mulder sits back and dreams up far out ideas.

I thought that the movie poster for goldeneye would be a good choice to write about because it doesn't just sum up the movie Goldeneye but it can sum up just about every James Bond movie there is. Up front you see James Bond holding his ppk pistol that he has used in the majority of the films. To his left you see the evil Bond girl that every Bond film has. To his right is the main Bond girl that every Bond film has. These two characters are essential for any Bond film. In the lower part of the poster you can see another one of the most important part of any Bond film which is his car. All around the lower image of Bond running you see the intence action sequences and explosions that are in all the Bond films.

I chose this picture of Tom Cruise in War of the Worlds because I think that filmakers are conveying a message through it. In this picture they are seeing visitors from another planet for the first time. They know that these visitors are hostile yet they are in such amazement that they just stand still and wach.