Sticks and Stones may break my bones.

I went to see Fast and Furious 6 a few weeks ago and enjoyed seeing the characters back together. In terms of story well, I mean you mainly want to see the action, fast cars, explosions and so on.. so its a pretty basic storyline. As said we want to see the action.. well most of the female audience also something else (can’t deny it ahah); however, the action is usually good when credible.. I know its fiction but its not like we don’t have the technology now to make things seem a bit more real; unfortunately some are just way over the top.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the Fast and Furious films but in the last movie there was one particular seen where you’d laugh or say “what the hell” [*SPOILERS throughout the piece*]. The chase is getting even more tense, as Don tries to follow the tank on the bridge in order to save Letty.. and there Don flies out of his car right over the over side and catches her in mid air landing on a car on the opposite side of the bridge. Ok yeah, it doesn’t sound really good, that’s why you should watch it.

It did seem pretty unrealistic.. I mean nearly impossible! It is funny when you re-watch the scene. Probably an impossible stunt. I actually can’t imagine how they manage to do most of the film stunts in general and most really just show that you can fall down some stairs but still get back up, with maybe a few bruises. Just like the fighting scene in the underground metro between Letty and the female police officer.. wow they really fly down those stairs. I can’t even last much when playing with my little sister at the park LOL [clip 9]. However it is still satisfying watching the actual making of most stunts (see video).  The whole scene on the bridge with the tank is pretty amazing, the coordination, the precision you need to achieve the director’s vision.. I guess it is different acting while being in bed, sitting down or standing to begin on a moving car followed by a tank ahah.

But hey if you want a great movie effect you got to get your hands dirty... or cut, fractured and swollen. There is a good documentary on ‘film stunts’ written by William Kronick which gives an insight to the way stunts are per-se performed and guided. Its interesting to see how in various genres stunts differ in danger or effect, for example there is an introduction to comedies, westerns or how the ‘car chase scene’ has become a very recurrent stunt to pull off in certain movies.  It was actually used more due to the fact that you could come up with lots of different ways to articulate a ‘mind blowing stunt scene’ with cars. It must really be tough to be a stunt double, especially for comedies! The comedies where the character repeatedly falls or trips and even though you think “that must hurt”, at the same time you can’t help laughing; but then thinking that they are actually doing so for us (the audience), for our entertainment.. other than the fact that they do it for a living. Most of the stunt men/women interviewees admit that putting their life in danger or even just the feeling is what makes it fun, they’ve experience but know there will always be that one time when you do get hurt, some pretty bad but managing to get back on their feet and start again.

“I felt that if I wanted to make any big money that I was going to have to do something that would put my life on the line”.  -  Hal Needham

AG

Links

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgoJafeKo3w  Documentary

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DHO7rOltsI  Transporter 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JZKEN_vpzY  Fast and Furious 6

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afEB9k2QXlU  The making F&F 6

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zrr3T4WTeQ Movie clips F&F 6 – clip 9

What makes a Good and/or Bad Director.

Ok, welcome everyone! This is going to be the first post of what I will call what makes a good and/or bad and associate it to a particular role within filmmaking. I’m pretty excited to do so and hopefully I’ll will fulfil this task; I’ll do my best in covering main aspects, drawing upon examples and obviously butting in with my opinions ahah. Just to point out, there are no right or wrong versions of what will make a good or bad role, it’s what each of us perceive and as we know we all account for things differently.

I’ll research certain aspects via internet and also would like to introduce some personal opinions, like interviews of people (maybe randomly pick someone on facebook ahah). Hope you’ll enjoy it and I’ll do my best.

Today’s post will be what makes a good and/or bad Director, but if it’s not or doesn’t seem to be covered in depth, no worries I can also expand with an alternative post!  

From a brief discussion by Ed Zwick and Morgan Freeman, the characteristics to associate to being a good director are: determination, knowing what you want, good casting agent and knows his/her role and sticks to it.

“I would have been very over determined”.

                                                                                                                      – Ed Zwick

There are so many things a Director needs to consider, it’s not just a name on the front/back of a DVD cover or magazine... it’s a big responsibility, where do we even start from? Obviously, this does not mean that any other role is less important or less efficient.

 I’m going to try and draw an outline of the main characteristics by reviewing my role as a Director for the documentary I previously [like ages ago] mentioned in a post; being as honest as possible, I will provide an insight to responsibilities and behaviours that a Director should assume.

First of all, whether producing a fiction, a documentary etc you need and idea [you don’t say – I know this is what most of you would think ahah]. The idea can be a story, an episode or event you would like to inform or simply amuse your audience with, for films in general (as many say) you hunger for a good script/story. Just by absorbing the films from one of my first year modules of Hollywood Classics, I realised how black and white or no special effects can deliver a fantastic movie simply by drawing you into the story – personally I really enjoyed Michael Curtiz’s Mildred Pierce (1945). 

Additionally, vision and originality are crucial aspects. The film is how you produce that good story in visual terms, how to convey to your audience certain massages, feelings, ideas. It will take a lot of practice, however some manage to distinguish themselves due to their way of showing – we know a Tarantino’s film from the violence and good dialogue or Michael Bay from explosions ahah. A director should have a clear vision in mind of how he/she wants to portray something but it does not limit itself there, a director should also be able to communicate his/her vision to the rest of the crew; if the actors do not understand what the director is looking for then it would be hard to fulfil the visual story.

Briefly, a director should have a “minimum” knowledge of the equipment he/she would like to use, where it is best to position lights in order to create a certain effect, how many shoots to take from different angels etc. But I’ve learnt that you always come across new things when actually on the field, during the filming of my documentary I learnt how to use the video camera [this sounds like I’ve never used one ahah] in many of its aspects; no more auto. The main thing is that technology is always evolving so we need to keep up to date with the development but determination, passion and enthusiasm are key ingredients.   

There is one very important point I would personally stress to work on: team work and preventing any hostility. In any work environment there will be people disagreeing with each other, discussions, horrible bosses (the film was hilarious ahah) or colleagues. If you encounter any of these its obviously not going to be a very nice atmosphere to work in and sometimes you can’t prevent it but you can try and also if it does happen, try to overcome such situations.  It’s something we always hear, even in school but at the end of the day it is so vital! I admit I didn’t apply this during my project, not that there were any discussions but still I took a different approach. In connection to this I should have firmly done what every Director should do: remind everyone of their role! Not by being bossy or a pain in the ... but by being direct and firm about it [big mistake I didn’t do]. You would think that everyone knows they have responsibilities and duties and that you wouldn’t need to tell them but if you have to, then yes remind them [not to the point where you turn red and steam starts coming out of your ears].

This is a general idea of how and what Directors should do, but obviously with time everyone will learn from different experiences and I do hope that any of you aspiring Directors may become successful because I do believe that every voice should be heard; yes there are those who distinguish themselves   but every effort made should be appreciated.

“I believe that a good director has to be sensitive […] to the strengths and weaknesses of the actors he or she is directing and be able to elicit a performance that will be in keeping with the character they are portraying. […] The Director should be able to direct his technical crew knowing if they are able to achieve his direction and vision and not push them to a state of uncooperation and resentment because of high handedness and arrogance and insensitivity to their feelings.'' 
                                                                                            - Chima Luke Okafor

See you next month with What Makes A Good and/or Bad Actor!

AG

Link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sANOOw_MeK0

GREEN SCREENING: A STUDENT GUIDE

Green is the colour of aliens and illness, of accidental highlights and illicit vegetables. It creeps and sprouts, and bursts feverishly across the café table when nose etiquette is forgotten. It’s a colour you skirt gardens to avoid. Yet now that you’re required to complete a green-screen project, you’ve hardly seen anything else. As you resolve to think orange thoughts, a figure lumbers into your frame, plummeting forward and recoiling back as though fighting truculent legs. He clumsily flaunts a wholly green outfit. If you believed in signs, this would probably be one.

You reluctantly begin to plot: you know that you need a screen, preferably green. You know that screen needs to be lit evenly, that the object or person in front of that screen needs to be far enough forward that they can also be lit, separately. Most crucially, you need something to eliminate the green; you need to film surroundings away from your cocoon, your troubled friends and confused, unruly hair. Yet your imaginative capacity only extends as far as the pastry between your teeth, with which you’re currently having a rather intimate, and apologetic, love affair.  Minutes later, you’re piling swirling pastries on spongy hummocks and buttercream slopes, dribbling butterscotch on foaming cloud cover and a crumbling flapjack terrain. Masculine shrieks indicate the sighting of mice nearby. You begin to regret brainstorming on an empty stomach.  

In a daunting green screen studio, you attempt to replicate the lighting that you noted at the scene of your sugar land, positioning the camera as you positioned it there. You pretend to stumble across an edible landscape, in reality, absurdly, wobbling between green walls. To finish, After Effects is your tool of torture. You must combine your performance with the cake landscape, whilst adopting technical jargon such as ‘keying’, ‘screen gain’ and ‘GoodgodwhatthehellamIdoingwithmylife’. Filled with thoughts of failure, you crawl home to devour your mini roll mountain and think on it another day. Or never again.