Nuke week

Just one week before due date, we are still doing rotoscope, I'm very worry about this :-\

My favourite directors

<YIYI>

1.Edward Yang.A great philosopher director of Taiwan,born in 1947, and he died in 2007.A innovative pioneer of new movie in Taiwan.He's film career began in a land of love and humane care of depressed teenager,in his films he delicate depict the changing face of Taipei life,and same time try to find the value of life of young people and how to master their own future.

<Happy Together>

2.Wong Kar wai born in 17 July 1956, a Hong Kong Second Wave filmmaker. In his film philosophy that life does not exist but the feeling of it,therefore his shots do not live in the story,but the "feel".He make film a poetry,rather than tell us a story, for example, he always seeking unique atmosphere,texture,mood in movies.He quoted the words of a French director to express his understanding of the film:the film is your first dream and your last dream.His film is an excellent footnote of this statement.

<Dreams>

3.Akira Kurosawa is a Japanese filmmaker.one of the most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema.He is definitely love make film,once he cut he self more than 30 knife attempted suicide after the film <Train Crazy> defeat, some people think he is narrow-minded,but it is hard for outsiders to understand the kind of pain that his dedication in a film which no one cares.Even when he reached his 85 years old, he still insisted to create film.When Kurosawa at 80 years old, he did shoot <Dreams>, eight dream in eight short films,eight different heroes and topics.Seemingly unrelated,but they had hidden and subtle performance of the dreamer look back on life and love.

<Life of Pi>

4.Ang Lee is a Taiwanese-born American film director,in his movies,he like to put some ordinary things that people simply do not think they are related together,and then let them collide and conflict to each other.In the <Life of Pi> Ang Lee use the greatest length, the most magnificent picture and the most breathtaking shots to explain the first story.For the second story is different to say,not even a shot,just line drawing protagonist languages, and the third story is make people even more helpless to tell which is directed only by a beautiful metaphor.

<3 Iron>

5.Kim Ki-duk is a South Korean filmmaker noted for his idiosyncratic"art-house"cinematic works.Due to his personal experience that is a quite legendary battle after he graduated from high school, he got very through understanding of human nature.I think in his story that the edge of the crowd,are linked with how he saw the society.Maybe art is the same,when we watch his film,sometime may feel pity to miss a shot, because he has a high talent in painting aspects of a story.

<The Wind Rises>

6.Hayao Miyazaki is one of my favourite animation director.He has relatively simple narrative style,there are some keywords of his films:girls,flying or running and animistic type of natural magic.In his works it is difficult to see the heavy sense of character through changing times,instead he is good at express more individual lives and experiences. 

9 different shots types and 4 different camera movements in film making

These are most frequent use movement in film making, according to the way I tell story, I will choose different camera movement. For example: when I'm shooting a environment, I prefer to pan or tilt camera to show the surrounding.

When it comes to shot types, a tip I learnt is to visualise the story by storyboard and give it to others to read and get feedback, in that way I can keep my personal frame style while doesn't confuse audiences.

The steps of film production

The illustration shows the fundamental steps to make a film, here are five major stages:

• Development — The first stage in which the ideas for the film are created, rights to books/plays are bought etc., and the screenplay is written. Financing for the project has to be sought and greenlit.
• Pre-production—Preparations are made for the shoot, in which cast and film crew are hired, locations are selected, and sets are built.
• Production—The raw elements for the film are recorded during the film shoot.
• Post-production—The images, sound, and visual effects of the recorded film are edited.
• Distribution—The finished film is distributed and screened in cinemas and/or released to home video.

B-roll footage and how it works

B-roll footage refer to the  alternative footage intercut with the main shot in an interview or documentary,in order to illustrate the story fully and stay attract viewer's eyes. So B-roll is definetely a big deal. 

To shoot a B-roll footage is slight different from main shooting. For instance: blur for focus, add different angles and so on, Due to B-roll footage will go over audio, so it gives filmmakers more room too be creative and chance to go back do it again.

Self-evaluation of first project

After editing the interview of Sandy, here reveals some flaws that I need to bear in mind.

First of all, when we shoot interview in a fashion shop which down on first floor, the lights here are quite warm and dark, due to that I used a small light, because  at same time, I want to keep the vintage feelings that fashion shop brings to me. However, when we browsing the footages on computer, the gain of pictures is to high. So next time, I will double check lights and camera setting.

Apart from that, through editing, I found out the B-roll footages of interviewee are very limited, before shooting, I planed to set two cameras on different angle of interviewee, but it was too late to book two of them. Lesson learned--sufficient prepare of equipments.

On the other hand, the interview questions are the best part of the whole interview. I did researches about questions of fashion designers and give them to Sandy beforehand, besides rehearsal in her mind, she can also choose the more interesting one to answer.

To sum up, with classmates corporation, we did this interview very productively, though there are problems left for editing, after this self-evalution it just become more clear to me where should be improved during film production.

Group shooting project 2

This week, we have a new team in class,with other 3 brilliant members,we are planing to shoot a short film to horn our filming skills and story telling skills as well.

Learn NUKE

Thanks to Rachel who devoted her time to teach us how to use Nuke to key the footages we got with green screens. It is totally different from After Effects which I used to use, but it very convenient and the results comes out are very good. Next week, we will start keying all the green screen shoots, and same time, we will start doing foley and hard effect sounds for the project ;)