The week begins with introductions and knowing my peers. A great way to begin, as networking will be a critical skill for future reference, as some of us may land similar jobs or even the same. It’s a skill I must master, as it’ll be an important one for the rest of my career.
Our next session of study that is quite an important detail, was Shot Dialogue. Structure of editing, and understanding the language of editing is quite key, as well as being able to understand the visual language of film.
Understanding the principles of cameras, regardless of whether it is live-action or animated, is an important visual language that tells a lot of the story, sometimes even more than the script itself. However, as briefly mentioned before, the power of editing goes hand-in-hand with directing. Learning these technical aspects allows us to implement these ideas in a 3D world, where even though they may be animated, exaggerated or filled with broken rules, we can express everything on screen with purpose and intention, rather than accidents.
Seeing how ‘film’ first began and how it slowly developed into a notion of happy accidents and how these building blocks have developed into a form of industry-standard techniques, means that people such as myself can follow these bread-and-butter techniques, to a high level. As shown through a course of short and long films explaining the background of cinematography and screenplay, I’ve confirmed that you can almost make an entire film with nothing but basic knowledge, and produce something of higher quality. Only once you’ve mastered all the basics can you freely experiment with the idea of rule-breaking as a tool for storytelling.
Introduction To Film
Through Paul Merton’s documentary of the history of film, we glance over Auguste and Louis Lumiere’s (Lumiere Brothers) lives and understand how ‘film’ came to be.
Film in the 19th and 20th century for many obvious reasons was not as developed as it was today. When the Lumiere Brothers had released their first screening in 1895 on the streets of Paris, by word of mouth, around two thousand people had been lined up, waiting to get in. But as pictures describe, there was a large frantic crowd shoving one another just to take a peek into what film cinema really was.
The Lumiere Brothers were not the only ones trying to develop the idea of projecting moving photographs. Inventors from all around the world were trying their hardest to keep up with the power the Lumiere Brothers had obtained, but was never quite enough, making the Lumiere Brothers quite successful. So be it, people would offer all their fortunes to try and obtain one of these machines, which eventually would lead the world into the film industry.
Introduction To VFX
VFX has co-existed with ‘film’ quite homogeneously for a very long time. Examples of this can be shown in the 1933 King Kong where claymation was used in conjunction with film to create otherworldly creatures or scenes, sometimes being used to scare viewers behind the big screen with never-to-be-seen imagery. VFX was a new concept, with a multitude of ideas that had never been explored other than in animations. However, everyone was aware that drawings and animations are not real, they’re drawn, so how can someone become so developed in them? Well, VFX was a great way to allude the viewers into believing that these clay monsters were real and that there was a real threat, causing an intense amount of emersion.
As time progressed, the quality of VFX grew exponentially, allowing for movies such as The Terminator, Toy Story, James Camerons’ Avatar, or even Titanic to exist. With each passing year, the quality and believability of VFX only improved, sometimes allowing the common viewer to easily be deceived and to question their own reality, leaving only those with a keen eye, able to see the deceit.
Of course, this sounds ever so mean, deceiving your viewers. But it allowed for a greater experience where you could tell a story uninterrupted with great reception. Mixing the real world with the fake. Without VFX, we would never have developed film as much as we have today, we’re able to have an unimaginable amount of worlds, places or characters at our fingertips, making any possibility a reality. To even further this, it allows for the general public to pull inspiration from directors and their film, and aspire to recreate them in real life, like Back To The Future’s laceless shoes (Self-lacing sneakers).