Colour

I recently watch one of my favourite films....Schindler's list. Other than Liam Neesons amazing performance and Spielberg's fantastic job, i realised what made the film so special...The colour! The idea of making the film black and white with only a bit of colour is genius! it makes things that usually wouldn't stand out; The little girls red coat and the glowing yellow shabbat candles each were there to make an impact and keep the viewer involved in the film. Without saying anything, the viewer can see that there is still a lot of hope withing the Jewish people through the colour of the candles. Spielberg did not want to butify the Holocaust and wanted to make the film timeless, colour adds beauty. This was not what the film was about.

I also played a game recently called 'The Saboter', it is a game set during the french revolution. The game is mostly in black and white to show areas where the morale of the french people is low and Nazi power is high, and Vice-versa.

I have spoken about how sound adds a lot to a film in a previous post, I think colour has the same job and should be used to add something more.

Research

This is the 2nd part of the questions we were asked to answer about ourselves and research.
By doing research, i will be able to see what is out there that i can extend on or make better. I am also able to find different methods that could make what I'm doing a whole lot better. As research starting points go, i stick to the exploratory method. This method aims to look at what is out there and therefore i can get ideas and extend on my own. I also like the idea of Interim research which looks at trends, this way i can see progression of what I'm researching. I'm quite wary of descriptive research as i know how long winded it is, it takes a lot of time to find out something that can be done quicker using other methods such as using exploratory to see what surveys have already been done.

I find that pilot stage is quite irrelelvant, this is because it looks at developing plans on research, this is seen as a warm up and to me....a bit of a waste of time. I usually know what research i want or need to do and just go with it.

The Book of Eli

I didn't realise how much sound contributed to the whole viewing experience until watching this film. Of corse i knew it effected the film, but this film does a very good job at utilising it to add more emphasise to each scene. I cant say much about the film without giving it all away but the only thing i will say is that it is based on god and faith and even though the bible plays a major part in the film, all Denzel Washington can teach us from it is treat others better than you treat yourself, which is bull as throughout the film he is slicing and dicing everyone that's in his way. People that i went to see the film with thought that the ending was great and that you have to think about the film to really appreciate it. I do not think that on the other hand but il let people decided themselves and let me know what they thought.

Past, Present and Future.......and Tetsuo

This is the first part of the homework...i understood it as talking about what i have done in the past, what im doing now and what i want to achieve in the future.

During the past few years, I have not done a lot of work outside of school. Although this may seem a disadvantage to some people, I believe that it helps me push further in the course. I did an ICT course in 6th form high school which involved a lot of designing work on Macromedia Fireworks as well as creating an interactive story for children in flash (which was like the interactive narrative but longer) . With the knowledge of Fireworks, I was able to do little things outside of school that I would have not been able to do beforehand. I designed a few logos, one was used by a friend on an American based site selling electrical products (www.techcrazy.net), I also helped design a website used for a jewellery company. Although this is not a lot of work outside school, it all kick started my decision to take multimedia. I have always enjoyed film and had hour long discussions with friends about what films I like and hate and why. After doing the Oneshot project, I realised this is what I want to do, I also realised after watching Tetsuo: The Iron Man, I knew I did not want to create anything weird with a lot of eerie noises or disgusting images which were obviously there to javascript:void(0)make an impact, but something that people could connect to and realise the situation. This doesn’t mean that I want to create things that happen in everyday life but just things that people could watch and feel something real towards.
While on that subject, that was the weirdest film iv ever seen. At first I was just tired and thought to myself “just get through these two hours”, and then I felt sick due to the disturbing scenes and noises in the film. Honestly a penis drill?! That was a great idea! And why did she it turn his girlfriend on?! All just weird. Also the Uzi at the end confused me, if they had one....why didn’t they use it earlier? However I thought it was a life lesson and a film that I will never watch again.

First Day Back

The first day back started with a 2 hour lecture, we were mixed with the other art and design subjects for the first time which may have not been a great idea. The lecture was interesting as i learnt that all three subjects had a lot in common, I also learnt that theatre design students were scared of progression and had a problem with most of what multimedia had to offer. A student from multimedia said that the progression from 2d to 3d inspired them to take up multimedia, to which some theatre design students replied "in theatre it has always been 3d and with actors it has much more effect than something popping out at you on a screen", this angered a lot of people obviously. However it was a good lecture and am looking forward to next weeks...

We also had a seminar where we introtuced to Dr. David Downes who would be our lecturer for the next 5 weeks. We were told that over the 5 weeks we would learn action script 3 which i havent used before and so dont know what to expect.