Tuesday 18 January 2011

Documentaries and bad food

OK so I'm not feeling too well, think i had some bad food yesterday and been up all night, but other than that everything is good.

After presenting our film last week, I'm happy to say that I'm genuinely proud of what we made. We first saw film which i thought looked amazing and the presentation of their group work was genius! However i feel i have to comment on their presentation on the film tea. To be honest i was a bit shocked, when evaluating someone Else's work, especially if its a group project i think that you shouldn't give it the 'Simon Cowell' approach. I believe they said something along the lines of "This scene was good and we thought that it was out of place because it was the only shot that didn't lack imagination". Some constructive critism guys! Tea's evaulation of our work was good, i think they did a good job.

Anyway!!

So we have started our documentary project which im excited about, we had an introduction to it with Jeanie Finlay, a documentary maker based in Nottingham. She was really interesting and helpful and i personally think the best guest speaker we have had. We had to come up with ideas for documentaries and film a teaser a proposal for it. Phil came up with loads of good ideas and we decided to stick with a documentary about the characters in an english pub which evolved to the decline of the english pub which was a stronger topic.

We went out with our equipment and went to the nearest pub so that we would 100% have something filmed. We got in and asked to film the pub and they said no problem however they didnt want to be filmed and niether did the custoemrs which was unhelpful but we worked around it. We filmed a lot of shots and then went looking for a different pub down the street, However it was closed which kind of prooved our point. When we got back i started working on a proposal and the other boys in the group worked on editing. We kept our proposal short and sweet and used traditional and patriotic music in th background which helped our proposal a lot!

After everyone had gone Jeanie and jools said that ours would be the film that they would commission because of the proposal which we were chuffed at.

Overall, a good start to the documentary project. (However im feeling awful)

Saturday 1 January 2011

2011!

ok this is the first time I have had time to sit down and think about uni. I have been working non-stop! as soon as i got home from Uni, that evening I was at work and because it was xmas i didn't have a day off until today...well of course xmas day but couldn't do anything then.

Ok so that's my excuse.

I have to write up the notes I have on our film as well as write about the film my group will be evaluating (Feel). We showed our film and it had some mixed reviews. My group think that it was very good and actually told a story as well as made the audience have to think rather than watch....I have to admit the music was a bit overpowering but it will be sorted out by the time we are back. have to give praise to Alex for editing the film so well.

The film that we are evaluating is Feel, which i have to admit looked amazing and Ben did a fantastic job directing it. there were a few bits which i didn't like as well. Il get on the them in detail when we give our presentation but they were mainly things like continuity errors.

Other news, I've been looking at the essay brief and just wrote up a quick swot analysis so it should come along in a bit.

O almost forgot, watched a couple of good films during Christmas, as you do. Christmas Tv was bollocks this year btw.

The films were Prophet, a french film about a north African prisoner in France and the divide between the french and Arabs, as well as how he coped and survived in prison. the next film was Lebanon, an Israeli film about the 1982 was in Lebanon. The majority of the film is filmed inside a tank with some shots looking through the scope of the tank to see the outside. I thought this film was amazing and so clever. Recommended and if you do watch it, let me know what you think.