One of the most iconic filmmakers ever, Ridley Scott, even at age 77, shows no signs of slowing down any time soon, with his recent release of The Martian.
http://nofilmschool.com/2015/11/77-year-old-ridley-scott-emphasizes-power-storyboards-and-written-word In this interview, Scott tells his experience in the film business. He had never made a movie until he was 40, and almost 40 years later, is still making movies at the top of the box office 5 weeks in a row (The Martian has made over $550 million worldwide). He states that GoPro's are quite a helpful tool in the industry, for he put 30 around Matt Damon throughout the movie. He also tells the importance if storyboarding, which seems to be something people I know don't really enjoy. "I storyboarded the entire film, right through everything. they aren’t stick figures, they are wide shots, mediums, etc. With the power of the board — we doubled the budget [of Alien] — we went to 4.2m to 8.4m." It's amazing someone so successful started at 40 and has built up completely, and plans going for as long as possible. Filmmaking is a timeless career, one of the only careers where people don't want to retire at 65 and don't want to stop and relax. That shows signs that the field you are in is right for you, when you love going to work every day so much you want to work that job into the grave with you.
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Whiplash is currently the #140 movie of all time on IMDb. But it very well could be my favorite. As a learning drummer and film maker, this movie really inspires me. Although I never want to drum until my hands are covered in blood nor get t-boned by a truck, sorry for the spoilers, it drives me to become better at both drumming and film making. From the amazing audio to the fact that you can feel Miles Teller's pain, this movie was so well put together. Every scene had you holding on, and that's what I want to do with the films I make. Let the audience feel what the characters are feeling and sending shivers down their spine and goosebumps onto their skin. This story is about a college kid majoring in music, but it's about a lot more than that. A passion for music, a close relationship with his father, a love interest, and an abusive teacher makes the story different. I don't really believe I could say anything to improve this movie, I have watched it over and over again, once listening to the music, once picking out details in the cinematography, once on an airplane where every curse word was censored by JK Simmons saying the funniest and most ridiculous things. To be honest, I've only used actual lighting correctly once, and that was a couple weeks ago. But after seeing the difference, I was stunned.
http://nofilmschool.com/2015/11/lighting-like-vermeer-create-cinematic-depth-lighting After that day, I've been interested in lighting a lot of my work, although it's quite expensive for a whole kit. This article shows how to light things correctly and show depth in this 2 dimensional field we work in. "Cinematography is basically painting with light -- and painting ain't no easy task." Although it may look easy in the video, when using actual lights, I was astounded by how much of a difference dimming a light ever so slightly made. This article talks a lot about this depth-style lighting, which was first started in the film industry in 1940s film noirs, even though they were black and white. Showing depth on a 2D screen can (literally) make things pop. Although I can't completely relate to the author's love of Vermeer, who I truly don't know about, they did a good job in writing, but it would have been nice if the article went more in depth on what the video talked about, instead of just saying that they liked the video. Lighting is truly an art in the film world, when done correctly. This was my group's entry for the Martin Luther King Jr Contest, and this year's theme was "Love Illuminates Life".
First off, I'll be honest and say this is not my best work. I had been caught up in another project for the last month or so, and didn't put full effort into it, which is not what I had hoped to do. We had this original idea of a bully who keeps beating this civilian down, but the civilian keeps getting back up. He never backs down. This went with the quote that "Hatred darkens life, Love illuminates it." I decided we should go somewhere dark, which probably could have worked better. After we wrote the script and story boarded, we were hoping we could film it outside but weather had changed that for us. Getting close to our deadline, we still wanted time to edit, so we decided to film in out school's workshop behind the auditorium. I think it was a pretty good place, but a man had come in halfway through shooting and stated working on something we weren't familiar with, and putting nails in things quite loudly with a hammer. We finished filming and planned on coming back the next day to reshoot, but he was still there. This caused us to use none of the audio we had captured. Improvising, we used all of our shots, and big thanks to Stockton for finding this very fitting speech by Robert Kennedy. Overall, this project turned out better than we thought it might, and I learned a lot of things I will make sure to carry into my next projects, including some fight scene techniques, low-light shooting and more in-depth color correction, and purchasing the rights to music and things. For the last few months, me and a few others have been making a documentary for the Olathe Northwest Band. This project will be around 30 minutes long, the largest project I've worked on.
I've learned a lot from this project, from ways to improve editing skills on long projects to putting a sock on a microphone is a pretty effective wind muffler and band kids don't have much of a social life during marching season. I've spent countless mornings and Saturdays filming, spent full days interviewing, and stayed after school until 9 editing too many times. But, this really helps me to adjust to what true people in this industry do. During marching season, the band has practice starting at 7 AM and going until the end of 1st hour every weekday but Thursday. They then have to play at every home football game (there were only 4 this year) and every Saturday they had an all day event of some sort, parades and competitions mainly. After going with them to a few of these, I realized what they truly go through. Getting to school at 6 AM and going on bus rides up to 4 hours to participate in a 10 minute performance only to get home sometime past 10 PM. These kids are COMMITTED. Their last competition, Neewollah on October 31st, some arrived to school by 5:45 and loaded the bus headed for Independence, KS, 4 and a half hours away. Once there, they changed into uniform and practiced, and because our band is the biggest in Kansas, we were the last band in the parade. After the parade, they got free time for around 3 hours, able to enjoy this small town's fair and festivities. Once back, they loaded back onto the bus for a ten minute drive to the local high school's football stadium to compete. The whole season, they had come so close in all of their competitions. And finally, at Neewollah on Halloween night, they took home the gold. Best Drumline, Best Drum Majors in class, Best in class, and Best Overall. Once they got back to the buses, they had dinner and took pictures with the trophies. They were so relieved, and wanted to get home. These kids chose to skip all Halloween festivities at home to represent their school and came out on top. This project was a blast. I learned a lot about documentaries, friends, and the band. I will take so much from this experience, and I hope someday I will be as committed to making movies as these band kids are to what they love. |
About MeMy name is Graham Petter. I am a junior at Olathe Northwest High School, and I am into cars and films. Archives
December 2016
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