Modern Technology and Movie Plots

....Directors have no problem getting an audience to believe in ghosts, vampires, succubi, extraterrestrials, poltergeists, gremlins, wizards, giant worms, latter-day dinosaurs or rustic werewolves who seem to have unlimited access to steroids; all that is deemed perfectly logical and believable. But it is impossible to get anyone to believe that a character in a horror film or thriller would not be armed with the technology needed to foil the depredations of his rampaging, bloodthirsty stepfather. This is the impasse to which technology has brought us.

I read this in an article about how modern technology has affected the plot structure of films and thought it was quite interesting. How so many films would not have the same affect on it's audience if set in today's technologically advanced world. I was impressed with one persons response to the article:    

Taxi Driver,

Rather than mope around his flat bored and lonely Travis would either become an obsessive facebook stalker or use the internet to reach out to likeminded individuals.. in fact that would make a good film in my opinion! the resultant bloodbath would be awesome.. thats if Travis could be bothered to leave his flat rather than getting bogged down in internet porn or spending his days arguing with people on youtube.

Travis Bickle, send friend request?

Can anyone think of any other good examples?

Thanks for reading, Chris.

New Film Buddy

Axl the Axolotl 

My amazing and hard working girlfriend Shelley(blog) never makes it to the end of the movies we watch without falling asleep so I decided to get a new film buddy, Axl the Axolotl. Unlike my girlfriend he never complains about my film choices (he has better taste than her) and with him being nocturnal he has the same sleeping pattern as me. He seems to have a real interest in what is going on in the room around him and I already feel we have a bond. He is the coolest. Take it easy everyone and I'll probably end up posting about him again sometime.

Submerged Mad Max toys in the background

Axl doing an impressive impression of Predators sperm

New movie I would like to see right now.

Horrible Bosses

Why? Dark comedy with Kevin Spacey, need I say more.

IMDB page

Lenses For My Phone Camera!

Whilst browsing the web three or so weeks back I came across these beauties, two detachable glass lenses for your phone camera. One fish-eye lens and one combo macro and wide angle lens, needless to say I ordered them right away. I just thought they were the coolest things ever and I still do after receiving them through the post yesterday. My Nokia N8 is an amazing camera phone which I had already used a lot but now with these two bad-boys on my key ring at all times along with my 'Big Six' six-hole blues harp I've got unlimited entertainment in my pocket every time I leave my house.

Camera Phone Lenses

Here are some photographs I took with my phone yesterday, all manipulation and effects have also been done on the phone itself. They are all untouched with my computer. 

Macro photograph of condensation and guacamole on a plastic lid. 

Macro image of a crossbow bolt tip

Lomo effect of a Bee and flowers

More lomo

Fish-eye 

Fish-eye

Part of my keyring (macro)

Ten pound note (macro)

Sweet wrapper (macro)

Dashboard texture (macro)

Ten pound note (macro)

Ten pound note (macro)

Fish-eye flowers

Had to sneak a self portrait in

Shelley's hamster (Fish-eye)

Shelley's eye (macro)

Shelley's cat 'Socks' (fish-eye)

Fish-eye paw

Socks a.k.a. Skraghead (fish-eye)

I'm really happy with my lenses and I think my first day of using them was a successful one as there are some good photos in there, let me know what you think and take it easy, Chris.

First attempt at making a 3D gif image

Thought I would try messing around with making a 3D gif image using just my phone camera (Nokia N8) and Photoshop. I'm quite happy with the way it turned out and will certainly try making some more in the near future.

Some Of My Favourite Blues Harp Videos.

Buddy Greene 'Jonah And The Whale'

Im no strict Christian, infact I'm not sure what I believe in these days but I just can't get enough of this video. I'd estimate half of the 400K page views are me, if church meetings where like this in England I'd be there every Sunday.

Crossroads(1986) Final Duel

I know I've posted this scene before and I'll probably post it again as it's one of my all time favourite movie scenes. I get chills when the harmonica kicks in and can't help but move.

If anyone else out there has some random videos displaying music which they just can't get enough of, let me know and I'll check them out. 

Take it easy, Chris

Bowling + Music from 60s/70s + Great Actors + Brothers Directing = Perfect Comedy.Scenes

Kingpin (1996)

The Big Lebowski (1998)

I could watch these scenes a million times.

High Fidelity - Movies I recommend.

My amazing girlfriend (www.ikoss.blogspot.com) brought me a copy of High Fidelity earlier tonight after I had complained several times about losing my copy. I love this movie and will be watching it at some point over the next few nights. If you haven't seen the film I recommend you buy it for cheap online and watch it right away.

High Fidelity at Amazon.com

Trailer.

Take it easy, Chris.

I Saw The Devil

A couple of nights ago my girlfriend brought around a copied dvd her Mum had bought, we don't usually watch copied films as I'm against film piracy but the title intrigued her as she's a horror fan. I hadn't heard of the film before so I had a quick look around the internet and found mostly positive reviews so we decided to put it on. I've watched a few badly dubbed films but this one took the biscuit, truly ridiculous. Ninety-nine percent of the time bad sound or dubbing in a film means it gets turned off in my house but I could see there was something different with this film. The intro was shot so beautifully and pretty much every scene was lit so interestingly thereafter, I could put up with the bad dubbing easily. The basic storyline of the film goes as such, a demented serial killer murders the wrong guy's wife. The widowed husband' a 'secret agent' captures and tortures the serial killer only to release him and do it all over again and again, until the supposed hero starts to become a monster himself. The narrative is ok but at times it seems to be simply used as a device to get from one brutal torture scene to the next. Some of the scenes are brutal in content which is generally not what I go for but the beautiful and often creative cinematography made this film stand out to me. 

Screen shots from the intro

My favourite shot in the film

Overall I enjoyed I Saw The Devil and I would recommend it to all but the faint hearted, without doubt the best 'torture' movie I have seen. (Just a shame about the bad dubbing)

If you've seen this film let me know what you think.

Kodak Advert shot in 16mm

A few months back during my degree course as a class we entered the Kodak film competition. This was an exciting prospect because it allowed me to try my hand at shooting on film rather than digital. I quickly assumed the role of Cinematographer as I really wanted to get my hands on the camera. The college had recently purchased an Aaton XTR Prod 16mm camera and I was the first student who got to use it free reigned, which was cool but also quite scary.

Aaton XTR Prod

Being born into the digital age I have become accustomed to instant footage, there's nothing scarier to me than finishing the shoot and tearing down the set with out actually knowing if you've recorded anything at all, never mind anything useful. Five or so years ago I did try my hand at 35mm film photography which I did enjoy but even that was more instantaneous than shooting on 16mm film, as I had learnt to process the films myself. What if something went wrong whilst loading the film? That would be my fault alone.  

Our concept was to create a Support The British Film Industry advert type piece rather than go down the route of the scary Anti-Piracy adverts which are around at the moment. 

Inspiration

As a group we all really liked the Radio One adverts as seen below as they have a nostalgic and patriotic feel to them which we wanted to recreate.

The Result

After waiting for a few weeks for our film to be processed we received the footage on mini dv tape and nervously played it back. To my relief there was something there, in fact the footage looked pretty good. Here is the edited finished piece.

  

 Although I am pleased with the end result, if I was being critical I would say that I over lit the background. This was simply a case of not really knowing how the camera would pick up light and fearing that there would be nothing recorded. Let me know what you think by commenting, cheers. 

Degree show Photos ( I know they're a little late)

Here are the photographs from our degree show held at Fruit Bar in Hull on the 2nd June 2011. As you can see we got a pretty decent turnout and to our pleasant surprise we got an amazing reaction from the audience. It was a brilliant night and I couldn't have asked for a better conclusion to our course. You can see below that we were a small class and therefore a small crew and the results we achieved, to quote our external examiner, were beyond all expectations. What's next for us all? I do not know,  excited would be an understatement.

Future Classics (The class) - Me, Michael Hirst, Shona Singleton, Tom Lee, Olivia Young, Adam Hill

Me and my beautiful girl Shelley

Control Station

The Screen

The Audience 

Audience and displays on the back wall

Also check out this good review of the evening and films.

Independent Review of the night!!!!!!!

(All photos taken by Tom Lee on his Canon 60D)

Final Year Cinematography Show Reel

A rushed compilation of some of my work over my final year of a film degree. Criticism is welcome but don't be too harsh, cheers. I have a few months to wait for my results but I am confident I will pass to a decent standard, the external examiner liked my work. Guess I should start asking myself what's next? A couple of week relaxing in bed watching films sounds good.




I've had to compress the video file for uploading purposes resulting in a lower quality video, however I hope you can still get a feel for my work. The Roses at the start where part of a lighting experiment trying to recreate the look of practical lighting using studio lights and the horse rider footage was a project in colour correction, it was originally really desaturated and blue. The rest of the shots are from the short films 'Unrest', '99 Forever' and 'Perfect Pygmy'. Information on these films can be found in earlier posts including the full version of 99 Forever.

99 Forever directed by Olivia Young

The final edit of 99 forever for your viewing pleasure. (Might be worth checking it out in a larger size on Vimeo) For this short film I personally did all the camera work, lighting and colour grading. Let me know what you think.



'99 Forever 

Where were you, New Years Eve, 1999? 

Starring Amy Meanwell and Francesca Turton. 

Written and Directed by Olivia Young 

Successful Show!

Last night my degree course class showed our final year films to a decent sized audience at Fruit Bar in Hull and the reception they received instantly made this stressful last year seem worthwhile. As well as showing three films, two of which I acted as cinematographer on, creating a behind the scenes piece for the third, I also had the opportunity to show a five minute show reel of my other work. The reaction to all the pieces I worked on was superb and I felt proud of something I had done for the first time in a long time. Add to the night some drunken tutors and my own Mother drunk and that equals a whole lot of fun. The films are getting shown again tonight at HSAD and I have to run to help with the setting up. I will continue with this post and hopefully get some photo's up from the night at a later date. Take it easy and check back soon.

Some of my Favourite Movie Scenes