Through The Wormhole, Is Luck Real?

Nam June Paik - Noise, 2011

Nam June Paik - Noise from Media Centre on Vimeo.

BA 2 Premise Ideas.

Premise Ideas.

1.    A divorced father faces losing contact with his 8 year old son if he can’t convince his ex-wife to put on hold her plans to move abroad and instead let their son attend a trial at Oldham Athletic Football Club.

2.    A man stuck in the monotonous routine called life has his world flipped upside down as the fabric of reality suddenly tears at the seams. He soon discovers he’s trapped inside a computer system, a simulacrum. He must find whoever controls this system if he is to restore faith in his own existence and maintain what little sanity he has left.

3.    The end of the world is neigh. Five strangers are forced to take refuge inside an abandoned tower block as anarchy reins on the streets, the Earth’s atmosphere begins to boil and resources run dry. These people all believe to be alone, that is, until one of them discovers something hidden inside, something not meant to be found.

4.    A wounded Knight flees from battle to take refuge in a dark wood, but he is not alone. Hunted my manifestations of his self-indulgence, violence and maliciousness he must acknowledge his past misdeeds and overcome the wood’s horrors if he has any hope of survival.    

5.    The last man on Earth, aided by his only two remaining friends; a bundle of twigs and a mouldy potato, search the devastated landscape of our time in search of answers and other survivors. Soon all is not well as the man begins to sense his fiends wish to betray him and leave him for dead.  

360 Club Shoot

Police 'House Safety' Film

2 Min Music Video Project

Interactive Cinema Wiki Definition

Interactive cinema tries to give the audience an active role in the showing of movies. The movie Kinoautomat by Czechoslovakian director Raduz Cincera presented in the Czech Pavilion inExpo '67 in Montreal is considered to be the first cinema-like interactive movie. The availability of computers for the display of interactive video has made it easier to create interactive movies.

Another newer definition of interactive cinema is a video game which is a hybrid between participation and viewing, giving the player - or viewer, as it were - a strong amount of control in the characters' decisions. A prominent pioneer of such a technique is the successful Hideo Kojima, whose gameplay often takes a priority to the storyline and long cutscenes. His gamePolicenauts, a point and click adventure game which has shootout sequences (that make use of the lightgun peripheral on the Sega Saturn version of the game), has a subtitle which reads "Interactive cinema" on the cover art of all versions of said game, which is an early example of a prominent game developer labelling their game as such. A recent incarnation of an idea similar to this one is Fahrenheit, (censored version released in US and Canada as "Indigo Prophecy") a game dubbed as "interactive cinema" by its France-based developer, Quantic Dream.

1992 saw the release of North America's first interactive motion picture, I'm Your Man. Certain Loews Theatres locations were retrofitted with controllers to allow audiences to vote on decisions made by the main character. Although initially touted as the first step toward virtual reality cinema, the experiment was a failure and the equipment was removed from theaters by 1994.

The Canadian-produced Late Fragment premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2007, and has been screened numerous times at special engagements, but was not released in theaters.

2 Min Music Video Project.

For my directing class next week I have to create a 2 min music video. I can choose whatever music track I please but the visuals need to be metaphoric and abstract. The must also contain the following 6 things -

• A tall space.
• Use of darkness.
• A glimpse.
• A visual crescendo.
• An opening. 
• Poetic roar. 

Not overly sure what to do. All the music I listen seem to require neon lights, cityscapes, karaoke and arcades! If only I could go to Tokyo I'd be fine.  

In Depth Email To Writers

I'm just posting this email on here because I feel it has some useful points that could be used at a latter date.

Okey, I've been doing a bit of thinking last night about the way we can go about writing this script. I've just tried explaining my thoughts to Hamish and failed miserably so I hope in written form you'll be able to make more sense of it. I'm not handing you anything regarding physical content of the film, by and large that will come from the diary, I'm just trying to maybe alter our perspective, maybe change our approach to the narrative. I hope by doing this we'll begin to think about other aspects of this story. 

Okey, I'm just going to throw in some bullet points. 

• The war starting is the cataclysmic event, the hook, what ever you want to call it. 
• A turning point in Len's life is him joining the army to fight in the war. 
• The war itself is the antagonist/conflict/barrier that Len must face.
• Len's overall goal is not to win, but to survive so he can continue to serve his country. 
• Len's special talent/attribute is his ability to draw. So he uses his talent to help achieve his goal and is what makes him an interesting subject to explore.  
• So, the next dramatic event in our story would be the build up to the battle at Vimy ridge and Len's contribution to that battle. 
• The resolution would be that the battle is won by the allied forces. 
• But the war still rages on. 

Please comment and challenge those statements, but at a basic level that list, at it's core, is the back bone to our film. 

Here's an example of how I think the story can begin, before a single image has even been shown on screen. 

"In 1914 X amount of brave men signed up to fight the great war. These are the recollections of one of those brave men."

"Smithy" (Smithie sp?) 

By doing this we're telling the audience exactly what the film is about, we are establishing a time and place, we're also introducing the character immediately.  

What comes next is up in the air as far as I can see. 

One option is we can straight away introduce Len the drawer, out in no mans land taking sketches. We don't really know anything about this guy other than he draws. He's good, he begins to draw sketches for plans that are used to help the allied forces. 

Or, we could introduce Len through his regiment. It would just give us a quick glance at his back story, give the audience an understanding of how he got to where he is, North France.  I'm not thinking lines upon lines of dialogue just a short little intro. Visually we could then see him sketching at his billet while on a short break from duty, a simple, calm, human moment. Maybe he's sketching a couple of soldiers, or a building. I'm talking seconds here, the above would take about a minute of the film. This is more of a biopic approach. The film would then naturally move to his work in the battlefield, then to vimy ridge. 

Or, if we wanted a docudrama approach, we immediately begin talking about war artists in general. We then move onto Len Smith, his work, the use of his work then vimy ridge. This approach would lead us to need two narrators (?). A narration to describe the generic use of of war artists for espionage purposes. Then the second narrator being Len Smith himself to add a more personal touch to things. The film will then lead to Vimy ridge. I think we're all in agreement that Vimy ridge is going to play an important role in the film whatever decision we choose. 

I think, if we break it down into a simple 3 act structure of some kind we have this -

1 act - Introducing Len.

2 act - Out in no mans land, drawing. The build up to Vimy Ridge. 

3 act - Highlighting that his work was used during the battle, his work contributed to the victory. End credits explaining a brief history of what he did after the war etc.       

Thinking about it, now I'm just reading back what I've just wrote, I like the idea of opening the film in the billet, just chilling sketching. Its a good contrast, his sketches just for fun, for memories in a diary then suddenly out in no mans land drawing to help win the war, its a dramatic shift and it's interesting. I think if we choose this route we'll need to really hone in on exactly what parts of his diary we are going to use. We'll have to move time and space with a line or two or else we'll risk running over. 

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