Truth in movies.

When we think of movies that are completely true, we always think of documentaries. But there is no such thing as complete truth in films because its impossible to show it.

Documentaries are still the closest thing to the truth out of all the genres, but the moment something is given a certain perspective parts of the truth are blocked out, and when the footage is edited the truth is completely changed since it takes out all the parts the audience wouldn’t be interested in. 

To show what I mean, I have a picture which shows how the truth gets obstructed the moment something is filmed.

This photo is from San Diego Video Production http://sandiegovideopros.wordpress.com/about/

As you can see the real truth is changed because of the people filming, but since they don’t film themselves filming, the truth is not shown.

Another thing that makes a documentary fake is the narration, since the person wasn’t actually there talking.

Many filmmakers have started trying to make films feel more realistic by acknowledging the camera, this is done using special effects such as lens flare and splatters on the screen. It makes the audience know it is a movie but implying it is real by making it feel more like a documentary.

So until someone makes a movie that has no editing, added sound, and shows everything it possibly can; documentaries are going to stay the closest thing to truth in film. 

Timeline of events. 1900 – 1960

Recently in class we got into groups and created a timeline of events for certain years.

Our group was given the years 1900 to 1960, we had to have 5 main events, one for text, one for politics, one for sound, one for film, and one for technology. We also needed one significant picture for the years.

This is what we made.

We decided to put on all of the events we found onto the picture, so I made a video highlighting the 5 main events. The video is shown bellow.

The song used in this video is called Decisions by Kevin MacLeod and is licensed under a CC Attribution 3.0. http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100756.

The Digital Dilemma.

A lot of people would agree to say that Digital is better than Analog mainly because in many areas it is, but there are some areas that digital fails in.

In the media industry it is very important to keep all the files in the best possible state, but when dealing with digital files it can be a real hassle. There are so many things that can cause a digital file to be absolutely corrupt and unreadable, it can be anything from a slight recording failure to a maginet being too close to the device it’s stored on, this is because of the way binary works.

Binary requires every single 1 and 0 to be in the right place or it all falls apart, for an example I have translated a phrase from words to binary, then removed only 3 zeros and converted it back to text. The example is shown bellow.

As you can see, removing only 3 zeros changed the entire thing from a phrase into a bunch of unreadable code, imagine what would happen if only a few zeros went missing from a raw video file.

What makes Analog easier to manage is the fact that analog is all physical, things like CD’s and Vinyl use bumps to store the data which gets played back in real time, if there is a corrupt part of the recording nothing else gets affected. Many people still prefer to use analog for this reason alone, usually because of previous bad experiences with digital.

Another thing adding to the dilemma is formats. People are finding more and more better ways to format their media to be a better quality, smaller file size, more secure file using new codecs, but this can be a giant pain to work with. A problem I have had with this is when I edit videos, sometimes the video i’m editing is in a format that the editor is unable to read, it becomes very frustrating because in order to edit it, you have to convert it into a readable file.

I would still have to say Digital is better than Analog despite the anger that comes with it, since digital is a lot easier to use..

..as long as nothing goes wrong.

What makes Enter the Void different from other movies.

Recently our class learnt of the movie “Enter the void” directed by Gaspar Noé in 2010. So I decided to give it a watch and it was honestly the craziest yet brilliant movie I have ever seen.

What makes it brilliant is how a large part of the movie is all in a first person perspective and has barely any cuts in it, they even went as far to edit blinking into it which after a while feels really strange.

This was the first movie I have ever seen where I actually felt like I was the protagonist in the film, all the point of view shots I have seen in other movies have felt too fake and a bit forced. Thanks to this film can I also understand why it hasn’t been done as often, there are times when watching Enter the Void that make you feel dizzy and sick just because your mind starts getting confused about if you are the character in the movie or the person in the chair watching it.

Another cool thing about the movie is the how the narration is pulled off as the main characters thoughts, in most movies the narration of thoughts are usually written poorly and doesn’t sound natural, but in Enter the Void it is written in a way that sounds like what real thoughts sound like.

Overall I honestly don’t know what I would give this movie out of ten, it’s extremely confusing but amazing at the same time. All I can say is, it’s a movie I can never forget.

The difference between diegetic and non-diegetic sounds.

Both diegetic sounds and non-diegetic sounds are used in practically every movie being made today.

Diegetic sounds are from noises that are happening in the scene that haven’t been edited in, this means sounds like people talking or things like footsteps. People can usually tell which sound is diegetic from what they can see on the screen.

Non-diegetic sounds are sounds that have been added in, this can include things like music, a narration and sound effects. Non-diegetic sounds are often used to add drama to moments that would be silent without it.

As an example of the effects non-diegetic sounds have on films; I have edited a scene from the movie Zombieland to take out the non-diegetic sound. The clip is shown bellow.

This is an edited clip of a scene from the movie Zombieland directed by Ruben Fleischer in 2009.

As you can see, the non-diegetic sounds were used as mood music and sound effects to create a moment that feels like something dramatic and intense is about to happen. As soon as the music was taken away the feeling of the entire scene changed and the intensity of the scene vanished.

Sometimes people crossover both diegetic and non-diegetic to create a trans-diegetic transition. An example of a trans-diegetic transition is when there is a radio on the screen playing a song and when the video cuts to a different scene but the music is still playing in a non-diegetic way.

Overall, Non-diegetic and diegetic are both equally important in a movie, since diegetic is about what the characters hear and non-diegetic is about what the audience should feel.

How video games have a place in media.

For many years video games were considered childish by a large portion of the public, but it has recently gained a very large community.

One of the main reasons for this happening is multi-player, this is where you are able to play one game with multiple people for a completely different and new experience.

The reason multi-player was so important was because it meant friends would be able to have fun doing things together without needing to be at the same location.

Another reason video games gained a lot of popularity was because they started telling stories within the game instead of just having mindless objectives, people started using video games as escapism in a way that gave them control over what was happening in the story; it gave a whole new meaning to the word “Story” where the player was also the character.

In 2009 studies showed that the video game industry had just started making more money than the film industry, proving that games have truly worked their way up in modern society and now have a large place in media.

The games shown in the pictures are: Minecraft and Sonic: Generations

How radio broadcasting has changed.

Ever since the first radio broadcasts; the radio has been a major part of media.

The radio is most commonly used to play music and news to a very large amount of people from a single place, this can be achieved since radio waves can travel distances of up to 40 miles before being un-reachable.

The way people have broadcast radio has changed greatly over the years, the devices used that were once massive have changed into a few computers and a microphone. 

The photo used was from the Lap Records radio station. They can be found here: http://laprecords.org/

Until recently using radio waves were the easiest way to play audio to a large audience but many people have made the change to the internet, on websites such as SHOUTcast.com there are over 600 thousand radio stations which are available all over the world with very high quality.

The reason for the change to the internet is because using the internet allows both a faster rate of data which means higher quality audio as well as a larger coverage that is easily reached by millions of people around the world.

Although the radio has changed a lot over the years, radio waves are still used a lot because although the internet can be more effective, it is not always available to things such as cars.

So although radio has changed to be easier to broadcast; the things being broadcast-ed haven’t and radio waves will still have a large part until an internet connection is freely available at any location over the world.

I used this website as a learning resource:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/How-Does-the-Radio-Work-75702.shtml

The importance of Lighting.

Lighting is one of the most important things in the creation of videos; it is very useful to set the scene and to show different emotions.

The styles of lighting that are used in movies usually follow themes which convey the genre of the movie, for example, in comedy’s the lighting often follows a very light and warm theme. Whereas horror films and thrillers follow a dark and cold theme throughout the movie, even when the scene is set outside on a nice day.

To show how lighting can change the emotions of a scene, I edited the lighting in a clip from the T.V. show Elementary, the video is shown bellow. 

The clip in this video is from Season 01, Episode 07 of CBS’s Elementary.

In the video the only thing I changed was the lighting, but it made the character as well as the scene look completely different. In the un-edited part of the video, the scene felt like a mystery where the character was looking for something, but in the edited part the character looked like he was in danger and more worried about the situation instead of curious.

Lighting is also a very hard thing to get right, especially in dark scenes since too little light leaves the film looking grainy and too much won’t give it the right effect.

Overall, if there was no lighting, there would be no film.

That is the importance of lighting.

The importance of music.

Our class was recently taught about the importance of music in a scene.

Music can be used to make the audience feel differently about a scene, like when sad music is added to a scene of someone walking, the scene goes from just someone walking to a person in a very deep and sad situation.

To demonstrate how much music can change the feelings in a scene I have edited a clip from the movie “The Big Lebowski” changing the song used in it, this clip is linked below.

The song I used in this video is called Five Armies by Kevin MacLeod and allows distribution under a creative commons licence.

In that clip I found that by changing the music from a happy song to an intense and mysterious song it made the character look like he was in a lot of trouble and less relaxed about the whole situation.

The idea of using music to tell someone how they’re supposed to feel sounds stupid since we all think we know how to feel when shown a situation, but it’s actually a lot harder than we think. If you watch a scene from almost any old silent film that has music in it you will find it very easy to know what’s going on, but if you play it on mute it can be hard to tell how the characters are feeling since their expressions could be any mix of emotions.

Music is one of the most important parts of films ever since the first films were created, and it continue to be important until they find a more effective way to control peoples feelings.

Favorite Scene – The Grey (2011)

The favorite scene I chose was from The Grey directed by Joe Carnahan.

The scene takes place just after the protagonists (Ottway – Liam Neeson) friend dies with no way Ottway could have saved him.

The reason I liked this scene so much was because it is the first time in the story he truly realizes he might not survive and for the first time, he prays, this is important since throughout the movie it has been made clear that he doesn’t believe in God. It makes the main character (Ottway) not seem like a bad-ass for the first time in the movie and even makes him look weak, I was so glad they did that because otherwise it would be a movie about a guy with no emotions just being a bad-ass.

Something I was very impressed with in the scene was that with such little dialog and nothing really happening on screen, I was able to sit through it without the tiniest bit of boredom even though the majority of the scene is silent and only contains about 3 different camera shots. Silence is a very hard thing to get right in a movie but in this scene the use of it was perfect.

Overall I didn’t actually like The Grey and if the movie didn’t have this scene in it, I would have thought the whole movie was a waste of time.