Response To Movie

The cinematography in the documentary Rivers and Tides, not only brought the movie to a whole other level, it helped to get the subjects point across. All the shots had composition that was very appealing to the eye. The movie was about this guy who makes art out of things in nature. And the movie itself was art. Some of my favorite shots in the movie were this crane shot while the subject was putting together all the twigs and branches to make this huge circular structure. The shot allowed the viewer to see how big and beautiful the artwork he made was. Another one of my favorite shots was towards the end of the movie when the subject was taking these roots in the country, and making a mega collage. The goal of the cinematographer and director was to show art with art. So the framing of the art would be art itself, everything the artist did was just inflated with their shot of choice. There wasn’t much control of depth of field in the movie most very fast lenses, every shot was pretty much all in focus, but since it was a documentary and the composition was perfect, it didn’t matter. The overall theme of the film was to show of deep everything really is, in order to do this the shots need to be above in beyond. Their goals were easily accomplished with montages of the artwork and the subject on the field doing his artwork, they really conveyed what this guy was doing. All around Rivers and Tides is a very well done, relaxing documentary. The subject of the documentary is also a very good character and the movie is very thought provoking.

Don't Turn Left on Steinway

So here I go, I’m really dreading this whole blog thing, but I guess it s a good thing, tension is always good. My name is Paolo, I’m a filmmaker, at the moment I’m in the process of making a short film , and waiting on funding for a documentary. Recently with my school we visited the Museum of the Moving Image. Lots of very cool stuff, two things which stick out to me right away were their array of old cameras. Which really showed the progress from one camera to the other. I’m very interested in animation also, so the animation section was awesome to me. I loved to see some of the first steps of animation, and how it got where it is now. The Mutoscope was really cool, it was made by Herman Casler who happened to work for Thomas Edison. Basically it was a series of flash cards, and you would spin the handle on the outside of the machine to give the illusion of motion. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCJeOca-GQU) This is sort of like it, only the original machine had much fewer images. The animation Flying Circus by Monty Python was very funny, what was even funnier is how much South Park ran with their whole vibe and technique. The feral fount was also another one of my favorites, it was like live action animation. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JRu8rQlM3o)Basically this spinning machine had a series of objects on it which would give you the illusion of something happen when the strobe light was turned on. The last thing which sticks out to me was the great train robbery and specifically their use of rotoscoping. Basically they would paint every frame of lets say the actresses dress to give the audience a feeling of color. I’ve done a lot of rotoscoping and I thought it was very cool to see some early usage of this technique. I’ll end my blog on a high note, two of my favorite songs this week.

First song tough its either:

Summertime by Herbie Mann:
http://www.imeem.com/jazzmusic/music/Gi8q5Nae/herbie-mann-summertime-live-at-the-village-gate/

Or

Get Thy Bearings by Donovan
http://www.imeem.com/skatelrg/music/eD5S8n76/donovan-get-thy-bearings/

And the second song:
Wrath of Kane by Big Daddy Kane:
http://www.imeem.com/people/TdOYwQ/music/B0Emi0wg/big-daddy-kane-wrath-of-kane/