PEEPEE STUDIOS
Plushie 3
When shooting this plushie, I had only 10 minutes left in class, so it was rushed. However, instead of going out the next day and shooting more film by myself, I decided to make a film with a minimal amount of clips saved by editing. So thats exactly what I did.
Silent Movie Sound Task
Finished product below
When I watched the source video, I instantly was like "wow I wanna do better than whatever this this person did," then proceeded to do something of about the same quality. It was fun though, as I've never really done a whole lot of sound work.
I started with two things: the ambient street noise and the background music.
video
Music
steps
horse
cage
rattle
big crash
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Street noise
INTERVIEW 1:
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Interviewing
We filmed these interviews in a pretty loud library, and we probably should have picked a better spot. When editing this in premiere, it was super simple. The B-roll is all images and slightly rushed in anticipation for working on graphics for Muench's film. I also tried to color correct it by matching the tint to the red hair. If I knew how to take out white noise in audio, I totally would, but I didn't feel like it was totally necessary considering this was just an interview project. Asking questions is also an art I have yet to master, because the questions I ask usually sound like small talk rather than questions people want to hear.
Being Interviewed
Being interviewed was nice. It was pretty much just answering questions. It was also nice to know that looking into the camera was frowned upon, because I did exactly that at the end.
Behind the Camera
Being behind the camera was a nice little break from talking. I had to rearrange the shot a little bit since everything got rearranged when she was going to sit in the chair to get interviewed.
Documentary Review - SUPERSIZE ME
For this, I watched Supersize Me, the staple Documentary for the early 2000s. It follows the journey of the great Morgan Spurlock, on a mission to expose the harmful nature of McDonalds food at the expense of his body. At the beginning of the film, his doctor is listing off his health specs, and they're exquisite. Great blood pressure, amazing cholesterol levels, the doctor is in love with this man's vitals. He then proceeds to let the doctors know that he's going to be eating only McDonalds for the next month. Throughout the course of this film, he encounters many health complications: puking on the 2nd day of the McDiet, heart palpitations, waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to breathe, among other things. His doctors are advising him to stop what he's doing throughout the entire film. He keeps doing what he's doing. He explains that he started to crave McDonalds and would get headaches if he didn't get it. He ends the film asking who you'd rather see die; you or the fast food industry.
While 2005 McDonalds may be very different from 2019 McDonalds, this movie still does a really good job at exposing them. It doesn't really search to pick apart or even create an argument, its simply a televised experiment in which you get to chose how you feel about it.
NEWS IDEAS
Go to an old folks home and ask them their most amazing life stories
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Taco Bell Food Review
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Ask the deans what they think about the MITH position
RECENT UPDATES (Feb 25)
I've been working mainly on two things: A hypnosis PSA and some lower thirds animation.
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This video actually started out as a joke. The music came first--I took Redbone by Childish Gambino and slowed it down by 35% and put it backwards. The result was this horrifying soundtrack. I then thought it would be cool to freak people out by flashing odd and unexplainable pictures and videos on the screen in an attempt to figure out what exactly makes things creepy. Then Katelyn came in and I showed it to her because I was showing it to people who wanted to see it, and she said that it could be turned into an actual usable gawlik-worthy film. So thats what I did. I slapped a purpose onto it, did more editing, and called it a PSA.
The second thing I worked on was the customizable lower thirds. I was told by Muench that he needed some animated lower thirds for his film that looked professional, so he gave me the solid he already had produced and told me to edit it to match a pre-made lower third, but change it to be customizable. So I worked on that. It took many attempts, but I eventually got it. I ended up with a nice, fancy, customizable lower thirds.
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The scene I analyzed was the infamous incinerator scene from Toy Story 3.
The scene is led into with the Woody's hope-dropping line "I don't think that's daylight", as they realize the glow at the end of the tunnel is actually the light from the blazing incinerator that is sure to kill them. They then continue, in classic Pixar fashion, to try every last attempt at averting their demise, no matter how hopeless it is. The little figures try running against the conveyer transporting them to the fiery pit, their attempts clearly failing. They are flung off of the belt into the fire funnel, yet they still try to escape even with no possible route of escape. There's a wide shot, showing the sheer size of the flames compared to the barely visible toys, our heroes. The music grows more and more intense, and there's a clanging metal beat in the background that persists through the rest of the scene. Jesse yells to Buzz, the usually fearless one who seems to always know how to get out of bad situations, "Buzz, what do we do!" It then cuts to Buzz's face, and his expression is one of true hopelessness that has never been rendered on the character before. He has no clue what to do, and is realizing that there is nothing they can do to escape from their dire situation. He then does the only thing he can do, and he takes Jesse's hand, signifying that this is clearly where the road ends for them. This prompts Jesse to look up, somewhat surprised that even Buzz can't think of anything to do. She then accepts her fate, looks over to bullseye, the struggling animal in thrashing distress, and comforts him with a hand on the hoof. The hand holding spreads to the rest of the group, and soon, everyone is unified and accepting their fiery death. There are then shots of the characters most viewers grew up with leaning their heads on each other's shoulders, accepting their own deaths. This makes even the viewer feel as if they know whats going to happen, and throws them for the empathetic death acceptance loop that mirrors what the characters are going through. The face of the franchise, Woody, is left staring into flames, looking absolutely horrified as he stares his own death right in the face, and getting closer to it every second
TOP 100 MOVIE REVIEW
Silence of the lambs is a very well written movie. I loved the rudimentary but effective camera strategies, such as the dramatic zoom-ins when they realize something or dutch angles when there’s something very wrong. Easily my favorite part of the whole thing was when Clarice is in the pitch-dark basement from the perspective of Buffalo Bill with his night vision. Its deeply unsettling and quite frankly makes you want to yell at the screen. The writing behind Hannibal’s character is incredible. Not one thing he says is filler, it all feels like it means something. I find myself rooting for him sometimes, wanting to see what his supreme twisted intellect is going to do next. It’s compelling all the way through with many plot twists such as the scene where they’re searching for Hannibal after he’s killed the two cops and it turns out he’s in the ambulance with that other guy and he’s disguised himself as a dead cop. The title “Silence of the lambs” is pretty poetic as well, since she ends up “Silencing the lambs” by killing one of the serial killers and saving the girl, symbolism for saving that lamb she couldn’t save from slaughter. The title poster also happens to be pretty cool. The moth over the figures mouth is most likely symbolism for the moth chrysalis inside the dead girls throat.
One of the things that makes this movie so great is it balances disturbing imagery with a balance of insanely good writing, on top of the fact that they know how to use the goriness. Rather than oversaturating the viewer in gore and blood and horrible things, its used selectively in small but intense doses, such as the scene where the officer is strung to the cage with his stomach open and flags and stuff. Its for shock but also awe, making the viewer wonder how and why any human being would do such a thing. The viewer is often in awe at how Lecter can still cause humans suffering and death with only words from the other side of a fortified glass pane, and such a character that the viewer wants to see more of is key in many wonderful movies, such as the Joker in the Dark Knight or Hal 9000 in 2001. This is overall just a really amazing movie I should have seen sooner, and I understand why everyone raves about it.
IRON MAN BTS
Behind The Scenes: Iron Man
The one thing I kept thinking while I was watching this behind the scenes was how much time, energy, and money must have been put into the smallest scenes. They were talking about this 10-15 minute scene where he’s in the cave doing his thing and the director mentions that “only 10 months ago” were they starting to film in the cave and now they were almost done. The also used a fake painted set cave. The scene where Stark is running from the attackers in the very beginning must have cost tons in pyrotechnic and military departments. They interviewed this one guy who’s job was to teach the actors how to look like they knew what they were doing in a scene. You’d need to fly all the equipment to the location, pay tons of actors, get them appropriate, fitting costumes, Get multiple expensive suits for stark to roll in the dirt in, hire stunt doubles for needed scenes (the one where he’s taking over the cave in his mach 1), plan and get every shot possibly needed no matter the cost, pay the marines to fly their helicopters over the desert for a couple weeks, among many many other things. The money this requires is absolutely insane.
Another thing was typecasting. Robert Downey Jr. was picked for the role because of all his physical and mental similarities to the comic book Tony. He has the same humor, same facial hair, face shape, and pretty much everything else that Tony Stark has. Jeff Bridges just kind of looks like a villain.
I found it very cool to see some of my favorite scenes from an outside look, and the outside look almost made the acting look like a bad play for some reason. The beginning scene where he’s showing off the tomahawk missile is showed from an outside view, and apparently they use a fake shockwave machine in order to create the whoosh of a shockwave. Its this big air canister with a fire extinguisher nozzle.
Seeing the dry runs of the special shots of people flying is always very cool, because so many tricks are used in the process. Some included would be green screen and wires. However, in the scene where Tony’s destroying everything in the cave, it’s actually a stunt double shooting real flames out of a functioning (ish) suit.
My favorite part was the nice little semi-interview with Stan Lee off and on set in his first marvel cameo of many. They all clapped for him when he walked on set, he was making jokes, and the staged interaction between him and Mr. Stark looked real and heartwarming. He was in his tent, hanging out with playboy girls that were going to be used during the shot. The cameraman asks if he can get B-roll of him in his tent. Being one of my favorite movies of alll time, seeing the behind the scenes was especially cool, and I definitely want to see more.