BVA year2 Blog 12

How film art present to wide audience

In the last few blogs, I talked about some film technics that has been frequently used in making film and the forms of expression. In this blog, I would like to explain what film art exactly is and the function of it.

Film is a new art form after literature, drama, dancing, painting, and building. Filmmaking has been developed around 200 years since it was invented at 19th century. And now it has become the most influential art in our world. There are varieties of movies, some movies are emphasize on the narrative and describing distinguished of character，some movies are more about documentary.

Due to anything could be filmed and then present to audience, so film is a comprehensive art, bearing the art factors of many arts such as moves, music, dance, drawing and literature. But different films highlight different context and genre. As a visual art student, I like the film that involved a plenty of literature factors and drawing factors.

Film absorbs the method of how literature describes human social life andthe realistic world. From the built of characters, arrange of story line, description of detail to narrative structures. However, the element of literature in film is totally different from the language art based on words. Literature can only use language art to describe and build characters. Film can express story through motion pictures, acoustics and its unique form of expression-Montage. Also, Film absorbs a lot of elements from drawing. These elements include the use of image structure, color, shadows and lines. But this is not about put drawing into filmmaking. Drawing is about reflecting human life through line and color. Film is just other way around, it using motion images and the cooperation with sound.

Film is a organic complex of many different art. It is not just piece different form of art expression together. Filmmaking is about use other art as reference and inspiration, then use these elements to create its own art form to wide audience.

BVA year2 Blog 11

Why do we transfer motion images into animation？
Nowadays, I realized that animation is no longer the show for children. It is already became an entertainment for people of all ages. Animation is stem from American and the main purpose of making animation is to entertain the general public especially children. However, with the development of techniques, animation has been wildly used in many other areas like filmmaking, commercial video and so on.”In addition to its use for entertainment, animation is considered a form of art. It is often displayed and celebrated in film festivals throughout the world. Also used for educational purposes, animation has a place in learning and instructional applications as well”.(wisegeek.com)

In my opinion, just like other forms of art, animation has its own unique attraction. Humor and exaggerations are the main elements presented by any forms of animation. Here I want to explain why people turn real life film into animation and the technique it based on.

Rotoscoping-is a method of traditional animation invented in 1915, in which animation is traced over actual footage of actors and scenery. Traditionally, the live action will be printed out frame by frame and registered.”(Wikipedia.org) So the question is why we watch the “traced” animation rather than the original film.
I think it is not wrong to watch original film, but as visual designer, it is important to think about how to display same content in more than one visions. It is interesting to look at things from different way, and consider and learn the same thing in other perspectives. Kanye West’s music video for his song “heartless”, the entire music video is a rotoscopin animation. After watching a lot of black hip-hop, rapping and gangsta music video. People might start feeling boring when looking at big size shirts, gold jewelries, sunglass and tattoo. And viewers may want to watch something new, something fresh. So, “Heartless” music video tells people what hip-hop music looks like when it is made based on animation techniques.

BVA year 2 Blog10

Analyze basic moving image editing techniques

Montage is one of the basic techniques in editing film. In contemporary film industry, montage is not just about two or more images are juxtaposed, creating meaning from the collision, montage has been divided into several technics.For creating different emotion, mood, meaning or genre, editors will use and chose the right montage technic to edit videos.

Kuleshov Effect-this is the most basic montage technic; it is just about link two scenes or images together to create third meaning. A photo of a man plus a food picture can present a concept of hungry.

Metric Montage- “this is the running time of the shot or each time of the shots.” (www.maikito.com)Commonly editors would like to use metric montage to edit documentary clips or images. That means metric montage is not a technic for editing narrative or story.

Rhythmic-“this combines elements of metric montage, the combination or collision of two shots or the rhythm of the shots. How the moment in one shot affects the moment in next shot. Here, movement takes precedence over length.” (www.maikito.com) For making music videos, rhythmic montage is the most commonly used method. In “written in the star” music video, sequences are linked based on the strong rhythm of the song. It shows how clips are affected by each other. Basically, the singer will sing the same lyrics in many different scenes. The editor’s job is to pick one or two parts from each clip and link these parts in order to produce rhythmic flow.
Tonal-tonal montage is about cutting and editing clips together that elicit emotion. The key to produce an emotion is finding the right clips to respond the tonal of background music. Another similar technic is called “overtonal montage”, this kind of editing always happen in movie trailer. Usually, the purpose of making movie trailers is to attract potential audience. So it is important to think about what is viewers feel when they finish watching movie trailer, is the emotion make them want to watch the whole movie.

BVA year2 blog 9

Political film
The question that I chose for essay assignment is about discussing if art/design has an obligation to work for political and social change. In this blog, I am going to talk about how film art reflect political issues in human being society. There is a basic concept of art from Wikipedia:“It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music, literature, film, photography, sculpture, and paintings. The meaning of art is explored in branch of philosophy known as aesthetics, whereas disciplines such as anthropology, sociology and psychology analyze its relationship with humans and generation. ”This is a pretty microscopical explanation, but it clearly tells people that no matter how artists change their art form or invent new media to create new context of art, they still cannot separate art from human life and the society they living in.

Motion image media is everywhere in modern society. And watching film has become the most commonentertainmentfor people. Many directors use film as a tool to reflect political thoughts and human social life. Therefore, except newspaper and TV shows, film already became a common media for people to realize some social issues. But the difference is- film doesn’t tell political issues directly to audience, film usually saying something deeper through narrative and art skills. For example, a comedy movie called “Burn after reading” that fully reflect the relationship between ordinary citizen’s life and high-ranking officials. I like the idea how directors use some people’s moral consciousness to link people of different kinds in society. Director uses a satirical tone to describe the bureaucratic evil practice and what the government has done for this city. Like they try to remove some state secrets through hunting good people.“If a leader sets a bad example, it will be followed by his subordinates.” In common life of average citizens there are also some secrets that they can’t tell to other people like unfaithfulness between husband and wife. However, they also use abnormal methods to settle problems.

Through watching this kind of movies, people can take the cue and enlightenment of their life. This kind of political movie tells citizens’ common life dramatically, and this can show us what our society and the environment we living in looks like or people have to be responsible for their own decisions in their life.

BVA Yr2 Blog 8

violence and sex in film

In this blog, I would like to analysis how movies can reflect historical and social phenomena and problems. There are lots of movies explore and present the disasters and social events happened in human history.In Schindler's List (1993), Steven Spielberg truly expresses the brutality of fascist in the second World War. There is a sequence can let viewers deeply feel the how serious guilt fascist made in history.


In this sequence, Spielberg uses comparison technique to explore wide difference of living environment between Nazi officer and Jewish slaves. Herr Kommandant is a high-ranking officer who controls majority of Jewish slaves. Herr Kommandant walks to the balcony and shoot at the poor slaves with worn-out clothing. What behind him are extravagant furniture and a naked woman. So the scenes of Herr Kommandant's house and Jew's are keeping crisscross.In this sequence, there are few shots are highly compared, like the haughty look of Herr Kommandant with terrified look of slaves, beautiful furniture with worn-out clothing and so on.

Different movies pursuit different objectives. Movies like Schindler's List are always describe war, race, sex, nation,faith, money, pity, encroach, hope in a serious way. However, some modern films start using new ideas and art concepts to explore same social social problems. In the movie Pulp fiction, it still includes elements like violence, money, crime, sex, race and faith. The reason why Pulp fiction is a landmark of film history is not just because its narrative structure against normal principle but also the way of how Quentin Tarantino presents the concept of violence and sex. The idea for creating this film is mixing templates of stories and narrative structures together rather than telling viewer how bad of taking drug or killing innocent people. That means there is no educational content in the film, the director just wants to let viewer easily to watch this movie like a reading fictions or novel books selling out of the streets.

Black humor is the main feature in Quentin Tarantino's work. Pulp Fiction is full of blood and thunder and its visual impact is greatly surpassed other violence movies. The quote from wikipedia tells people the violence in pulp fiction is not horrible anymore. Killing and sex are exposed in black humor."The film is known for its rich, eclectic dialogue, ironic mix of humor and violence."

All in all, violence and sex have became a common subject in Hollywood film industry. It is hard to find a Hollywood movie with no violence and sex. There are more new concepts about violence and sex like "romantic violence", "aesthetics of violence " and so on. However some people say " Hollywood's preoccupation with violence over sex has affected our ability to accurately perceive reality."(http://www.abc.net.au/) But I think to be an artist, we should think more about how to develop old ideas into something new and stop being realism unless when we have to make some political art with other purpose.

Blog 7 BVA year2

Modern Film Noir Film
It's barely to see traditional noir film nowadays but it's techniques have been using all the time. Some movies are made through film noir techniques which express the mood of dark, we call them "Neo-Noir"."Neo-Noir is a style often seen in modern motion pictures and other forms that prominently utilize elements of film noir, but with updated themes, content, style, visual elements or media that were absent in films noir of the 1940s and 1950s."(wikipedia.org)

Film noir techniques(shot angle):Sin city is a new noir film directed by Robert Rodriguez and its genre is based on Frank Miler's comic book. This new noir film is not a regular crime movies as we usually see on screen. The directors actually push the beauty of picture frame to its extreme through using a bouch of low angle shot, deep focus and bird view shot.

Low angle shot:The original reason for shot subjects in low angle is because movies are basically made on stages in the past. Viewer can't see ceiling or sky through screen."An unorthodox method used in the film was the way low-angle shots were used to display a point of view faceing upwards, thus allowing ceiling to be shown in the background of several scenes."(http://www.gradesaver.com)in/ this still, viewer can see japanese killer Miho is jumping down from the roof with two broadswords. I think the reason why the jump is shot in low camera angle is not because directors want viewer to see the sky in background but the jump in this position can give viewer more visual impact and sense of reality.

Deep focusDeep focus has been wildly using in the shot of long distance and large field scenes(depth of field). "Depth of field is the front-to-back range of focus in an image — that is, how much of it appears sharp and clear. Consequently, in deep focus the foreground, middle-ground and background are all in focus."(en.wikipedia.org)In second still, viewer can see through the lowest stairs from the top and there are a lot of cops at each stair. This kind of shot angle could also be a subjective camera position. That means camera can act as the eyes of viewer. Viewers can feel as if they are the character who is watching downstairs, a kind of feeling like "you are there".

Year 2 Blog Assignment 6

What is "Film Noir"

In this blog, I want to talk about what is film noir and how it influenced contemporary. "Film Noir (literally 'black film or cinema') was coined by French film critics who noticed the trend of how 'dark', downbeat and black the looks and themes were of many American crime and detective films released in France to theatres following the war,"(www.filmsite.org/filmnoir.html) Film noir film use its unique techniques of light set up, shot angle to express stories about detective, crime, politics and so on. The most important thing people should learn in noir films is what techniques the filmmakers use for creating a dark, mysterious atmosphere."Strictly speaking, film noir is not a genre, but rather the mood, style, point-of-view, or tone of a film."(filmsite.org)

Main techniques:
Chiaroscuro: "in art is characterized by strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition."(wikipedia.org)
Backlighting: "backlighting refers to the process of illuminating the subject from the back.(Low key: only one key light, a low light situation)

"The curious case of Benjamin Button"
The techniques about chiaroscuro and backlighting can be seen from some stills of this movie. The curious case of Benjamin Button" is not a noir film, but director uses a lot of film noir techniques to create atmosphere and mood which are similar to noir film. The conversation scene in Captain Mike Clark's boat is shot through chiaroscure light. In this scene, there is only one beam of light comes from window, so the light is boldly contrasting with the dark space. And it is good to see the only beam of light is on the bare belly of Captain Mike Clark, because this light makes captain a central character in this scene and it makes him the focus of this conversation.

There is a scene about a conversation between Benjamin Button and his flatmate. Benjamin sitting in front of a lamp. With this light setting, Benjamin's portrait is been illustrated from the back. That means the light source and the viewer are facing each other, with character's portrait in between, Viewer can only see the dark side of the subject, this kind picture can create a parting or sad farewell mood and atmosphere.