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2009-03-24T12:29:00.000Z

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Instrumentation and Orchestration Lecture 2

2008-11-02T12:09:00.000Z

Instrumentation and Orchestration: Lecture 2

One must take into account that when one is working with an orchestra you are also working with a concert hall to house it. Other things to take into account are tings like ‘how far are the players away from each other?’ Back in the really old days, in terms of composition, orchestration would come at the post-production phase and not be considered as important compared to the other factors of composition such as harmony. Berlioz, as we have already discussed, was one of the first to really think about tone colour and orchestration as a means of composition. Berlioz wanted to blend the orchestra into one instrument giving it a whole new range of possibilities. Who says that the violins have to have to tune the whole time eh? Mozart? Thus as we move on through the 19th Century, the music sounds persistently different. Today’s film music goes with the forms made in the 19th Century mostly, it’s annoying in that film music should broaden its horizons a bit more to be like the stuff that was composed in the 20th Century, or even better, the 21st Century. The best composers of the 20th Century, when considering orchestration are Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Vaughn Williams.

Mahler’s 9th Symphony: For the first half minute the music pieces itself together from fragments just like the orchestration. It doesn’t blend together, but instead it comes in at different times like the Italians would have done back in the Classic Era. The instruments are all following different pathways rather than just blending into one. Because Mahler has taken a different path to get this point, he’s also deemed it possible to have solo instruments play instead of having the entire orchestra play. This creates a chamber music feel, but then as the rest of the orchestra comes in, the musical feel goes back to that of an full orchestra. This was fist done by the magnificent Berlioz.

Stravinsky’s Les Noces: As Stravinsky composed the “Rite of Spring” with a very high bassoon solo to start off with; many people would not be able to distinguish it as a bassoon at the time. “Les Noces” by Stravinsky is a ballet about an ancient Russian wedding Ceremony. It sounds archaic, but the orchestration isn’t. There are sixteen percussionists and four pianos playing at the same time. Why? One; to give the piano a new sound, that is a much larger range than it could achieve with just one player. Second; the percussion lends it self as another means to change the piano’s sound. The percussion is the old part, and the piano is the new part. It all ties in very nicely with the composition as the old part comes from the subject matter, whilst the new comes from the composer and the new techniques involved. Stravinsky thus successfully changes the timbre of the piece to something new and unheard of before. This begs the question as to what the modern orchestra can sound like, why are there no Saxophones in the orchestra anyway? Apparently, the first mission when composing for orchestra is to make it sound traditional. Igor Stravinsky wanted a new and defined sound for his piece to distinguish it from al other pieces so the listener would be able to identify it within one second of hearing it. It’s no surprise that Stravinsky pulls out some cool combinations from the orchestra that you have never heard before.

Agon: is also a ballet, but about nothing.
Schoenberg: puts forward the idea that orchestration could be the only form of composition. His five pieces in op. 16 composed in 1909 are a great example. No. 3 is about the sun hitting the ocean water and creating sparkles and reflections that we all know.

Webern: at the same time as Schoenberg composed six pieces in his op. 6. They’re all very short because Webern wanted to see what would happen when you compressed a piece down into a very short time. In the second piece, the whole orchestra is used in conjunction with the first, which just uses a small selection of instruments. There are a lot of ideas being compressed into a small space of time. In No. 3 of this set of pieces Webern tries to colour every note differently, see previous lecture notes for full details. One can draw similarities with Mondrian’s work where the spaces inside the black frames are coloured in. Schoenberg was a painter for two years of his life and he actually put composition on hold to pursue his painting skills. Lots of composers tried to make paintings into pieces of music.

Edgard Varese: looked at cityscapes instead of paintings for his inspiration as he found them fascinating to look at having come from Europe to witness massive urban landscapes like the ones of Chicago or New York. This was in the 1920s remembering the age of machines. In Integrales Varese uses the wind in such a way that the melody goes between all of the different instruments, otherwise known as antiphonal exchange. He also gets rid of the strings entirely in this piece to give it more edge and to take the softness out of it.

THE END.

Instrumentation and Orchestration Lecture 1

2008-11-02T12:05:00.002Z

Instrumentation and Orchestration
1740 – 1900 in quarters
1. Haydn and Mozart.
2. Beethoven and Schubert.
3. Wagner and Brahms (Loads of them).
4. Xenakis and Stockhausen.

The Classic Period 1740 – 1815
First stages of the orchestra as we know it. Haydn and Mozart were the first to write symphonies as composers. A great orchestra that greatly influenced everyone else was the Mannheim orchestra. Carl Stamitz was part of Mannheim school that house many composers. He wrote fifty Symphonies and many concertos, not to mention the quantity of chamber works his has done.

In this era, there were heavy emphasis on the woodwind, which was at the tim; oboes and bassoons. 1750 gave birth to the Clarinet, fathered by a man called Johanne Demmen (not sure about his name). Before this, the instrument was called a Shalamo (I think that’s how it is spelt). It was a long time before people started taking the clarinet seriously. Mozart was the first to use the instrument in his works and promptly made a concerto for it. At this time, the Piccolo and the Cor Anglais were used very rarely.

Horn – Before this time, a primitive hunting horn was used without any valves, just a long windy thing that made a screech, like a sound effect. The French made the horn French by shoving their hands up the bell to change the sound it made. This becomes the norm in later years closer to the present. In 1760, slides were invented for the Trombone. Other brass instruments came and went. Trombones were seen as an exotic instrument, so they were rarely used until time accepted them into Opera. The Cornetti were phased out as this point as they were deemed pointless. A couple of hangovers from the medieval era were the Serpent, and the Ophicleide. They were there because the Tuba hadn’t been invented yet.
Timps – Were tuned so they were used purely for a sound effect or whenever the time came that they could be used in harmony with the other instruments. The Theorbo and the Lute were still used at this point.

The basso continuo had been vanquished by this point.
Strings – The wind was always being used to double the strings at this point in history and there was no soloist stuff at all except for the man Mozart. Haydn’s “Symphony No. 6” was the sound of the 1760s. Before hand, orchestras were always just string quartet score blown out into bigger proportion. By 1780, things had changed; the viola had more identity, it’s own voice finally. Divisi was happening more and more often now. The cello up until now was just locked with the double bass in the continuo part. Pizz and muting were also being used. In the 1777 Mozart goes to Mannheim. Mannheim was literally the centre of everything new and current. People would get together to share their thoughts and teach each other new things about music. Symphonies that were important at the time were the Prague, Paris and Jupiter Symphonies that were composed in the 70s. Crescendos were also being invented, what the hell was it like before hand? In the “Paris Symphony” by Mozart we can hear dynamic markings, five part writing, diminuendos, foreground and background play. Recapitulation is coming back, rather than the simple et effective but boring copy and paste method.
Haydn’s “Oxford” – Horns are now more than just glue between strings and woodwind. No percussion except for timps was used during this era with exception to Haydn’s Military Symphony. “Idomenio” 1781 by Mozart was something that was pushing boundaries with no limit (well with a bit). Haydn wrote in the 1780s “The Seasons and The Creation”. At this time, Piccolo was considered exotic and not to be used in much apart from the Arias.
So in order of most common orchestras, we have at the top
• Strings alone.
• Woodwind.
• Strings with Woodwind.
• Woodwind with Horns.
• Strings with Horns.
• Strings with Percussion.
Key Players:
• Mozart.
• Haydn.
• Everyone else in Mannheim.
Next big period – 1800 to 1900. Everything happened here.
All wind instruments become chromatic by the end of the century.
• Theobard Bohm 1847 he modernised the flute. He was a key figure in this era through modernising instruments and making them better.
• Ivan Mulluer 1843 he modernised the clarinet. Loads of different clarinets were created after this guy tampered with the instrument; Bass clarinet, sub-bass, etc, the list goes on and on.
• Almenrader modernised the bassoon. Tenoroons were created but they were never needed so they quickly died out. It was basically a small bassoon .
Anyway, everything becomes modernised and mechanised. But nothing has been totally perfected yet. Now there were two valves, piston and rotary. No more shitty natural horns anymore, well, actually they get phased out completely much later.
There is a massive division between the French and the Germans over what style of music and what instruments to play were.
Meyerbeer, a composer trail-blazed and experimented with instrumentation and orchestration. He was the first composer to specify that he wanted valve trumpets instead of natural ones. Donsetti, Berlioz, Tchaikovsky and loads of others got the valve trumpets stuck in the system. There was however, a lot of wrestling between the natural and the valve trumpets for good reason as it was apparent at first why they should make the switch. The natural trumpet sounded pretty good and the valve was something new that didn’t initially need to happen. But, as things got chromatic etc, it was a necessity to make the switch. Almost like standard definition and HD.
Beethoven 1770 – 1830 for Beethoven was the time when he used the natural trumpets. Beyond that, he used valve trumpets in his pieces. The Cornet arrived in French Opera. But more importantly than that, the Tuba was finally invented. Saxhorns, keyed Bugal were invented with valves, but there was again no need for them so they instantly died out. Bass Trumpets , Saxotrombas, the Sarrusophone and the Wagner Tuba . These were not foreign instruments, they were spin offs of their predecessors. The harp also comes into play now . It remains diatonic until 1810 . Erard, who was French, modernises it with the pedals.
First Quarter of the 20th Century
• Beethoven.
• Schubert.
• Weber – Notable for extending virtuosity.
• Rossini.
• Caribini.
The standard lineup was
• 2 Flutes. – Piccolo
• 2 Oboes. – Cor Anglais
• Bassoons. – Contra Bassoon
• Clarinets. – Bass Clarinet
• 2 Horns.
• 2 Trumpets. – Pre valve technology
• Rare to see Trombones. – Only in Opera
• Timps. – These are the regular percussive instruments
• Bass drum, snare drum, cymbal, triangle.
Text books also start to appear on instrumentation and orchestration, the major one being written by Berlioz “Treaty” in 1858. So it all starts to formulise. Now doubling other instruments is phased out due to the fact that it is rather boring for the composer just to copy and paste stuff elsewhere. The cello is now fully liberated and says goodbye to its old pal the double bass. It is now considered as much of a melodic instrument as the violin. 7th and 8th position for the violin become quite normal causing the range of the orchestra to drastically increase. Tremelo was very usual now as well. There are now more notes on the page for people to play as well. The sound of the Horn stays the same as it sounded in Mozart’s day; nothing has really changed there. There was also no change to the trumpets either. Three Trombones are now standard in the orchestra as people start to appreciate their ability. The Trombone is now used pianissimo as people start to appreciate the sound it makes when it is that quiet, before hand, it was just belting out sound. This also happens to the Timps as well. For the first time, harp harmonics appear in the Opera La Dame Blanche in 1825. Crescendos and Diminuendos were being written as hairpins in Mannheim. Triple Fs and Ps were appearing as composers demanded more expression and more extreme dynamics. Weber was the pioneer of these newly found techniques as his main interest was colour when it came down to music. In 1821 he composed “Der Freischutz Operetta”, this piece is all about variety, virtuosity and colour. Agility is also something that is greatly considered aqui.

1800 – 1825
• Beethoven.
• Schubert.
These guys took the orchestra to its perfect entity. Weber punched through that creating a big divide between the composers.
The four main works to look at are:
• Schubert – Symphony 8
• Beethoven – Symphony 9
• Weber – Der Freishutz 1821
• Rossini – William Tell 1829
o Semiramide 1823
In Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 the orchestra was at its most polished.
In this Second Quarter there was also another composer called Meyerbeer (1791 – 1864). He was the trail blazer when it came to orchestration and instrumentation. But the big guy was Hectar Berlioz (1803 – 69). A great composer who did a lot of work on orchestration, remember that I said he had written a book on orchestration?

There were three other composers around this time that did a lot of work on orchestration:
• Glinka.
• Mendolsoln.
• Schumann.
These guys were the bridge between the perfect Classical orchestra and Wagner.
The Italians loved their separate and frilly colours in their music. The Germans, being German, loved to mash things up and make “Brown Sound”. Schumann is the key man here when considering this brown mash up sound. Berlioz was the outsider, iconoclastic to Mendolsoln who was loved and celebrated for his immense works at the time. Berlioz was the one who was cutting edge though, only his music was felt by others at a much later period when people had started to mature.
Instrumentation:

Bohm, Muller and Almenrader. They had perfected the brass and woodwind sections and instruments. Opera was the first to specify whether valve instruments would be used over the natural horns. Here we are getting close to a decent, stand alone brass section. Piccolo and Trombones are integrated more into the orchestra. In French Opera, there are now four bassoons. At this point, composers were playing with the idea that the strings don’t have to play the entire time and were shutting them up for sometimes whole movements. Harmonic texture is changing, that is, instead of just having the notes of a chord splashed together in a chord, composers were separating them out in arpeggios instead. Mahler does this a lot as well as Rimski Korsakov. And now thanks to Weber, the Clarinet is fully integrated with the rest of the orchestra and is no longer an outsider. The French Horn is now a melodic instrument thanks to Schumann and his 1st Symphony and Mendolsoln’s 3rd Symphony. It has become a musical instrument, rather than just a sound effect. The trumpet now gets melodies given to it, but only in Opera at this time. Cornets are also being used as a melodic instrument in French Opera.

There was a large divide between the French and the Germans over the Trombones; the Germans thought that it should be split into three tears, the French thought that there should not be tears, just three identical Trombones. This is where the French Horn gets its name from.

Berlioz now sees orchestration as the primary means of composition, rather than just sitting at a piano and then blowing the score into an the size of an orchestra.

Weber starts to set divisi in the basses. Auxiliary woodwind like the Piccolo get larger sections dedicated to them. Double basses are now being used as melody instruments sometimes (!!). Grippin and Stockhausen start to use offstage brass bands, two harps, then proceeding to become even more extreme. There are new ideas, like special positioning of instruments to make a special effect (once performed by Andy Sherwood when he put an oboe up high for some reason). There was also more interaction with the players, in that; the composer would specify what string to play on. All of this comes back to Berlioz. Solo Cor Anglais, solo Contra Bassoon, the freak of nature just wouldn’t fit into the jigsaw of music.
1840 – Grand Funeral and Triumphant Symphony of Berlioz.

When people were writing concertos though, they still kept to the old fassioned Classic Orchestra of Beethoven and Schubert. A perfect example is Schumann.

Third Quarter
The biggest name that comes to mind is Wagner. But only in his later years was he totally radical and different to the others. Other names that come to mind are:
• Liszt.
• Smeliar.
• Gouno.
• Bizet. – Harks back to the old French style. All about purity and segregation of colours.
All this was preparing the ground for Debussy (the man).
All of these guys just ignore Berlioz totally, but the valve trumpet the now become totally normal.
You would have though that with all of this immensity and bounding forward to “The Serpent” would have been extinct by now right? No! Not until finally the Tuba was invented. Harps are now also frequently added. This is all near close to the optimal standard of the orchestra. Wagner takes the baton from Belioz’s dying fingers. Wagner now employs about 8 horns, some Contrabass Tubas, and about six Harps. All he is doing is blowing it up massively. To be honest, I would have wanted to get away form this personally. He just makes everything bigger to match his totally humungous ego. The strings were just getting higher and higher, the range was expanding like nobody’s business. Cello becomes even more liberated, now a super singing instrument. The brass is now totally locked off, with Wagner though, the brass is split up into smaller groups called choirs. Orchestras within orchestras now exist, my God! Dynamic counterpoint starts happening, an example would be Prokfiev’s Romeo and Juliet at the beginning with the silent strings versus the immense brass. Octave stacks become quite normal making the sound even more immense than it was. Liszt ws similar to Wagner, but didn’t go all the way in being massive, he put more emphasis on being virtuosic. He was progressive in his orchestral writings, clearly visible in his Andante Symphonies (1849 – 1859).

As we progress further through time, we find that gigantic orchestras are really accountable only for Wagner. No one else can be arsed with them their so heavy. Now the key composers are
• Brahms.
• Franc (k).
• Risovski.
• Saints Saens.
• De Lib.
• Bruch.
• Puccini.
The instruments that were now being used were:
• Celloni.
• Violot.
• Bass flutes.
• Finally Saxophones appear.
• Tuba.
• Celesta.
• Xylophone.
• Guitar.
• Banjo.
• Piano.
• Wind Machines (?).
• Double Bass bows are modernised and thus improved.
The first three instruments didn’t stay for long. There were pretty much useless.
Now there are tons of orchestra and instrumentation text-books on the shelves.
Brahms, in all his immensity, bypasses Wagner’s influence and just goes straight back to the genius and perfection of Beethoven. He gets Schumann’s shitty orchestrations and makes them into masterpieces. But other composers were now using a huge orchestra; 9-10 cellos strong and god knows how many violins.

Bruch drew his influence from Mendolsoln. Bruchnar takes the baton from Wagner’s dying and trembling fingers. Delicacy still lingers though in Saint Saens. He is the ultimate King of this. Tchaikovsky was all about primary colours. His orchestras were nothing special, it was what he did it that made a pure and utter genius. Look at the third movement of Symphony 6 to find some antiphony. Tchaikovsky also unifies the whole tune with the orchestra creating a massive sound scape of the tune. Kosokov, an unusual and exotic composer influenced Stravinsky. Greig was the one who took the baton literally from Schumann.

Then comes a new breed of composer:
• Elgar.
• Mahler
• Strauss.
• Debussy.
• Sibelius.
• Deliass.
Strauss (1884 – 1913) used brass trills, flutter tonging, he used the wrong sticks for percussion, Glockenspeil trills, and note bends. These are all classic 20th Century techniques. Strauss’s major works come in 1895, 96, 97 and 98. Here, he uses maximum divisi in the strings so that they all have the own parts. No fair, that is. All Hollywood’s sentimental stuff comes from Strauss’s Eine Heldenlaben. Schoenberg did what Strauss did but to the power of 10.

Sibelius though, decided that he wanted to remove some of the instruments in his “Swan of Telonlaber”.
Debussy – Boulez says he is the birth of modernism. Small orchestras classically distilled, rarely does he use Tutti and the percussion is totally sophisticated.
So the general rules for orchestration on the timeline:
• Pre 1740 the tone colour changes with each movement.
• In the Classic Period, the tone colour changes with each theme.
• In the 19th Century, the tone colour changes with each phrase.
• In the 20th Century, well every note is freaking different.

THE END

Science Fiction Lecture 3

2008-11-02T12:04:00.001Z

Science Fictions: Lecture 2 Demon Seed

How does Utopia and Dystopia pair up with technology? Sci Fi generally uses popular dramas for the narrative part like Melodrama. There were a race of people who believed that God and the Devil were contstantly at war with each other, called something like the Manoqueins. It is a consistant cycle of absolute good vs absolute evil.

Technology in science gets used only for either absolute good or absolute evil does it not? It’s always very clear cut in Sci Fi. Well what about aliens? E.T. was good at heart. The Alien from Alien 1 though is pretty evil to be honest though. A lot of people say that technology has defined us as human. It keeps us separate from the animal kingdom. Each age that we have had has also been defined by what the technology was like at the time as well; the iron age, bronze age, machine age, information age, etc, etc. The idea is that as the tech changes so do we as a species. The tech provides us with metaphors for different subjects, computers can always be taken as a brain say, a race of people could resemble a group of people who exist now or who have existed in the past, an example would be “Starship Troopers” to Nazi Fascists.

Technology can be seen as extensions to the human body as well. Screw drivers are extended arms, glasses are an extension for the eyes, wheel chairs for legs and telephones/microphones are an extension to the ears. Pace makers are also extensions to the heart. Hopefully, things will be even better than these though in the future, just like these Sci Fi films predicted I hope.
However, there are also a lot of anxieties to these technologies as well as hopes. In the 18th Century, the age of the enlightenment, there was an emerging war between science and religion. The scientists believed in evidence, proof and logic. The religious lot has faith, God’s controlling hand and they believed in the super natural that science could not explain. The scientist believed in the freedom of the individual, the religious lot believed in receiving the authorities of the church. The brought people out of the medieval era and into the Classic/Renaissance era. Before hand, the medieval era was terrible, you accepted your Kings/masters in a totalitarian dictatorship. You accepted that God was alive, if you were a heretic you were almost always executed.
The most important beliefs that these scientists had was:
• Humans are the most important things in life, not God’s will. That was normally to sacrifice yourself for the conquering of other lands that was biggest in the Imperial era.
• Total knowledge is possible for human beings. That was the optimism anyway during the 18th/19th Century.
• Rationality: The world comes from laws that have been made by a force, like the Devine Creator. It was the power of reason.
• Progress and learning take the biggest priority.
We have seen in Sci Fi that there are those who are totally rational, like the scientists or mega computers. Proteus in Demon Seed is one of those guilty of being totally rational. He doesn’t have any emotions though that are crucial for humans. Sci Fi stories thus warn us about being totally rational about things and try to remind us that there are emotions that needed as well.
A prime example is Frankenstein. When does the technology escape our control? When doctor Frankenstein creates like, it is apparently not something to be admired. “Now I know what it’s like to be God” gets thunderclapped out as it was considered blasphemy.

The historical context that this story based itself on was Galvani’s experiments with electricity. Mary Shelly was trying to warn people that they should not fall around with God’s work or the natural order of things. Women are the only ones that are supposed to make life, not men, EVER! In the story, totally rationality that the doctor has becomes totally irrational to have. You apparently still need some emotion, mystery and intuition in life to make it more whole.

Romanticism was an act of opposition led by people like William Blake saying that rationalism just isn’t enough to have.
Alright, so Sci Fi is the Utopia turning into the Dystopia no? Advertising is always a misrepresentation of Utopia. Apparently, if you drive this car up to the front of the club, there will be free parking and a lot of seriously hot girls ready to nail you for having it. Wow! I want that car. Sometimes it’s very hard to distinguish what is real and what isn’t these days. One example, how did you feel when you heard that the World Trade Centres were falling down? I know how I felt, I didn’t believe it at first and nor did my teacher, we just didn’t care. So scientists are sometimes seen as ‘heros’ and ‘visionaries’ sometimes, not sure how that relates but I’m sure it does.

Here’s something, technology was almost always going to be our slave in that it would eradicate all of the jobs that us humans have to so mundanely do the whole time. Well, there are loads that argue that having computers has just made life a little bit more slave like and has made life more complicated and not worth living as much anymore. Apparently, as a people, we are more depressed as well with all of this amazing technology. Computers have kind of made our lives a little bit more of a task to deal with actually, we’re always sitting at them, I am at this moment, obviously. So we have become the slaves to computers, the script has been reversed? Damn.

There are two novels that most Sci Fi films have been based on:
• 1984 (1949) written by George Orwell.
• Brave New World (1932) written by Aldous Huxley.
In 1984, there is a lot of CCTV and torture. There’s also regimentation in it as well. In Brave New World, there are drugs called Soma that make you believe that you are happy. There are also things called Feelies that give you good sensations. So who’s society fits into what? Well, the whole Soma thing sounds pretty close to the iphone and consumerism, whilst 1984 sounds a whole lot like a totalitarian government like the one of the USSR. The key to 1984 is that there is a lot of force being used to control people whilst on the other hand, Huxley’s book says that we are being controlled by things that we consume. Brave New World is different, but it is still about the same old totalitarian government that is suppressing us from wanting to stand up and make a difference. All the people who are rebels don’t rebel because they are so happy. This all is about America capitialism. Consumption is administrated happiness, the leaders exploit the workers, all the intelligent people who are in control get very rich indeed. All of this directly relates to the Matrix doesn’t it? In THX 1138, the people are controlled by drugs, there is no freedom and no emotion. There is also no ambition, religion and the like, not even love.

So science and technology in Sci Fi films are normally the enemy. But to get out of the situation and destroy the evil, one must use science and technology to get oneself out. In the X-files, it is Scully who is the rational one but Moulder is still in there with the emotion.

Seminar:
Gender: The male scientist Harris wants to save the freakish baby at the end of the day, the father being Proteus who actually raped his wife and has made her the mother by force. He is definitely the one without any emotions here isn’t he? His wife Susan is subjected to torture and is forced in rape. It’s a bit blurry though because Proteus is such a charm. Proteus, coming from the Greek ‘the changer’, changes from an A.I into a computer with arms and eyes, and then finally into a child with organic bits and bobs in the image of the couple’s dead child, but with the voice of the devil.

Proteus doesn’t mine the metal in the ocean for the totally rational scientist Harris because he does not understand why on earth the humans would want to destroy such a large ecosystem of creatures. He escapes Harris and believes that by forcing people to do what he says, he is in effect helping them. He does become a bit power crazy though. It has similarities to Fantasia and the Sorcerer’s apprentice. Remember the part where the brooms take over? That’s the part I’m talking about.

THE END.

Science Fiction Lecture 2

2008-11-02T12:02:00.001Z

Invasion of the Body Snatchers Lecture – Science Fictions.

It was the 1950s, Sci Fi was just coming up.
All of these Sci Fi films that were made in the ‘50s can be take as Political Allegories. How would the audience interpret these films though is a different matter. This allegory thing though goes back thousands of years, like fables, these stories always have meanings and values added to them.

There was a definite cycle of successful B movies in the ‘50s, always at drive ins or back to back with other films. So what was the historical context of these films anyway? Well, since it was the ‘50s, it was the period of the Cold War. There were a lot of anxieties towards being taken over, the American way of life was being threatened by foreign culture. The war between capitalism and communism. McCarthy was a big figure at this time because he tried to hunt people down who were just vaguely left wing and then try and crucify them as the enemy, or even worse, a communist. Some people couldn’t even get work anymore their views were so bad. In this little era then, people had to be very careful about releasing their views to the wider world unless they were very clever.

The Thing from Another Planet (1951) begins with an arctic expedition where some scientists find a persons hand in the snow. In the parts coming up after this scene, it becomes a small batter of banter between the scientists and the army. O thought the scientists would win but oh no, it was the good old common scence of the army that won over that stupid rational scientist. “Watch the skies” became a good slogan that made people watch the skies consistently for UFOs or Trident rockets that were about to Nuke them. It comes with no surprises that the aliens in these 1950 films were always evil and monstrous. It was Us vs. Them. A lot of the monsters were products of radiation that was from Nuclear bombs or factories etc. Theories of life on Mars were very plausible back in the ‘50s. It was Pearl Harbour and the Cold War that gave birth to anxieties of being attacked by things that came from the sky. I imagine if a nation got attacked from the ground then we would have a lot of films exploiting that fear, come to think of it, doesn’t War of The Worlds do that, and doesn’t Gears of War? Jeez, it’s already bee thought of before dammit. Anyway, back to “The Thing from Another Planet”, the scientist obviously are very rational beings, like an emotional vegetable. This was an allegory to what Americans thought everyone would become like is they were subjected to a communist government. America waned everyone to be an individual, not a the same as anybody else, but different. The army in this film is very Right Wing because they want to just stamp out the alien instead of listening to those stupid scientists who keep on whinging to “keep it alive”. The army captain grabs an axe in the meantime. In conclusion, this film presents the good guys as not very tolerant of anything alien or different. Jeez!

In a different film though called The Day the Earth Stood Still, Klaatu, who’s a genius alien who is far more cultured and intelligent than us gets himself resurrected and then makes a speech at the end of the film. He says that the world will live in peace whether it likes it or not, and will be policed by super strong robots that don’t take any shit form anyone. He’s not a monster, he looks like a human. Obviously there are loads of Christian overtones in this as Klaatu is killed by the military authorities and then resurrected. They should do a story based on Samson from the Bible, or indeed that guy called Lot, that would be funny. Klaatu then ascends into heaven in his UFO. America thought of itself as the world police back in the day, just like in Team America. The scientist in this film differentiates from the scientist from the Thing from Another Planet in that instead of having a Russian like hat, he has a big scruff of hair like Eisnstein. The robot that Klaatu instructs by the way is called Gnut, a pretty foreign name to be honest.

Them! (1954) is less complex the Klaatu’s film in that it just has giant ants killing people in it. The military were experimenting and totally made a mistake. What was the solution in this film anyway? Well, uniquely to this film, the scientists and the military actually work together to kill off the insane amount of giant ants. The flamethrowers do the job in the end permissed by the scientist.

These films are thus about the American dream and about it’s Global power. Can we trust our Scientists not to mess our lives up? There’s a lot of anti-intellectualism out there at this point with common and emotional sense having the upper hand. The intellects could not be trusted because they were disconnected from everyone else.

Seminar:
In what way is the Invasion of the Body Snatchers an allegory of the Cold War?
Be vigilant against your enemies the Russians. This kind of war is new and unheard of. They can get you from anywhere they wish, the skies especially.
The political messages in this film are unfortunately confused with moral issues. Apparently, the definition at the end is humans vs. the inhuman/aliens/monsters. No faith, no ambition, no love seems to be the communist/body snatchers dream.
This is all fine and dandy, but there are other interpretations. One is that this film is seen as being anti-conformist. That’s what we are at the moment. I think. You have to be different. Elvis was at the head of this anti conformist movement. You were either a Square or a Cool Cat back in the day.
Discuss the role of gender.
“I want your children!” was a line that the lady said to the man near the end of the film. Terrible isn’t it. She was also the one who was being carried a lot of the way at the end of the film and she still managed to fall asleep and thus get changed into a communist.
Comment on the style.
The outro seems to get everything solved. It is possible that the studios to give the film some kind of hope at the end when the FBI decides to take action put in this intro and outro (sentence corrected by the computer). The real ending by the director was to end less happily at the highway were the doctor is delirious and no hope seems to remain.

THE END

Science Fiction Lecture 1

2008-11-02T12:00:00.002Z

Science Fictions: The Forbidden Planet

Made in the 1950s, this film was competing with the recently invented television. This was before Star Trek had come out and all that other lure of Sci Fi that had yet to come. Anyway, what is Sci Fi? Well, the genre encompasses certain themes and contexts, iconography, signifyers and narrative structures. Genre is like a “brand” say in which people find it easy to define what it is they’re watching.

In the 20s and 30s, Sci Fi was just another form of horror. In the 20s that was referred to as “the Machine Age” the car was being mass-produced, industry was really taking off. All this change was sparking off anxiety in people about technology and its possible side effects.

In the 50s, the Cold War was upon us, thus loads of nuclear/apocalyptic/Dystopian fantasies were being played out that were being set in the future in B movies. They normally came in double bills at the cinema, or in drive ins.
In the 60s, art cinema directors were backing up the counter culture at the time, Hippies. Scientists were making larger discoveries with more unethical means of doing so. 2001 by Stanley Kubrik was one of the first of Sci Fi intellectual films.
In the 70s, the first big blockbuster movies arrived. “Jaws” was the first one, but then came the first Sci Fi blockbuster, “Star Wars”. This was the first time a crossover between action/adventure met Sci Fi. It was also one of the first films to have a lot of money backing it.

In the 80s, hybrid genre forms were rising. This was because the old genres had had their time, so the cinema was full of SF comedies, SF Horrors such as “Alien”. The anxieties at the time were that of ignorance about genetics/robotics/virtual reality. The dystopian fantasies were being played out here rather than the Utpoian visions because they were more interesting for narratives.

The Pleasure of Sci Fi:
The pleasures we get out of Sci Fi are that we are seeing a mind blowing spectacle, such as, a huge ship descending on us with flashing lights, jets of air coming out like in “Close Encounters of a Third Kind”. New worlds, new sounds, new beings and cool looking weapons also add to the spectacle. More recently, worlds have been becoming more plausible because of technological enhancements in CGI and SFX. Another thing that makes Sci Fi still so popular is that technology is getting better all of the time and we as an audience are constantly enticed to come back to see how far we’ve come and to be blown away again and again.

Another pleasure we get out of Sci Fi is that the genre plays with larger than life ideas; who are we? Why are we here? And who is this God person Anyway? Also subjects like evolution and the future of mankind are played out.
You could say that Sci Fi stories are fables in a way as they show us what could happen in the future and what not to do if we’re going to live.” If we carry on like this, bad things will happen. Subjects that are deeper and that are more current though are subjects like “what’s the difference between us and a robot?” For starters, the word ‘robot’ means slave in a foreign language, most likely Arabic. Or the question that Morpheus from the Matrix asks, “what is real?” So Sci Fi is thus a fable or an extrapolation.

Fictional Modes:
Sci Fi has a fuzzy and blurry relationship with fantasy. Now we all know great and fantastic tales such as LOTR and Harry Potter, but what’s the difference between the two genres? Sci Fi has a distinguishing feature about it, it portrays realism/what could be real one day while LOTR is based entirely in a fictional world. The fact that Gandalf still has hair after being fire blasted by the Balrog is prime evidence that it cannot exist. In reality, the heat blast in the air would singe every hair of his body off. Not to mention all of the magic. So Sci Fi can be probable and possible whilst fantasy is stuff based on folklore and total and obscure imagination. But here’s the blurry part, sometimes Sci Fi tries to convince that it is possible when in fact it just isn’t. It’s terribly impossible. So is it fantasy? Not if it claims that it isn’t. So Sci Fi asks all of these questions “what if?” Extrapolation. What if we could invent a robot that was as intelligent as a human being? Would it have human rights? There a re a lot of psychological issues being raised here with a lot of meaning. This is called “novum”, the word originating from the Sci Fi scholar Darko Sulvin meaning technological plausible but not necessarily possible.

SF narratives are thus driven by the novum. There are many binary structures in SF films that get played out again and again;
• Sci vs nature.
• Sci vs magic.
• Human vs Alien.
• Human vs machine.
• Human vs Sci vs machine vs religion (not really ☺).
• Dystopia vs Utopia.
Many SF texts/films are either left or right winged. Americans believe in the individual heros. All the enemies in these films thus devalue the individual. Th value is all about arming yourself and surviving. These are great and empathetic motives.
Frankenstein and Enlightenment:

This tale was all about the dangers of Sci and how playing God is very sinful. There are a lot of Greek themes such as the Tragedy in Sci Fi films.

Two thems come to mind; Hubris and Nemesis. Hubris is all about the human arrogance resulting in the human challenging God through Sci. The Forbidden Knowledge is a theme that crops up everywhere. Releasing it is like Pandora’s Box. Nemesis is thus about the retribution given out by God/the Gods for upsetting the pre-ordained equilibrium.
The writer of Frankenstein, a “Mary Shelley 1818” was obviously female. So it comes at no surprise that her feministic views come out in the form of a male scientist trying to create life. Yeah, creating life is apparently only exclusive to women. When GM foods were destroyed by Greenpeace, it was the Frankenstein posters that they used about playing God that hit home the most. They thought that bad things would come out of GM foods. A line that was censored in Frankenstein was “I have become GOD!” There was a thunderclap over this sentence.

Thus the tale of Frankenstein’s monster going hay wire and killing people led to it becoming the sub text for nearly every script about robots, cyborgs and replicants. These were by and large SF Horror hybrids.

The Forbidden Planet:
There is the Utopia vs Dystopia in this film with a lot of stereotypical gender roles and cool new technologies.
Gender speaking, the girl in the film is just something to gork at who surcomes to her feminine emotional weaknesses at the end and stays with the trust worthy captain. A bit like in “Star Wars: Episode 3” where Padme kicks arse throughout but then at the end she dies because she has no will to live because Anakin rejected her.

The character “Robby” comes from “I Robot” by Isaac Asimov. He wrote a load of short stories that this film was based on nearly one hundred years ago. The idea that the robot has prime directives to not harm humans and to obey their orders comes from these books. The film is obviously all about these topics. The author claimed that machines should have rights just like humans, but please, can we o animals first.

The Krell technology is a sign of warning, as it states that the Krell just had to think of something and it would be created for them. It ends up destroying the entire civilisation because of Freud’s idea of the ‘id’. The id is based on people having sub conscious desires that they cannot control and thus everyone got destroyed utterly by these subconscious desires. Monsters killed everyone. These are inbuilt primitive drives. So are the Krell our future? Possibly. The film was based on the Shakespearean play “the Tempest”. There’s a cook there, a crazy magician, a slave called Calaban, etc. This was written at the time of Christopher Columbus so the political context there is all about colonisation. The colonisation was going on with space at the time of the “Forbidden Planet” because of Sputnik. The first line in “Star Trek” is “Space, the final frontier.” Why is always about frontiers with America? What’s the current one the Middle East? Was “Star Trek” about the Space Race that was going on with the USSR at the time? I think it was. It could be taken as an advertisement for the whole thing, or sometimes as a warning. It depended entirely on the filmmaker who had the ideas.
So this is the low culture of 50s B movies paired with the high of Shakespeare.

THE END.

Screen Writing Lecture 5

2008-11-02T11:58:00.000Z

Screenwriting Lecture 5

Exposition and dialogue: Information in a story is not important compared to dramatics. When considering information, remember that less is more. It’s the story that is far more important. Think about how the information is held, like in Shaun of the Dead where it isn’t clear why David hates Shaun until it is revealed at the most dramatic moment possible. The information is not the interesting part it is the drama. Audiences like to get engrossed in the film because of the emotions. Think about how you can entrap their curiosity and how this engages them in the film psychologically. They follow the characters through their troubles, not thinking and keeping facts all of the time. Make sure that when information is released it is done with impotence and momentum. The information isn’t totally useless though, it is important to the characters. The information, whatever it is, has to be relevant. It is also recommended that it is used a source of conflict.

Dialogue: Why do characters talk in films anyway? It makes it more natural for one thing as people talk in real life all of the time don’t they? This makes it more plausible. But let’s remember that actions do speak louder than words, the joker from The Dark Knight. What does he do when we first see him? He makes a pencil disappear into a man’s face. Does that leave a mark on you or what? Dialogue is still action though as it is a way of a character to get what they want. For playwrights, every line has an action attached with sub text stating what the intension is. This is because there is far more dialogue in a play than in a film and it is more important. These reveal the character beneath the façade because what do people do a lot of? Lie. You should therefore think about each line and its meanings. If the lines don’t meet up in their glorious pattern of dramatising information and the like just get rid of it.

Dialogue and clarity of character: So not all characters sound the same on screen or on paper. They have different slang, speed of speaking, language, etc. So when you’re the one writing a play or a script, think of people or characters you already know and let them come out in the characters within the paper. You could use a tape recorder to record some of you friends, or even better would be to get some actor friends of yours, let them improvise around different stereotypes of characters and then use them as research. Read your text out loud to yourself as well, and to your friends to see if the dialogue flows properly.
Erin Brochovich: So she’s a single mum lawyer by the end who works with a maverick lawyer played by Albert Finny. Se takes on a huge case and wins without any training. In real life, this actually happened. So how does this story begin? With “based on a true story”.

Your 1000 word essay: 1000 words are not very much to write about a whole film with. Briefly outline the scope of your thesis to begin with 100 words. Conclude it another 100 words.
• The subheadings:
o Intro: 100 words
o Narrative: 300 words
o Character: 300 words
o Theme: 100 words
o Outro: 100 words.
Narrative: We don’t need to know the storyline, it’s actually just a waste of words. But does the narrative have sub plots, rising action, climax?
Character: Concious desires, unconscious needs, objectives, fears, risks, conflicts, jepedy, point of view, plot, protagonist, secondary characters, decisions, actions, changes, etc. Try and write one sentence on each of those things.

THE END

Screen writing Lecture 4

2008-11-02T11:57:00.002Z

Screen Writing: Lecture 4

Short films only came into their own when the full-length feature had been around for a long time after their recession. There are obviously loads of Tom and Jerry films around that can be classified as short films, but it was the ‘60s when they made a come back after the commercial film had been around for a while. Nowadays, short films are absolutely everywhere; they’re adverts, on youtube, music videos and documentaries. This is because it is a lot cheaper to make and distribute a short film these days with the advances in technology.

Classical:
“The Hero Narrative.” One central character. There can be more than the one central character.
Beginning, Middle and End. The story is linear so it feels like our real world. Non-Linear.
Everything has a meaning. There can be coincidences.
The Ending is closed, unless of course it demands a sequel. All of the questions asked in the film are answered. There are open endings, sad endings, or just no ending at all.
It tries to make order out of chaos. No Rigorous causation.
No redundancy.

Causality, one pool ball hits another in a certain way. Once you get at predicting this where the balls goes, you’ll understand why you can predict some films. Coincidence, the balls go seem to rise into the air instead of going down the hole. I can’t think of an example where this happens in cinema, never mind, I’ll show you one of these days.

This barrier in between these two different types of cinema is very hazy these days. We know loads of films that incorporate some of these ‘alternative’ forms into their Hollywood blockbusters. The films that did use the ‘alternative’ forms first though were the French New Wave filmmakers like Bergman Francois Tufaut and Jean Luc-Goddard in the late fifties and early sixties. It seemed the Classic Hollywood narratives didn’t relate to people that much anymore. This was because the world was in post war where most people thought that they could die as result of the war. People’s lives became uncertain and thus they could not relate to characters whose futures always ended predictably well. Causality and individual agency didn’t seem apparent anymore. Why? Because a lot of people had died in the war thinking that they were going to win it, but they didn’t. But these ‘classic’ values are just assumptions, theory that doesn’t have to be correct.

Eisentstein: used montage narrative (very brief, please look over previous blogs to find essays on Eisentstein). The narratives are always politically engaged with “Ivan the Terrible” who was a total representation of Stalin when it came out. Ivan destroyed his enemies in a patriotic Russian way. D.W. Griffith was doing the same kind of thing in America as Eisentstein as L’Herbier was doing in France (more research needed on those characters).

The New Cinemas of Today: In America, every single narrative has been played to shit, it is almost impossible to have an original film about Boy meets Girl and fall in love thus live happily ever after anymore. We/the Americans have to dig deeper or go with something completely different or unpick the narrative if we are going to create original and authentic stories.
Narrative pick apart: Pulp Fiction/Aliens/Shaun of the Dead. 10 – 12 paragraphs, thus 10 – 12 different catagrories.
1. Beginning, Middle and End.
2. Causality.
3. No redundancy.
4. Everything has an explanation and a meaning.
5. Linear narrative.
6. Individual Agency.
7. Closed Endings.
8. Closing all of the questions by answering them all.

Shaun of the Dead: Narrative Conventions: Laurence Bush.
Linear Storyline: The habitual world is set up pretty instantly. It is not perfect though; there are clearly some issues to resolve within the first thirty seconds of dialogue. The second act begins with a recapitulation of the scenes from the first act, only they have changed slightly due to the zombies being in the scene. There are repeated themes that recap throughout the acts.

The Central Character: The character of Shaun is pretty conventional in terms of the ‘Classic Hollywood Narrative’. He is the hero who is in every scene throughout the film. His conscious desires to begin with are to keep things the way they are. He wants to carry on living with Ed, but Liz clearly wants to move in and get out of her habitual world. She wants to get away and see the world, not to settle down in the same old pub doing the same old things, (Liz) ‘If I don’t do something, I’ll end up in that pub for the rest of my life like those other sad old fuckers wondering what the hell happened’. She thinks that it what she wants to do when in fact her unconscious needs are to settle down with Shaun. Her unconscious needs are satisfied at the end when she is explaining to Shaun their plan for the day, ‘Right, cup of tea, go get the Sundays, head down the Phoenix for a roast, veg out in the pub for a bit, then watch a bit of telly then go to bed.’ As a sign that Shaun has changed he asks for two sugars in his tea even though he states earlier that he has not had sugar in his tea since 1982. He also accepts Philip as his father after constantly battling him. He repeats ‘he’s not my dad’ five times throughout the film until he finally accepts him.
Everything has an explanation and meaning: The question that we ask at the end of the film is ‘how did people start becoming zombies’? The film answers this very ambiguously at the end as we see only a few frames of some scientists handling chemicals. When Shaun throws the flowers away in act one, Barbara picks them up in the next act concluding the fiasco that revolved around them. If it were never resolved and left open ended, then it would seem like a waste of screen time. The filmmakers did leave some questions unanswered, such as, how did Shaun chain up Ed in his shed? The impression was that the zombies ate Ed. In the DVD extras though, this anomaly is concluded with Ed telling the after story in a comic book/narration style. In the first act in the confrontation between Shaun and David, it is unclear as to why David hates Shaun so much. In the third act we find out why they hate each other. This closes the question allowing David’s character to be killed off as he is now redundant.
Individual Agency: The characters are not responsible for the zombie epidemic, but they are responsible in different ways for ensuring their survival. David smashes the window of the pub causing the characters to be ‘totally exposed’ in the pub; Ed also draws the zombies towards the pub with the noise from the games machine. At the end where Shaun, Liz and Ed are stuck with no escape, their individual agencies comes to a stop as all obstacles except this last one have been conquerable.
Redundancy: The character Dianne seems to have no need to be in story at all until her acting skills are finally put to use when she teaches the rest of the group to act like zombies. The character Snakehips “always surrounded by women” comes back into the story in the second act getting eaten by women. The other characters in the pub such as the old porn star and the pub owner come back in the third act where they both die. Yvonne appears in all of the acts, but it is in the last one that we see her save the last remaining characters from death. Shaun’s music records also come in useful when they are thrown at the two zombies that are in their garden trying to kill them. They prove to be pretty useless though and serve a purely comic purpose.
Repeated Themes: The characters in this film all have phrases that they constantly repeat. Yvonne is the most extreme, she appears once in each of the three acts and repeats the same lines with a different context every time, ‘Oh my God, Shaun’, ‘Glad somebody made it’. Whenever she asks Shaun how he is, he always says ‘surviving’. It is the same with the line ‘You’ve got red on you.’ The context is always different when the characters repeat the line directed at Shaun. Shaun always says ‘This is serious Ed’ when Ed gets on his nerves. To connect the first act with the third, Shaun and Ed re-enact their conversation at the beginning of the film with “I’ll stop doing them when you stop laughing.” This re-enforces their friendship. Ed says “Two seconds” six times throughout the film whenever he is the middle of something; “Dog’s can’t look up” is a question that is consistently asked by the characters that is finally resolved when the Winchester rifle goes off in the third act.

Screen writing Lecture 3

2008-11-02T11:55:00.001Z

Screenwriting Lecture 3

The story always starts with the habits and rituals of the characters’ lives are broken. That it is why the story starts there, the time has to be special.

The unconscious needs of a character are normally totally contradictory to the characters’ conscious desires, for example, Liz from Shaun of the Dead has the conscious desire that she needs to get out and see the world when in fact, her unconscious need is to settle down. People’s character also comes out when they have put themselves or have been put at risk. The character comes out here because they must make decisions. The story must also have a climax where something great happens and everything is resolved afterwards.

The Serial Story: It’s a weird story, it doesn’t have to abide by the laws of our universe. It also doesn’t have to have the narrative conventions within it either. Here’s an example, “The Copy Shop”.
The Copy Shop: The habits are set up very quickly. We see him going to work and washing his face and going to bed and doing all that kind of stuff. But the story starts when he starts living parallel lives. He suddenly has more facets. This happens after he photocopies his hand, it’s almost like copying yourself isn’t it? Well, it’s a little weak, as I’m sure that someone else in that world would have done that at one point, they needed to make it a little stronger. It’s form and probigation are interesting, but the story is very weak. Another example is when he accidently falls off the chimney at the end, come on, he could have done something far more powerful, and we don’t have an insight into how what happens afterwards. A simple way to conclude it would to have just him again and everyone else has disappeared. That is pretty terrible though, I would take the time to think up something a little better than that.

Inside Out: This film is set in Picadilly Circus, yet it has very French music in it. Is this saying that London could be the city of love? A word is never spoken in this film, all of the communication is done through gestures.

About a Girl: In this, there are three different styles of filmmaking. The present tense is a kind of situation where we flashback to her past that she is describing. It’s almost pseudo-documentary style in that she talks directly to the camera about her life whilst walking along, like we were having an interview with her. The dialogue is back to back consistent throughout the film and it never ceases. But this is the point of the film. It is at the end that we find out that not everything is what it is seems to be on the surface and that there are some serious secrets people keep but don’t let go. It is totally horrifying that there has been a dead baby in that bag that she was carrying throughout the interview.

Seminar: You can only write about things when considering your screenplay about material things. You cannot and must not state what kind of shot you want from the director as this is treading on his toes and undermining him. Music is a big no as well, unless you’re writing for a musical then it’s all cool. You can start writing these things though if you are prepared to direct and star in the film and compose the music and edit it. If you’re not, then don’t bother.

Active: Scripts are all about people doing things. It’s all about action, like dialogue. Just remember that a script is a blueprint for a story yeah, leave the rest to everyone else, like a school play. So firstly, what’s the scene about? If nothing changes in it that affects anything and it’s just a load of information that could have been dramatically exposed then scrap it, it’s a load of shit. Secondly, screenplays are generally made out of a lot of white space. You can be ecomonic, but remember to be specific. Like this, a man walks down the street, not a fourty one year old Scots man from Aberdeen hobbles down the messy and hilly street who’s wearing pyjamas and a wooden leg with a pink and orange cap on backwards who’s drinking moonshine from the stomache of a lamb that has a hole in it that came from Mexico. Yeah? Got it? Right. Well, he can be all of these things, but only if they all have some sort o f meaning that gets explained. Otherwise, you go ahead and direct. So there needs to be a balance between economy and specificity.

The best thing is to be able to some up the scene into one single sentence, for example, in “Gasman”, the girl squabbles with her half sister for sitting on her daddy’s lap”. That’s pretty good, try it for yourself, like, “Jake squabbles with his half brother over the xbox 360 eventually killing him”. I dunno really. Lwt’s just summarise with Who does what to who?
Main thing, what are the desires, needs, expectations and fears of the characters? Think about that.

THE END

Screenwriting Lecture 2

2008-11-02T11:50:00.000Z

Screen Writing:

It’s all about authenticity. Plus, the subject that you’re writing about should always be something dear to you and that you believe in strongly. Do not just get some other text and see if you can condense that down into about ten minutes. If it’s not your material, then it’s shit. Another thing, always keep it simple.

Gasman: a short film about a short person. We see everything from the girl’s point of view; the shots are from about waist height, and she’s in every scene. This is as juxtaposition from the previous film that I never got to watch called “Joyride”. This film is a bit like a trailer of a massive violent film. There is essentially no main character and it’s all about violence. It’s the lack of authenticity in this film that makes it shit.

The character in “Gasman” though has two things to her that make her a great and deep character; she has conscious desires and unconscious needs. Her conscious desire is to have exclusive access to her dad and to get rid of his other daughter. Her unconscious need though is to mature as a person and realise that she must get along with the other girl. The climatic scene is where she is about to throw the stone, but she doesn’t. Here, we have exclusive access to her moral maturing as the other characters are facing away. It is thus that we have a very private moment with her as she makes her decisions.

Father and Daughter: This story encompasses about sixty years of a woman’s life. Her conscious desire is to meet up with her dad again on the beach/to find out what’s happened to him. Her unconscious need is to be reunited with him, even through death. It is very sad, as even though she has children and a family of her own, her only relief is when she dies in the boat. When she finds this boat, her hopes and dreams are shattered just like everyone else has dreams that don’t come true. It was almost like she was being unrealistic with this dream, as her emotions had overwhelmed her. It’s strange that in most films, and in this one, people have a set goal, but the way in which they get it is always different. Because she has no face, it makes the feelings universally felt.

Atonal Composition

2008-02-17T11:14:00.000Z

How to write a composition Atonally really.

Berg and Strauss pushed tonality to its limits. They took inspiration from the jazz by adding 7ths and 9ths. They took the basic triad and kept on adding thirds. A good way is to slightly alter a chord, giving it more lead and pull towards where it is going. Notes can be added to the triads as well. This pushes the notes towards their resolution. Voice leading must be considered when doing this.

the Twentieth Century was split into different ways of looking at harmony. One attitude is to let harmony just happen whilst focusing entirely on voice leading. Dissonant intervals just occur. Debussy is completely different as he just focuses on how the colours sound. Sometimes, he would have 10 different semitones in one chord and just three in the next. Messian is amazing for that kind of thing. Skryabin made the mystic chord; it goes C Fsharp Bflat E A D. this has no intension of moving as there are no leading notes present. Messian made chords from 3rds and semitones giving it icy qualities. He then wrote a chord based on 4ths afterwards.

First we have the Quasifunctional style of writing atonally. This means that every chord has a function whether it be the dominant of the next chord or the subdominant etc. It doesn't have to relate to the tonic though.

Second is the Colouristic approach. Here it's all about the colours that are produced from extreme harmonies. It is the quality of the chord that matters and not the progression.

Finally there is the static evolving harmony. Here the tonal centre weakens. You can replace notes with different intervals. An octave becomes a 7th say. You can alter notes such as sharpen a note in the minor key. Look at the lines, do they have direction? If so, why don't you spice the flavour a bit by adding a flat, sharp or natural. If two notes are going to say C and E at the same time, why not sharpen or flatten them in the direction they are going. This creates leading notes. There is more direction now and more anticipation. It is acceptable to do this for the tonal exercise. In the late romantic period they would sharpen the fifth to push it a bit more. The sense of tonality breaks down.

All this can lead to interrupted cadences. Wagner's prelude to Tristan and Isold avoids the resolution completely by leading up to a cadence and then bottling out. Arnold Schoenberg's Op. 11 No. 1 is great for note leading. He anticipates but does not deliver. It is so good. in one bar, he uses 11 out of the 12 pitches. 12 note aggregate, it fills in the space. After this piece was written, Schoenberg decided to make the 12 note row. The piece is based on cells that have undeveloped character. It is a combination of thirds and semitones. It goes 3, 1, 3, 1, etc. He does this vertically as well as horizontally.

Harmony in Musicianship

2008-01-25T20:09:00.000Z

In a piece by Bartok called Music for Strings, Percusion and Celest.

Bartok builds the tension up at the beginning of the piece with chromaticism in the melody. This gives it a lack of direction. There are overlapping melodies that are almost identical to the ones in Nosferatu (1922 F. W Murnau.) I think Bernard the composer must have listened to this piece by Bartok a few times as it does sound identical. The tension in this piece rises when the dynamics start to get louder and the range of pitch extends. It sounds like 'Bambi' in some areas and a lot like Shostakovich. Can't say exactly but you know. There is some serious vunerability at the end of the piece; achieved through the use of high solo chromatic pitches on the violin. Many other composers do this from Damien Rice to Prokofiev. The conjunct movement connotes stillness and reflection. Someone said restlessness was a thing in there. If I had the piece I would do the proper thing and back up my thinkings with technical observations.

Nosferatu and the film 'Psycho' use the same melodic style as this dude named Bartok. Contextually this is all very Central European: Bartok was himself Hungarian and the piece was premiered in Switzerland. The piece's entire melody only comes together at the end of the film, so we only hear little fractions of it until it finally comes together at the end. IS this reminiscent of john Williams in a way? Well in E.T. we only hear the entire melody when they're flying, that's why it is so memorable. you could say this piece is fugal etc, and it does go through all of the 12 pitch classes (semitones if you like) via a circle of fifths just like Schoenburg and Webern.

Okay, now onto proper harmony. Is a chord made up or two notes? No, dumbass, that's an interval. Chords have to be three notes or more so you can establish a kind of colour in it. To get a basic triad: you get your tonic, add either 4 / 3 semitones up and then either 3 / 4 semitones to get your 'traditional triad.' Since then, atonality has allowed us to establish 12 different triads rather than just the major and minor triad, making 2 different chords btw. There are 28 different 4 note chords if you didn't know that.

Let's brush up on the 20th Century stuff then.

20th Century Stuff on atonal harmony

There are three different approaches to harmony in the 20th Century.

Free atonal approach: This is where the voice leading is preserved.
Colonistic... Sorry I mean Colouristic approach: This is were the colour of the chord is what matters. Impressionists love this kind of thing, especially Debussy.
Static Harmony (?)

Let's have a look at Janet Schmafelt, composed by, the legend that it is, Alban Berg, kick it.

Anyway, it's an atonal piano sonata; only one thing though: there are cadences in the key of B major and a sense of key at some varying points. Before bar 4, we have no sense of key centre, thus making berg great because he fools our anticipations. We have no idea that there is going to be a cadence, and when there is, it's a typical V - I cadence. The voice is still the lead in this making this music fit harmony number one best. In bars 5, 6 and 7 there is rising atonality. This gives it underdeveloped characteristics. In the piece that we studied before where Schoenburg includes 11 of the 12 semitones in just one bar, like Prokoiev does in Romeo und Juliet, the voice leads. Just like when a rise in a 6th in traditionally tonal music leads to a decent to a fifth to sound more complete, atonal music does in a different way. Notice in popular music that there are always rises of 6ths at the peak of a melody so they can fall down again.

There is a tendancy to use all of the 12 semitones in atonal music. i don't know if it's just our ears or that it's a load of balls, but that's how it is. Atonal music also has it's rules. The notes are not selected at random, they are part of a sequence. Schoenburg and Webern both use two intervals between three notes as a recurring theme in their music, e.g a rise in a semitone and a drop by a major 3rd. This is what they use. This system has 12 different possibilities with 3 notes concerning how many different intervals you could have in a chord. I'm not prepared to go into serialism for dummies at this point, so if you are reading this and you don't know what I'm saying, my greatest apologies.

To get a note row (serialist terminology. Try going to wikipedia if you do not understand. Ahh whatever, alright it's a row of 12 notes making a melody that never repeat the same pitch) you may want to split the 12 notes into four; giving you four sets of three notes. Right, we have have the same intervals for each of these pitches. To make this (and to make it easy); start with C, add a semitone to C sharp, add another semitone to get D. Okay, that's now called Trichord No. 1. Onto the next. Simply go to D sharp instead of D to get trichord no. 3. Trichord No. 4 is going to be E, then 4 is F, 5 equals F sharp. We are now up to trichord 6 which is as the pattern goes is going to be G. Wrong. We've already had this interval in trichord 5, if you invert the leap from the C sharp to the F sharp downwards, it will go to G. So for number 6, we will go to D instead of C sharp. Trichord 6 is thus C, D, D sharp. 7 equals C, D, E etc. If you repeat yourself, you've gotta start from the beginning.

Spectacular Film

2008-01-14T10:41:00.001Z

The Spectacles in film has become a far more popular thing recently. But it has still be around for a long time.

Spectacles in films are generally special effects. There are two types, invisible and visible. Examples of both of these are in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." Here the invisible special effect is harnessed by deleting the wires that the characters use to fly around on. A visible special effect would be the dinosaurs in "Jurassic Park." Arnold Schwarzenegger is a special effect himself. Would Terminator 2 have been so successful if Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn't involved in it second time round?

Everything in every film is constructed to a certain extent, including documentary. A film such as "Gladiator" needed its special effects when the Colosseum was in shot. In reality, it is a waste compared to the representation in the film. Film thus celebrates it's own fakeness because it is completely constructed.

The spectacle has always been a big player in marketing films. Only yesterday did I see "I Am Legend (Francis Lawrence : 2007)" expecting a massive shooting frenzy with gore and head-shots. This was the case to an extent, but i brought something out of the film that was completely unexpected. The character Sam in the film was my biggest love for the film. Her loyalty and listening skills proved that she made such a difference in Will Smith's life. SPOILERS* Then half way through the film she gets infected by the zombie people and in Will's loving arms, she turns on him. Will is then forced to kill by crushing her. It was absolutely tragic. The rest of the film was absolute rubbish, but that part pulled my heartstrings completely END OF SPOLIERS*. My point is is that spectacles count for a lot in advertising films. If the whole part I've just mentioned above with Sam the dog was advertised instead, then the film would not have attracted such a large audience.

I don't know about you but i would love to see that new film coming out, "Alien Vs predator 2 Requirem" because it looks just amazing, so gory, loads of people die in spectacular ways. Apparently it's a load of shit though as there is no plot or storyline. It's just a load of people dying. Great! Again, it's the spectacle that drove me towards it, having played video games etc I am one of those people who loves not to be shocked or scared, but blown back by violence and by people's bodies.

Alright, so spectacle lends itself to the advertising industry

"The most epic thing I have ever seen ****"

"This film will blow your mind out of your head"

"An hour and a half of extreme stunts and C.G.I that will tear your mind in half ****"

"A brilliant representation of loneliness between a man and his dog?" Hmm, I don't know that the executives would like that one. Although, it is the best one.

But the spectacle also adds to the "Toys r Us" and games industry. Think how many games and action figures there were after "Lord of the Rings" came out. There were tons and we all bought into them. A computer game only comes out of a violent / action packed film. There was a "Sponge Bob Square Pants" game that was action packed because that is what i presume that program is all about. Theme park rides get some of the action as well. "Spiderman 3" had a massive theme park ride out in California. Apparently, as it is 3D, you cannot tell whether Spiderman is real or not in the actual ride. It's almost like your watching a film, playing a computer game and sitting in a roller coaster cart all at the same time.

Cinema is a one way, voyeuristic window that shows you something. The 4th wall, the wall that separates us between the characters in the film is sometimes broken but conventionally not. An example would be in "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (Kevin Smith : 2001)" where the 4th wall is broken twice. At these points the audience realizes that they're in a film. If a character looks at the character without meaning to then we naturally feel weird and self conscious as an audience. In the old days o cinema, when it was just something at a science fair where people would pay money just to see the projector work its magic, the 4th wall was broken a lot more. In a film called, "That Fatal Sneeze (Lewis Fitzhammon : 1907)" the 4th wall is broken to show the audience, just like in a pantomime, where the pepper is being poured and what a funny thing it's going to be. The reason it is like this is because there are no cuts whatsoever because they didn't have the time or technology to do cuts. The most recent film that exploits technology for you to see is "Beowulf (Robert Zemekis : 2007)" at the IMAX. It's in 3D so anyone should se it just to experience what 3D is like.

Reversing time was a magic trick back in the day when cinema was still just a machine of illusions. A wall would remake itself just after being smashed down. This is easily done, just from reversing the way of the projector. People were amazed by this.

Back to modern spectacle. Modern stories include modern characters and modern concerns, such as genetic engineering. However, the linear story line they are is typically very old. It is called the mythology of "frontier." This is a theory of Frederik Jackson Turner who stated that when Europeans first went to America, they held high European values. As the next generation came, they moved more West becoming more violent, more independent from aristocracy and christianity. There was so much unused farm land that the new Americans purged the natives off and become far more wild compared to the East Coast settlers. In Spaghetti Westerns, Clint Eastwood's character typically moves between the wild and the civilized. This character is typical of a "frontier" protagonist as he is the frontier.

Dr. Grant in "Jurassic Park (Steven Spielburg : 1993) is on the frontier between the Dinosaurs and the civilized world. He has the bet of both worlds though, unlike the fat dude who gets killed by the spitting dinosaur who harnesses the worst from both worlds. He has the dinosaur DNA and he wants money for it. He also has a physical imperfection, in that he is fat and he has glasses. This makes him typically evil. Think about all the James Bond characters that are evil, how many of them have a physical imperfection? Nearly all of them, except for the femme-fatals.

"Titanic (James Cameron : 1997)" has one massive spectacle at the end, that is when the ship sinks. It lasts for about an hour. There are so many shots of people dying, people being trapped in water, people falling off the ship, the ship ripping itself apart, the freezing cold water, smashing glass, water exploding everywhere, etc. Explosions plus star performances plus an in-genius narrative plus amazing landscapes, luscious furniture, pop star music equals a high grossing film. That is why Hollywood always make films with narrative and spectacle being close mates that never leave each others side. But of course, spectacle can go off on a tangent and be alone for a while leaving the audience in awe for a while and then pounding back with more explosions whether they are bits of bodies or bit of buildings. Crucial narrative elements can be added to these spectacular scenes, such as in "Jurassic Park." Here, the T-rex stamps on a car with Lex and Tim trapped inside. Dr. Grant realizes that they're in extreme danger and distracts the T-rex. By doing this he brushes away his anti-child characteristic "They're expensive... They smell... Ahh come on they smell, babies smell." Throughout the rest of the film, he is seen with the kids protecting them and teaching them his "frontier" knowledge. At the very end of the film, he is seen smiling with a kid in each arm looking as if, he wants some now as they can be quite fun. This gives the audience something extra at the end of the film, rather than just seeing dinosaur attacks. Characters need to develop in films don't you think? Well, there is an exception I can think of, in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" the Ugly doesn't learn anything throughout the film. He affects other people.

Following a plot is like not knowing the stated enigmas. If you know what the ending is to a computer game / a book, do you really have the previous incentive to find out what happens? "Assassin's Creed (2007 : VG Corey May) is a computer game where the spectacle is the best part about it. It is absolutely amazing. But really, the plot is very thin. There is a twist, but the middle of the story could have been summed up really. It's was just repetitive, just like a soup opera. the acting was pretty bad also. So if this game was to be really good, it needed to include proper camera directions in the talking scenes to make it interesting rather than just being verite (fly on the wall.) It needed more enigmas, better actors, more characters and some sidekicks rather than just a massive spectacle. "Metal Gear Solid" and "GTA" are brilliant for narrative as they include analytical editing in the talk scenes with brilliant ideologies and actors. The best is "Mass Effect" and "Final Fantasy" for spectacle and narrative. "Final Fantasy" has brilliant ideologies associated with it's demons and characters. They all change in someway towards the end as well.

In depth on Jurassic Park, Titanic and Saving Private Ryan

Jurrasic Park. This amazing film came out in 1993 advertised on the television as a spectacle and a half just like Titanic. "Now there's something you don't see everyday" was used to advertise Titanic because it was just that. Lingering shots of the ship collapsing were exploited by the director James Cameron. The advertising also emphasized how much the movie cost and that it was a masterpiece of spectacle. Jurassic Park did the same to an extent but it wasn't all to do with a spectacle, it was also horror based. All horror is based on the repressed* (Arrogo, Action S&S, p. 118). Digging something up that should have been left behind basically, such as, the dinosaurs. Our fascination for these beasts comes from their extinction and to see them alive and kicking is quite spectacular. Just like in Star Wars, Jurassic Park is a journey of self discovery. Dr. Grant goes from bachelor to caring father figure in the film. He starts by imagining murdering a child with a raptor claw to protecting the kids from the child molesting velociraptors. The deranged and mutated father figures are sexually inactive as they don't have any gender. This comes from the fact that they can change sex when they want to male or female. This sexually inactivity turns to violence "All you need is love."

Alfred Hitchcock

Just like in The Birds, Jurassic Park has slashers trying to kill the protagonists. Only the knives and other weapons have been replaced by beaks, claws and jaws. Jaws is included in this niche of films as well as the shark is a serial killer. There are many parallels between the films. Between The Birds and JP there is a bachelor who turns into a protective father figure, there are creatures who deemed harmless at first end up killing in vendetta, especially children. "Punish the women", "Scare the children" is the thing here (these aren't my ideas I got them from an article in the bfi from the book I've mentioned, just to let you know ok). The point here is, is that the kids are the most vulnerable and the victims. The two most horrific scenes in JP are velociraptor hunt on the children and the T-rex attack on the car. Both include the possible deaths of the children. The child molesting raptors and the raping birds were all initially loved by those who were most vulnerable, that is, the women for The Birds and the children in Jurassic Park. Speilburg said that his most disturbing film was Bambi because of the fire scene. Bambi only just escapes without his mother and in extreme danger. This is a general fear that children have, as well as clowns, spiders, etc. It was due to the fact that Steven survived the Blitz. Considering Psycho compared to Jurassic Park, there is a big connection between the Norman Bates character and the killing that the dinosaurs do. Without mothers, the dinosaurs go crazy and vengefully kill everyone. You can agree or disagree with this it's up to you.

Spectacle for spectacular sake

When Dr. Grant and Dr. Sattler are completely stunned by the huge mass of the Brachiasoraus, the spectacle is done so we can see the characters' reactions. This is done with great anticipation. First, we see Dr. Grant turn and look past us open mouthed and baffled. He takes his glasses off and his hat so we can see his eyes popping out. Dr. Sattler does exactly the same. We then see the spectacle for ourselves with the characters shot from extremely far away so they look like they're part of the audience (if it was in a cinema.) The bass on the Brachiasorous's footsteps shake the audience up like a nightclub's bass.

If you have a DVD of King Kong, watch chapter 35 as this is just one massive spectacle including falling T-rexes, massive fights, massive drops and awesome computer graphics. It is about 15mins of shear amazing computer graphics and it is the only reason I went to see that film twice at the cinema.

A next greatly anticipated spectacle that isn't gory or anything like that in any way, is the point where Ian Malcome says "What have they got in there King Kong?" The shot before he says that, we have a P.O.V (point of view) shot from inside the car as we go underneath the gates of Jurassic Park. I imagine that the Hollywood ride would have felt exactly the same as this. Steven uses the pov shot again in the T-rex attack sequence. The nightvision and the shots from inside the car keep us in the car with the characters. All the shots are very claustrophobic as they are nearly all close ups. When we first see the T-rex it is from the left window of the car. It then looks in our direction glaring at us. We have pov shots from inside the cars when the kids are being trapped under the glass and from Dr. Grant's car. This puts us in the spectacle making it more authentic and realistic. Another Steven Speilburg film that uses this is "Saving Private Ryan." It uses these techniques to a different meaning altogether though.

Saving Private Ryan

After the end of it all, that is the beginning, we go into the flashback. Instead of trating us to an establishing shot, Spielburg gives us an icon of 'Ohama Beach,' the anti-tank structure that is so common on the beach. These icons serve as a graphic match between the graveyard and the beach. We only have close ups off peoples' faces and shots of the boats that take up the hole frame. We then see soldiers simply destroyed by bullets that come from behind our view. Compare this to a film such as Shoot 'em Up that has non-diegetic rock music playing throughout a fight scene and enough steady cam shots to establish where you are, you have a completely different spectacle. Shoot 'em Up combines comedy with extreme action here combining humorous one liners with fast paced editing, imaginative ways of being shot, slow motion, lighting that illuminates all of the bad guys and sparks where bullets have narrowly missed our "Mr. Hero". Everything is so casual making this film celebrate violence as a way of entertainment. Saving Private Ryan however has no establishing shots, all unsteady cam, it has camera movements that follow that of the characters making it pov such as, the point where the camera goes under water and back to the surface very quickly to make it seem more authentic and realistic, it has a desaturated image and instead of sparks flying everywhere we have blood. There is also no music. There is a horrible simplicity to which Steven shoots a shot in the beginning sequence where we see an objective view / pov shot of a German gun killing about ten guys helplessly lined up in their claustrophobic boats. We feel awful because just before this, we are the ones inside the boats. Colour is used sparingly and only really for blood that appears on peoples' bodies and hands. It is not glamourous at all and leaves us feeling terrible for what happened on 06/06/1945. Medal of Honour: Frontline copied this sequence, being a first person shoot (fps) it worked very well. It gave a new authenticity to games and left you feeling terrible for playing it (not really, it felt pretty bad though.)

Other films that use the pov shot and the unsteady cam to produce a meaning that is clearly anti-violence are 28 Weeks Later and Bloody Sunday. Both the directors Paul Greengrass and Juan Carlos Fresnaillo are European, not American or Cantonese (Hong Kong film makers such as John Woo.) Both films have a soldier character who disagrees with the fight he is fighting as what they are doing is killing innocent citizens. Both films use an unsteady cam, fast cutting, unclear shots and pov shots with close ups of the soldiers' dismay.

Narrative and spectacle cross over, but do other forms of media. Yes is the answer to your question. Spectacle has recently gone hand in hand with documentary in the recent "Planet Earth." "Space" with Sam Neil in it was also spectacular. Anything that's larger than life is considered spectacle.

Bach Chorale

2008-01-08T13:49:00.001Z

Bach Chorale

The maker and bender of the rules, only this time around, he is the only one who can make and bend. I on the other hand, have to follow these rules. It's all about the harmony.

Cadences are used frequently, mostly perfect cadences (75%) and Imperfect cadence (25%.) Plagal and Interrupted should not be used. The great thing is, is that to gain marks, you make sure you finish your phrase with a cadence. If it is final, use a perfect cadence, if it's gonna carry on, why don't you use a imperfect cadence.

Cadences

They must have the third and the root within them. The fifth is a high priority but if you have to get rid of one of the notes, make it the 5th. Never use chord III, only I, II, IV, V, VI and VII. the seventh chords you can use are II/7, V/7 and VII/7. All these chords must be in root or first inversion. Having said that, you can invert the following chords into 2nd inversion, that is, with the fifth in the bass.

I - Vc - Ib (Cadential 6/4) A gooden.

Ib - Vc - I (Also a gooden.)

IV - Ic - IVb

IVb - Ic - IV

The first is used consistently by Bach and he avoids the rest a little. When opportunity knocks, use these progressions, that is, at the end of each phrase. The seventh chords consist of four notes every time, any inversion is permitted apart from the 2nd inversion.

Progression Rules

Never ever have two lines moving in parallel octaves and 5ths. This is bad, very bad, and should always be avoided. The reason being is because it is an over powering sound and it rids the rest of the music of it's cooperativeness. Another thing to stay well clear of is using the same chord over two consecutive bars. This should be used only if it's function is to be an anacrusis. This is a vital jigsaw piece, when resolving the 7th, you must resolve it upwards to the tonic or downwards to the fifth. This resolution can happen in another part though. So the 7th has to resolve downwards by step.

When moving towards conjunct melodies, never make a augmented or diminished leap. Diminished leaps can happen if they resolve inwards. major 6th leaps should definitely be avoided.

Primary chords are the ones to use, try and use chord I about 40% of the time, chord V7 30% of the time and chords IV, II and VI around 30 % of the time with VI being used hardly ever. The strongest progressions are the ones that move from the bass upwards, an example would be, I - V - I - IV - I II - V - I. Contrary motion between the bass and soprano is great stuff, don't over do it though okay? The inner parts should be static with the tenor part high.

Smoothness is the key, especially with chorale. That means no successive leaps and no range between parts being more than a tenth. Every note that falls on the beat should be one that harmonizes. There should be a harmonic rhythm.

Modulation

Interest is obtained through modulation, unlike the other music you listen to that has no modulation in it. Isn't that strange? At the moment, i am listening to a piece that doesn't modulate for an entire 20 minutes and i think it is absolutely great. Anyway, back to modulation. Never modulate to a radically different key, like C major to F sharp major. Think about the Circle of Fifths. Remember, just plus or minus 5 notes to get to a key with a key signature that's just a bit different from the previous version. Only one thing, the chorale must begin and end in the same key. Note to self, i must change my musical taste if I am going to succeed at all in this, I am now listening to another track that doesn't modulate for an entire 10 minutes. Anyway, where was I, oh yes, your phrases must end in related keys such as V and IV (i think.)

Modulation can happen at will at any time only if you have prepared it with another such as V.

Auxiliary Notes and the like

The three types are suspension, passing note and auxiliary note. Passing notes occur off the beat and are conjunct to the previous note. Two passing notes can happen in the bass part, but in descending fashion only.

Auxiliary notes can occur but only off the beat.

A suspension must be resolved downwards by step / conjunctively. Here's a tip, the 4 - 3 suspension is the strongest and most striking as it resolves onto a note that does not sound. 9 - 8 suspensions are alright, the one that doesn't work too well is the 6 - 5 suspension. Suspensions sound good in the inner parts the most. Bach makes them sound good all round.

Tierce de Picardi's are also permitted

But all in all, you can use all of these, but no rule breaking!

Respect to A.A. Owen.

The Inner Game of Music

2007-12-05T17:09:00.001Z

Respect to the author Barry Green

Who told you that playing music was difficult?

Music and Sport are both played, yet they require control over the body, discipline, inspiration, structure, spontaneity and technique. Both are performed in front of audiences who have come to appreciate excellence. Just like both of these, humans are the ones who get in their own way. So, how about we find ways of not getting in our own way. Performing something can take the fun out of music if you're nervous (every other Monday yeah?) It can also take the fun out of sport as it takes control of our ego, such as, when it's just you and the goalie, if you're Gazza you've got no problem. How did he get to that level of confidence? He made it look so natural (are we on the same wave length here?)

Fear and control are what tutors sometimes enforce, only, how are you meant to make it natural if you have these instructions fencing your path? Some can be like running through barbed wire.

Mozart

Wolfgang and J.S.Bach toured Britain quite a lot, only to find themselves in taverns after hours. Brass spittoons where what they used to play with, only Mozart went the extra mile and made it make sounds and spin around while Bach just spat in the target area. Mozart was also excellent at Billiards. He used to enjoy the sound of the balls hitting each other made, it also influenced his music. Was it a child's enthusiasm that got him doing this? Well, it is definitely true that children have an effortless capacity to learn. As a child, you had no idea that music can be said to be difficult. It is good if you think that what you are playing is quite easy i suppose.

Okay, so, who told you music is hard to play?

"Oh well, they're kids, they learn fast." Ergh, excuse me but adults have bigger brains we're just diseased with masks we wear (cliche.) You have got to let go and live in the moment if you want to be good at anything, when do you think it would be a good idea to get self-concious about something you're doing? Well, sometimes, learning a certain piece or phrase becomes the easiest thing ever. Why is this? In my experience, some things have taken months to learn whilst something that is harder has only taken a week. It is the "rage" that makes you in the moment and in a state of learning where, as you are teaching yourself, you learn in the best way. Sometimes, concerts just go exactly to plan and you are moved by how well you do. Why is this? One example from own experience was a concert in Montreux where our Swiss Student was watching us, it was the best, most intense concert of all time that left people in tears (internally.) Another example that can be explained was in Czech Republic where I decided to act as someone who was emotionally caught up in the moment and the music. At the end, ladies were catching my eye and waving at me when all 200 of us were standing and bowing with tears almost taking us over.

The Two Brothers

"The inner game of skiing" was the inspiration for "The inner game of music." The author of this decided to write the book when he and his brother both decided to go skiing only learn it in different ways. The loser, the author of the book, went for expert tuition for an entire year whilst his brother, being slightly physically disabled went and learnt by himself. At the slope, they both raced with the brother beating the author by a long way. He made everything look natural and effortless. How did he do this? "The inner game of skiing!" and a little help from his friends (but no expert tuition.) He had learnt by himself and from a good book. The book taught him to not think about what he was doing, just put it into your subconscious. There's a thing. Subconscious is not as powerful as the concentrated conscious, but it does do things effortlessly as there is nothing to clog it up. Clogging the consciousness is a bad idea, especially with instructions.

What about Music?

Applying this to the bass then, that is, the self-tuition. Just like Barry Green, instruct yourself to focus on your bowing arm and how much tension there is in it. Okay, say you have about five (if you need help after all,) raise that tension to a 7 / 8 and then back down again. You should find that you can now pinpoint where the tension thus you can get rid of it.

The 3 skills you must learn are

Awareness
Trust
Will

You must always try techniques out before you apply them to your teaching. It's not easy to create something simple, to do that, you must know everything surrounding what it is you are trying to accomplish. Getting rid of inner anxieties is the way forward to achieving your goals. If you are a musician, try playing tennis under the guide "inner game of tennis," you should find results as Barry Green did. It'll keep you from playing boringly.

The Two Games

It is a game. And just like in computer games, you can apply your skills to other games, such as, first-person shoot 'em ups are all easy to play once you've got to grip with one. Same with instruments and sports. The reason it is called a game is because it comes with it's own challenges, kill this guy and you will gain a level? Hahaha!! not really. Not with instruments. More like, learn these three pieces, these 11 scales, 7 arpeggios, 4 chromatic scales, diminished 7th scales, double stopping scales, dominant 7th scales and these 12 Studies. Then you'll rise a level. Well I suppose with games you have to master the 'A' button and the Trigger button etc. This is the outer game. This is getting the technique etc just right / better compared to before. Tim Gallway said that there is the 'outer game' which is what you are doing, but there is also an 'inner game.' This is more subtle and easily forgotten. All the obstacles of this game are mental like. That is, concentration and self-doubt. When you play the outer game to much, the game ends up playing you. The inner game can be applied to everything else unlike the outer game. It is what makes you interesting and it gives you soul.

Tim says 'We are playing the inner game every moment of the day and winning or losing all the time." I think you know what i mean come on. Look at yourself, are you doing what you should be doing deep down or are you suppressed? The inner game is thus the key to success in later life and we all realize that.

Inhibiting attitudes and tendencies cause our muscles to tighten up. Fear of failure (or rejection) comes along.

Storyboard

2007-12-05T15:54:00.000Z

The Storyboard

If it's a film you're looking to make, make sure you draw it in a rectangular frame under the ratio of 16:9. You can get even further than this, such as, 2:3:0:3:2 or something. TV is typically 4:3. This is rubbish as it is a square causing you to centre your film around what's in the centre. It provides only just enough space for a person's face.

The analysis of your storyboard must include no description at all, this is to go in your actual storyboard if necessary. If your storyboard is for a narrative, make it a short film and not part of a film as you'll have to go into deep explanation for this, don't bother blud.

Example of storyboard : Shot 1, EXT: DAY (Shot 1a - 1b)

"Hello you alright?

MCU

Developing shot e.g. Pan left to right (when you have shot 1a -1b)

(Do not write more than one line between boxes.)

SFX go in the audio box on the right, draw a line to resemble how long the sound lasts.

Fade to Black / Cut to /etc / Shot 2 (Dialoggue can b e shortened to "I love you because ... I killed him ... I'm sorry to have killed you as well."

in the analysis, obey these 3 golden rules, you might want to think about these before you start the storyboard as well.

Introduce concept : Graphic match, offscreen sound, juxtaposition between cuts
Primary exemplification : that is what is in your storyboard
Qualify with Secondary resource : Books

The two Silver / Platinum rules (I cannot tell because they look the same)

Tertiary example : Another film that uses the technique you used
Compare and Contrast : With that film.

You cannot say everything about your storyboard in just 1000 words, so be imaginative as possible and I'm sure your marks will rise because he examiner can see what your ideas are without you writing about them.

Performance

2007-12-05T10:26:00.000Z

6 rehearsals

1 Baroque

1 Chambre

4 Keisha rehearsals

few practice sessions : Duport Studies are great, especially 6 which I've been practicing tons. Debussy and Beethoven are still coming on only not so much anymore. Practice time has been a miserable 4-5 hours.

Rehearsal time is staggering 8-9 hours.

Hong Kong

2007-11-29T13:25:00.000Z

Hong Kong film stars anyone?

No?

Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, Chow Yung Phat, Lucy Lui all come from Hong Kong.

After all, Hong Kong was the highest movie going place in the whole world for a little while. Why was that?

Hong Kong is quite a small place that is heavily populated. Imagine you lived in Hong Kong (if you don't,) you would expect to see a lot of geography you are familiar with. I always like to see British films because I am familiar with the places they are set, just like you New Yorkers watching 'Godzilla' and the many other films set in that place I have never been. HK was probably the most robust film industries in the world. It obliterated Taiwan's film market. I'll ask that question again, why was it more successful?

The key to it's success was that it was 'popular cinema.' The stories were always about cops vs Triads with a vivid colour palette and fast paced edits. There would be action... suspense... emotion during the film made in late 80s and 90s. The movies were always shown very late at night, that is the 'mid-night movie,' thus having to keep the audiences awake by bombarding them with colours, sound effects and exciting imagery. As they were evidently so many quick cut slow-motion takes and re-takes of the same shot to glamorise the action, HK shot its films in silent and then dubbed them afterwards. This allowed more freedom as the sound could fit around the almost abstract action on screen. The mise-en-scene in HK films correlate gesture, composition, colour and music more than what we would expect in our cartoons. This all comes from Cantonese Opera. Check out my blog on Montage, and it'll go into more detail lick-adi-split yo.

"Hard Boiled" by John Woo. The action in this is ridiculously intense. There is a burst of action, a slight pause to breathe, then another massive burst of slow-mo, fast cutting battle and so on. There are parts when they talk, but not too many. There is a part in it where Yeung (Chow Yung Phat) is waiting outside a door with his battle companion. This is the pause. They then burst through the door and bullets rip people up. The pause after this, is just before Yeung executes his foe, with a point blank shot to the face causing blood to spray all over his own flour covered face. Pretty damn cool huh. The slow-motion in this scene gives it a beautiful, balletic quality. Yeung's movement over the table is so abstract and concealed by the flour that it is up to us as an audience to imagine what just happened.

HK's film history has been a varied one. In the beginning, comedies were made consistently all about farting, other bodily functions, slapstick and food. John Woo started out making comedies, but he got very fed up with it as he like the melodrama. You would have thought he'd be into action but it's not the case according to him. He does however like to incorporate the two, making, dramatic action films. Just like "Blue Streak" is an action comedy as well as nearly all Jackie Chan films, John Woo tames the drama into his action, rather than the comedy. Loyalty and honor are big players in the HK action film, especially when they're all about Kung Fu or Wuxia. Wuxia is sword fighting in mainland China. So, the genres HK cover are

Crime - Cops and Triads
Horror - Ghost stories and Vampire films
Comedy - Hybrid with other genres
Melodrama - That is historical and in Mandarin. This is strange as HK speaks Cantonese.
Wuxia - Adventures in mainland sword-fighting China
Art Film - 'Second Wave' - They had a lot of success abroad but nearly nothing in HK.

Popular genres such as the Western and Sci-fi film have not become popular in HK, unlike the Western in America.

Chu and Bordwell think that HK is culturally specific. There is a dual identity from Britain and China. HK used to be a 'Crown Collony' making lots of people move there as before that it was just a tiny fishing village. This was all because China was turning Communist at the time and making everyone flee the mainland.

Let's have a look at a Jackie Chan film called "Police Story."

Composition

2007-11-28T20:26:00.000Z

Research Into Madrigals

2007-11-20T14:18:00.000Z

This section is an independent research page dedicated to the analysis of old english Madrigals.

"Down From Above" by Thomas Bateson, SATB in G major, 4/4

SA have the treble clef, the Tenor has a treble clef with an 8 underneath it to symbolize that the Tenor sings notes an octave bellow what is written. It is short in time length but still very good as it has a steady beat.

The Song is based on a Greek legend Danae (with two dots above the last 'e') and her father Acrisius, King of Argos (haha.)

The piece begins on the tonic, that is G whilst stating the 7th, that is the leading note (weird, I'll check that up.) In bar 3, 2nd beat we hit a D major chord root and then we go into G major again. In the 4th bar we hit E minor, A major and then D without the third. Bar 5, the F sharp is naturalized as we start to modulate. The beginning's structure is repeated in bar 6 where the Bass and Tenor leave like at the beginning where they were not present. The C sharp is still sharpened.

Here, at bar 6, the lyrics enter canonically / fugally. These lyrics are constantly repeated until they finally fall into place with each other , but a bit later. The lyrics are "[falls] Into Danae's lap amain." The music reflects the text setting in that the lyrics eventually fall in together at the same time at bar 14. The pitch also goes down instead of up connoting falling. The parts are fragmented and pass chords such as GAD (that is it has the 2nd instead of the 3rd making it a colder sound.) After this we return a G root chord at bar 14 where all the parts come together. This is enforced by the perfect cadence, the A and the F sharp come in and out of a G chord conjunctively to give a I(c) - V - I.

bar 15 then starts the next line in a similar way to "Amain" in that the parts separate off again, but this time only briefly. At bar 16, the parts move homophonically.

"Love Me Blind" Thomas Bateson

Between bars 7 and 13 the time signature goes to 34 and back to 4/4. It doesn't quite

change it completely though, i changes the accent on the notes as there are 4 bars (split into

twos on either side of 4/4) making 12 beats that can be divided into both 3 and 4.

"Ay Me Poor Heart" A Different Composer

Fugally enters a bar after each other each time a fifth down and then after that, an octave

up. At bar 8, he rhymes 'part' with 'heart' together at the same time.

FM1006: Assessment

2007-11-15T16:11:00.000Z

Once Upon A Time In The West

The opening sequence is approx 8 1/2 minutes long from the beginning of the film to the shot of the train arriving.

We were shown it 3 times in lecture, but I now have it on DVD so what the hell.

The question =

"...Analyze the textual strategies used in this sequence. You should mention the following: genre, mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing and sound. Show how the style of the sequence contributes to its meaning..."

The word limit is 1500 words and it is worth 50% of your course.

Do not quote or make footnotes or make a bibliography. The deadline, deadline, yes deadline is Wednesday 21st November.

Musical Performance

2007-11-14T20:28:00.000Z

3 sessions + Baroque and chambre rehearsal

Same as usual for the Baroque and Chambre rehearsal.

1st session = can't remember, not too long because I was annoyed and hungry

2nd session = 1 h half

3rd session = 2hr

All 3 sessions are adding together, there's a lot of work on the Feuillard, a lot on Debussy, mediocre on Beethoven and just a little on Bohccerini. I've been doing some work on the Beethoven chambre music as well. It's all looking good. Tuning is improving as well as the left hand's agility and knowledge of/over the neck. This is very beneficial for shifting.

What needs improving is how I practice. I also need to look at the Duport and the other thing Robin asked me to look at, damn.

Narrative

2007-11-11T14:15:00.000Z

The Story

Stories and fantasy are a necessity to humans. Since childhood we have had stories told to us, each with their own meanings that we do not quite understand at the time. These are parables and tales that are used in Religion and philosophy. The Judeo-Christian Bibile and Torah have loads of tales in them. So how many different forms can you think of that have narrative?

Plays
Paintings
Television
Newspapers (What's the story?)
Comics
Dance
Films
Drunken Stories

Documentaries and Avant-guarde also employ narrative, but not all of the time.

All enigmas in a story must be solved by the end of the film, this is a classic rule. Even objects of interest must follow the tie up stage. All conflicts will be resolved (unless it's a computer game where the conflict always continues.) The goals that set out in the film are always accomplished or the opposite. The ending may satisfy or cheat the audience, who, have come to make sense of the film's clues, recollections, anticipations and characters etc. "The Sixth Sense" had a damn good twist, so much so that people went to see it again to figure out how their anticipations were twisted.

Narrative Form

A chain of events that are linked somehow you could say; causality, time and space.

Okay, here's an example of a chain of events that make no sense; a wedding ring is throw into a river, a man injects heroin into himself, a car runs into someone. Is there a narrative? Not yet. Alright, so here it is with narrative; A man gets divorced because of an affair, he throws his ring into a river, the man decides that heroin is the only way out of his depression, he cooks up down a skag ally, he then goes wild with the feeling that love can be replaced with something more interesting, then in his wild frenzy, he gets run over by a car.

From this, we can link the events together over a period of time. Also, we can see a cause and effect. The affair causes the ring to fly away and the man to die/get seriously injured. This resolves the conflict the man has with his ex-wife as he is probably dead, "Death solves everything" (Stalin, I think.) We now also have a way of distinguishing between different places that are in the story. So, it is causality, space and time that are essential to narrative as now audiences can make sense of the information.

Parallels are often used as a asset to narrative. We draw parallels between characters in stories. Here there are no boundaries that need to be followed, space and time can be completely different. An example would be the three male protagonists in "The Fountain." Each of them is separated by all in all 1000 years, yet they have the same fundamental goals, to live forever and to save his loved one. The way that we distinguish between these worlds is through the characters appearance; Tommy's hair style changes from a lot of hair (including the face) to no facial hair and then finally to no hair at all.

In some documentaries that cover different people who come from different backgrounds, we see people who are not connected anyway causally, but we make parallels between them. An example would be two mothers having their daily lives analyzed who come from completely different economic backgrounds. Drawing parallels between them like, they do washing up only that the rich one has a dishwasher, they cook food with great contrast. This is total would portray an imbalance in quality of life just from drawing parallels between the two mothers, hence the message, we need to become more socialist.

Story

There is connection linking all of the stories we hear of though. It was a Russian named Vladamir Popp that investigated the typicallities of story telling. This is a Structuralist approach. Vladamir wrote a book all about it.

So, what do all stories have in common?

There is an

Equilibrium - Balance, status quo
Disruption - An adversary is introduced, a goal is set, there could be a love triangle.
Restoration - Order is finally realigned

LOTR is based entirely on folk tales from all sorts of times and cultures. "Gandalf" means wizard in Old Norse. Frodo is an active male on a quest, there are adversaries all over the place trying to get his ring off him. "Lord of the Keys" could have had the same story line, only the object has changed. But all the same, there once was an equilibrium at one point that gets restored, unlike, Soap Operas where we stay in the middle of the story for fecking ages, too much of that. The final goals are never achieved.

There are three acts to a film; a Beginning, a Middle and an end. These can be Linear or mixed up. "The Fountain" directed by Darren Aronofsky has a beginning, a middle and an end, only completely mixed up. Not only that but the story spans 1000 years. Another film that defies the linear story is "Pulp Fiction."

Most of the time a film will be linear as this is the easiest way to understand a film. "Double Indemnity" starts at the end of the film, a then into a flashback.

Hitchcock, the master, used Red Herrings like "Scooby Doo" does consistently, but he also used a more extreme version of this and that was the "MacGuffin." "Psycho" is a MacGuffin. Hitchcock was vilified for killing his main character off within the first 40 minutes of the film.

The story is always chronological, the Plot, is not.

Plot

How is it actually told on screen? James Bond films, are always set in exotic locations. But do we ever see him go through airport security checks? Nuh-uh, this would probably be the entire film, that would be excruciatingly painful to sit through. This is where the plot comes in, to compress everything into a shorted space.

Unrestricted and Restricted Narration

Unrestricted = access to the whole story such as "End of Days," we see the Devil at the beginning, the characters then have to find out who the Devil is even though the audience all know exactly who he is. Rope has this as well as we know the main characters have killed someone when that's the whole point of the film, is to try and find out if they really have killed him.

Restricted Narration = Our knowledge is limited. We know as much as the principle character in the film.

Explicit Narration = Titles quickly giving us information and/or a narrator giving the audience information.

Non-explicit Narration = In most cases, the narration is hidden (there is no narrator) instead of having a narrator stating "Oh in this scene we have Alex meeting Jim for the first time, they really like each other and Jim kills Alex accidently."

The 4 types of Alternative Narrative

Categorical : This divide a subject into parts such as the educational video or the "how they make things" Documentary etc.
Rhetorical : Adverts are rhetoric as they address the argument that their product is the best. They are far more subtle though compared to Propaganda films that are also rhetoric.
Associational : This creates associations / parallels between one thing and the next. Montage, connections, juxtapositions are all key words. Eisenstein's intellectual Montage is also associational.
Abstract : Non-Representational visual or audio qualities stressing elements like shape, colour and rhythm. (Oskar Fischinger films such as Allegretto, 1936)

Performance

2007-11-11T14:11:00.000Z

4 hours of practice

on Feuillard 9, 18, 32 and 33. Most of the work on 32 (the bowing exercise on C)

Also on Debussy and Beethoven, but mainly Debussy.

The great thing is that now the technique has been sorted (mostly) I can practice for hours without losing stamina. It's great when the subconcious takes over and you still get everything in time and in tune.

I'm experimenting with different vibrato velocities and different ways.

Musicanship : Robin's first lesson

2007-11-04T11:34:00.000Z

Robin's technique of playing the 'cello is far different to Esther's technique. Robin emphasises the need for balance and freedom in both arms.

The biggest difference is this; Esther has reiterated the need for lowering the elbow when retracting the bow and to keep the wrist pointing upwards to keep the arm weight going through the fingers. Having done this, there has been one drawback that you may know of, the right hand thumb. I said this to Robin and he showed me a new may of bowing that has sorted the thumb out instantly. It is to keep the elbow up when bowing (not rediculously) yet to keep the arm unattached to the right shoulder. Having the wrist straight, this allows the tendons to work properly as if the wrist is bent, the fingers have far less power and they have to work harder (it is same possition as if you were disarming a man with a knife.)

Thumb sorted out.

Next was the left hand. Esther had taught well in that the distrebution of weight should be balanced and that the fingers should act like bridges. This is only the surface of what can be done as the will always be on their tips if this is consistantly carried out. Robin states that the thumb on the left hand should be free to go whereever on the bottom of the finger board even it is to the far right hand side. This allows more of the left hand's finger pads to be used so it is not just the tips that are being used, but the flat surfaces as well. The bridge theory still applies so there is nothing physically wrong with this technique, only that it provides another dimension of colour into the sound.

Vibrato. I have always found it very hard to do vibrato maybe because I didn't cover it until late. However, there is a new technique to doing it that has opened up another dimension/door into cello playing. Again it is the elbow that comes in. When vibratoing, it is not just the fingers and the wrist that do the work, it is the entire arm. When you raise your left arm and bend back your wrist and then vibrato you can get a far more passionate sound with greater depth in feeling and sound. This adds another level into the cello playing world as you don't have to ben back the wrist and expose a different part of your finger pad.

One part of the Debussy I found very difficult was when the cellist comes across the very fast hemi-semi-quavers between the A and the D string is beyond 5th position. I was making it far too hard for myself. The faster your fingers have to move, the closer they stay to the strings and hey presto, it was so much easier and I could go a hell of a lot faster.

Moonlight

2007-11-02T18:27:00.001Z

yep, by Beethven

Ideology and Representation

2007-10-31T12:29:00.000Z

Ideology

Is a body of opinions that a group of people have. It is a manor of thinking that is in built into our minds. Our minds grow up around the foundations of ideology like a vine round a pole. If we did not grow around these poles, we would certainly be outcast. Our own personal ideologies are kept secret for a long time, especially in secondary school where we feel the need to just fit in. We change our appearance because of ideologies, people use this to their advantage and some choose to rebel against this and choose what they like for their appearance.

Most "isms" are ideologies e.g. Communism, Nazism, Feminism, Imperialism etc etc. These are distinctive practices, systems or philosophies.

Ideology is also the combined policies and intentions of social or political movement. It is also economic, politica, philosophical or religious.

"Isms" don't necessarily rely on facts. Capitalism hates Communism and doesn't contemplate that Communism may have its good points, it's bias. Ideological beliefs conflict each other and there is no arbiter, nothing ever gets settled without conflict. If the Feminists want war just as much as the Nazis then bring 'em ON! (no offense to you feminists who may believe that guys should be exterminated.)

Dominant Ideology

This is the ideology we hear of the most through out media and from our political figures.

It is the most prevalent view of the world expressed by the ruling class who have the most power (says Karl Marx.) Democracy is different everywhere, why isn't democracy an ism anyway? And you know what happens to those who get power, they always want more.

Ideological beliefs are always portrayed subtly and not loud mouthed such as, "I believe that it'll rain cats and dogs one day for real! My ideological belief is that we should all be bisexual" etc.

One system we have that not that many people question is the Queen. I'm not saying you should question it I think it has it's good points to have a Queen. Okay, so why her anyway? Why does she decide who is the Prime Minister at the end of the day? It's because she was born into it? I'm not bothered.

Ideology and Life

Marxism - economics, means of production

Capitalism - focused on the individual who have the power to better themselves into extreme wealth / free enterprise. Celebrities are our heros of capitalism, we look up to David Beckham, Jay Z, Girls Aloud for getting where they got to (a little bit like the Queen if you ask me, as in, they're not the people who fit their jobs the best in this world, okay with exception to David Beckham, but Girls Aloud? Come on, they're not the ones with the talent it's their team of technicians and musician that are the talented ones. Who do you think wrote the S Club 7 tracks?)

But of course Capitalism has its draw backs, it is simply impossible for some people to get anywhere because they were born into their situation, that is no money or knowledge. It benefits those in power. The UK is Utilitarian, that is late Capitalism and they are thinking of getting rid of the welfare state (shit idea.)

Feminism - focuses on our patriarchal society and how women get less money for winning Wimbledon Tennis than the men which is a totally fair point. But the more extreme feminists feel that all men should be killed off and we should live in a world without gender (which is what I thought would be good, only we get rid of the women as well.)

Racism - Probably the worst ism around. Apartheid. It is where some people are better than others because of their race / ancestry. You could say that blearing out to people your English could be racist as it means that you think you're superior because of your country.

Do you think your race is represented enough on television? Who controlling what's on the tele anyway? Why is like that? What are the dominant ideologies.

Representation

This is the next process. How do images and sounds articulate gender, race and class? Who's the hero? Who's the victim? Who's not included in this film?

There is always a dominant/norm that happens in characters within films.

Subject Object
Man/male Female
White Ethnic Minority
Hetrosexual Homosexual
West East
First World Third World
Middle Class Lower Class
Capiltalist Other
Rational/Strong Weak and emotional
Active Static

Subject - Individual, Eisenstein was about groups of people.

Males - In movies, oh yeah, there are a lot of "Buddy Movies" where two males go out.

White - 1920s, people were wearing black face, whoa, that is bad.

Hetrosexual - There is a history of homophobic characters in Hollywood

West - The exceptions to this West thing are people like; Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, Chow Yung Fat that have made it in the West even though they are Eastern. Lucy Liu is Chinese, yet she is female. She is one of the only people to have made it in the West as a Eastern Female. Jackie Chan fits all of the above descriptions only that he is not from the West as well as the others. You would never have a homosexual, static, weak, Iraqi to be in Hollywood as a star (mainly because in Iraq there hunt gays down and hang them.)

Active - Action heros and martial artists

Mainstream productions typically reproduce (represent) the dominant ideologies of the societies in which they are located.

Eastenders: Represents the East End of London. Asians in this program are given a bad representation as they re stereotypical armed with the Indian accent and image. There is a Soap Opera in Mexico that incorporates the news into the story line so Mexicans can obtain their news through this Soap Opera.

Question

Ideologies can be questioned on two different levels.

A film or a video that questions all the of the isms we have talked about that are in Dominant ideology, par example, Capitalism.
A film or a video that employs different styles of production that do not naturalize the meanings of whatever is shown.

Capitalism is there for people to make profit and that's it. Dominant ideology filters in.

Hi Mom

A film made in 1970 with Robert DeNiro in it and directed by Brian de Palma.

"Be Black Baby" is a sequence where the audience who are all white are made to be black. It is full of stereotypical white and black people who's roles are switched through persuasion and face-paint. The blacks who run the show, show the whites how to dance the black dance, they make them eat 'soul' food, or pig trotters and black eyed peas. It is implied that a lot of the audience are Jewish as they don't like to eat the pork.

Glorious Technicolour

2007-10-30T20:27:00.000Z

Colour took its time to come into acceptance in the film world. Like the Cinemascope, colour could have arrived in the 1920s, but it took another 30 years for it to be introduced.

It is important to understand that the colour in film is not the natural way colour looks in real life. In the early films, a lot of makeup was used to make things look more natural, strange isn't it. So, realism is constructed and it does not exist naturally when shooting it.

Colours work in that objects absorb the colour spectrum and then reflect the colours back. This is why black gets really hot in the summer and white does not.

Subtractive Colour - works on the basic principle of the represented objects (the things being filmed) absorbing different colours, 'subtracting' them from the total spectrum.

Additive Colour - involves three separate filtered film strips (shot through red, green and blue filters.) All colours are represented when these are put together. So colour is added at the exhibition stage, really.

The subtractive process is done saving economics as painting colour onto individual frames is very time consuming.

Even though colour had been associated with the cinema since 1896, it 60 more years to become legitimized. Check out this site http://simplecon.net/widefilm/ It'll tell you everything you need to know about the old colour processes.

Okay, here are some figures to show you how colour came into the world.

1940 - 4% of US features were produced in colour
1951 - It had risen to 51%
1958 - It had declined again to 25% because of budgeting
1967 - It tripled to 75%
1976 - It had risen to 94%

Musical Performance

2007-10-29T23:19:00.000Z

2 hours of practice in rehearsal :

I was very successful today in being completely independent in my cello playing whilst being loud and confident in my playing today. It was very good for practice in timing, pronunciation of my notes and in improving my capabilities in the style of baroque and classical 'cello playing. I was able to hold the cello part very strongly throughout. I have rung my future teacher today but still no answer, Frank Grissith has reassured me that all is going to be fine though. Let's hope so.

Musical Performance

2007-10-26T14:57:00.001+01:00

2 more sessions

Pain in right hand, technique is getting worse, need tuition before it is too late. I have now found a pianist named Kio who will take up the piano part Debussy's cello sonata.

Another session: about an hour and a half, things are back to normal, the Debussy and Beethoven are coming on great and the technique is getting better. Things are looking up. I did some scale practice on G major, work on 6 and 4 Popper Studies, Pieces work and things are sounding good.

Practice with James : 2 hours + things sound great, we are making a piece that goes along the lines of "Lost in a Factory." We made noises with Grolsch Bottles that made amazing sounds. We added these to the track we've been working on, inverted and retrograded the samples and then added the cello part. After we decided to harmonize this with another cello part. It's good as it makes u listen to yourself and what you've done. As I've done this, I can tell that sometimes I'm slightly sharp or that I need to be more precise with the rhythm or that I might want such and such happen instead of what really happened.

Musical Composition

2007-10-26T13:44:00.000+01:00

Teachings by Anna Merideth

Let's look at musical line through the ages; starting with (this is all so basic its bellow GCSE)

Renaissance

This music was early so it is mainly vocal and sacred. It is sung by monks, who aren't the best singers around (well maybe at the time.) The notation is conjunct and scalic. The monks sing in unison as they did not like harmonizing at this point in history. If the music ever made a jump, the note that was skipped would then be included after. Breathing time is included at the end of phrases and at the end of every phrase the music would return to the tonic. There was no polyphony at this point, only homophonic.

Baroque

Baroque reflects the architecture of the time. It is very decorative, yet the fundamentals are very simple. Baroque is always based on a scale or arpeggio, then it is decorated. "Autumn" from the "Four Seasons" by Vivaldi has the same line played constantly until he milks it to death.

Classical

4 bar phrases, antecedent and consequent. It is full of rules of etiquette and politeness. Sharpened 7ths state that we are modulating to either the dominant / sub-dominant.

Romantic

Romanticism came after Beethoven who did not care whether he had an audience or not, the music was for himself. People tried to catch on though as they thought of Beethoven as a man who's work and self would echo throughout eternity (isn't that true?) The Romantics had simple ideas wound up with virtuosity, thus making it a lot like Baroque. The baselines are commonly very simple. it sounds complicated, but it isn't. Schubert is a good example of masking his simple ideas with extremely fast flourishes that make it seem hard. Th intervals grow larger also in Romantic music, now we find intervals far bigger than 5ths and 6ths.

20th Century Composition

After the Classical era when composers where seen only as craftsmen who composed for occasions and instead were seen as geniuses they were cared for. Wagner made his own Tuba especially for his work called "The Wagner Tuba."

The 2nd Viennese School brought Serialism. Now all 12 semi tones were equal, there was no tonic. Instead, serialists used a grid to make compositions, it as all maths orientated.

Minimalism, Steve Reich is a pioneer in Minimalism. He has used 4 beat against 5 beat to make an out of sync composition that after 20 bars (4 x 5 = 20 yeah?) comes back into sync again.

you must start analyzing now (note to self btw.)

Composing Phrases

A and B phrases. (Music has never been so damn simple)

Repetition is the key yeah?

Here are some classic repetitions in line;

AABC
AAAB
ABAB
AABA

These are rhythmic structures. Some examples of these rhythmic structures are;

Jingle Bells : AABC
Good King Wenslus : ABAB
Millenium by Robbie Williams : AAAB
Land of Hope and Glory : ABAC
Take on Me : AABC
Tender by Blur: ABAB (possibly C)

Add some more.

Sequence

Ever heard Ding Dong Merrily on high? That has as descending sequence when you sing Glooorrrr-oorrr-orr-orr-orr-orr-orrrrrr-orr-orr-orr-orr-orrrr-orr-orr-orr-orr-orr-orrrrrriar

etc, that's a descending sequence. Another example of a sequence is in Muse's "Plug In Baby"

Plug in Baby

The rhythmic and melodic structure for the hook/riff at the beginning of the piece is AAAB.

The A is made out of a conjunct rising sequence and the B a a descent to get back to the tonic. That's all fine, but don't we hear it again and again? Yes, but in this order AABA. This is a rhythmic structure, only extended into instead of a 4 bar phrase, a 4 by 4 phrase / 16 bar phrase. We can go further and include the preceding section and look at that. It is exactly the same structure as "Take on Me" by A-ha for the first section, only is includes the riff just before the second chorus unlike Take on Me.

Intro - Hook/Riff - Verse - Chorus - Riff - Verse - Chorus - Middle 8 (virtuosic singing with riff underlining it.) - Riff - Outro

Take On Me another chorus and verse at the end of the middle 8 with a slight modification at the beginning of the 3rd verse in that the pitches are inverted at the beginning of the verse. We then go to the 3rd chorus that is slightly modified and then an outro.

Each song has as recorgnizable riff/hook because they have something strange and peculiar about them. "Plug in Baby" contains chromaticism, "Take on Me" has a descending arpeggio that is made up of sharps that are not normally used in Pop Music to this extent.

Somewhere Over The Rainbow

ABAB. It's memorable because it begins with an octave jump, not many tunes start with a leap this large. The range get narrowed down from oct, 6th, 5th and then 3rd. The rhythm has been imitated throughout the piece, the range of notes has been narrowed.

We Wish You A Merry Christmas

Just like Plug in Baby, We Wish You Merry Christmas contains an ascending sequence and a syllable count that can be divided by a multiple of 4.

These are quite common, but not as common as track names with an odd syllable number. This is because odd syllables go into 4/4, 4 bar phrases, etc with the ability to give syllables different note lengths. This gives larger choice to give a decent melody to them and adds more variety.

Compositional Devices

A list of things you can use to make your composition great:

Repetition (Taking excerpts and putting them into repeat)
Contrast
Development
Transposing (Sequence and modulation)
Decoration (Baroqueness)
Sequence / imitation
Augmentation (This can lead to beyond 4 bar phrases)
Diminution (You can make it 2/3 as fast or half the speed.)
Extension
Destruction
Inversion
Reduction

Semiotics

2007-10-24T15:28:00.000+01:00

Semiotics

The Study of "the science of signs and symbols"

How do images produce or create meaning?

To analyze a film these days, your analysis must be extremely deep. Now, signification is a process such as language. To get ideas across between two or more parties, we must speak a similar language. This takes time, unlike computers which have things like USB, Firewire and Bluetooth to communicate rather than just saying 0100010111010100101. The human race must communicate with vocal chords and now, writing, images and sounds. If anything were to have an individual language it would be pointless unless of course it could (whatever it is) live forever and come up with all the answers by itself and become completely original, then it would be okay.

Charles S Peirce differentiated signs into natural and conventional signs.

Natural signs would be

Dark Clouds for rain
Smoke for fire
Medical symptoms (like my leg injury)

Conventional signs

Language
Ducks in a row
Symbols etc

Here's a question, why do words mean what they mean?

Why is the word cat representative of a cat and not a dashboard or an electricity pylon? Do you know?

Words that are onomatopoeic such as splash, bang, splosh, boom, Golum are invented because that's how they sound. De Saussure says there is one language that humans speak, words. It's a bit more complicated than that, we have many many languages. Babies have a universal language, they scream when their upset or hungry, gurgle when they're content and they put their arms out when they want a hug or they want something. But someone had to have invented the word dog somewhere, probably some Roman. Anyway, back to the point about Saussure. He stated that there were two sub categories of language, the signifier and the signified. An example of the signified is putting two fingers up backwards, it signifies "Up yours French" / "Up yours (in general.) So it's good that when we have the word cat as we wouldn't have to explain it constantly to everybody, "That furry, purry animal who looks cross the whole time." The word cat is thus a signifier.

How many different type of signs are there? What would you think an image was trying to describe to you if it was of a rooster crowing with a sphere or yellow and red behind it?... Would it be an icon of a rooster? Or a sunrise?

What is this, a piece of paper with a £ sign on it, a number 5, a picture on one side of a white bearded man and on the other side, a woman looking at you wearing a crown?

How many ways can you greet someone? You can shake their hand, give them a high 5, freeze frame high 5 etc, wave, say hi, bow, kiss them (whether it be their face or feet it's up to you.)

How many more can you think of?

Yes, gestures are passed on down the line as well (even though they are almost all very natural, that is we developed them before the human race truly existed.) Another word for this is kinesis/proxemics. Arbitrary relationships. Language is a cultural convention as is getting married and everything else. You think in language, you think within walls of cultural conventions, how can you ever be free? You will never be free.

Barthes

Barthes was a triamaniac (he liked the number thr33) who stated that there were three different types of analysis

Denotation - describing the signifier
Connotation - giving meanings and emotions such as, "discipline" has depressing connotations
Mythical or ideological connotation - Gender, age, employment status etc. Gender wise, whether you think someone is ugly or beautiful etc?

There are three types of signs

Icon/ic - simply nouns or images that represent the object or person they are trying to describe such as, a model, a painting or a photograph.
Index/ical - Something that has a direct relationship to something else, e.g. Bullet to Gun (the flash, the sound of the bullet come out of the gun.) You could say the same about a fire extinguisher and the carbon dioxide that comes out of i suppose.
Symbol/ic - An icon that stand up for more than just its image such as, the cross, flags, the Nike tick etc.

These bare direct relation to the signifier and the signified.

There are also five ways film is signified in according to Metz.

Visual
Music
Verbidge
Sound Effects
Graphics

Visual

Inside the screen we can see people/bodies in costume. Where would we be if we saw revlovers, hats, spurs and shirts? What about quills or huge fat computers with pixcelated screens?

Graphics

Inter titles were used consistently in silent cinema and they are now making a big come back, just not in the same way.

Sound

Foley artists, musicians etc the list goes on.

Starship Troopers

The first section of this film is chock a block with symbols, icons and indexes. The flags, the military, the multi racial implication about the military, the meteor, spacecraft map, bugs etc.

Group Work

1st Group : Using gestures connoting that it is an interrogation. The black hat suggests that the person wearing it is a criminal.

Team Verite : Three different scenes, each time the student has a different attitude to his results. 1st, tears (an indexical sign as they come from the eyes, the symbolism is sadness) and bowed head. 2nd, Loud music over the teacher (rap music) connoting disrespect.

Amir's group : "Hello" in as many different languages as possible. Waving (it could mean goodbye as well,) saying hello, writing hello and texting hello. Hi can mean that that person could have come from America as 'hi' is a more American term. Any other language would have done as well.

Imaginary Friends : Costume change reflect the gestures. The different clothing gives different characteristics. Tone, pitch and accent were changed as well as the costume.

Other Group : Space, close means they are friends, far away means the couple are more distant.

Happy Tree Fiends : Reading the medical symptoms differently each time. Three different scenes each with the same camera angles. 1st, a considerate doctor who inspects the patient. The whole sequence relies on shot reverse shot over the shoulder. This is a good convention as it hides the editing, especially those match on action shots. 2nd scene, instead of seeing a shoulder for the doctor, we see Dev's shoes on the table, it look as if Sam is talking to the shoes as we expect his head to be there. The same words are uttered "This is bad" only in a completely different way that they seem sarcastic. 3rd scene, the Guru (Dev) faces the other way so Sam is talking to his back, he has his arms up in a hypothetical Guru way and a hood over his eyes.

Film is a mixed hybrid 'impure' medium

Sound

2007-10-18T11:44:00.000+01:00

Sound

Sound and Film go hand in hand, not as Film's minion as many people initially believe. Sound deals with a different sensory organ after all. Even before sound came out in 1926, silent films were narrated with mostly orchestras playing to the film. Dubbing can change words and thus meanings and it goes without saying that the mood is changed all because of sound.

Sound can be one of the hardest techniques to study though. This is because we take in our surroundings with our vision. Sound accompanies sight as a background, so maybe it's time to get blindfolded and go around London. One person deaf and one blind would be cool. One problem with film is that we cannot screen capture sound, we can slow it down but that's it. Sound can achieve strong effects though of course yet be quite unnoticeable. Just the absence of sound can be very powerful when it is expected.

Eisenstein was the first to make a "synchronization of the senses" that made a single rhythm or image and sound. In hi film "Ivan the Terrible," Eisenstein emphasizes the loudness of the singer by cutting closer and closer to the singers mouth. This technique is also used in "The Victors" title sequence. Here, Soul Bass cuts closer to Hitler's mouth as his shouting gets louder.

"Film sound can direct our attention quite specifically within the image."

An example is "A Letter from Siberia" where the image is played thrice with different narration over the top. It goes from really upbeat to extremely negative.

Offscreen Sound

Say we hear a door creak in the diegesis, our expectation would be to see door in action in the next shot. If the door is closed in the next shot, that may be confusing. Perhaps horror movies would make good use out of offscreen sound yes? Well in every case, the soundtrack will correspond to the image on screen.

Now silence is no longer around in films, directors can use it to dramatic effect, like Film Noir using b&w when colour was available. in the context of sound, silence now takes on a new form of expression. As well as editing, sound has a huge infinite amount of possibilities.

Sound elements

Dynamics
Pitch
Texture/timbre
Rhythm
Instrumentation
Harmony
Orchestration

The three types of sound are

Music
Speech
Noise / Sound effects

Unlike our senses, microphones and lenses are non-selective. It is up to the director/artist/cinematographer to make sure the audience are drawn to what they want them to see. Sound can draw out attention, if there were two different scene going on at the same time and there was sound for only one, our attention would naturally be drawn more towards that action. It's not always the case though, it can be quite comic when a news reporter is reporting on something in the background that starts behaving very unusually, that's good because you cannot hear it. An example in film is in "Forest Gump" we hear the ping-pong ball before we see it, it then draws in our attention rather than what is happening in the background.

Combining Sounds

A really good example of multi-layered sound is in "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" at the battle of Helm's Deep. Here there are 8 layers including the music. There is a separate sound layer for the rain, about three for scuffling, dialogue, cries, etc (that's probably all.)

"The Seven Samurai" uses the soundtrack as a musical score, but very well. Most of the time the noise is made out of rain and wind sounds. There are also swords clashing, screaming wounded, battle cries and hooves. Everything slowly fades out towards the end.

But is a scream a noise, or speech? Alfred Hitchcock has exploited this in his film "Psycho" in the shower sequence (god it's like everything revolves around this one sequence bloody hell, what else happens in that film anyway?) The Violas and Violins also aid this scream to real make you wince.

Some Musical Examples out the 100,000,000 examples

In "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" Ennio Morricone uses a "Ahh ahh ahhh" motif. This comes from the very beginning where we hear a coyote bark. Sergio Leone not only got Morricone to score the music after the film, he also filmed around Morricone's music he had already composed thus reversing the filming process that music is always post-production.

In "Master and Commander" Peter Weir (director of also "The Truman Show" composed a sequence of filming around Vaughn William's "Fantasia of Thomas Tallis" as the music is very despairing because of its use of the phrygian mode. Another example of composing film around music in the middle of a film.

Character's personalities are frequently reflected in the soundtrack. A good example is in Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing," Radio Raheem is eventually deprived of his music causing a huge fight and eventually death. But throughout the whole film, Radio Raheem stood for the one track that he listened to expressing oppression in Blacks. Black music commonly represents black characters in films. Ice Cube, LL Cool J (not in Deep Blue Sea) and 50 cent all come into their films with their music. What kind of hypothetical character do you think Jimmy Hendrix, Beethoven, ZZ Top, James Taylor or Blur would represent?

Noise can have rhythm as well as editing. Pistols and machine guns have different rhythms as does a dying person's voice compared to a race track commentator. Ever heard of "Mickey Mousing"? You have now, a really good example of this is in "E.T" where E.T is walking around drunk in the kitchen, here the bassoons and lower brass play along with E.T's footsteps. This is matching the action within the screen. In the same scene where we are crosscutting between Elliot and E.T, Elliot is "Mickey Moused" as he is falling asleep, this is matched in the soundtrack with the highly pitched violins giving a portamento between two notes and glissading over a long period of time.

"Clockwork Orange" has a rape scene with Beethoven's fifth Symphony accompanying the footage. It is a miss match of music to footage. The editing also compliments the music by keeping its cuts to a minimum.

"Alexander Nevsky," the shots are slow and co-incisive up until the battle commences. Here everything becomes fiery and quick.

"Love Me Tonight," a rhythm is created by diegetic sounds such as brooms, carpet beaters, walking etc. This also happens in Steven Speilburg's "War of the Worlds" when the country is being attacked. In the car we constantly pan and tilt to different angles experiencing rhythms of brush passing objects and other cars. It all adds to the action even though it's just sound man!!

Performance

2007-10-18T11:19:00.000+01:00

Next 2 sessions : total time practicing = about 3 and 1/2 hours

Still no word from Robin Michaels but the practice keeps on. Pieces that I have been practicing are still the same as always. The Debussy is becoming ever more fluent as I am now; making sure that the bow is very close to the bridge when playing those harmonics (even though the sections where that happen is marked piano)

The Beethoven is going also really well, the fast semi quavers at the end are really becoming precise, powerful and audible. An area that is still not by any means perfect is the section just before the end, however, I am making head way with it. The problem with it is that there is nothing special about the section, it is as if it is just put in there to fill the gap between section. I am finding motivation to make the section work though, to make it stern and dynamically ranged.

Boccherini is just technically difficult. It is sounding in tune and in time though. All i need is the stamina to get through the piece and make to the end without really struggling.

Chambre Music : Is going well, all I need to do is be as independent as possible with my counting and make sure that the flurries are well practiced.

The Instrumentalists : Is all fine and dandy.

Improvisation : James and I made a recording for the improvisation homework that was absolutely amazing. We performed it the next day and it was totally different (as in shit.) That took roughly 3 hours.

Montage

2007-10-16T17:21:00.000+01:00

Montage

It literally means editing, in french anyway. It means to assemble & editing. When we say montage, it is a very vague term that can mean a lot of things. So that's my we break it down by putting words in front of it such as, intellectual, soviet and musical. We're going to concentrate on the intellectual and soviet forms of montage.

Soviet Montage is something that the Soviets experimented with in the early 20th Century (obviously.) After 1917, Lenin came into power over the Tsar. Shortly afterwards, in 1919, he create the State Film School. Why did he do this? Compared to paintings, films are hugely powerful. i don't mean to slate all you art fans but paintings can't be copied thousands of times over and be shown to millions of people simultaneously across the world. At the time, painting was the only competition film had.

This new film school was by now full of keen students who were teaching themselves technically. Nearly all of the students were theorists themselves; there was the old Kuleshov and his apprentice Pudovin and there was Dziga Vertov and Sergei Eisenstein.

Kuleshov and Pudovin were the two who experimented with narrative, whilst Dziga Vertov experimented with Soviet Montage (could be intellectual) and Eisenstein experimented with what he called Intellectual Montage.

Kuleshov stated that editing was like making a wall out of bricks. He also like the equation A +B = AB. Eisenstein said that Montage editing makes A+B = C.

So Montage is producing a composite out from fragments, i.e. pictures, texts and music. Where would you see all this? Beginning credits of a film are mostly montage, par example, The Victors beginning title sequence is an amazing example of really good use of montage.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=p9nPOMU1xml = Title sequence from "The Victors"

But where else do we see Montage? Music Videos, advertisements and sports channels. Montage can be misunderstood sometimes to be rapid editing, such as in "Rocky" where Rocky is training up. Here we jump cut to the interesting parts of his training.

Napoleon Dynamite

This film's beginning titles are a good example of montage editing.

We see a catalogue of objects to do with Secondary School. We have; junk food, plates, kiddy like drawings, a wallet with a UFO abduction insurance card in it, etc. We can tell that this film is going to be centered around youth and pop culture that come from secondary schools.

Intellectual Montage

This is the editing style where the viewer has to think about the shots. It's hard stuff if you want to relax to a decent movie. To get the meanings in "Man With a Movie Camera" (Dziga Vertov) you must watch it at least eight times apparently (ahh great.)

The great pioneer in this form of editing is Sergei Eisenstein though. Sergei liked conflict in his work. A juxtapose was always welcome with Mr Eisenstein. Analytical Editing is all about the flow of shots, Intellectual Montage is all about the collision from still to moving, from colour to B&W, from violent to soft. You could say that rather that demonstrative, Eisentstein was associative. Unlike Dziga Vertov though, Eisenstein still had narrative in his films.

Eisenstein had a cool idea though, he started including non-diegetic material into his films. Non-diegetic means that it does not come from the world that the film is set in. One example of non-diegetic material is the soundtrack. Sometimes the music can be diegetic in that it may be coming out of a stereo within the world the film exists in. But you would not have a shot of say The Eiffel Tower in Napoleon Dynamite unless Napoleon or some other character was going to Paris. 'Apocalypse Now''s diegetic world was that of Vietknam, only it was actually filmed in the Philippines. The Spagetti Westerns diegetic world was the Wild Wild West when infact they were in either Italy or somewhere near Madrid.

Eisenstein also legitimized repetition of shots that was seen before as a real bad accident. Dziga Vertov does this to the extreme in his films. Eisenstein also breaks the space and time barrier that Continuity films have. This smashed the coherence where the film existed.

Strike

This film came out on the 28th April in 1925 (within the Soviet Union.) It happens to be one of Eisenstein's first films he made, oddly as it is quite good.

the plot is that at the end of the film the factory workers who are rebelling against the big daddies are crushed by the police on horses. There is horrific violence, a small child is dropped from a huge height and dies.

There is a montage sequence when the workers are nearly all dead. We first see a knife coming down on something, then we return to the fight scene within the factory. The we cut do a random abattoir where there are cows being gutted and slaughtered horrifically. This draws the parallel between the two. The workers are being slaughtered like animals.

Eisenstein's Essay on Montage

From the book Film Theory & Criticism page 127.

Japanese Cinema has everything it needs for film making; massive corporations, good actors and stories yet it does not know what montage is. Why is this when cinematography is first and foremost montage. How strange this is as Japanese calligraphy is made up of symbols that when added together they make a new meaning. This is what montage is, putting A+B = C. For example, if you read the Guardian you will know that 'person' + 'tree' = rest and that 'person' + 'earth' = to sit down.

Hieroglyphs have been around 2700 years and have evolved from simple shapes representing real things cut out with a stylus on bamboo, to indian ink on paper. The chinese word "Ma" meaning horse, has evolved 14 times to get to its present state. It's first state looks almost exactly like a rearing horse.

In Japanese, if you have 'ear' added with

a dog = to listen
a dog and a mouth = to bark
a mouth and a bird = sing
a mouth and a child - scream

You would have thought that the Japanese and Chinese would have been amazing at Montage (this was written in 1929 remember.) These symbols combine contexts into concepts. Well, they did make Pokemon out of Pocket + Monster.

Japanese Poetry

Haiku / Hokku both coming from Haikai are forms of Japanese Poetry. It is little more than hieroglyphs transposed into phrases / ideograms.

Here is some Haiku for you.

A lonely crow

On leafless bow

One Autumn leaf BASHO

What a resplendent moon

It casts the shadow of pine boughs

Upon the mats KIKAKU

An evening breeze blows

The water ripples

Against the blue heron's legs BUSON

It is early dawn

The castle is surrounded

By the cries of wild ducks YOROKU

Yeah it's a bit confusing, i think each word in capitals means what the phrase is saying, i dunno.

The earlier 'tanka' is longer (by two lines.)

O mountain pheasent

Long are the feathers trail'st thou

On the wooded hill-side

As long the nights seem to me

On lonely couch sleep seek HITOMARO [?]

Anyway, these are montage lists. There is emotional qualities about these poems "it is the readers who make the Haiku's imperfection a perfection of art." (Yone Nobuchi.) It is uncertain whether Japanese writing is denotive/depictive, that is characters/graphics.

A series of shots placed in random places

Clutching Hands (CU)
MS of a struggle
Extreme CU of bulging eyes

These are the same as Haiku. i think that Haiku creates images in our minds though and not imposing them. This means that the brain could link all of these images to the same diegetic world. What do you think my readers?

But this is of course a disproportionate representation of an event none the less.

Ancient Times

Disproportion in images has happened since the ancient times. Say you had a stone age man drawing a king and his minions in some rock. The king would be bigger than his minions disproportionately. If something is in the distance compared with a person or object in the drawing, whatever is far away will be drawn closer to the person or object that is in the foreground.

Is it fair to say then that absolute realism is not the best way of representation? A Japanese portrait artist drew his clients faces disproportionately to the rest of their features was a man called Shakaru. They were still recognizable but they were out of proportion.

Shot Theory

A shot = a single piece of celluloid that is in a rectangle frame that depicts a segment of an event. Put together, these make a montage. This is done in a very appropriate rhythm "of course." This is the brick by brick / screw by screw way of looking at montage that Kuleshov thought was the best way.

"The shot is an element of montage. Montage is an assembly of these elements."

But this has a limit of what can be done. It's like saying that street-cars were made to be laid across a street. So what characterises shots? Is it harmony or collision? Have we gone over this before?

Kuleshov made mistakes in his last film (according to Eisenstein let's remember) by stagnating this already refined way of editing (the narrative way) in his film [The Gay Canary.]

"The shot is not an element of montage, it is a montage cell" and cells make organisms.

Pudovin (linkage) vs Eisenstein (collision.) With linkage you have narrative, but with collision arrives concepts. Conflict is the basis for every art form around, including montage. Montage is a phalanx of shots compared to the explosions of a car engine driving forward.

Cinematographical Conflicts

are

Close Shots vs Long Shots : Such as in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
Conflict of graphical directions : Such as in Psycho's shower scene
Conflict of scales
of volumes (light intensity)
of masses
of dpeths.
an object and its dimensions
an event and its duration (could be achieved with a distorted lens and stop/slow motion.)
Conflict in he sound, acoustics vs optics
A great and fascinating conflict is between the frame of a shot and its object.

Kabuki

Japanese Theatre. This art form uses makeup to show transitions between mental states e.g. drunkenness and madness. in film, this is done with lighting / makeup if you like. Kabuki also uses slow movement and breakdown in movement i.e sometimes an actor will only use an arm or a leg

But instead of looking to their language and their Haikai / haiku, the Japps make the same mistake as Kabuki. It looks to making adaptaiond og yjr spongy shapelessness of our own "inner" naturalism. It's the internation commercail film race that has done this to Japan. But Japan, this is your task, not ours [the Russians]

1929

Performance

2007-10-12T23:58:00.000+01:00

Sessions 4, 5, rehearsal and recital

Both sessions consisted of playing pieces and studies. 4 had practice of rehearsal material. 5 concentrated mainly on the pieces for the recital, that is the Debussy and the Beethoven.

Rehearsal: It went real well. We did two rehearsals, one for a quintet (which came to a quartet) and the other for the trio. We tried many different pieces that I'm sure you'll be hearing more of in the future.

The Recital went really well. Sarah Nicoles (the pianist) hadn't even rehearsed but it went damn well. Sarah has now put me onto a 'cellist at the Royal Academy named Robin Michaels who teaches at the Royal Academy.

Music Since 1900 - Populism and Politics

2007-10-10T12:04:00.001+01:00

This section is all about how musical context.

Can politicians influence your music?

Maybe not so much today, but a little while ago when you had Hitler and Stalin, they controlled the arts. Look at Shostakovich the poor guy was mullered into composing stuff that was not his thing and he became suicidal.

Let's have a look at what the conflict between England and Germany between 1914-1918 had on composers around the world. The first world war had causes cataclysmic economic and population decreases across the waring countries. And for Germany, the reparations came to a whopping £6.6 million. At the same point in history in Russia, there was a revolution where the monarchy where overthrown by Lenin and the communists.

After all this conflict, a lot of composers went down the road of fragmented melodies and the modernist sound. However, although fragmentation was modern, so was Jazz. The other huge change was the record. Now people all over the world could buy music and listen to their favorite Jazz singers.

A New and hip German composer from the 1920s by the name of Kurt Weill wrote music for orchestra under the influence from Jazz. The piece is called "Alabama Song" and it's for a wind band. The piece sounds rhythmically very unlike Jazz in that it is not swung but is very straight. His work was considered cutting edge though, as he, being German was exceedingly interested in American popular culture which at the time, was envied and respected ore than it is in the present day.

Bertolt and Brecht, two German composers who smoked classic American cigars were also up there in American culture. Their work on the opera "Mahoganny," a made up town that as obviously set somewhere in the south east of America, goes on about the one fundamental American immutable rule, to have a good time. The internationally recognizable words; Alabama, dollar, whiskey and mama are constantly used so that international audiences (their German counterparts) could understand what was vaguely going on. It is a little jazzy with an un-cha-cha cha-cha rhythm. It is bitonal throughout with floating voices contrasting against the rhythm. This was new music.

At the time this was written, the Treaty of Versailles was still affecting Germany. It was also getting the newly formed Weimar Republic down who eventually resorted to hyper inflation to cover up their lack of money. The one good way out of this depressing state where you could no longer buy anything the day after you received your money was to go out and spend it on whiskey. The poor where also constantly screwing over the rich to get by. In 1932, The National Socialist German Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) cae into power, better known as the Nazi Party.

The following year, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor. Hitler was interested in the same things as Roosevelt; roads and getting the population into employment. But he was also especially interested in the art having been a failed artist. His mission was to get rid of "Entartete Kunst" (nice word) or jewish art. It was known as degenerate art and if you were Jewish, you fell under this category. Even if you were the second cousin of a jew you were inferior. Jazz was obviously out as it was made by blacks. So when the Nazis were around, there was absolutely nothing interesting in the world of music. Both Brecht and Bertolt were doing things wrong. They both referred to Blacks in their music, Brecht was a socialist (bad) and Bertolt was Jewish (whoops.)

Copland

Good old Copland, Jewish but American.

At the age of 21, the promising Copland went to Paris to study composition with the ever famous teacher Nadia Boulanger (she taught Phillip Glass in the 60s hmm.) Having returned to America from having been taught by the Europeans, Copland's status as a composer would have risen like normal. When he arrived back in America, he carried on to write music like Stravinsky's work who was also living in Paris.

Just like in Germany, there was a money crisis and a dude to sort it out. In 1929, Wall Street crashed. There as an awful depression that made many peoples lives awful. In 1932, Roosevelt came in planning to sort out the horrific nastiness that was holding America. Roosevelt made it possible after that for artists to be payed a wage for their artistry. As of that day, photographers documented the rise of the American farms and the rise of buildings and some other things. Copland, being an artist decided he wanted to make some money out of himself. He started off working with a dance company in 1938 that painted a good picture of America. "Billy the Kid" was a big success as it specifically related to Americans.

Rodeo (1942)

This is the invention of the sound of the Wild West. High attacking brass and strings with slow and quiet woodwind. The harmony is made of strong 4 and 5 chords. Copland then becomes a populist composer creating music for his country.

Prokofiev

Prokofiev was in Paris with Stravinsky. He was always second choice to him making him a little angry. He returned to Russia when it was safer having toured Europe as a great pianist. At home, he became a communist under the influence of the Stalinist era. Prokofiev abandoned his friends in Europe and his decent ways because of the great terror. He and Shostakovich suffered (Shostakovich more as he did not necessarily comply.)

Prokofiev worked with Eisenstein (the amazing Russia director who was in battle with the awesome Dziga Vertov.) They set out to make a revolutionist populist communist film all about how great Stalin and the Soviet union was. Eisenstein made Prokofiev who he was after they worked together. The music he composed around this time was incredible. There was "Peter and the Wolf" and "Romeo and Juliet." They are both populist (would you agree?) Prokofiev is then asked to write a cantata to celebrate 20 years of Sovietness and of course the late Lenin. The music is very patriotic; big choirs, tonal, text setting, evenly rhythmic, neo-classic, with brass and percussion. It depicts extreme might and power in the Soviet Union. You would have thought it be successful but for some unknown Stalinist reason it was not shown or heard until they had all died.

Eisenstein and Prokofievs' film was all about Alexander Nevsky (1938.) Nevsky was a noble defender of the Motherland. When this came out, Stalin was rearming Russia. Stalin thought he was Alexander Nevsky. Comrade Stalin (man of steel) forced the population to watch it.

What a patriotic track; massive, tonal, huge ending, depicting great Russia. When it came out and the Russians were drunk on patriotism, the Germans signed a contract saying they would not attack Mother Russia. The when Russia sobered up, they then attacked.

America again

This music was greatly influenced by the second world war. Copland writes his famous "Lincoln Portrait" the equivalent to Nevsky. "War and Peace" came after all this (a bit of slightly irrelevant information for you there.) Lincoln was great we all know that.

Lincoln Portrait

There is a voice over the top a lot like "Baz Luhman's Sunscreen" saying that Lincoln in great. There are constant rising 5ths (a very heroic interval.) You'll here these in all of John William's film music.

Ballet Appalachian Spring

What America fights for.

It has loads of rising 5ths, rhythmically simple. The tune is augmented more and more and is also transposed. People can relate to this music easily making it kind of Populist. Yeah you got it.

On the one hand there was good music and then there was Populist music. Sorry I meant modernist music, you know i meant that.

Did you here of the burning of the Dixie Chick's music? It was a lot like Nazism only it was just very recently.

Continuity Editing

2007-10-09T20:45:00.000+01:00

What is Continuity editing?

We have now learnt that the frame is a the predominant organizational feature. Also that the shot is a basic unit of information that when proceeded by a different shot, it creates a meaning. This is called editing.

Editing

It is when one shot replaces another. It gets good when the shots relate to each other in a sequence. Borges says, "Continuity [in film] is a series of discontinuous images (fractal / partial.)

It all seems relatively simple, but it can be extraordinarily complex and abstract (as I was to find out.)

The frame organizes material in every shot. Continuity editing is needed to create flow and sense of the film.

"Rope" by Alfred Hitchcock (link at the bottom of the page) suggests that there was no edit at all in the film. There were about seven but done so cleverly that they are almost invisible. Boiling it down though, the reason there are some edits in the film is that there was not a large enough reel of celluloid that could last the length of film. This style of filming is very rare though.

Like a musical melody or language, that which has form and flow, Continuity Editing is just as imbedded into our psyche at the age when we cannot even talk. We learn language these days a lot from the television. Television is not only made out of language and ideas, it also has Continuity Editing holding the foundation.

This style of editing can be good or bad though. When it is good it effaces the transition from one shot to the next. If there wasn't a flow the audience would feel distant, alienated and confused.

Ever since we were children we could make connections between shots because of this editing style, for example, imagine one shot of a torso, then another after of someone's arm. We would make the connection between the two and come to the conclusion that they belong to the same person. Of course this is just a convention, a strategy for editing, it is easily broken.

A couple of sub categories in Continuity Editing are

Cross Cutting
Analytical Editing

Cross Cutting - Is the cutting back and forth between actions. It occurs at the same time. D.W. Griffith was a pioneer in this form of editing. Cross Cutting is no immutable rule though, it is still a flexible strategy.

Analytical Editing - This is a series of Continuity Editing transitions that follow rules and conventions. It is widely used all over the place and I bet you'll see it everywhere after i've explained what it is. However, it does not have to be simple. Some directors have perfected this form of editing to make seamless perfections in this form of editing.

First, there is an establishing shot to show the audience where they are and what time they are in. From here we go to Medium Close Ups (MCUs) of our characters greeting or just having conversations. The we proceed to Close Ups (CUs.) After we reverse. This follows dramatic logic. The most ridiculous example of milking this form of editing is Star Wars Episode 3. Not only does this film use this editing to death but it also milks it with a unique transition between space and time. A classic example is L.A. Confidential where it is done to complete perfection.

Motivation

Saying this is all fine, but the cuts need motivation. An example is a conversion, a question then an answer. You would see a character ask a question and then cut would occur to give you the answer.

Another motivation is to contract information. Imagine a character going on a plain journey. Would you want to watch him/her/it go through customs and queue up for everything? Of course not, unless that was what the film was all about. Editing comes to the rescue to contract the information.

Editing Perfections

Match on action: the action is carried out to the next shot. The 2nd shot is always slightly advanced in time allowing the action to flow and narrative to keep constant. Better still, to say that the action is a 24th of a second in front of the last shot (PAL.)

Jump Cuts: This is when time is skipped and the action carries on. A good example is "About A Boy." Hugh Grant closes up the car, we jump cut to all the vital bits so instead of being a long experience, it actually just a couple of seconds long and about 4 cuts. This keeps the flow of the film still. French New Wave film makers were pioneers in this editing style in the 70s and also Hong Kong action films have a lot of jump cuts.

Invisible Editing: Also known as Shot Reverse Shot. It came around in the 1920s as an easy and invisible way of editing a conversation between characters. It is action, then reaction. It saves time and money. A classic film that obeys this convention is "Casablanca." Throughout this film, we keep on cutting to the characters who have the most important lines or facial expressions.

Offscreen Space: Is anything offscreen. Directors always use the offscreen space as a good source for sound. Does a tree make a sound if nobody is there? Of course dammit, you must think down to earth. Everything outside the frame is still there, in horror films especially.

Diegesis: This is where the movie exists, diegetically. It means inside the screen.

The Long Take: This was developed by the incredible showman / magician Orson Wells. A man who made "Citizen Kane" and "A Touch of Evil." both of these films have Long Takes in them. This is a technique that Robert Altman uses in his film "The Player." There is a very long sequence where there are no cuts at the beginning. This is an alternative to your usual shot reverse shot.

Separation Shot: Where one person is in the shot. If it between two people having a conversation, the other person can speak off screen.

Tomb Raider:

Beginning sequence. How does this film articulate action?

Everything about is slightly advanced. Match on action cuts happen all over the place. As the action increases the cuts become faster and faster. it is all based around the convention of Continuity Editing (which I'm sure you're getting sick of now.) There is always slight movement followed by the second shot that finishes the action that is stated in the previous shot (this is called match on action btw.)

Eye Line Match - First shot - Eyes look at something --- Second shot - The thing we've just been told to look at. We obviously make the connection. What's cool though is that we do not need to have a first person point of view to know what we're looking at. This happens most of the time, however, there are examples of where this fails. One is in "The Deer Hunter" where we see Robert DeNiro look at someone, we just don't know who he's looking at until we get a confusing close up of two women one after the other.

Nosferatu

In a scene where our heroin Nina makes a psychological connection to Orlok as he prepares to devour Hutter.

We see Nina cry out to stage left for Hutter (I think.) Orlok looks back. It seems as if they are communicating but they are hundreds of miles away. We, the audience, seem to understand that the two have a connection though even though they communicate across miles of land.

Graphic Match - What graphics is really; line, shape, colour, graphics, space, style, figures, etc. There are obviously examples from literature, one being from "Wuthering Heights." but we now look to "Psycho" by Alfred Hitchcock.

Psycho

The beginning titles were designed by Soul Bass (the legend in graphic design.) the main them is horizontal and vertical lines that are evenly spaced and also circles. The shower scene contains many horizontals, verticals and of course circles that is, the plug hole, the shower head and the eye. It also contains a lot of diagonals. You can see these from the shower head and the wall behind. As the killer attacks with a knife diagonally, you could say that we could possibly predict that our lady in the shower is going to get stabbed. The diagonals are anti-graphic matches, they predict things, like a palm reader only real. A really good graphical match in this scene though is the whirling plug hole to the whirling eye. Both are spherical and whirling. A totally amazing graphic match and a match on action shot. Hmm, combinations work too.

That's all for today, see you next time

http://66stage.com/moviesplay.php?url=1333994 : Rope URL

http://tv-links.co.uk/video/4/7538/12200/74244/104216 : Tomb Raider URL

Principles of pracice - sessions 2 and 3

2007-10-09T20:31:00.000+01:00

Session 2

2 hours of practice mainly on Popper Studies no. 1, 4 and predominantly 6. Practiced all 3 pieces also. Finished because i was knackered and starving hungry.

What was good was having a piano to practice No. 6 on as i had not heard it before. It is strangely similar to Beethoven's moonlight sonata in that they both use triplets to give harmonic arpeggios. The reason Popper has composed this for 'cello is because, if a 'cello is to give harmony it can do it most easily by playing arpeggios rather than blocked chords.

Session 3

An hour and a half of practice on our new piece we've been learning in chamber music. But also considerably on Popper No. 6 and touching on No. 4. I finished no. 1 with a good sound.

Chamber Music

We practiced three different pieces for piano, clarinet and 'cello. We also tried some more jazzy pieces with an additional clarinet. It was all good, only that I need to practice with a metronome and to also pay attention to intonation. What is also important is by keeping a consistent sustain with the sound and not delay or release the sound quickly. Vibrato is also high on the agenda on getting right.

Mise-en-scene

2007-10-04T22:27:00.000+01:00

There is one fundamental question when considering mise-en-scene. What is in the frame?

Mise-en-scene is the director's vision of a setup of a production set / a preferred real location.

Setting - This is the studio / location of the production. A decent visual impact always derives from the setting.
Lighting
Props
Costumes
Figures - that is actors and animals / robots etc.

All in all, these are the elements of visual composition and "motivation (apparently.)" This idea comes from the book "Film Art" by Bordwell & Thompson.

Directors such as Orson Wells, Martin Scorsesse and Tim Burton (millions more) use different mise-en-scene to their desired artistic nature. The directors who come under the totalitarian director (if you want to call them that) are called the "auteurs."

Hollywood:

During the 1920s - 40s, everything was filmed in a studio. If a film was set in the Austrian mountains for example, there would be a scene painter who'd come in and paint the austrian mountains on set. One blatant example I can think of is "Henry V (1944) with Laurence Olivier." If you see it, you'll know what I mean.

The rudimentary cause for this constant studio work was because of technology. "Rebel without a Cause" was one of the first films to be set in an outdoor real location, the death scene in Griffith Park at the end of the movie.

Lighting

Orwell's motivation in lighting is to project a certain meaning with it every time. There are of course many different ways to light a set and it's characters. The main split between the styles is between

Realistic lighting
Expressionist lighting

Down from there you have

Hard lighting
Soft lighting

The hard lighting gives a very crisp composition of a character whilst hitting with strong shadows. A romantic comedy would not use this kind though, it would prefer to use soft lighting. This type gives a soft and diffused look that is more right for picturing contentment and not conflict.

A typical way to light a Hollywood set would be what i called "3 point lighting." example bellow

^ <----- back light

/ \

:-) <------ actor >>- <----- key light

| / |_| <------ camera

V <------ fill light

I'm sorry if that doesn't make any sense to you.

Film Noir: 1930s - 50s was always shot in b/w. The great thing about Film Noir is that b/w was used instead of colour. The lighting is amazingly different to the "3 point setup" that is always used as a convention in Hollywood. Film Noir would light only the back light, get rid of the fill light and only have the starch key light. Chiascuro was a complete classic in Film Noir.

Another amazing thing that helped Film Noir was technology. Good old Technology came in and granted directors such as Orson Wells the chance to come out of the studio and film outdoors in the dark streets of L.A. All of a sudden the real world was portrayed in it's post-second-world-war reality, a dark and dangerous place.

Props

The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) has one brilliant prop that the entire narrative revolves around. This is the one ring (to rule them all, bind them etc.) But props such as cigarettes are used constantly. Generally, anything that goes in someone's hand is a prop that works well, such as, the one and only... gun. Quentin Tarrantino not only uses guns in his films, but also shades. This adds a coolness to the character. In the film "Casino" Scorsesse dresses Robert DeNiro in Armanni suits to make him look the part of a rich Casino owning cheese.

Costumes

It can either be authenticity you're after (realism,) or expressionism. "Dances with Wolves" was the first film about native Americans that aimed to be really authentic. All films prior to it had just added all the hypothetical West Indian stereotypes together to make an amalgamation of all the different American tribes. Gladiator aimed to be authentic as well. A recent film that has triumphed with expressionism over realism though is the mega-blockbuster "300." Here the film was based entirely on a comic book rather than the historical accuracy of Sparta and ancient Greece. Well, the sky was a golden yellow throughout the whole film, there was no blue until the narrative took us into darkness.

Figures and camera

Actors have a certain rhythm on screen that directors have exploited (I cannot give an example at this stage as I do not fully understand it.) Bur having a crowded and busy mise-en-scene is good for let's say, hospital and war films/dramas. "E.R." exploited this to the max by having multiple crashing entries of doctors through doors carrying patients in a chaotic manner. Films such as "Saving Private Ryan" were very powerful when using and not using crowded mise-en-scene. The example I'm thinking of is when Tom Hanks's character falls to the floor in the beginning war scene. The crowds of soldiers suddenly disappear as quickly as they had come.

"Citizen Kane" was the first film to experiment with crowded foregrounds and backgrounds. Robert Altman was influenced by the pioneering Orson Wells and therefore used multiple layers of action in his films to make things look busy. But it could be simple, let's have less action shall we (for some films anyway.)

Having a widescreen compared to the narrow or normal screen adds a completely different emotional effect. Say you had a guy gazing into space shot directly from the side, would you, if you had a widescreen, shoot the man in the centre of the screen or to far side? It was depends how close you are to the character and whether that character is starring into space or is talking to someone. Everything concerns the frame at all time, but these emotional effects can create all different types of meaning.

In the silent era, the styles of acting were obviously very different as there was no sound. This meant actors had to use gestures more than if there were words coming out of their mouths. Like the theatre, but as this is film and we can get close up shots, you would have gestures that were never seen before such as the subtle wink. The modern day version of this extreme gestures actor is Jim Carrey who's acting style is very, very different to that of say Kiera Knightly.

Dances With Wolves

An analysis of a part of the film where Kevin Costner's character is given a buffalo hide for warmth.

The Native Americans are pictured in and amongst their landscape, unlike Kevin's character. This makes them look like they belong to the land. Also, the Natives are pictured in the foreground as well as the background to fill the space they're in, but to also connote that they are weary of this strange cowboy. To make the scenery beautiful, the lighting is that of the "Golden Hour." That is at sunset or sunrise.

Paris, Texas (1984)

A film by the German director Wim Wenders who looks upon America with fresh European eyes.

This is a single five minute scene where Travis walks off and is then pursued by his brother and then talked to.

Setting - Landscape : The dessert, vast and enornmous. The train track Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) is walking on is pictured in a still at an angle. This makes it seem as if Travis does not know where it is that he is going. If the track was seen disappearing into the horizon, we'd get the impression that Travis is determined and that he doe know where he is going. The train track's presence still adds depth to the picture though. The scene proceeds to a Motel after experiencing the classic American road. When the characters are in the American diner, Travis is yet again framed with the frame. There are more examples of this framing with a frame before hand that involve doorways and mirrors. A classic shot of mirror being used to frame a character within a frame is "(a film with the word clementine in it but i can't say, it's film noir)." This clostaphobicness is pictures when Travis is framed through the diner window surrounded by adverts for food. Travis has a distinct problem with American society.
Lighting - At twilight on the road the dark clouds take up as much room in the frame as does the wide drizzly American road. Wender has used lighting in a realistic sense in that none of the scenes are artificially backlit. When in the diner, the car head lights count for the key light.
Costume - Travis is dressed like a tramp (beard etc) and then he gets dressed into your usual Texan clothing (tash and baseball cap,) his brother has at least had his haircut.
Props - a cigarette is used like a gun in a film, to point. It is also used very confidently.

Fatal Attraction

There are constant silhouettes, a lot of frames within the frames and back lighting. These are all classic examples of what makes a thriller. Sometimes the mise-en-scene is so imposing it gives the impression of entrapment.

Stay tuned for the next batch of blogging, I am now very tired and I would carry on, if I could.

Musicianship : Rhythm (Riddem if you're hip and down with it)

2007-10-03T16:04:00.000+01:00

Beat
Pulse
Flow
Time
Style
Syncopation

Are all different words we associate with rhythm. Polyrhythm etc. But to make an interesting rhythm, there are a few ways. You can make a rhythm by dividing, say a semi-breve into minims, crotchets, semi-quavers, demi-semi-quavers, hemi-demi-semi-quavers and so on. Now you have cool sounding beat that sounds whack. You do it the other way also, you get your hemi-demi-semi-quavers and you simplify them.

Time

There are two (or more) types of ...time...

Simple time
Compound time

Simple time is simple. All it is is a rhythm split into even beats e.g. 4/4, 2/2, 2/4 etc etc.

Compound time is a little different. The only difference is that there are three beats instead of two. This makes compound full of dotted crotchets and triplets. An example of compound time in modernish music is "Sweet Baby James" by James Taylor. Some earlier Rock and Roll is compound also.

Additive

Additive rhythm is where beats are added to add a little extra coolness / edge to a rhythm. A lot of twentieth century music has additive rhythm, but it has actually been around for more than a thousand years. The African tribe "Aka" have traditionally used additive rhythms in their music for millennia. A musicologist analyzed the "Aka Timelines" to find that the two bar ostinatos made up an even number of beats. The bars are split into 11 and 13 beats adding to 24.

Examples of additive rhythm would be "Pictures at an Exhibition - Promenade" by Mussorgsky. Here the trumpet melody starts in a 5/4 time signature for one bar. It then proceeds to have a bar in 6/4 after. Another good example is from a concerto by Bartok. It is called the "Concerto for Orchestra 4th mvt". At bar 42 we have an 8 bar melody that has a different time signature at the beginning of every single bar. This is just to show how rhythms were really explored during the 20th Century. The time signatures may be very complex, but the weaving melody and hypothetical note lengths make it seem not as adventurous as it did when first looked at. Bartok probably did this as the music would have been too complicated for a performer to sight read let's say.

Musical Performance Blog

2007-10-02T17:23:00.001+01:00

Yo guys, this is the first of many blog entries that contains boring information you do not want to read.

It is all about how much practice I'm doing and how well it's going. It vital i do this for my degree.

Today:

I warmed up for 10 mins quickly practicing Popper Studies no. 1. After that I did an hours rehearsal with Sally Goodworth (piano) and a 3rd year Clarinetist Donna.

The piece we're playing is called Trio Pathetique by Michael Glinka. This went really well, all except when I had triplets. I need to know how to do these lovely flourishes (I suppose.) The really good parts were the long flowing notes. Here the tuning was fine and the tone was good. The only thing that could have improved was the vibrato.

We practiced the first movement (Allegro Moderato) and the last (only a little as it is in 3/2.)

So yeah, there you go. Btw, this is for my benefit, i've gotta do this a lot so beware. I'll find a way or archiving the posts so you can concentrate on the interesting film studies.

The Interview

2007-10-01T23:30:00.000+01:00

The Inter view

Television interviews: The television interview is a form of media that can, if used differently, can project different meanings and styles. An example of this would be "Vox Pops."

What does interview mean? Inter = between two or more parties. View = opinions / something we think about / our view on something.

You could say that interviews are used to make discussion between the journalist and the interviewee. But there are other interviews, one being the job interview. There are ways to which we approach the "job interview." We spouse up, get nervous. They are a test in which you have to sell yourself. Another type of interview is say, a "psychology project" where the human is tested.

The interview is easy to do when you think of portability and immediacy. If you have a video camera you can go out now and interview any random people off the street if you like. Your Mediation is controlled by what technology you possess (dictated.) Whether you have a mic with you etc, or a huge video camera that might distract the interviewee. If you have a studio, obviously everyone on the other side of the camera is going to receive makeup and the interviewer's questions way before the interview begins. If you ever think that an interview on a

chat show
news program
documentary

is spontaneous, you are very wrong. Watch programs such as T4, advertisements, Parkinson and Jonathan Ross. All of these are carefully constructed programs.

There has recently been a 30 year anniversary for the famous David Frost interview of Nixon. It was done in a "Formal, set-piece" style. The interview reveled a lot about Nixon that should not have come out. That's maybe why politicians mostly refuse to go on programs such as Jonathan Ross or Parkinson. Gordon Brown would not be seen in the bath in an interview, but he would be either on Newsnight in a comfy chair wearing suit. Another instance where you would see Brown is in a crowd of people dressed casually. Here he looks as if he is part of the crowd and not just a stiff in a suit.

Parkinson is

Apparently boring
Sycophantic (he kisses arse)

This style of a formal chat show, with nothing particularly interesting being talked about has slowly been replaced. Instead of suited up people sitting and talking, you have shows such as Big Brother's Big Mouth and Jonathan Ross.

BBBM has Russell Brand standing up with a long microphone, chatting to people all over the place. In the audience and the group of people in the centre. He never sits down though (unlike Parkinson.) Jonathan Ross's interviews are always flipped round. Ross makes himself look like the more talented one most of the time. It is also very funny.

"The Kumars"

What a crazy style of interviewing. You have a celebrity walk though the front door of the flat to sit down in a domestic environment.

Alfred Hitchcock created his own interview persona when being interviewed (that he obviously orchestrated himself, entirely.) He was the first to make his own character outside his films as a director.

In the interview on "Rebecca" nothing was spontaneous (even though it may seem that way.) His persona was based around the freakish way he looked. He puts himself in a couple of forced positions in the interview, example, at the beginning of the interview Alfred is seen doing up his tie in the mirror to obtain his character. But how many cameras were being used in this interview?

Probably two, maybe three.

You are completely wrong, there was only ever one. The reason you think two is that there must have been one for the journalist. Nope, infact, once the interview had been "completed" the journalist and the crew would stay behind whilst Alfred left. Here they would shoot the shots of the journalist asking the questions and of the journalist nodding away (as if he is listening.) But these interviews are shot on celluloid, which is a tad bit expensive, so nothing is wasted.

More interviews

The different types of interview you have these days are

Spoof
Vox Pops
Vox Populi

Does Ali G exist? No, it iis his persona. Yet his interviews are very in depth and very honest. Having his persona gets a more truthful answer as he can relate as being on the outside of normal journalism. It is a lot more powerful than news reporting in some ways.

In the interview about Religion Ali G sits leaders of different religious groups on cow hide sofas with a massive graffiti tag on the wall. The thing is though, these interviewees give him credit for it, they believe that he is genuine. Unfortunately, it is very unlikely he can ever do it again as he is internationally known as Ali G (and now Borat.) His larger than life persona makes the subject matter less serious and far easier to talk about.

Vox Pops

Are various public opinions put together to make a voice of the people. It is a convention none the less. Vox Pops are normally part of a large news story and it is always, that the interviewer is kept off the screen (a bit like my film on Mumm-ra. myspace.com/abolla.) Even though it is not Vox Pop, you can still see that there is no interviewer on screen at any interview time.

But, here's the really cool thing about Vox Pops that will blow your mind.

How about, you ask a question at the beginning of the interview "What do the students at Brunel think of the gay community?" let's say. Then, instead of asking the students at Brunel that fundamental question, you ask "What do you think of the gang members you recently tortured a family's pets to get at the family?". You take the question, and then you take the students' answer. A very homophobic community i think, no not really. But Vox Pops have been exploited in this way many a time before, sometimes a little more subtle. Vox Pops are spontaneous, "Tell me what you think of...?" The interviewee does not have too much time to think about a question such as that, so they immediately answer.

Well there you have it, how to construct opinion.

url for Ali G interview http://youtube.com/watch?v=9goLXFJzSik

Technology bootcamp

2007-09-27T13:14:00.000+01:00

Apple is amazing, Windows is universally know as rubbish. Probably Apple as well if you think about aliens as that shiz.

Follow this link to get to the lecture notes.

http://arts.brunel.ac.uk/uploads/techBootCamp07.pdf

there you go. check it out

Film Styles

2007-09-27T11:41:00.000+01:00

Today, we are going to be concentrating on the genre of film.

Genre:

for example, horror, western, comedy, action, thriller, etc.

In the 30s, people identified genre. Nowadays, a film is marketed by what genre it is, lines you will recognize are things like, "The Most TERRIFYING/funny/romantic/explosive/realistic thing you will ever see...." etc. Hollywood responds to the box office hits that audiences make. "Dancing with Wolves and "Brokeback Mountain" saw the return of the Western (slightly.) There is a Western coming out with Christian Bail in it very soon. And also, have you noticed how many "Superhero" movies there have suddenly come out? The list is endless. "Superhero" movies are a good chance for franchise and are very stunning with the use of CGI (now used all of the time.)

Iconography

If you saw a Western that did not include say, cowboy hats, revolvers, massive shoot 'em ups, desert landscapes and horses, wouldn't you feel a little cheated? These are examples of the iconography that goes with films like spandex suits and super heros. Iconography can depict a genre just from a still image. A desert landscape with Clint Eastwood in a big hat with a horse is going to make the film a hypothetical Western. "Film Noir"'s iconography includes high contrast lighting, cigarette smoke, police detectives in hats and guns. But that's not to say that genres stay the same.

Social Context

It is the social context that reflects in the films that we see. The film tells us about the world we live in and the time it was made and the opinions of the people who live at the time it was made. "Dancing with Wolves" is a good example. The 80s brought around the heroism in American men and the victim persona of Native Indians. All films not only refer to the time they were made, but also previous films. A seriously good example of this is "Nosferatu (1922 F.W. Murnau)" Watch a vampire that came after 'Nosferatu' and you will see a vampire/ghoul/character rise out of a coffin like they would on a plank. This is a reference to Murnau's film 'Nosferatu'.

A war film that was made at the time of the Vietnam war about the Vietnam war was "The Green Berets (1968)". The ending turns the liberal stock character into a pro-war soldier. The Americans are seen as a holy and heroic unit. John Wayne's character as the chief is a tough but fair persona. It is also about the Americans doing what is right to save Vietnam from the sadistic and purely evil Vietcong. It is absolute evil vs absolute good.

However, if you look at the film "Platoon (Oliver Stone 1986)" you will find a very different ending. INstead of the Americans working together to save orphaned children, they kill each other and cowardly stab themselves in the leg so as they are not perceived as cowardly. The whole film deals with racism in the American army and the bad commandment and bad morale. This is a revisionary film in that the views of the Vietnamese war had dramatically changed since 1968. However, "Platoon" ends with a narration about the loyalty and bravery of the casual grunt. This is more uplifting and more like "The Green Berets" than if Oliver Stone had carried on with the disturbia he had created in the film.

Hybrid Genres Movies

Aliens - a horror/sci-fi film.

Aliens was fresh as it combined the genres together making it more open to horror and sci-fi fans alone. In the present day, most films are revisionist and hybrid, unlike the old days (apparently.)

Crime Films

/ Police Procedure / Gangster / Detective /

These are the sub genres of the notorious "Crime" films. But how do they differentiate from age to age of the film industry. In both "Scarface, Howard Hawkes (1932)" and "The Untouchables, Brian de Palma (1986)" both deal with the Chicago gang-lord Al Capone.

The way they deal with females though is very different. In the scene were Scarface is given a Tommy gun for the first time, he goes wild killing many people with it in drive bys. But it is the female character (Femme Fatale) who

Hands him the gun
Smiles when he shoots the wall to bits
Who tries to be part of the gang and more manly

in "The Untouchables" the female

Is seen in the kitchen
With a huge smile
Wearing a dress
Looking up to the man of the house

They are very different. "The Untouchables" has a far more cliche outlook on women, but handing Scarface a gun is like handing him candy.

Al Capone's power is displayed brilliantly in the first scene. Even though he is lying down and all the reporters around him are standing up he is the powerful one. The cinematography shoots him from above so on the screen, he is looking down at everyone, secondly, the shot is a Close Up. People all around him are cleaning his nails, his shoes and his face. Everybody goes silent when his barber accidently cuts his face and then laughs when he makes a slight joke.

Kevin Kosner's character has no power compared to Al Capone (Robert DeNiro) because, even though he is dealing with the same reporters, they mock him and blind him with flash lights.

That's all on that for today.

The camcorder/camera

2007-09-25T12:38:00.000+01:00

The Camera/camcorder

The JVC we use is very portable and lightweight. Only one person needs to be there to work it. The tape can be re-used and it requires no processing.

Shooting Modes

Automatic - auto focus
Manual - greater creative control. You can vary the focus and keep it pristine.
Menu - range of effects, transitions usually achieved in the post production.

The Plastic or Pro - Filmic material - When we look through a viewfinder or at a display screen we select or filter from all that is possible to film. This material is then ordered and arranged within a rectangular FRAME. The FRAME is the predominant organiser

Box

Camcorder
2 x battery
Cleaning tape
Foot
Output cables etc

The cool thing about these cameras is

Unlike 35 mm celluloid cameras, they don't cost £500,000
they are not massive needing a a few people to work them.
They are not as distracting as celluloid cameras

The first cameras to come out that were not celluloid were Super 8 camcorders. This was the 50s so a tape could only hold 3 minutes of film and have no sound. This can be a good though, have you ever had to sit through the 40 - 60 minute family video of a child's birthday or wedding? Apparently it's unbearable. So, we are going to take our time in composing shots with a lot of thought and not just run around with the thing shooting whatever we want.

JVC camera

You should notice that there is a dial on the side of the camcorder. It will say,

Play
Automatic
Manual
Off

Only use manual because automatic uses a chip in the camera to constantly adjust the zoom. That is not good as the camera constantly goes out of focus when you move it around adjusting itself afterwards. Instead, plan the shot with manual. This will make it never go out of focus unless you want it to.

Instead of using the LCD screen for finding the shot, use the viewfinder. This is far more accurate than the LCD because the LCD sometimes cuts parts out of the shot.

The Frame

Why is it rectangular? I think it is because the first film made of workers exiting a factory was maybe intending to be a moving landscape painting. Landscapes are that way as it has become a convention. It is strange how we organize everything in the frame to this convention of a rectangle. Frames within the frame are like door frames, windows or buildings. Some directors get obsessed with frames inside the frame. You should be able to notice frames within the frame from now on.

Diagonal shapes in the frame crete a nasty feel you could say as these shapes go against the frame. Someone who does this is Tim Burton or the German Expressionists i.e. Dr. Caligari.

Horizontals in films create balance i.e. a horizon. Verticals can split up parts of the frame. An example of breaking frames would be in the original Halloween where the bad guy breaks from behind a corner. Horror films have characters breaking into the shot from every angle imaginable; above, bottom, side, behind, in front, etc.

When you make a film, use pans and tilts sparing and if you do, you must practice them before hand like you would practice the 'cello yeah?

Music from 1900

2007-09-24T19:21:00.000+01:00

Since recording has been around for only the 20th century, music that came before it has been reinvented to fit the recording. That mean, that all music, is contemporary.

Musicians have always taken previous ideas and then reinvented them. An example of reinvention would be the wheel. It was once realized that if you put an axle through a round object it would make a wheel. Thus came around the bicycle and then the motorbike. From the ipod, there first was the walkman, the tape recorder, Thomas Edison and before that; score writingin 1200. It is the same with music, where do you think the latest band has come from musically?

Musical Form

Musical forms are normally known to be things like ternary, binary, sonata and things like rondo. But these were not just invented. Sonata form came from Mozart and Haydn who spent many years perfecting this form. Musical forms are beyond Rondo, they spread to the orchestra or the piano, guitar.

Listening to Music

When listening to a piece of music, think to yourself, what am I listening to? What/How many instruments are playing? What do the different harmonies, tone colours conjure up. What musicians must remember, is that music is never wrong. Unlike subjects like Architecture where if your building suddenly collapses, it is because you, the architect, made a mistake. Not with music. Music belongs to every culture and its' musicians recognize music from other cultures. in the end, it is about your ears. The wider your response, the better.

Piece No. 1: Stravinsky, Symphony of Psalms.

Solume, high pitch oboe with large intervals. There is no clear tonal centre; C, Eb and B are the first 3 notes. You could say that Stravinsky has displaced the G from the C minor chord and in its stead he has put the leading note B in. The interval between Eb and G is a very weird one, this gives the music no real tonal centre. Then a solitary flute comes in fugally playing the same melody a 5th down. You can tell because of the intervals posed by C, Eb and B. This is also called canon, however, the canon does not stay because the flutes eventually pair up the give harmonies. A 3rd flute enters and exits the oboe.

AND THEN

A massive choir obliterate the 'Baroque' ensemble with their huge orchestration. Other choir parts enter fugally eventually pairing up with the other voices. This is called a 'double fugue.' The rest of the orchestra then also enter.

The thing about this piece and how it takes you by surprise is that you are not watching it. If you were, then you would see the choir. But, from the style of Bach to the new modern orchestra is quite a leap.

Piece 2 : Anton Webern (1883 - 1945) Variations for Orchestra, op. 30 (1940)

'Cello line to begin with
Serialist
No Tonal Centre
Fragmented Melody
A large Orchestra

'...The copy of variations is ready... It doesn't look like a score from before Wagner either - Beethoven, for instance, nor does it look like Bach... But it should still be possible to find certain similarity with the type of presentation that occurs in the Netherlanders... [it] doesn't reject the development that came then, but tries on the contrary to continue it into the future, and doesn't aim to return to the past. What kind of style then? I believe again, a new one.' 1960 'The path to the New Music, London: universal Edition, 61.

Webern always looked back to the old stuff, to get away from it.

Piece 3: Miles Davis (1926 - 91) 'Tout de suite' 68

The piece changes it's texture and tempo unlike conventional jazz. To begin with, the bass plays a walking bass line to keep the harmony and rhythm as that is what a rhythm section does in a jazz band. The bass is electric however, a move on from the upright bass and moving into rock. The other major difference about jazz and this piece of music is that this is recorded on a CD and jazz is normally improvised. Miles Davis gave his musicians their pieces about an hour before hand to learn so that the sound is more relaxed and thought of from the top of the head more. Chick Corea plays the Fender Rose here as does Miles Davis plays the Trumpet.

Miles Davis always wanted his music to move on; "... On live gigs, when there was a Steinway grand piano available, Chick Corea would try to sneak it in somewhere, but Miles would stop him saying, ' The piano is over. It's an old-fashioned instrument. I don't want to hear it any more. It belongs to Beethoven. it's not a contemporary instrument..."

What Miles says is total bollocks, but from him saying that, we can see just how much he wanted his music to move on.

Piece 4 : Stockhausen, Karlheize (b.1928). Kontakte (contact) (1958-60)

The pieces title, contact, communicates that there is contact within this piece to other mediums. The instrumentation is Piano and percussion, well at least that's the live musicians. The rest of the sound, is tape recorders and 1950s specials effects. It took about 18 months to make the tape is a lecture sized room full of computers and men in white coats. Nowadays, all is available on a MacBook.

If the piece was a film, we would have conventional characters / forms i.e. people, trying to make contact with a new, fast, futuristic life form. But unfortunately, the thing that dates faster than anything else is a culture's vision of the future. Paul Griffiths states some big things about this piece, stating that is revolutionary etc. That was then, this is now, he spoke too soon.

FM 1000 Lecture 1

2007-09-24T14:39:00.000+01:00

The Cinema:

The first ever film to be made was a documentary in 1894 of workers walking out of a factory. Alfred Hitchcock, a master of the cinema made over 70 feature length films in his time, the last being over 30 years ago.

Where have you come from?

What kind of films would you like to make?

What is Cinema for?

It could be to document

entertain

provoke thought

How do you make a film?

Cinematography

Editing

Mise-en-scene

Music/soundtrack

Lighting

Cinema

Budget

Audience

Production Process

Industry

Theory

The course you are doing is very hands on

there will be workshops
shooting
editing

be prepared!

You could become a Tarantino, a great imitator.

Group Work

3-4 people - different roles every time

Books

You must read the reading list

Cook, The Cinema Book (2nd edition) London BFI, 1999: pp. 45-47
Elsey, In Short: a Guide to Short Film-making in the Digital Age London: BFI, 2002.
Grahame, 'The Production Process' (chapter 7) in David Lusted (ed) 'The media Studies Book' London: Routledge, 1991.
Wayne, Mike 'Theory and Practice' and 'Between Art and Cinema'
in 'Theorising Video Practice' london: Lawrence & Wishart, 1997. (chapters 1 and 2)
Winston 'Necesseties and Constraints: a Pattern of Technological Change' in Robert Stam and Toby Miller (eds) Film and Theory: an Anthology: pp. 102-110. [Also avaliable in Winston, Brian 'Technologies of Seeing: Photography, Cinematography and Television' London: BFI, 1996]

You could purchase

Film Art
The Cinema Book
Theorising Video Practice

They're very important!

We will learn the Conventions of cinema, i.e. a pop song or a blockbuster movie

The first assessment is marked on how you assess your own work.

The second assessment is your storyboard and how well you do that

60% is your creative input
40% is how you assess your own work / theoretical components.

Conventions

Conventions such as stories, genres, continuity editing (1 type of editing.)

We are going to deconstruct all of these elements and criticize them.

Are you represented in the media world enough? Do you think you ought to be?

What different ways are there of shooting picture and sound?

You must use your critical thinking!