In the back of the building in Jewry Street takes place on my fourth and final lesson of this semester Production Management. The aim of these lectures is to illustrate how it works and what does the figure of the producer in film and television teaching the basics of copyright and of all the bureaucracy behind the production and distribution.
The first lesson was only the introductory: The teacher has just read to illustrate our timetable and explain in brief leaders will take place as the semester. Despite the departure of quiet, threatens to be a very demanding teaching, because my final grade depends on a single, large coursework, while all others will always include at least two.
To close on the lesson, our teacher showed us the first ten minutes of Living in Oblivion, a little-known film with Steve Buscemi who talks about the misadventures of a crew committed to achieving a low film budget. The professor said that his intention was to make us think about what role a producer within a crew of this type (in the film producer is the blond girl who constantly screams into walkie talkie), but I think his real goal was to take us seriously if we are to continue working in this field.
Click here for the trailer Living in Oblivion. In Italy came out with the title in Oblivion.
the teachings of the second half, this is definitely what I was expecting most of all. In Basic scriptwriting we will taught how to draft a screenplay for television and cinema, both as regards the technical aspect with regard to the content and style of narration. The teacher is the same Design for the Moving Image, and get it back in the chair is a pleasure for pleasure because his work exudes from every word. For this module I are required coursework two: one is the adaptation of The Swim Team, a tale of five pages of Miranda July, while the other is the creation of an original treatment, or to a detailed synopsis for a short period of fifteen minutes.
As Frank McCourt said in his Hey, Teacher! , when someone writes in America even the telephone directory is only a matter of time before someone else asks him when did he make a movie. The Swim Team has been adjusted just last year in a short film.
Today's lesson, as well as introduce the teaching itself, was focused on identifying the structure and the type of a story. As we all know already, a story follows well-defined structures:
- Expectation (Expected): characters and environments are introduced - Development (D): the characters decide to do something - Complications (Complication): an obstacle complicates the mission - Climax: the characters face the obstacle at a key moment - Resolution (Resolution): an order is established or re-established
What is less intuitive but is that when you write a good story should always take into account the presence of this structure to respect and use it. A viewer needs the characters to be introduced before they are put into action, but a narrator may also decide to advance action on presentations to make the story more exciting.
An example of a film that upsets the narrative structure is standard Pulp Fiction, where the beginning is the end. In fact, even in this circular structure characters are introduced to the audience before inserting them in the action itself, just that Tarantino decided to start from a point a little 'different. The same can be said for Memento by Christopher Nolan.
With regard to the types, the matter is very simple: there are only seven stories, the usual seven stories that are told all the time the dawn of time. To put it this way is a bit 'depressing, so let's say there are seven archetypes, like the seven musical notes, are only a limited number of starting points to build an infinite number of different stories.
- Achilles The story revolves around an almost invincible hero, but has a fatal weakness. Characters that reflect this pattern are, for example, Dracula and Superman.
- Cinderella The main character tries desperately to achieve his dream, most likely to improve its social and economic status. Examples of this archetype are The Pursuit of Happyness and every damn movie Rocky .
- The Chase The main characters must complete a specific objective. It differs dall'archetipo Cinderella of the fact that the characters do not necessarily need to improve themselves or their status in order to achieve the goal. Obvious examples for this pattern are sacrosanct every fantasy film, do vobis.
- Faust The main character makes a choice that led him to obtain immediate benefits, but serious problems in the long term. An example of this archetype is The Godfather.
- Orpheus The main character has suffered a great loss, and seeks to bridge this gap is equivalent to looking for something or seeking revenge. An easy example is Kill Bill .
- Romeo and Juliet The story revolves around the impossible love of the two main characters, although there is not necessarily a bitter end. An example of this archetype is Titanic, but also Brokeback Mountain .
- Tristan The main character is attracted to two different people, but is forced to choose one. Two Italian examples for this pattern are The Last Kiss and Renato Zero . Even though my teacher is not entirely convinced, I like to think that under this type can be made to include also those stories where the protagonist is not so much attracted by two people, as two different ideals. I think such a Bertolucci's Novecento, where Jerard Depardieu plays a peasant Emiliano undecided whether to remain loyal to his friend or master adhere completely to the communist ideals.
These are the seven archetypes, others do not exist. Every story adheres to one of these types and reinvented, often in conjunction with: Star Wars example is a combination of "Cinderella" with "The Chase" and Scarface of "Cinderella" with the 'Achilles'. One of my classmate has found a film that includes all seven archetypes in Dragon Heart . Mine has occurred Lost .
Basic Introduction to Film & Introductory Factual Production
Monday classes started again at London Met, and my course again to the great purpose in the first two days of the week classes for three hours, one after another. It must be the punishment for having enjoyed loosely on Wednesday and Thursday last semester free.
Introduction to Film is held by the same teacher Media Methodologies, and unlike other courses not designed to make us learn any trade specifically, but rather to develop our ability to observe and analyze the film. It is a type of detailed analysis that affects only the experts, so that the type of work we do is in no way comparable to writing reviews. But is very close to what I intend to do on this blog, so it happens to bean!
Bean
The first lesson was very introductory, as customary. Our teacher gave us reassures us that the course will get us to hate the film, but to do well in the course we really love the movies! He also assured that she is not a snob who ignores Hollywood principle, but rather that his tastes are internationally minded and do not disdain even the horror. The knowledge we gained during the first half and we gain during the second round all useful for improving the analysis that we will Introduction to Film , whose fundamental purpose is to show us how production, distribution, directors, actors and technicians different influence on the final product, and how this can be noted by looking at the film as it is, without hunting for anecdotes published elsewhere.
To expand our knowledge about cinema, there were several recommended books and magazine Sight & Sound , I'll have to go to get hold of the BFI Library .
Sight & Sound Magazine is published by the BFI
Introductory Factual Production instead is the heir of Lens & Sound Crafts and Post-Production Crafts . For this teaching we will divide into groups of 3-6 people and shoot a short documentary following the guidelines that we will be given. It 's a project exciting but also makes me very nervous: there's a lot of work to do and I have no idea of \u200b\u200bwho I have in my group or I could choose the subject for my documentary. In London, do not know anybody, and I should find someone or something easily accessible that it is interesting to survey and visually satisfying to watch - not as easily available all at once, as you can imagine.
To give us an idea of \u200b\u200bwhat we achieve, our teacher showed us some student projects last year and pointed out to us where they worked and where not, as some of the documentary series 3 Minute Wonder.
The documentary series 3 Minute Wonder is broadcast in the UK by Channel 4 .
year was held at the BFI Southbank on the third Future Film Festival, during which experts BBC gave free lessons on how to turn shorts effective use software for special effects, effectively manage the assembly and many other things. This was an very interesting, segnalatami the module leader of Media Methodologies ... who sent an email to his students when the maximum number of members to the various workshops had already been reached. There was still a chance to look at two selections of short films produced by some film students like me, so I decided to also go for a look.
The first selection, Future Film Shorts Programme 3: Horrible Humour is a good start with a short film about a girl who was saved from a likely shoplifter from the clutches of a serial killer seducer, but when they were first shown a brief sketch about a killer who steps gave a hitchhiker and then the unfortunate story of a man to pull himself out of a serious gambling debt, sold the kidney of the daughter of six years, the quality has gone from falling. After three cartoons and horror that they wanted to laugh but failed, fortunately the situation has risen with a cartoon that showed the importance of washing your hands after you poop through a catchy song (original soundtrack, I presume) a short film which saw two young men on the verge of divorce, separate their assets sticking colored post-it on things they wanted for themselves and take another short fantasy with a girl who was all day watching TV and eating ice cream never help the mother to do crafts.
Despite the overall mediocrity of the shorts, I had so much crap for me to give up and remain for the second selection, which began an hour and a half later. I decided to pass the time browsing through the library of the BFI, which also sell many DVDs of foreign films and lots of books relating to film-making , when I asked about what makes the film so different from home or university television or cinema. There is something in picture quality that makes them immediately identifiable as the product of non-professionals, but I still can not explain what this is actually due to: shutter speed? the use of lights? focus? I must investigate. The impression I have, however, is that the images "domestic" are somehow more realistic than "professional", but still displayed even less palatable. I have to ask one of my professors and I hope to find and fix the problem: I want to produce beautiful images.
As I said, I stayed for the second selection, called simply Future Film Shorts Programme 1 - but if I had known what was waiting for me, I ran like hell. It was depressing two short films and five documentaries inconclusive. I narrated a short film depressing of a widow who burst to cry when he could not turn off the tap dripping but that smile again when his son was going to throw the garbage, while others saw an old lady feeding her husband a sleeping pill even older in order to sell their undisturbed scassatissima car. Documentaries inconclusive instead spoke of a young Indian cricket was a matter of life or death, a group of elderly living in a community centered on the cultivation of a garden, how important the parents, a poor African village but where children play soccer all day and I am so happy and a man on the threshold of sixty years has decided to leave his wife and children and become woman, thus achieving the ultimate happiness and the most detestable that has ever been seen on this earth at the same time. The psychological distress that has caused me the vision of this material has not been alleviated by the presence in the room super excited filmmakers of "documentary" about the importance of parents (a group of young Indians who were the raspberries over the other courts - so they and genes that are known to make films!) and the aforementioned transsexual.
If I had never known childhood trauma suffered during the early years of my life, what I witnessed yesterday was largely filled the void.
After a visit from Forbidden Planet and as unsatisfactory by HMV, the quality of the day was a bit 'and Beppe relieved when I went to see Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, in performed at the Royal Haymarket Theatre near Leicester Square. It was so I wanted to see this tragicomedy of the theater of the absurd, and when I saw the pages of the 'Evening Standard which was staged in London with Ian McKellen in one of the main roles I decided I could not miss it.
I must admit however that Godot I expected a bit 'more: I can not even tell me to be completely disappointed, I have not even thought of that masterpiece theater where I had heard so much about. If behind every joke there is a hidden meaning in addition to the general absurdity of existence and human life, I have not read. This is probably due to the fact that I am the theater of the absurd, Beckett and Godot in high school I studied them, but my idea is that if a work is valuable and well-designed there is no need to study it in depth for understand it, except for some details are specially designed for experts and scholars.
