Dear Diary...

Diary Entry 1: 30.9.10

Today was my first meeting with my final production group members. I am very excited to say that i am with Rachel O'Connell and Sharon Uyinwmen as i know that we will each work very well together. Today we just had to presennt our story ideas to each other and pitch a few thoughts of how we want the film to look, in the sense of camera filters, colours movement and text. We also brainstormed theme ideas and came up these:
- a mystery at the beginning that is revealed at the end
- Dreaming - our own world where anything can happen - falling asleep
- falling ill - my sisters keeper
- Everyone has a weakness - Kryptonite is supermans and he is the most famous hero in the world??
- substance abuse - fall through reality
- the fall AND rise...?
- the fall through society
- Loss of innocence
- Graphic Matching > Robert Lepage
- Fall - Autumn
- Falling from success once being at their peak
- DEATH - ultimate fall
- Falling out (with friends)
- Falling from grace
- Falling in love
- Falling OUT of love
- Subtitles for silent film?
- effects onscreen - black and white? sepia?
- use of shadows and lighting.

Dinner for Schmucks

...

Dinner for Schucks by Jim Vejvoda

Dinner for Schmucks, a reworking of Francis Veber's original French tale Le Diner de Cons, follows Tim Conrad (Paul Rudd), an ambitious analyst at a private equity firm who is on the verge of moving up the corporate ranks. He's equally persistent in trying to get his longtime girlfriend Julie (Stephanie Szostak) to accept his marriage proposal. An opportunity for professional advancement presents itself when Tim is asked by the boss of the company, Lance Fender (Bruce Greenwood), to attend his forthcoming monthly dinner at his mansion. But what makes this dinner special is who the attendees are required to bring as their guests.

Fender and his top execs (including Ron Livingston and Larry Wilmore) bring extraordinary guests with them to these dinners, unique individuals whose charming traits make them ... ripe for ridicule. The point is to bring the biggest, most oblivious idiot savant you can find and whichever employee's guest is deemed the most spectacularly offbeat buffoon "wins." Tim is initially appalled at the very idea of this dinner, but secretly decides to attend it in order to gain favor with Fender.


Tim literally runs into the perfect dinner guest: Barry Speck (Steve Carell), a divorced IRS employee and amateur taxidermist whose passion is to turn dead mice into recreations of various famous works of art or historical events -- his "mouseterpieces." The sweet-natured and optimistic Barry is clueless as to Tim's true motives, instead thinking they've simply become fast friends. Tim's conscience gnaws at him, but it becomes easier for him to use Barry after the fool makes his life hell in no time. This big dinner will prove one to remember, but who just might be deemed the bigger schmuck -- Tim or Barry?

Boasting a stellar supporting roster of comedic players -- including Zach Galifianakis, Jemaine Clement, David Walliams, Lucy Punch, Octavia Spencer and Chris O'Dowd -- Dinner for Schmucks turns out to be far funnier and more endearing than its painfully bad trailers would have you believe. It's got plenty of zany laughs and a lot of heart, but it's also never as cutting or as dark as its premise would suggest. It's the safest mean-spirited comedy you'll ever see.

It's a testament to Rudd and Carell's talents and chemistry together that we remain invested in characters who are, respectively, self-centered and too blissfully ignorant to be true, and neither of whom is especially well-developed. It's a one-note premise, but the leads work overtime to try and make us care about these guys and, once we do, buy into the farcical shenanigans that follow. Galifianakis and Clement have the showier and more outright funny roles, but Rudd and Carell do all the heavy lifting here.

The thing that makes Schmucks distinctive and interesting is the film's tone, something that the trailers couldn't capture or sell. From the opening credits sequence set to the Beatles' "The Fool on the Hill" (which plays over a tableaux of Barry's mousterpieces), we're aware that as wacky as the film may get there is still a human core to it. But the film, directed by Austin Powers's Jay Roach, is also trying to have things both ways. It wants us to laugh at Barry and his fellow idiots, but also to respect them as people, too. It's a fine line to walk, and the film doesn't always maintain its balance.

Dinner for Schmucks has enough laughs to warrant a look-see, but it's too concerned with trying not to really insult anybody to remain consistently funny or to develop the characters and plot beyond its skit-like premise. Overall, this Dinner was a satisfactory meal, but not quite the comedic feast that it might have been had it possessed some spicier ingredients.

Charlie St Cloud

Click images to enlarge.
These are the posters for the 2010 film The Death and Life of Charlie St Cloud, whats interesting about these posters are that although they each use different photographs you can tell its form the same film. The images are about the only thing that changes across the posters, but the font, layout and styling of the the title stays exactly the same , which make it easily recognisable by audiences. The colour white is prodominantly across all poster, which give it a heavenly/soulful vibe which suits the plot of the film as Zac Efrons charcater can see the ghost of his younger brother.





Below is the original novel cover of Ben Sherwoods orginal title ' The Life and Death of Charlie St Cloud' and two international posters for the same film (German and Spanish)

Review: 'Charlie St. Cloud' - One Efron Away From Being Awful

July 30, 2010
by Jeremy Kirk

"Trust your heart if the seas catch fire, live by love though the stars walk backward." As we learn from the titular and ghost-seeing character in the new film, Charlie St. Cloud, this quote from poet E.E. Cummings is about taking chances. It couldn't literally be about stars walking backward. That's just silly. Chances. The act of stepping outside your boundaries and doing something far from your own comfort zone, almost reckless even, that may be met with absolute success or outright failure.

Unfortunately, the people behind Charlie St. Cloud may be looking for stars to walk backward or seas to actually catch fire (let's put those Louisiana jokes back in the box), because the film they have created is one without chances, without risks of any kind, really, and the series of poor choices creates a saccharine web of lame dialogue and unimaginative plot points. It should have been called White Noise instead for a number of reasons.

Charlie, played by Zac Efron, is a highly successful high schooler. He has just received a boating scholarship to his college of choice and his loving mother and younger brother, Sam (Charlie Tahan), support him in everything. Everything changes one night when Charlie and Sam are in a violent car crash, one that kills Sam and leaves Charlie flat-lined for a few moments. When Charlie miraculously comes to, though, he finds he can see Sam's apparition. Thinking it is the ghost of his dead brother, Charlie makes a promise to meet Sam in the woods every day at the same time so neither of them are forced to face life or afterlife alone.

Five years pass, and Charlie, honoring the promise he made, stays grounded to his hometown and connected to his long-lost brother by the guilt inside him. It isn't until a girl from Charlie's past comes back into his life that the possibilities of breaking away from the ghostly image comes to the forefront of Charlie's head. Once that happens, though, Charlie finds himself torn between the promise of a life and the promise he once made to the dead.

The problems with Charlie St. Cloud, really one, serious problem that rears its ugly head throughout the course of the film, are evident from the first scene. It involves a boat race with Charlie and Sam, not yet expired to the land of mystical catch-playing. The tone in this scene, as is the case with the tone throughout the film, is all wrong. Directed by Burr Steers, the man who brought us the surprisingly comical 17 Again last year, the opening scene is paced and shot like an action film complete with fast-moving helicopter shots that zoom into the brothers' boat as if it were a police cruiser chasing a boat full of drug dealers. Any scene should never be shot this frantically without bullets flying and squibs popping.

It all comes down to choices, really. How does one approach the scene at hand? What underlying feel should the filmmaker be going for based on what the screenplay calls for? Sadly, Steers seems to make one poor choice after another. The moments between Charlie and Amanda Crew (Tess Carroll) as the girl who walked back into his life (I seriously think that might be her character name) are genuinely brutal. Moments after these scenes present themselves, we are offered flashbacks to them for specific reasons, and the second time is even more brutal than the first. Charlie St. Cloud never feels like its own film, but, rather, a series of themes, ideas, and styles that are thrown in simply because that's what this type of heart-string tugger is meant to include.

Unfortunately, the only thing successfully tugged or even moved throughout Charlie St. Cloud is the viewers' patience, as it wears thin. By the time other ghosts and plodding left turns thrown into Charlie's world come around, we simply don't care. We just want his brother to walk into the light of the afterlife so that we can walk into the light of the theater lobby.

If there is a success to be found in Charlie St. Cloud, it's in the emotional weight Efron brings to the main character. Appearing in virtually every scene, his performance very nearly saves the film from being a complete waste. The emotions that rise from the character might be lost on Steers, but Efron seems to know where they need to go. He presents them in every distant look and in every tear he pinches out of his eyes. It really is a travesty to see such a fine actor giving such an impeccable performance in a film that has absolutely zero emotional movement elsewhere.

The saccharine identity strewn throughout Charlie St. Cloud is hardly forgivable. The film's finale takes place at sea with Charlie and two others (Donal Logue in one of the film's many wasted roles; Don't even get me started on Kim Basinger as Charlie's absent mother or Ray Liotta as the devout paramedic who brought Charlie back to life) making a daring rescue attempt. At what or who is probably best left for those who want to view the film spoiler-free, but it really doesn't matter. The one thing they can't rescue is the water-drenched celluloid used to shoot it all. That's not salt water they're treading across. It's sugar water, and the bitter aftertaste hits very soon after consuming.

Jeremy's Rating: 4 out of 10

The XX

The XX!

This is a band that i absolutely love and i am glad to say they they have recently won the 2010 Mercury Music award...Congrats!

I have chosen to upload this video and i think it fits perfectly well with my Fall Out of Love concept as, as the video plays you should realise where the love dies....

Enjoy.

Robert LePage

Today we looked at the French Canadian film maker Robert Lepage and his film La face cachée de la lune (The Far Side Of The Moon). Whilst watching the film we focused particularly on Lepages' cinematography and composition, which he expertly used through the use of 'Graphic Matching' allowing the audience to flow fluidly from one scene to the next.....

BRIEF: Take an everyday, inanimate object and photograph it in an interesting way....

Cinematography - free slideshows

IDEA 2: Narration

Narration is another good way to tell a story as it allows the audience to get an immediate bond with the main character and we are sometimes told of previous event which help to move the story along without taking up footage.

Narration takes place at the beginning of every episode of my favourite television show How I Met Your Mother :) In which the protagonist Ted Mosby is telling the story of how he met his children's mother whilst they sit on the sofa. Throughout the episode Teds narration helps to add either added information or comic relief.

However, although this is a a great narrative idea it would be impossible to create an audible narration as our brief to create a SILENT film : So an easy alternative could possibly be subtitles.

Narrative Ideas

Having an awesome idea is all well and good, but if you don't tell the story right, you film could just become very flat and unengaging. Good and interesting story telling is key to consuming your audience into the world of your film.

IDEA 1: Reverse Chronology
This is an extremely interesting way to tell your story as it allows the audience to see the ending, to later discover how the plot and characters began their journey. This narrative style was recently used in Gaspar Noé's Irréversible (2002), the technique is used so thoroughly that the end credits are not only shown at the beginning of the movie, but they roll down the screen, rather than upwards which we are accustom to. The 2004 film 5x2, directed by Francois Ozon, tells the story of a relationship between two people in five episodes using reverse chronology. I personally love this narrative style although it can be difficult in making the audience understand the plot and sometime it is is used flippantly without having any relevance.

Below is a clip i watch from a University student which i didn't understand why this style was used and i didn't particularly understand the video.



As the above is a music video, i believe that Coldplay's The Scientists may have been their inspiration. This video is AMAZING and as the video is shot in reverse, Chris Martin even had to sing the song in reverse while the song was played normally. Confusing?....just watch.....

Enjoy.

The FALL.fall.FaLl.FalL.llaf.ALLf...........

The original concept of The Fall was presented in film form as we as a classed watched the 2006 film by Tarsem Singh. After being told to interpret the Fall in many different ways, it became quite hard not to think about it in the literal form of 'falling down' or 'in love'. So after analysing and taking the phrase apart, these were just some of my A2 Media ideas.....

IDEA 1 : FALL FROM GRACE.

'A fall from grace' is the common catchphrase that people use to describe someone of much respect/ authority who has somewhat let themselves and their morals go. I like the idea of this as the phrase applies to anyone in any situation.



IDEA 2: FALL OUT OF LOVE.

I hate the cliche of falling in love. BUT. as much as i tried, I kept coming back to the idea of love. But felt that falling IN love was a far to obvious, and so thought about the aspect of falling OUT of love by observing the period of when and how the passion and love dies within a relationship.

IDEA 3: FALLING OUT

Falling out with a friend is a common accurence and you often make up after a couple of days. But what if you fall out with the wrong person at the wrong time. They might not be as willing to forgive & forget. Falling out of luck is another common phrase which best describes comdey duos such as Delboy and Rodney in Only Fools and Horses or Laurel and Hardy in their classic
'piano falling down the stairs sketch.'



More to come....

S____ S______s

I LOVE THE_____________ in this video as it_________

CSI: NY Silent Scene

As a HUGGGEEEE CSI fan! (Vegas, NY & Miami of course) of course watch it every week. A few week ago i was watching this episode of CSI: NY when i noticed that the entire scene was silent ( t took me a while to notice lol). There was a scene prior to this clip which was also silent but had a more artistic approach as it cleverly showed the lives of three different neighbours through their window panes which created a 'picture frame' effect. The camera transitioned slowly and panned between each 'picture frame' . The smooth movement sometimes became unbalanced to reflect the tension within the frame. eg A teenage girl had snuck her boyfriend in to the apartment while her mother was at work. But the mother came home early and as 'we' are across the street we are able to see that the mother is coming up the stairs, but threw another window (daughter cant see). It is here where the camera moves restlessly between each frame. The music is also very chaotic and dramatic, which adds to the comedic effect of the scene.

In contrast, the music used for this clip is tense and earry as it reflects the sinister action going on within the frame (man poisoning the canary). Note how the camera shakes uneasily as the man begins to poison the bird.

Enjoy.