It is 1am on Monday morning, and I just realized I completely forgot to upload my video essay. Or do the Weekly Summary. So. Happy Halloween.
For my video essay, I did the scene from The Return of the King where Pippin sings for the Steward of Gondor. The Steward, Denethor, has just sent his son, Faramir, on a pointless suicide mission to retake a fort that has been lost to Sauron’s forces. I chose this scene for two reasons: I could see a lot of symbolism in it, and I love Pippin’s song.
Making this movie was extremely difficult for me, since I’ve never done anything like this before. I used Windows Movie Maker (aka what I tried and failed to use for the paper crane tutorial). I managed to figure it all out eventually, but it took me a while. The tutorial was outdated, so I tried youtubing some of my own, to mixed success. Eventually, since I decided trying to freeze-frame something was a no-go, I decided to show the audience the scene I was analyzing prior to the analysis, since most people probably haven’t seen Return of the King as much as I have. Then, I copy/pasted the clip and did a voiceover narration. I’m.. ok with how it turned out. Does it look professional? No. Does it look pretty good for someone with 0 experience? Yeah, I guess.
For my video essay, I had to think about movie scenes which were especially powerful to me. Instead of doing multiple scenes, we were to pick just one. I came up with the scene from the Hunger Games where Rue dies. It is an incredibly powerful scene. I used Audacity to record my commentary on the scene, then I used Windows Movie Maker to edit the video and the audio together.
We were directed to review a video this week for the Video Essay assignment.
I chose to review the opening scene from Django Unchained. I chose to watch this movie as opposed to another movie simply due to its accessibility on Netflix.
It begins in the middle of nowhere featuring opening credits in red. These opening credits standout in contrast to the background creating a tension on the screen which alludes to Ebert’s idea of intrinsic weight. Furthermore, examples of Ebert’s ideas in the article are displayed when the characters come into view and march off to the right of the shot. The direction of their march is into the future. I suppose marching to the left would just strike me as odd. It would seem as if they were making their last appearance in the movie if they were to walk out of the shot to the left.
Another general rule I noticed is an example of how the “top” of the shot is dominant. In the scene the doctor sits atop a carriage above all of the other characters, showcasing his power over them. To reinforce his display of power, the doctor is shot at a lower angle during his first shot. This implies he has a certain power. Higher angles display weakness, while lower angles imply power. To further support his importance, the doctor is placed in the center of the shot. If he was placed any further to the left his importance would be undermined.
This scene is full of examples from Ebert and Tony Zhou. One just needs to look.
I really enjoyed completing this assignment. When I first saw essay, I dreaded the thought of having to write an actual essay but once I saw the actual assignment I was excited to complete it! I chose to analyze a scene in Django Unchained that had the shot-reverse shot effect, the ensemble staging effect and lots of movement. To complete this assignment, I went through and read Robert Ebert’s article and watch all of Tony Zhou’s short series videos. I took some notes from these and tried to narrow down what I was looking for in a scene. I then went on to watch Django Unchained on Netflix and decided that this scene had a lot of what I was looking for and wouldn’t be too difficult to analyze. After a lot of searching, I found the scene on Youtube and downloaded it to my computer and then imported into iMovie. This was my first time actually using iMovie but I got the hang of it pretty quick and had fun creating the voiceovers and the full analysis. After I was done, I went ahead an uploaded it right to Youtube! Like I said in my title, this is my kind of essay!
I reviewed many articles about film analysis and the details on how films are created. As such, for this assignment we were to choose a scene in a film and analyze it and reflect on how certain aspects of the scene related to the new information we learned through our readings. The movie I chose a scene from to analyze is titled “Tombstone”. I chose this movie for multiple reasons, I feel it contains very good imagery/scenery that emits certain emotions to the viewers, it is centered around the western theme, and takes place in the same town as my audio group’s radio show we completed last week! The specific scene I chose from this movie to analyze, which can be seen below, was when Wyatt Earp (Kurt Russell) confronts a town citizen.  I chose this scene because I feel it embodies multiple concepts I learned through the resources provided about analyzing movies. As such, in my opinion this scene most definitely contains Ebert’s idea of “intrinsic weighting”. When he discussed his idea of “intristic weighting” he stated that “certain areas of available visual space have tendencies to stir emotions or aesthetic reactions”. This is apparently based on the location of the actor/actress within the image. Interestingly enough, I found his concept to be quite true. For example, in the scene I chose, the character sitting at the poker table is on the left side of the shot and seems in the wrong because he is sitting in Wyatt’s chair. However, as the scene continues to play the poker man is shifted to the right side of the screen, becoming not necessarily more positive as Ebert states but, more innocent and blameless. While, Wyatt transitions to fill the left side of the screen providing negative emotions to the viewers that he (Wyatt) is being nasty and overpowering the other character.
Another key aspect I feel this scene depicts very well is one of Tony Zhou’s ideas from his series “Every Frame is a Painting”. This specific idea he titles “Shot/Reverse Shot” and his video can be seen here. This concept can be seen in the beginning of this scene because the camera is set between the two characters and flips back and forth between them so each have their own camera shot when they speak. Due to this technique used within this scene, I feel it is in part used to make sure the viewers are aware of who is speaking and places more emphasis on the emotions and what the character is saying. I feel that this technique within the scene I chose not only achieves the above, but also seems to build the tensions between the two characters because the camera starts slow then gets slightly faster shifting back and forth between the characters until they both are in the screen shot. Also, in the opening of scene I chose, another one of Tony Zhou’s concepts is used. It is called the “Praise of Chairs” and this concept is about how important an object that is usually overlooked can be within a scene. For example, in the beginning of the scene I chose, Wyatt tells the other character that he is sitting in his chair and due to this, their scuffle with each other begins to build, exhibiting how important a chair can be within a movie scene. Tony Zhou relates the idea that a chair/ a particular character’s chair can express what type of person the character is. At first, I found this idea silly but when I noticed the chair within this scene that Wyatt states is “his” chair, it seems to be relatively high class, very strong, and well made, which would be fitting for a character like Wyatt who in the film was known as a very successful lawman (on the higher class end of society) and strong, both mentally and physically. Overall, I feel I have learned a great deal about analyzing movies by reviewing the provided resources and now have a better understanding of the details and thinking behind the creation of films.
I used Windows Movie Maker to trim and edit the scene. As such, first I had to download Windows Movie Maker onto my computer then import the movie, then I was able to cut and pick the scene I wanted to use for this assignment. I saved the clip but, it saved as a .wlmp file and would not load onto my blog or youtube. I struggled with this for quite a while, but eventually figured out how to save it as a .wav file. Once in a .wav format I was able to upload it to youtube and embed it here.
This 5 star video assignment was to do a video essay. Â I picked “And then there were none” because Agatha Christie is Isabelle’s favorite writer and someone she aspires to be. Â I went through several scenes and marked what I thought was important to the watcher. Â The movie was good, but predictable. Â As soon as someone admits to their crime, you know their time has come to die. Â I used Movie Maker to create this video essay. I had a hard time getting all my captions to stay in the movie. Â I think it was just an example of save and save often. Â I believe this one has all my edits in it.
…for the week to go to training at her new job. She left me here with our little one, who does not keep quiet or entertained for long periods of time. I Â resorted to dispensing Funyuns and drinks galore, as… Read more
A major part of this week’s assignment was to create a video essay for a movie that was included on a list that the professors provided. Considering that I have always wanted to watch an Alfred Hitchcock film, I chose “Notorious”. Preceding the viewing, we were required to read Roger Ebert’s “How to Read a … Continue reading “Notorious” B.I.G. (Movie)
So yesterday I watched The Postman Always Rings Twice from 1946, because I was interested in seeing how the story we read the second week of classes would be depicted in a film. I decided to analyze the opening scene of the film when Frank first meets Cora, mostly because I couldn’t decide on a scene that I liked best and this one was already on Youtube. So I downloaded the scene and put it into Movie Maker. Because the scene itself is only about a minute and half, I ended up recording about another 2 minutes of film of myself on my webcam in order to be able to say everything I felt was pertinent to the scene. So I used both the webcam and the narration features of movie maker, neither of which I had ever used before, but they were pretty self explanatory. While I knew exactly what I wanted to say in my video essay, I felt that some times it was difficult to articulate in the prescribed amount of time, so some things took a lot longer to record than I expected. I think I would rather stick to traditional essays rather than video ones in the future. There’s just too much pressure!
For the video essay assignment, I decided to watch the movie Notorious by Alfred Hitchcock. For my video essay, I focused on the scene when Grant tells Bergman about the about his plan to have her seduce one of her past acquaintances. I read through Roger Ebert’s How to read a movie. I concentrated my essay on his talk of movement and the meaning behind left/ right, background/ foreground and top/ bottom. I enjoyed reading his article because I had never thought of the placement of characters on the screen having a meaning. It made sense for foreground/ background and top/ bottom but left/ right was a new concept that I hadn’t heard of before. I also looked at a few other videos about cinematic techniques.
First, I looked at the three parts of the Top 20 Cinematic Techniques video series on YouTube. I didn’t know about many of these techniques. I knew about panning, slow motion, and special effects but I had never heard of some of the other names that certain techniques were called. For example, I didn’t know that panning upward was called crane- up. The videos were very informative and I enjoyed seeing the different cinematic techniques of movies I have seen. The second video I saw was called Camera Angles and Techniques. I liked this one because it showed different ways that my group can later approach our video show. It will be a good reference guide when we start shooting for the show. The third and final video I saw was called Star Wars continuity mistakes. I wanted to watch this video because I have always had an interest in Star Wars and I’ve always been interested in the mistakes that people make during shooting. I usually find a lot of mistake videos with animated film and shows rather than live action film so it was cool to see what mistakes big budget films make.
Video Essay
I used the Firefox video downloader to get my video. I have a sound recorder on my computer that I recorded my essay with. I found different points where my audio would fit best and mixed it in with the scene I chose. I was originally very hesitant to finish this assignment because I’m not confident about video making. I found Windows Live Movie Maker on my computer and it ended up being easier than I thought.
