Tag Archives for viza612

Film frustration

I like making videos a lot.  I’m beginning to think, however, that I’m not very good at it.

There are a few shots and edits that I’m okay with in this video, don’t get me wrong.  I don’t think it’s the worst thing I’ve done (not by far) but our critique time in class today made me realize a few things:

  • I am not really capable of controlling both the visual aspect of a short and the story aspect.  I guess that’s why films have a DP and a director, and one person doesn’t usually do both.  I think this video in particular is a great example – my mind was focused on the flow of action while we were shooting, not on the fine detail of shot composition, and as a result most of the shots were pretty ugly.
  • My apartment is the worst place in the world to shoot anything.  The worst.  We could have (and should have) shot “at home” scenes in any number of other places besides my apartment.  You’d think I would have gotten the message by now, right?
  • Yes, we were pressed for time and had a lot to shoot.  This does not excuse a lack of intentionality on my part.  In the 2nd part of the trilogy, when I was out of my “director” box, I was able to purposefully construct shots without thinking about the dialog or the action.  Those shots were much better than anything I shot in my own video.
  • I should have stuck with the tools I know.  The Sony EX3 is a great camera, but I don’t know my way around it well enough to be effective on my own.  I probably would have gotten better results with my 550D.  In fact, when we used it for the second shoot, I did get better results.
  • I’m tempted to judge a narrative video like this one with different criteria or concessions than a parody of “Cribs” or a longboarding montage, because they serve different purposes and aren’t trying to accomplish the same thing.  The fact of the matter is, though, that they should be trying to accomplish the same thing.  There was not one shot in this video that made me go “wow.”  It’s because I wasn’t ever trying to create a shot that would make someone say “wow.”  I was trying to get through a checklist of shots necessary to tell a story, plain and simple.
  • The class is called “visual communication.”  Yes, there’s a component of the class where we analyze the cultural relevance of cat videos and make jokes with meta-humor, but at the end of the day I need to be making the most visually interesting, appealing projects possible.  Right now I’m not doing that.

Video overload (also, Umberto D.)

Over spring break I created twenty 20-second videos for my VIZA 612 class.  Some of them are terrible, some are kind of cool.  You can watch them all here.

In addition to working on my ray tracing program and rolling out a new render-queueing system for the Lab, I actually managed to watch another film from my list – Vittorio de Sica’s 1952 film Umberto D. de Sica’s earlier Bicycle Thieves is one of my favorite films, so I’d been looking forward to seeing the film he claimed to be the most proud of.

It was an interesting journey to go on, because at the beginning of the film I felt like de Sica and screenwriter Cesare Zavattini were trying their hardest to make me feel sorry for the title character by pointing out his troubles almost ham-fistedly.  The dialogue, shots of people reacting with disdain to Umberto, and most especially the demeanor of Umberto’s landlady all rather loudly cried, “this man’s life is crumbling and you should feel sorry for him!”  I remember Bicycle Thieves being (or at least feeling) more nuanced in its handling of its characters’ poverty, and evoking a much more natural sympathetic response.

However, I got over this feeling of forced sympathy as the film went on and experience plenty of real emotion, especially as the degree of Umberto’s attachment to his dog, Flike, became clear.  Even the housemaid with whom he shares an almost fatherly attachment is ignored and spoken harshly to when Flike goes missing, at her most vulnerable moment in the film.  It’s sad and touching despite the sometimes odd-feeling interactions between Umberto and Flike (played by a trained canine actor) that seem like something more fitting to a 60s Disney movie.

It’s not quite on the same level as Bicycle Thieves for me, but Umberto D. is definitely a great film worth checking out; I plan on watching it again at the next available opportunity.

A brief thesis on hipsters

“The hipster tries to distance himself from societal norms by rejecting all labels; but even this action is fruitless since the rejection of labels is a form of labeling unto itself.  Once the hipster realizes this, his only consolation is in knowing that his once-ironic appreciation for vinyl and Pabst Blue Ribbon has blossomed into an authentic feeling of enjoyment that exists outside of the meta-realm of cultural accoutrement.”

You can quote me on that.