Colour grading is a new area for me but already it’s clear that using colour grading well can have a startling effect on the look and feel of a film. I recently watched The Book Thief (a surprisingly good interpretation of a great book) and really noticed the use of colour grading and how it enhanced an … More Industrial Media – Analysis and Reflection 4 – Q 1 Colour Grading Exercise
R.Bresson, Notes on the Cinematographer, 1986, London: Quartet A sound must never come to the rescue of an image, nor an image to the rescue of a sound Bresson’s brief, succinct quotes are great for provoking relfection on how filmmakers use sound and image. Coming from a scriptwriting and painting background words and image have … More Industrial Media – Analysis and Reflection 3 – Q 4 Sight and Hearing
This reading is from Steven Bernstein, Film Production, (p.211-221), Oxford: Focal Press, 1994 This article provided a really useful backup to the flipped lecture and practical lighting session that Andrea ran. My experience of lighting to this point is minimal. When I shot my documentary I used source lighting only which in some cases, especially in … More Industrial Media – Analysis and Reflection 3 – Q4 Lighting
Sound Design I want to start this reflection on some key points from two chapters in S. Alten’s book Audio in Media with a great quote by Kurasowa: ‘The most exciting moment is the moment when I add the sound …[then] I tremble’ (Alten p.4) This really captures the magic that can happen when sound is … More Industrial Media – Analysis and Reflection 2 – Q 1 Drama analysis
Clown Train This six minute film creates tension from the opening frame and continues to build the tension throughout with the creative use of sound, colour, framing and shot construction. The sound contributes to this in a number of ways using both diegetic and non-diegetic sound. The film opens on a black screen accompanied by … More Industrial Media – Analysis and Reflection 2 – Q 2 Clown Train review
Bernard Curran has written a really useful hand-guide to documentary filmmaking in his book, Documentary storytelling for film and videomakers, Burlington: Focal Press 2003. I have only read the extracts we were provided with but this looks like a useful book to work my way through. Some key points from this reading. Finding the story Documentary … More Industrial Media – Analysis and Reflection 2 – Q 1 Documentary analysis
Pre-production We had a team of six students, two who started the course on the second day of the intensive and one who just joined us for the afternoon shoot. We organised ourselves quite well spending some time planning at lunchtime. We prepared a shot list and this was useful in our shoot. However with … More Industrial Media – Analysis and Reflection 1- Q 5 Lenny
Nostalgia for the Light by Patricio Guzmán This six minute opening to Patricio Guzmán’s absorbing 2010 documentary is rich with images, sound and metaphor contrasting both light and dark and the esoteric and the mundane to set up a journey into seemingly unrelated topics – astronomy and the lost victims of Pinochet’s reign of terror in Chile. … More Industrial Media – Analysis and Reflection 1- Q 4 Nostalgia for the light
Uncluttered reality – is it real? Conventions in Short Documentary by Jeffrey Ruoff, Cinema Journal 32, No. 3, Spring 1993 This is such a great article that it’s hard to find just two points in it that excite me and are new to me. In a big picture sense Ruoff provides a succinct summary of the … More Industrial Media – Analysis and Reflection 1- Q 3 Conventions in Sound
Looking in and looking out I have been writing creatively and professionally in various ways over the last 25 to 30 years, as a playwright, scriptwriter and script editor and in my work as project manager. Over this time I have intermittently kept journals which were mostly records of events and related emotions as well … More Industrial Media – Analysis and Reflection 1- Q 2 Writing Reflectively
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