website

Check out studentfilmmakers.com. It looks like a great resource for you all. There are message boards/forums to ask/answer/look up questions and answers relating to pretty much any aspect of film, including cinematography, Final Cut Pro, Funding, HD, Lighting, etc. There is a Classifieds section for employment (volunteer and paid) and equipment. There are also links to festivals and other resources.

Take away shows.

The video below is part of Vincent Moon's Take-away shows series, filming bands in long takes in natural settings playing their music. Below is a video of Grizzly Bear, a band that I like a lot, singing The Knife accapella in the streets. There is another great one of Arcade Fire playing Neon Bible in an elevator. It's a creative, simple idea -- an interesting blend of documentary, performance and music video. Rather than elevating the musicians and bands into these icons that seem untouchable or creating a mystique around them, these videos make them seem like the real, albeit talented and magnetic, people that they are. It also illustrates that you don't need a lot of money or fancy equipment to create a striking, interesting piece. I like these better than 90% of music videos out there.

#10.4 - Grizzly bear - The Knife
Uploaded by lablogotheque

this video is of The Chariot, a Christian metalcore band from Georgia. If you watch the beginning of the video, you'll understand how it's made.

guess what?

Hey guys i got on! Now i can be just like everybody else! :)

Epicly Later'd Documentary Show

this show is filmed by a skateboard photographer Jason O'dell. he follows around many personas in skateboarding and shows you their day to day lives.

Chocolate Souffle

This is a picture I took of a chocolate souffle that I made. I took this picture for my step-by-step recipe website. The souffle turned out to be very delicious. I hope this makes everyone hungry.

Carissa's Blog Entry

This summer I filmed a huge production in Brooklyn, Michigan. We filmed at my family's cottage for four days straight! The footage is amazing and the shots are nothing I would be able to ever shoot again! The two stars of "Summer's Docks" are shown in this picture jumping off the dock. I am capturing the perfect shot and angle. The script for the movie is over 60 pages long and I have over seven and a half hours of footage on my tapes. I have one last scene to film, but I have to wait for cooler weather. It is about that time, the leaves are beginning to change colors-which is perfect for the last scene. After this last scene I want to begin editing. I don't want to give too much of the story away...ask me around May and I might be done with it! "Summer's Docks" has been an amazing filming experience for me. I have laughed, cried, and jumped for joy when I captured the perfect shot. This movie has been a journey and I can't wait to see how the finished project looks like......

Movies galore

A lot of possibly good, interesting movies out now. Ones off the top of my head: Rendition (directed by Gavin Hood, who directed Foreign Language Oscar winner Tsotsi), Things We Lost in the Fire (the first American film by Susanne Bier, a talented Danish director), Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Into the Wild (directed by Sean Penn), Michael Clayton, Across the Universe, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and Gone Baby Gone (directorial debut of Ben Affleck).

Have any of you seen any of these...or anything else this weekend?

I saw Rendition tonight. I thought it was pretty good. It has a good cast. It is also pretty frightening considering its level of reality to our current world.

Olivo Barbieri

Here are some links to works by and articles about Olivo Barbieri, the photographer/filmmaker that we talked a little bit about in class today -- we watched an excerpt from his site specific series from Las Vegas.

He uses a tilt-shift lens to obtain such selective focus.

One from Metropolis Mag, with photos and info on his site specific series.

Another link. You can also just Google his name and then look under images. I believe he recently finished a site specific project on New York.

Also, here is a link to a photo essay by the photographer Vincent Laforet for the New York Times, that uses a similar technique. The photos are aerial shots of major sporting events taken with a tilt-shift lens.

To make Professor T happy...

I saw this video the other day, about a day after we talked about Norman McLaren (I think?) And how he sometimes purposefully damaged his film. Well, director Samuel Bayer does the same thing in "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" by Green Day. If you look close enough, you can see the pieces of film where he extinguished his cigarette in and colored on the film with a marker. The song is okay, but the video is made better by Bayer adding the "aged" look.

Goodnight

I am writing to make our Professor Trapnell happy.
Here's a little bit more about who I am: I was born in Papillion, Nebraska, to an ambitious pumpkin farmer and a tea-pot collecting school psychologist. I am trying to build my vocabulary so I can use esoteric words. Restive would probably be the best term to describe me because I always feel I am five to five hundred miles away from where I should be. I love to use: hair care products, my imagination, and zeugma. Cooking and singing are two talents of mine (at least I think). Some of my best days include sleeping just five more minutes, a fishing trip, or a chance to be independent. Two of my favorite hobbies are imagining where I could be in a year and fishing. Now I am tired, so goodnight.

Favorite Movie

Honestly it's hard to say what my favorite movie might be. I love Pulp Fiction that is always at the top of my list, but I just watched a quick clip of Usual Suspects and that movie is awesome. I think what I love most is movies with a mystery or some sort of question throughout, and its all cleared up in that last 10 minutes. Some that come to mind are Usual Suspects, Fight Club, Seven, The Untouchables, Maltese Falcon, etc. I love also musicals, its funny how I can be watching Singin' in the Rain and really enjoying it and the next second I've got Boondock Saints popped in the DVD player. It's really hard to say, what movie I like most, I will say that not only do I like twist endings, I love character development, thats why three of my favorites, would be 12 Angry Men, All the President's Men, and One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. These are great movies because it focuses on the emotion and development of characters. The story and characters essentially drive these films, they don't need flashy settings or action and adventure quality. The intellectual ride we take with the characters is even better than any adventure story, in my opinion. Another who takes us on a very intellectual ride, is Stanley Kubrick, he is easily my favorite director, from his satirical gags in Dr. Strangelove, to his many adaptations, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, etc. A man who can look into space and create stories and follow the war path of Vietnam and create one the most compelling war stories ever written. He has covered very vastly different grounds in his work and does it beautifully every time. He is the best. Alright finally I'm a guy so I love the Shoot 'Em Up type of movies, I'm an intelligent guy but sometimes you gotta lose the brain and just enjoy an action flick. Die Hard is one I finally saw and really enjoyed, I think Alan Rickman was the best in it, I like Bruce Willis, but Rickman stole the show as the villain. Alright I've named alot of movies and in my opinion if you haven't seen them, I deffinately suggest checking them out, don't forget the library can be your friend when you want to see some classics.

Who is Pat White?

Hey everyone,
Well, I'm a little late on the introduction but here it goes. My name is Patrick White stick to Pat though and I am 17 years old and I love all aspects of film. My life pretty much revolves around it, from my ongoing collection of movies, past and present, to the very job I'm in. I go to Gretna High School and have been there for 4 years and love it, but that was one place I couldn't get involved in some sense of cinema. So, I must say that I am very glad that Metro has the chance for teenagers to learn about the always increasing art form of film. I don't want to get into my favorite movie, but I will say my favorite directors are Stanley Kubrick and Quentin Tarantino. Very different filmmakers, but thats the magic of film you can have so many different tastes and genres you enjoy, much like music. My only other comment is I wish schools would look at film more seriously, because it is a new art form and should be treated as such.
Thanks
Pat

Masculin Feminin

Godard's film, Masculin Feminin, is playing at Film Streams this Tuesday through Thursday. The times for Tuesday and Wednesday are 5:30 and 8 pm.

You will get extra credit if you go and extra, extra credit if you go and write two paragraphs on the movie. If I get at least one of you to see a Godard film this semester, then I will have done my job. If I get all of you to watch one (or at least a majority), I will be ecstatic.