This is the link to my final short film. I based my film on the emotion “Guilt”. All of the clips are mine apart from the clips of the people from Africa and the bath bomb footage, all of which were found on youtube. I tried to be creative with the way i showed each thing in this video. I did this by using a mixture of video clips and animation to make it more interesting and look more “arty”. I am really happy with the way that it turned out, however, if i did it again then i would probably make it shorter because it gets a little tedious after a while.

Gillian Wearing (born 1963) is an English conceptual artist, one of the Young British Artists, and winner of the annual British fine arts award, The Turner Prize, in 1997. In 2007 Wearing was elected as lifetime member of the Royal Academy of Arts in London.

In class we watched her short film “Dancing in Peckham”.

Dancing in Peckham is a 25-minute video that shows on an ordinary television monitor. The dancer, Gillian Wearing, under the vaulted glass roof, on the shiny pavement, has a look of intense seriousness on her face. She throws her hair about, shakes, gets down. She looks ridiculous, in a public place in broad daylight. She is not dancing to a Walkman, just to sounds in her head. The reason behind this was that she had always suffered from self confidence issues, and she figured she would do this to get over those issues. It was created to make the audience feel more embarrassed than her, because the dancing is so awkward and silly. I think this is very clever, and at first it make me laugh, but after a while i did start feeling awkward just watching her make a fool of herself!

 

Jan Svankmajer (born 4 September 1934) is a Czech filmmaker and artist whose work spans several media. He is a self-labeled surrealist known for his animations and features, which have greatly influenced other artists such as Terry Gilliam, the Brothers Quay, and many others.

In class we watched Jan’s short film “Breakfast”.

“Breakfast” is a 1992 Czech animated short film that uses claymation and pixilation. It examines the human relationship with food by showing breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

What happens in the film

A man enters a room, sits down, and brushes the previous diner’s leftovers onto the floor. Across from him sits another man with a placard attached to a chain hanging around his neck. The diner stands up and reads the placard one line at a time and follows the instructions. He puts money down the man’s throat and pokes him in the eye. The man’s shirt unbuttons itself, and a dumbwaiter rises up into where the man’s chest should be. The diner takes his food, and punches the man in the chin with his third knuckle for his utensils. When he is done eating, he kicks the man’s shin for a napkin. After wiping off his mouth, the diner convulses, and then goes limp. The man now comes to life, stretches, and places the placard on the former diner. He stands and puts another tally mark on the wall. Another diner comes in and the scenario is repeated with him. At the end, we see a line stretching down the hall and around the corner.

Awards

I found “Breakfast” quite entertaining and i liked it because it was something a little different and unique! I think its very clever, especially as it is done with claymation and pixilation.

 

“Run Lola Run” is a German film which explores the question “what if”. Throughout the film, we are shown the same scenario three times, each with a different decision at the start, which of course leads to a different outcome. The film follows the events between a woman, Lola, and her boyfriend, Manni, who she desperately tries to save from death by helping him obtain a huge amount of money he carelessly lost. It takes you on three different journeys with Lola, all controlled by fate, showing you what would happen in each, and all the “what if’s” that provide the foundations for each outcome.

After watching the film, I had mixed opinions of wether I enjoyed it or not. I liked the idea that the film was obviously trying to portray – different decisions cause different outcomes – however, I found that it was too repetitive and that is why I would probably give the film a 2 out of 5 because after a while I began to get bored.

The editing of the film allowed us to see both what Lola and Manni were doing at the same time in different places, and this helped to build tension. Manni was going to rob a bank if Lola didn’t get to him in time, and by seeing the two characters actions at the same time, we are left wondering “is she going to get there in time” and that built suspense.

A lot of different camera angles were used; e.g close up, mid-shot. This helped the audience see the characters surroundings, which made us understand more about the characters.

Something that I found interesting, which I didn’t realise until the end of the film, was that there were two colours which were used a lot throughout the film. Red and Yellow. These colours usually symbolise danger. The director of the film has cleverly made everything around Lola red (her hair, bike, car, telephone) and everything around Manni, yellow (his hair, supermarket).

So overall, I half enjoyed the film and half didn’t. I defiantly wouldn’t watch it again, but I would maybe like to see some other films from Tom Tykwer (the director of Run Lola Run).

Bill Viola

Bill Viola is internationally recognised as on of todays leading artists. For over 40 years he has created architectural video installations, video films, sound environments, electronic music performances, flat panel video pieces, as well as works for television broadcast, concerts, opera and sacred spaces. Viola’s video installations (total environments that envelop the viewer in image and sound) employ state-of-the-art technologies and are distinguished by their precision and direct simplicity. They are shown in museums and galleries worldwide and are found in many distinguished collections. Viola uses video to explore the phenomena of sense perception as an avenue to self-knowledge. His works focus on universal human experiences – birth, death, the unfolding of consciousness – and have roots in both Eastern and Western art as well as spiritual traditions, including Zen Buddhism, Islamic Sufism and Christian Mysticism. Using the inner language of subjective thoughts and collective memories, his videos communicate to a wide audience allowing viewers to experience the work directly and in their own personal way.

The video above is one of Bill’s pieces of work “Tristan’s Ascension”. It is one that we watched in class. Tristan’s Ascension describes the ascent of the soul in the space after death as it is awakened and drawn up in a backwards flowing waterfall.

I personally find it a bit boring and pointless. The video goes on for around 5 minutes. I got bored after around 1 minute. I couldn’t understand how it was meant to make people feel, and i didn’t really understand the meaning.

Awards

1984 Polaroid Video Art Award for outstanding achievement, USA 

1987 Maya Deren Award, American Film Institute, USA 

1989 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Award, USA 

1993 Skowhegan Medal (Video Installation), USA 

1993 Medienkunstpreis, Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe, and Siemens Kulturprogramm, Germany 

2003 Cultural Leadership Award, American Federal of Arts, USA 

2006 NORD/LB Art Prize, Bremen, Germany 

2009 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts, MIT, Cambridge, MA

2009 Catalonia International Prize, Barcelona, Spain

2011 Arents Award for Distinguished Alumni, Syracuse University, New York

2011 Praemium Imperiale, the Japan Art Association, Tokyo 

2013 National Artist Award, Anderson Ranch, Snowmass Village, CO

2013 Aurora Award, Aurora Picture Show, Houston, TX

For my short film I have decided to go with guilt as the emotion that the film is based off.

I first thought about doing appreciation, as it can cause different emotions and I wanted to do something a bit different. However, I came up with an idea where I could still use the ideas I had for appreciation but change it to more of an emotion. That idea was to do guilt.

My idea is to show clips of things that we take for granted (e.g water, food, shelter) and mix it with clips from youtube of poorer peoples living conditions. The idea is that will make the audience feel guilty that we take these everyday things for granted and that we maybe aren’t doing enough to help those in need.

Definition – Guilt is a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person believes or realises (accurately or not) that he or she has compromised his or her own standards of conduct or has violated a moral standard and bears significant responsibility for that violation. It is closely related to the concept of remorse.

For my re-design of the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire set, I wanted to create a 3D version as well as during a floor plan! I decided to create my TV set on the sims. Obviously not everything is the way I want it because they don’t have certain items on the game, but the shape is how I wanted it. The first picture below is a birds eye view of the set. From this picture you can see where the audience would be located, where the stage is, the entrance that is used by the host and contestant, and the lighting arrangements. I created this before I drew my floor plan, so audience are only at the back in the real thing, not at the sides as well.

There will be around six cameras of which the positions are shown on my floor plan which has been hand drawn. The photo below shows the position of one camera. It will be situated at the middle and back of the studio and will be used to film the host and contestant during the game and when they enter the studio.

In the photo below, you can see that there are three people sat on stools on either side of the host and contestant. These people are the new contestants that will take the place of the current one when they are illuminated.

Here is a close up of what the new contestant set up will look like. There will be a table in front of them and they will have a screen each (I couldn’t fit three on the table on the sims).

There will be cameras directly opposite the new contestants that will zoom in on them.

The camera opposite the new contestants on the left hand side will also film close ups of the current contestant, and the camera opposite the new contestants on the right hand side will also film the host.