Spin

I stumbled across this short film whilst looking for something to spark an idea for my short film I have to create. I really like the overall look and feel of the video, especially the lighting and the simple concept.

Synopsis:

A mysterious DJ is sent to a busy city block to mend a series of tragic events that occur in our everyday lives. Winner of 35 film festival awards worldwide.

Film Analysis

Ridley Scott's 'Alien' (1979) Quick synopsis:

The crew of a spaceship are taking there payload back to earth only to be interupted by Mother (the computer of the ship) of news that a non human signal has been identified and must be investigated. Upon arrival of the planet an Alien attaches itself onto one of the crew members and ends up loose on the ship, picking off the members of the crew one at a time.

I chose this particular scene because it is at the point in the film where you realise the crew are in danger and begin working together, where as at the beginning of the film there are a number of conflicts and differences between crew members, particularly betwen Ripley and Ash.

Scene Breakdown: (Ship Enters) this shot shows the actual scale of the ship as they head off into space I love this que as you know that the crew are now in danger and things are about to begin.

In this scene they are having to use and adapt materials onboard the ship to hunt the Alien. At this point in time the crew believe the Alien to be tiny but infact it is of a larger scale and is constantly growing as they speak.

Above shows the crew testing out the equipment before they split off to hunt the alien. The shots are very simple medium shots, flicking between Dallas, Lambert and Brett, to Ripley, Ash and Parker. The lighting in the scene is quite dark casting shadows across there faces and giving the feeling of claustrophobia, the captain in this scene is acting very cool and collected and the crew are working together well, as they know they have a problem.

The next shot shows Ripley, Brett and Parker searching the corridors of the ship for the alien. As you can see from the screenshot the set is darkly lit with only the flash light providing light. The corridor looks complex and industrial, and because it is a long shot it invites the feeling that something is going to jump across the screen. The scene is long and drawn out creating tension as we move along.

Once Parker has fixed the lights Ripley picks up a signal on the motion tracker and they slowly begin walking towards the next room where the signal is coming from. The beeping noise from the machine is a fantastic device that creates a lot of tension.

This next shot is from the room that the signal is coming from, I quite like how Ridley Scott decided to keep the camera angles quite low down to give the feeling that the alien may be looking up towards them, it also gives a feeling of false security towards the characters as you know what they are dealing with is a lot more sinister than what they think. Instead of using a shot that follows them from behind entering the room he has decided to let the actors slowly walk in, as the door moves up it brings in rays of light that sillouhette the crew, they move very slowly and the scene is incredibly drawn out creating even more tension, it is a medium long shot and yet again invites the feeling that something could jump out, the set almost engulfs the characters with its low ceilings and minimal lighting giving a feeling of danger.

Searching the Room:

The next shots shows the crew searching the room where they finally isolate where source of the movement is coming from, it is a small box, as they open box there is a lot of tension created as to whats inside it; eventually we see a cat scream and then run off, Brett holding the netting up to capture it lets the cat go, not realizing that they will pick it up later on the tracking device. Parker and Ripley laugh and tell him to go and get the cat, I particularly like this scene as the audience know that Brett has made a mistake and he doesn't realize it until Parker and Ripley laugh at him in a degrading fashion, making him look stupid.

This next shot is quite possibly one of my favourite scenes of all time, the tension created in it is brilliant. The que as Brett walks into the big room is timed brilliantly as the audience then realize that he is going die. Once again the shots in this room are timed brilliantly and are long and drawn out to create tension.

Remix Competition

I have decided to enter the Sasha remix competition advertised on beatport. The deadline is the 11th of February and the remix can be any genre you like. The winner wins a copy of Ableton 7 and will be interviewed by Beatportal, it will also feature on Sasha's emFire label, a label that currently only holds his solo work.

I've never entered a competition or done a remix before come to think of it, this is more of an exercise to get me to play with sounds and change them into my own style.

Details here:

http://www.beatportal.com/news/item/remix-sasha-for-emfire

Interaction Design

After having my SPP lecture on Interaction Design, I decided to have a look at the website Commarts.com, there is some very inspiring work on there, one site which has given me a very strong influence for an idea I have for my online portfolio is the look of the WhatNoise website which was created to increase the awareness of hearing impairment.

Commarts.com:
Overview: Using experiential games, this innovative site brings the effect of specific hearing impairments home to its visitors. Intended to produce empathy and understanding, What Noise? also serves as a fundraising vehicle for the client.
Built with Adobe Flash, Photoshop and Audition
3 interactive games
$70,000 raised as of May 2007

http://www.whatnoise.org/

Minilogue - Hitchikers Choice

This video is quality! Minilogue are group of artists that produce Minimal Techno/Electronica music, they are linked to the right of this page, I would recommend downloading there free live set which has some cracking tunes on it.

High Tech Soul: The Creation of Techno Music

Time Lapse

I came across this Michel Gondry video after searching for Time Lapse in YouTube, this is something that really interests and inspires me, especially the Minilogue Hitchikers Choice video.

Id never really heard of Michel Gondry before, but his name rang a few bells and as usual one thing leads onto another with youtube and I ended up watching more of his videos, he does a lot of commercial work and music videos and has won numerous awards, defnitly worth looking into!

Documentaries

I recently bought two DVD documentaries that I find inspirational and motivating, the first is a Slices dvd special of Richie Hawtin and the second is High Tech Soul: The Creation of Techno Music, featuring the likes of Derrick May, Juan Atkins, and Kevin Saunderson, basically the forefront fathers of the Detroit Techno music scene in the late 80s early 90s. I particularly like the way they are shot and how the interviews never bore, The slices DVD seems alot better produced, however I prefer the interviews of High Tech Soul, as you get a better understanding of the characters.

AVT Seminar: File types and Compression

We were asked to list a number of file types we might use, how we might use that format, and what software we may use to convert the files to other formats, below is what I found:

List of file types I might use:
.avi, .fla, .wav, .ogg, .mp3, .swf, .mpg, .pdf, .psd, .ai, .raw, .jpg, .gif, .bmp, .mov, .mpeg, .qt, .max, .3ds, .txt, .exe, .iso, .udf, .tiff, .wmv, .aiff, .nrg, .abl, .rtf

List of how I might use these files:
Adobe Premiere Pro makes use of a number of different file formats, not just in video but also in images and audio, most of Adobe’s software file extensions from there other software packages can be used in conjunction with Adobe Premiere Pro to gain the highest of quality in your work, such as .psd and .ai from Photoshop and Illustrator.

A small list of file extensions Premiere Pro can use:

.avi
.jpg .jpeg
.ai
.psd
.gif
.flv
.mpg .mpeg
.wmv .wma
.aif
.mp3
.wav
.ac3

List of what I might use to convert these file types:
I searched into google: “converter software” and the list was endless, there’s a variety of freeware tools to use but these offered limited file use and did not convert many different extensions. A decent one I came across is the one below, Blaze Media Pro.

http://www.blazemp.com/ - an extract from there website:

Audio Capabilities:

Audio Editing converter (mp3, wma, wav, ogg), and more.

Video Capabilities:

Batch video converter for .AVI, .MPG, .WMV, .MOV and more.
Convert, AVI, MPG, WMV to Flash.
All in one MPEG software solution, MPEG encoder, decoder, editor and converter.

The use of a converter is important in order to get your work onto different multimedia mediums, such as the web, for instance .FLV and .SWF files would be used for movies/animation on the web, or promotional videos need to be compressed down in quality to be shown on cd/dvd, it is important to use the highest quality setting when creating your work, you cannot convert a file from lower quality to higher quality!

An important thing to take into consideration as Danny noted is the use of codecs, an extract from wiki:

A codec is a device or program capable of performing encoding and decoding on a digital data stream or signal. The word codec may be a combination of any of the following: 'compressor-decompressor', 'coder-decoder', or 'compression/decompression algorithm'.

A particular video may not work because the codecs may not be installed, popular codecs for video include, M-PEG part 1, M-PEG part 2 (higher resolution and bitrate, commonly used for SVCDs and sometimes DVDs.), M-PEG 4 part 2, M-PEG 4 part 10 (the latest, commonly used on the Xbox 360, HD/Blu Ray, iPod, and Playstation Portable.) DivX, Xvid and many more. For instance if a video file such as .avi was compressed using DIVX, you will need the DIVX codec installed in order to view the video.