A few months back during our 105MC project we were introduced to the idea of interactive documentary. We were shown a couple but one in particular stuck in my head ever since I first saw it and just recently it was presented to us again for 161MC and so this time I just had to share it to the world. If you haven’t heard of ‘The Wilderness Downtown’ then you simply have to check it out.
Before starting it up I advise closing all other open programmes and putting in some headphones. It will ask you to type in your home address, do so. When it first starts up its easy to feel like somethings wrong as you will see upon its start but let it do its thing and enjoy the amazing interactive documentary.
I’ve realised that my blog posts some to have become few and far between and I assure you, there is good reason for that. At the moment I am deep in the throws of writing my first University paper for the end of module 105MC. Me and my group are producing a collaborative book, comprised of our own individual chapters and a bibliography, I have taken it upon myself to write the introduction to this book, perhaps the most important piece as should this not capture the reader then the rest will not get to unfold. So far, i’ve covered a lot of theory and analysis in my piece, but have failed to address the very aspects of ‘introduction’, to discuss and open up the book itself and vaguely cover what our beliefs are on the key concepts.
My blog posts will be picking up once again after this Friday when this has been handed in and my Character Concepts presentation has been delivered. Its been a very long week, with sleepless nights and headache mornings, but I will get through this, and then onwards to christmas!
Once again I find myself in a position of conflict within the groups structure, but this time perhaps more so as half of the group seems to have decided to take up arms against the final product that myself and another basically produced alone. So as you know if you’ve been keeping up to date with my posts regarding raw 105MC documentary our myself and a lad named Oliver stayed up till the early hours of dawn to finish off the video to the best of our abilities and meet the deadline of 10am hand in. I went to sleep that night feeling naively happy with what I felt was the best outcome from the limited filming we had gathered.
Oh was I so wrong, the editing process had basically been between myself and Oliver despite us opening it up to everyone to come along and have their say and input, they just didn’t seem interested. Yet this morning I wake up to a text from Oliver saying “Don’t think the rest of the group liked the video”. Immediately my eyes rolled in my head and my heart sank, I was reminded of Project 160MC and the troubles my group then had encountered during the editing process (something about the editing process just brings the devil out in people). I went onto our Facebook group page and was reading comments like “This isn’t uni standard” “They can tell its not organised” and all of this from the two people who had the least input into the project itself. They had all been given clear dates and times for filming, for editing meetings and for reviews of the footage before uploading yet they seemed unable to steer away from the lures of student life.
I am by this point furious if you couldn’t tell that for the second time (and likely third by the time I get round to reviewing my most recent 160MC project) that I have felt like we have dragged someone along in the group only for them to turn around and say its shit when it is simply too late to do anything about. I don’t know if I’m just choosing the wrong people to work with or if every group is encountering these problems but frankly all its going to take is for one of ‘these people’ to say the wrong thing to me and I will simply find myself speaking my mind.
And that is that! We have finished editing our documentary entitled “East meets West” and are now uploading it onto Vimeo ready for tomorrows hand in. Keep an eye on this space for the documentary review!
Once again I’m busy at work with 105MC about to give us the 72-hour challenge any minute now and my steampunk team firing on all cylinders with concepts and narrative suggestions. The most recent update comes from my ‘Steampunk Brothers’, the new nickname for my group/project. Carl Packer (http://carlpackart.wordpress.com) has once again created some master works of art to depict more concepts of the airship being piloted by our main protagonist, The Captain.
The project is really starting to shape up, I have another meeting taking place tomorrow (Wednesday) to discuss the final concept arts, the character profiles and in general finish polishing off the design of the world our Captain exists in. From here we can move on to defining a clear narrative within this setting and begin to plan out storyboards. I am most excited to bring this idea before my technical tutor Becks and learn more about green screening as this is something I have not used before, especially combining film and 3D animation. Stay tuned about this project, I really think its going places. I am currently playing around with concepts for characters appearances, i’d love to hear feedback from you guys on what you think of these particular items.
My documentary team for 105MC is really on a roll now with the addition of a new member who has really breathed life into the project, he seems to have a way of kick starting energy into the team whilst I organise what we each do. We had a short team meeting today to discuss our new plan of action and broke down into pairs to handle the key elements; post-production, production and the final piece, the book. We chose this based on our individual strengths and what we had done to date, this would also be our particular topic that we would cover in the book. Myself and Madeline are taking charge of production, this includes any extra filming needed as well as that taken at the actual East Winds Film Festival. Oliver and Dhani would be in charge of post-production, both are skilled film editors and have agreed that Oliver would edit whilst Dhani provides feedback and documents each step for use in their chapters of the book. Then Aiden and Ben, our two journalist members, would be taking care of planning each chapter of the book. They would write a brief for each of us telling us what our chapter needs to cover in order to be a success. All in all, I feel pretty confident now about the conviction of our group. For once I don’t feel like we are lugging dead weight in a project!
This was the day that me and my 105MC group were supposed to get the majority of our project work done including audience interviews and Q+A filming if possible, well in true fashion for me it didn’t go to plan. Only myself, Oliver and our journalist Aiden showed up and we had to cobble together what we could, including two interviews with staff and one interview with a member of our group who had just been to watch the opening film of the day Lust of Angels. All in all, it was a disappointing day after the hype of the opening day, though I did only see one film, perhaps I chose wrong.
I went to see ‘Laddaland’ by Sophon Sakdaphisit, who I had the pleasure of meeting on the opening day and who also directed ‘The Swimmers’ a film showing later on in the day. Laddaland followed a family of four into a new home in a village called Laddaland. All seems well with exception to a moody daughter, until a maid who lives round the corner from them is found brutally murdered and crammed into a refrigerator. What follows is the descent of madness of this village of people as they haunted by evil entities. This film really did feel like an Asian horror that had taken on many Westernised horror film cliches; plenty of jump scares to be had and menacing music. One particular jump scare even made me commit a serious sin, I spilt my pint! The ending was really quite interesting and kept you on edge as the whole series of events wound to a close. Overall the film was good, though I couldn’t help but compare it to my first two films and find myself disappointed and the day as a whole was a flop with little happening on the red carpet and half of my group seeming to be incapable of making it.
Following on from the amazing highs of yesterdays opening day of the East Winds Film Festival at Coventry University, it is now time for day two. Films included on day two are: Lust of Angels by Isogai Nagisa, Laddaland by Sophon Sakdaphisit, Z Storm by David Lam, The Swimmers by Sophon Sakdaphisit and A Record of Sweet Murder by Koji Shiraishi. Now unfortunately I only have one ticket for today and that is to see Laddaland by Sophon Skdaphisit since this is the piece me and my 105MC group are doing the majority of our work on. I would have loved to have watched some more, its such an action packed day of films. I saw the trailer to ‘A Record of Sweet Murder’ prior to the opening of yesterday late night film ‘Grateful Dead’ and I have to say it looked brilliant and twisted just like the film that followed.
So as yesterday stay tuned for a follow up post of how the events of today follow and for some insight to the film Laddaland and the East Asian film culture as a whole.
Wow! What an experience this has been, truly awe inspiring to me both as a film maker and a media consumer. I came in not really knowing what to expect except that it wasn’t going to be a grand scale festival, however this fact was balanced out by the sheer talent displayed before us and the presence of two directors who were sat literally a row of seats ahead of me.
So firstly we started off at the red carpet where I shot some scenes of actors, directors and audience members strutting across the red carpet for my groups 105MC documentary project. I felt really happy with some of the shots I captured and thought they perhaps wouldn’t form the bulk of it (since we are filming majorly on Saturday) these shots will make for interesting filler shots in the form of a montage perhaps. It was really quite fascinating to see the third year Media Production students at work beside us, snapping photos, shooting footage and interviewing the directors about their films, it really made me think whether documentary is something i’d be interested in exploring later on in my course. It was also cool to get to converse with some of the East Asian Film Society members who revealed just how much preparation had to go into the event and revealed the doors the society could open for me, something I am now hungry to get involved with.
Partners in Crime by Chang Jung-chi
One word: Amazing! Wow, couldn’t have dreamt of a better film to kick the festival off with than Partners in Crime, the tale of three boys who discover a young girls dead body in an alley way who goes to their school. These unlikely three become friends in their drive to discover the mystery behind the girls death, with twists and turns to keep you on guessing this is really amazing. It deals with real life themes like bullying that is so prominent in Thailand, and loneliness. Not only is its narrative strong but it has amazing use of lighting and cinematography; utilising rays of sunlight and dazzling underwater shots, this is really a film that has to be seen to be believed. Really, don’t judge this by its trailer, just dive in and watch it. It also has a catching soundtrack to it as you can hear in this trailer that really sets a good tone for the inner turmoil between the main characters.
Greatful Dead by Eiji Uchida
This film is strange; okay, so maybe I need to go back and revisit this one as by this point I was starting to feel the effects of being awake since 6am and being full on the go whilst carrying enough baggage to put a working donkey to shame. The story follows a young woman who enjoys nothing more than watching what she calls Solitarians, which means lonely individuals that have gone insane. The story goes from dark to light hearted and funny to twisted and disturbing, and then it reaches its climax and leaves you questioning what you have just watched. The acting from the main ‘protagonist’ is flawless and left me fully believing her descent into madness, no matter how disturbing her action were, I felt that it was truly bringing her happiness. Things I weren’t so keen on in this film include the tone of the piece, in pieces I struggled to tell if the narration was purposely trying to make us laugh or if it was being serious, perhaps this is a cultural difference to look into further when I interview audience members for my 105MC project. However, I did like how the ending looped back round to the beginning of the film in a nice little bow that answered some questions that you didn’t even notice crop up throughout the film.
Really excited to be attending my first ever film festival and right on the doorstep of the University itself, its East Winds Festival! I have been looking forward to this ever since I was inducted to the University and now it has finally rolled around I can barely contain myself. I write to you now before entry to the first red carpet at 7pm and I can see from my skilfully chosen vantage point the red carpet being rolled out and the lights being set up. Tonight I am watching ‘Partners in Crime’ and ‘Grateful Dead’, I will be posting up a follow up to this blog so stay tuned at midnight!
The Journey Begins 