Editing a Narrative

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, tress, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows… Authenticity is invaluable’ originality is nonexistent” – Jim Jarmusch

For our 162MC project we had to write a script and then film it following the conventions of a specific film movement, below is a list of some film movements that we could explore when making our film.
Film Movements:

American New Wave (1968 – 1977) example: Easy Rider (1969)
Soviet Intellectual Montage (1920 – 1930) example: Strike (1925)
Dogme 95 (1995 – 2005) example: Festen (1998)
French New Wave (1958 – 1968) example: Breathless (1960)
Italian Neo Realism (1944 – 1952) example: Bicycle Thieves (1948)
American No Wave Film (1976 – 1985) example: Stranger Than Paradise (1984) Surrealist Cinema (1920- Onwards) example: Un Chien Andalou (1929)
Hong Kong Cinema (1978 – 1995) example: Chungking Express (1994)
Slow Cinema example: Stalker (1979)

Advice From The Pros – Part 3

“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge – myth is more potent than history – dreams are more powerful than facts – hope always triumphs over experience – laughter is the cure for grief – love is stronger than death.” –
Robert Fulghum

Okay, so this ones not as much a piece of advice rather an inspirational saying. For me I managed to apply it as advice however. I have long doubted myself because I’m not as technically minded as others and yet I have such creativity to give to the world. Reading this just reminds me that none of that matters, because “imagination is stronger than knowledge”.

Advice From The Pros – Part 2

“Of all the Chris Foss paintings that inspired Guardians of the Galaxy, this may be the one that inspired us most. Yellow is an underused color in films, especially science-fiction and fantasy films. In Guardians, I used it as a signifier of change, rebirth, and redemption – the yellow prison uniforms, Drax drowning in the yellow spinal fluid, the yellow Groot spores, and the yellow interlocking Nova Corps net… I believe color is a part of what made Guardians successful. When so many huge, spectacle films have the beige color palette of Saw, the brain becomes thirsty for color. We were that technicolor pitcher of water at the edge of the summer desert.
This doesn’t mean all movies should be colorful, just that color in general is important, and too much of one thing is boring. If, over the next few years, films become oversaturated with bright colors, brains will be relieved by a film entirely hazel and gray.
Anyway, this painting, along with other Chris Foss works, was a part of my original presentation to Marvel when I pitched myself as director and I explained the visual direction I was going to take with the film. They were immediately on board, and we ended up hiring Chris Foss to help design some of the spaceships in the film. He was, of everyone, my biggest visual inspiration on Guardians.
He has a page here on FB – Chris Foss Artist Page. I’m not sure if it’s Official or not, but it’s worth checking out nevertheless.”

– James Gunn

Wanderers

“For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled. Even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven’t forgotten. The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood. We invest far-off places with a certain romance. This appeal, I suspect, has been meticulously crafted by natural selection as an essential element in our survival. Long summers, mild winters, rich harvests, plentiful game—none of them lasts forever. Your own life, or your band’s, or even your species’ might be owed to a restless few—drawn, by a craving they can hardly articulate or understand, to undiscovered lands and new worlds.

Herman Melville, in Moby Dick, spoke for wanderers in all epochs and meridians: “I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas…”

Maybe it’s a little early. Maybe the time is not quite yet. But those other worlds— promising untold opportunities—beckon.

Silently, they orbit the Sun, waiting…”

I came across this short film after watching a news update on the video game Star Wars: Battlefront, which is being produced by the game company behind Battlefield, DICE. It had been rumoured, that the art team behind the Star Wars game had been in touch with Erik Wernquist, the man behind this short film ‘Wanderers’ to help them build an art style similar to his. So, I checked out his short film and I can honestly say it is beautiful, its visuals dominate you in a sense of awe that makes me wish I owned a telescope. Its certainly an inspiration as I move forward with my own short film.

The Mysterious Case of Lord Lucan

Following up on the inspirational lecture by one of my course tutors, I decided to broaden my search for inspiration (my most favoured of his suggestions was using two separate images since the brain will automatically search for a connection between the two, thus creating a narrative). I had been reading the Metro on my bus travels to and from University before the lecture but had only recently started regarding it as a means of inspiration. The other day, I eyed an article in the paper of a man a seat ahead of me that caught my attention entitled ‘Dark Mystery of Lord Lucan still fascinates and horrifies’. Now if any news article title was going to scream film idea it would be that, within that title your painted an image of a dark, twisted story from the past that no one ever managed to solve, not to mention the very name ‘Lord Lucan’ carries connotations to the word Lycan also known as werewolf. So as I was getting off my stop I grabbed a newspaper from the dusty floor and took it with me on my travels. I later came round to reading the article; a story of a man named Lord Lucan who mysteriously vanished November 7, 1974 after the nanny of his children was murdered. Scotland yard said that the death of the nanny, Sandra Rivett is still ‘the subject of regular reviews’ despite Lord Lucan being officially declared dead by High Court in 1999. From this article I learned that it had indeed inspired many TV programmes and books surrounding his disappearance. This is an interesting story that would really feature well as a narrative for a film, you could add a supernatural element and add a werewolf curse to Lord Lucan, or you could make it a thriller in which the nanny is a killer herself and Lord Lucan must defend himself and his children. There are so many angles you could take this story from it has really taught me the value of printed media.