THE MOVIE LIST

Martin Scorsese, my favorite director.

So I have embarked on a journey this semester to watch as many movies as I can. My goal is to be able to call my self a full blown cinephile by the end of next summer. I want to be able to answer almost any question asked about almost every movie. As I watch more and more movies I've noticed my list has only gotten bigger, not smaller. My interests are expanding farther and I'm watching movies I don't think I would of ever watched a couple years ago.

I decided for this blog to post all the movies on my list and i'll update it from time to time to show what i've watched and what i've added... so basically this would go on forever.

Here is my current list first posted Dec.12/12. Ill update the date whenever I change something. A "-" means it needs to be watched and an "X" means I watched it. I'll start the list from when I first created it at the beginning of the program so there will be X's. Also I've watched a lot more movies just not necessarily on my list.

PS. I know you'll be thinking "you haven't seen____?!" in shock. And I will be soon I'm just trying to watch EVERYTHING. I'll get to it eventually...

List:

- The Thin Red Line
- The Shining
- Mean Streets
- Boogie Nights
X Magnolia
X Panic Room
- The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
- Citizen Kane
- Full Metal Jacket
- Poltergeist
- ... And Justice for All
- Serpico
X Punch-Drunk Love
- The Birds
- The Big Lebowski
- Chinatown
X Once Upon a Time in America
X The Pianist
- The Untouchables
- Carlito's Way
- American Graffiti
- Back to the Future
- Apocalypse Now
- Alien
- Thelma & Louise
- Clerks
X One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
- 12 Angry Men
- Fargo
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
- Badlands
- Eastern Promises
- Heat
X The Good Shepherd
- Tron
X Pan's Labyrinth
- The Abyss
- Battle Royale

*Here is a link to the IMDB top 250. I tend to look here for movies that I should check out.
 IMDB Top 250

First Semester of College Review

Sheridan College

So now I am wrapping up my first semester of college. These blogs are now one of my last two assignments (if you're wondering why they are all last minute and clumped together, i've been really busy with other finals). It has been quite a journey and a drastic change in my life in such a short amount of time!

In the beginning I knew absolutely no one going in. I come from a small town and a smaller high school so it was a big adjustment for me to switch over to college. Everyone including the profs are really nice and welcoming though which helped. I didn't find it overwhelming at all throughout the whole semester with maybe an exception of the last two weeks for finals. I think after slacking for the first 3 years of high school i've grown to become a much better student in my senior year and first year of post-secondary! Funny as i've noticed a lot people go in reverse to that.

As the semester went on I was able to meet some new people and make some new friends. I got to expand my knowledge as well as my interests throughout the last couple months. Without a doubt this program has fuelled my love for cinema even more.

Now as the semester closes I get some time off and my focus will shift temporarily to my application for Media Arts. I won't say anything about my project but I feel really confident in it and can't wait to start filming soon. I hope so much that I can get into the program I can't express through this blog how much I want it. But time will tell to see what happens.

Here's a link to one of the projects I did over the semester! Separation of Church and State
My last project is actually the same assignment but a different topic.

Pinewood Studios Field Trip

Pinewood Studios in Toronto

The other day the Media Fundamentals students got to go on a field trip to Pinewood Studios and the Advanced Film & Television studios in Toronto. Both were pretty cool experiences and both fairly different.

At the AF&T studios I got to see for the first time a studio set, since all the sets I've ever been on were on location. The atmosphere isn't much different based on people act just you're in a closed space and it is a lot more quiet. I've never necessarily enjoyed the look of studio settings in movies all the time because they tend to look unnatural to me. When you watch it you can tell half the time "hey that's shot in a studio." The lighting just looks off to me but that's just my taste.

At Pinewood Studios we didn't get to see inside any of the big sound stages unfortunately (which sucks cause the remake of Robocop is currently being filmed there). We did however get a cool 3D presentation of a video featuring James Cameron. It showed the difference between the different frame rates of 24, 48, and 60 frames per second. I never got to anything like it before and I thought it was absolutely incredible! It actually looks like the people on screen could be standing right in front of you! 60fps is the speed the eye catches images so the video was mirroring real life which to me looked amazing! I know the Hobbit is getting some negative reviews about it right now but I hope that opinion changes overtime because it is definitely the future of movies.

Can't wait to wherever our new field trip takes us. Here's a cool slow motion example of what high frame rates can do! High frame rate Slow Motion

PA Jobs

The Red One camera on shoots 1 & 2

Over the semester I have been lucky enough to do three jobs with Media Arts students. I worked on two 3rd year portfolio films as a PA and on a 2nd year adaptation film as a Grip. All three were absolutely wonderful experiences allowing me to witness and be part of real professional sets.

My first job was also my biggest. I was a PA on the film Anatomy of a Sunbeam and went up to Wasaga for four days for the entire shoot. About sixteen of us all slept in the same cottage make it very crowded but also very fun. We shot mostly in a trailer park and I helped with carrying/setting up equipment, but most of all worked as a driver. While it isn't a glorious job it was still fun to do driving around and talking to the actors most of the time. I'd sometimes be driving back-and-forth on the same stretch of road about ten times non stop, I think I drove about 550km that weekend! Overall it was an amazing experience.

On my second job it was only for a day on the third year film Autumn. I just did the same things as last time but it didn't end as well for me. After driving all the way to Toronto from Hamilton to pick up an actress I picked her up and started going back until I got into an accident (it was my first time driving myself in Toronto fyi, I live in the rural area). But I don't want to go into detail about that unfortunate bit...

On my third set with the second years I was lucky enough to work as a Grip through a connection knowing one of the students through my sister. This time I helped out more with carrying/setting up equipment.

Overall all three jobs were an amazing experience that helped me as a filmmaker. They were incredibly fun to do and everyone I met were really nice. Hopefully all the work works out in my favour when it comes to application time for Media Arts!

The following is a link to a film a few of the people I worked with on the first and second shoots made last year. It has 500,000 views! - Recess Opening Remake

Final Assignment - Mansion Madness

Inspiration for the screenplay

For my final assignment I decided to make a screenplay somewhat based off one of my favorite director's movies; The Game by David Fincher. I wanted to make it truly a choose-your-own story by having multiple paths to take, even have paths that you could miss entirely your first time through. While there is only two endings the world of the story I believe feels bigger with the more options.

Normally I enjoy stories where you can choose what happens, but I don't enjoy as much creating them. Whenever I write wether it is linear or non-linear the story always ends up the same way. I found it a lot more difficult to connect and disconnect a story multiple times and make it all work. It especially gets confusing when you have to jump back and forth between the pages of your screenplay to make sure everything works. I probably had to re-write most of the scenes multiple times to make it all worth together!

The screenplay is also only ten pages because I've always thought when it comes to short stories/films shorter is often better. If you can fit a good story into a smaller space or time then go for it. One reason for this is if you ever want to put your short film in a festival it is easier to fit in shorter films than longer ones.

The Game and the board game Clue are probably the biggest influences on this screenplay. Clue takes place in a mansion and you have to find out who killed who, much like my story. The inspiration from The Game is... well... I can't say it without spoiling it so if you're interested below is the trailer! I highly recommend it if you enjoy psychological thrillers.

The Game Trailer - David Fincher

Looper-ish Philosophy

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis play the same character: one is the past and one future

After watching Looper the other day I started going on a deep philosophical rant. I was thinking about the choose your own stories we were talking about in class and compared them to real life. Basically those stories are a media version of real life where we have to make decisions and what happens next is based on that decision.

Kind of scary if you think about it.

What if because you entered the right door of the class room instead of the left door you missed the chance to talk to someone who could change your life forever? What if you two made a movie idea that made millions? Seriously anything can affect what happens in your life.

I believe that every single person in your life affects your future somehow. Not just people who a friends but even people you never talked to one and you just walked by them in a store without even acknowledging each other. Maybe what your eyes see affect psychologically what your next thought would be, like the color red on some guys shirt changes your next thought to some kind of angry. Or maybe you saw there shoes and for a second you thought about how nice those shoes looked and if you ignored that and kept walking you could of been on your way to thinking of something important.

I imagine this is really confusing to read, it’s really confusing to think about. But this is the stuff that keeps me up at night.

Anyway why Looper made me think about this is because it is about time travel and changing the future so here’s a link to the trailer to help make this sensible:

Looper Trailer

ControlTV

Web Series

Talking about interactive storytelling in our last class where you decide what happens made me think about the web series ControlTV. It was started by Seth Green as an experiment to try a new form of interactive media, controlling a human being.

How it works is one contestant gives up their life for six weeks and lose control in anything he wants to do. Every week the views of the show can go on their website and vote what happens to him each week. You can decide things like where he works, who he dates, who his friends are and even go into such detail as when does he wake up and what does he eat!

The results I won’t spoil if you want to watch the series but you may be surprised by what people decide to vote for.

Unfortunately the series only lasted one season, although they did get renewed for a second in 2010 but are still yet to make it. I thought it was a really amazing idea and I hope to see it again because I love stories you can control, and when it is someone’s life it gets really interesting. 

Since it is so topical right now for what we are doing in class right now I highly recommend checking it out! Although you obviously can’t vote anymore here is the link to the short episodes on youtube:

ControlTV Episodes

HitRECord

hitrecord.org

Recently I joined an interactive filmmaking community called hitRECord, a professional online production company started by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. 

When I first heard about it I thought it was a really interesting and revolutionary way to do filmmaking. The way it works is that anyone can edit or remix anything that is on the website. You or others upload your own work which can be anything from pictures to music to video clips. Other people can see what you uploaded and if they want to use it they can download it and make it into something their own. These projects can get up to hundreds of people working on the same thing adding their own creative tastes.

Another cool thing about it is that you can make money this way! If Gordon-Levitt or someone else that is a major part of the company likes what they see, they can submit to film festivals and try to get it distributed. Whatever money it makes is given to every single person involved based on how much work they put into it. So not only can you make money but also get your name out there potentially.

Being in Media Fundamentals I thought this was a really neat thing I should try out since I’ll be doing all sorts of media that could contribute to this website. Hopefully I could add something that people would like! Check out the website I really recommend it!

hitrecord.org

"Cloud Atlas" Structure Review

Warner Bros.

My second screening at TIFF was a movie I’ve been highly anticipating and has major hype around it, Cloud Atlas. From the creators of the Matrix trilogy comes a movie starring Tom Hanks and Halle Berry about six different story’s crossing each others paths in different points of time. I thought this movie would be particularly interesting to compare with Freytag’s triangle that we learned in class.

There are six different stories and one major story combining all of them together. I’ll skip to the chase and say that all six of the stories do follow the normal triangle structure. The big picture however loosely follows it if you consider it a normal plot structure. 

There is an opening seen showing the connection of all the stories. What ever happened in the story (time period) earlier to the other one is acknowledged in that current story. To clear that up that means the story happening in the 70’s is being acknowledged by the story in 2012, and the 2012 story is being acknowledged by the future story past that and so on, but no story jumps an extra generation just the one after it.

All six stories’ rising action and climax coincide with each other so all the stories end at the same time (unlike novel where climax’s start at middle and go counter clockwise starting with the farthest in the future ending first).

This probably hasn’t helped much because it’s a movie you have to watch to understand...

IMDB Page

"Emperor" Structure Review

Photo taken by me

This past weekend at TIFF I watched the red carpet premiere of Emperor directed by Peter Webber and starring Matthew Fox with Tommy Lee Jones. A story about the decision wether or not to trial the Japanese emperor for war crimes post-WWII. Held at the Roy Thomson Hall I got to see the stars on the red carpet as well as doing a opening speech before the film. It was a surprisingly good movie but while watching it I couldn’t help but make the connection to Freytag’s triangle which we learned in class. So this review is not on how well the overall movie was but how it followed the triangle’s structure.

*Spoilers*

The movie opened heavily with the bombing of Hiroshoma. A big start to a more slow rising action. The Americans go to Japan to question Japanese army officials to try and link Pearl Harbor war crimes to the emperor. The story goes through a number officials slowly leading to the climax of interrogating the emperor, along with a subplot of Matthew Fox’s character searching for a lost love. 

After several interrogations and the discovery of the fate of the lost love. The climax comes towards the very end of the movie where the emperor interviewed by US officials but decide to let his reign of Japan to continue. The Falling Action/End came immediately after showing pictures with descriptions what happened after the decision.

Overall the story followed the basic Freytag’s triangle formula. 

IMDB page