5x5

• Clip 1: Kitchen Sink 
• Clip 2: Bathtub 
• Clip 3: Garden Hose
• Clip 4: Shower
• Clip 5: Dripping Bathroom Sink

    I created my 5x5 by filming sounds and movement of water throughout my house. I filmed these clips using a Canon 7d and used iMovie to edit it. One issue I found while editing my clips was that the shot of the dripping faucet had background sounds of the camera. To fix this I lowered the sounds in-between the drips so you can't notice it as much. I like the way it came out and I feel that even though the shots are simple they were well done.

   For our next independent film challenge I  feel that we should do something similar except this time incorporate music. One idea is we could show a story in less than 15 or 20 seconds then use music to help tell the story.

Dystopian Trailer Review

Equilibrium . Kurt Wimmer . R . 2002
In a world where rights are a thing of the past and feelings are illegal, a role model member of society, John Preston (Christian Bale) comes to realize the horror of his society and decides he is the one who has to take down the system.

      This is an exemplary trailer because it clearly shows the premise, protagonist's change and the faults of the society they live in.  The premise is clearly shown through the use of cleverly picked dialogue and visible text that appears every few seconds to help the viewer understand their society. The director also chooses very emotional and high-impact scenes and clips that help the viewer understand the premise. The protagonists change is clearly seen as they show his wife being taken and his reaction. All clips after this, show his new goal to overthrow the system. The faults of the society can also be clearly seen in this trailer. In the text they describe the lack of rights and the over-controlling government. The use of force and armed guards is also evident and show one way they control the population.
     The director was clever with choosing his clips and setting the tone so we should use this as a way of coming up with ideas for our trailer. I feel that we should use a similar style of text that appears along with some dramatic music. Also like this trailer we should show the development of the protagonist in a clear way. For example we could show him going along with the system until he sees what is wrong. This along with many aspects of the Equilibrium trailer will help us with creating our own dystopian trailer.

Article Analysis

     Tonight I read the article, "Preparing Students to Learn Without Us" written by Will Richardson. This article discusses the topic of using technology to learn outside of the classroom through the use of blogs and other resources. He mostly focuses on the idea of students finding a passion and building upon that. The point I found interesting about this article was that he suggested using a non-academic passion or a passion that is not talked much about in class and digging deeper into that and relating it to a class topic. For me it would be interesting to learn more about cinematography because one of my hobbies is photography and I could find relations between the two. I think the use of our blogs to learn more about a topic we are interested in would be a good thing to do within CAP. This would allow for a more personalized and exciting way of learning.

Annotated article: http://diigo.com/0sy4n

     Today I read, "Review: 'The Bourne Legacy' Retroactively Poisons the Prior Trilogy" written by Scott Mendelson for the Huffington Post. This review of The Bourne Legacy seems to lack much structure and focuses much of it's energy on personal opinion. What I can say about the structure is that paragraphs typical started with plot descriptions then carried into a critique of the film and it's effect on the Bourne Trilogy. After plot descriptions he soon described some of the acting (but not much) and continued to throw in his opinions. This film review lacked cinematography and editing comments besides one saying he liked the choppiness of some editing sequences. This review was also written in a rude and sarcastic tone which did not help me sympathize with the writer. He did not even convey a real theme (besides it didn't have one).
    Because of seeing this lack of structure I feel this review was confusing, so to help me and the rest of the class there should be some form of structure when we are assigned to write a movie review of our own. This would help with making sure we cover everything. Also when writing our own reviews we should be allowed to choose the topic and movie itself. Besides that there should be guidelines on how we write it.

Link to my annotations: http://diigo.com/0sua5  

   

Introduction

      Hi I'm Peter. I have two dogs named Floyd and Bayley. I play baseball and one of my hobbies is photography. The component of film making that most interests me is cinematography. Since fifth grade I have enjoyed going out and making short films with my friends. We never wrote scripts but our films still ended up being decent. This is still something I like to do however with more organization and planning.

     The most I ever enjoyed making films was in sixth grade when I lived in Germany. Me and my friend would spend our weekends coming up with stories such as a robbery or someone who is in love with nutella and would make them into films using our apartment building as a setting. We would both act, direct and edit.

 I think we could use this blog to:

• Share images related to our class discussions.
• Share films we make outside of class.
• Suggest new projects.
• Continue class discussions online.
• Share completed school projects with everyone.

One of the pictures I have taken. Shot in Copenhagen from the water using a Canon 7D.