North By Northwest (Not the Schools)

The Movie North by Northwest was an unbelievably crucial contribution to its time. While stylistically mimicking that of a James Bond Film, this movie could definitely be classified as a thriller. Many details jumped out to me while watching this film.

A common debate that came up while watching it was whether or not the movie was originally shot in Black and White, or whether it truly was shot in color. The colors were oddly vibrant, but only certain things like skin tone and cars. I personally found the effect to be intriguing visually, adding a more dynamic quality to the older filming techniques.

Another thing that jumped out to me was soundtrack, which for a large part of the movie made me think of the similarities of the West Side Story Soundtrack, a film shot in 1961, only three years after North by Northwest.

 Hitchcock Pushed the Boundaries in several aspects while making this movie. He raised quite a few concerns, particularly in the development of the fight scene on top of Mt. Rushmore. While swearing he would only be practicing safe camera work on the landmark, Hitchcock opted for a far more dangerous and destructive pursuit, having the actors swiftly scale down the side of the monument and risk not only their lives, but the statue as well.
This was not the only area in which Hitchcock disregarded the rules. Shortly after being told that filming the UN was not an option, He quickly threw together a Faux UN and simply filmed outside the building for establishing shots.

Hitchcok's story was that of a framed man who struggled to clear his name and survive. This story was told quite well, with the use of exemplary camera techniques and stellar special effects for its era. What I found to be outstanding, was the scene in which the main character is forced to stand in the middle of nowhere waiting for his Rendezvous. In a vast expanse of bleak country, a camera is utilized at a Bird's eye vantage point, capturing his exit from the bus, and the slow walk down the empty road. what I found impressive about this shot is the fact that it was clearly a deserted area, with nothing to capture such a high shot, meaning they had to build their own crane to get such an angle. The entirety of this scene is phenomenal, from the artistic camera work, to the outstanding capturing of the airplane scenes, one of the most well known scenes in the movie.

Hitchcock Directed this movie exceptionally, and demonstrated techniques that were far beyond his time. The critiques I have for this movie have only to do with the outdated quality of it, something that can not be changed. For the time that it was created, it is revolutionary.

 

 

 

 

 

Lehman, Ernest, Alfred Hitchcock, Cary Grant, Eva M. Saint, James Mason, Jessie R. Landis, Leo G. Carroll, Martin Landau, and Bernard Herrmann. Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2000.

Publicity

In my e-Comm class, we have begun to undertake the large project of creating a short film. The first step in this process was to apply and get hired into our divisions of the crew for filming. My job is Publicity Designer, essentially the head of all things Publicized for the film. I have had experience in this field going into the project, thanks to my Summer internships with an advertising agency, but I still found it essential to educate myself further. I went to the website NoFilmSchool.com and searched Publicity. Unfortunately, not a large selection of articles contained valuable content for publicists, so I went with an article with the closest amount of relevance.

http://nofilmschool.com/2013/09/public-broadcasting-censorship-ifp-film-week

this article talks about the common mistake of relying on Social Media to gain Endorsement and funding. The importance of face-to-face contact should never be lost. Despite the constant changing in our increasingly technological world, Personal contact is still favored to Donors and other investment. We cannot solely rely on the internet to do our job for us; it is a tool to assist us and nothing more. 

Christmas Music Video

For one of the last assignments of the year, We were required to partner up with someone else in class we didn't regularly work with and create a seasonal music video. My partner, Will Cecil, and I came up with several ideas initially, all ranging from outside events like iceskating, to intimate settings like decorating a tree. While all the ideas we came up with were fun and festive, we found that some of their aspects weren't very practical. We weren't able to film the entire group of people we wanted, so we were forced to be creative as the time we had grew shorter and shorter. Inevitably, the last week rolled around for the assignment, and thankfully, we had our idea finalized. We decided to use the song, How the Grinch Stole Christmas and had our friend, Alec Walberg play the grinch. Through a series of comedic shots, we portrayed Alec to be just as mean as the Grinch himself. Abby Peek also made an appearance in our video, playing an adorable Cindy Lou Who. overall, Despite the slight time crunch, I believe our video was a success.

Montage

To understand the concept of montage, you must first appreciate the man who invented the technique: Sergei Eisenstein. Sergei began his career in an ideal moment in history, a time when cinematographers were utilized to relay to the general public the war that was happening around them. Sergei was a very gifted cinematographer, known for his 'intellectual montage' skills. his films, such asLa destrucción de Oaxaca (Documentary short) 

 1930Sentimental Romance (Short) (as S. M. Eisenstein) 

 1929Gore i radost zhenshchiny 

 1929The Storming of La Sarraz 

 1929Old and New 

 1928October (Ten Days that Shook the World) (as S. M. Eisenstein) 

 1925Battleship Potemkin (as S.M. Eisenstein) 

 1925Strike 

 1923

Dnevnik Glumova (Short) 


perhaps his most well known film, Battleship Potemkin represents one of his best works in development of the montage technique. Montage focuses on emotion, not time. Eisenstein spends ten minutes on a scene that only lasts two, just to demonstrate the general feelings of the people in it. Abby Peek and I decided to do our montage as a promo for our school's Musical, The Wizard of Oz. we wanted to not only capture the essence of the show, but resurrect a nostalgic emotion that everyone felt when they watched the movie as a child.

Project Management

For my Group's MLK video Project, we were very diligent in the process of organizing and strategizing what needed to be done. We meticulously planned out every moment of our process, from storyboarding, to location scouting. We did our best to work around obstacles, like filming in the rain during an outside scene. We kept a running google Doc during the entirety of the project, and frequently texted our team in order to make sure everything ran smoothly. We planned constantly, and despite our challenges, we were able to execute this video properly.

Film Crew

While I know I could handle the job of being a Producer, I know my schedule keeps me quite busy, and I would be slightly concerned about how demanding the responsibilities of being a Producer would entail. Director of Photography is a very exciting, yet stressful job. This is arguably one of the more challenging jobs, because it involves being capable of shot composition, noticing visual dynamics, and being confident in camera work. The gravitation of this job is quite heavy, because without this person,  the film itself would not exist.  Project managers are highly important because it is their responsibility to keep everything running smoothly. While I know I would be good at this job, I feel that my talents would be better suited for something else.  Directing is having an overall vision for something, and convincing everyone else around you that its a good idea. I think I'd be good at Directing, but i enjoy more creative responsibilities. Editing is a detail oriented process that would require patience and a good eye for what looks best. I believe I am fairly qualified to do a job like this. I am skilled at finding ways to make something look its best, even if there is very little that went right in the filming process. I am good at thinking creatively, especially when I need to come up with a solution to a problem in short periods of time.

Codecs

Recently, I've had the opportunity to learn about Codecs. Initially, I couldn't say I knew a thing about Codecs. After doing some research, I discovered that the word Codec means compression/decompression. It also stands for compressor/decompressor and code/decode. Essentially what that means is that Codecs are computer programs that shrink large movie files so you can watch them on your computer easily. Even if we don't consciously know about Codecs, we use them on a regular basis; we need them every time we want to listen to music or watch a video on our computer. A commonly known Codec is Mp3, that renders music and allows sharing to be quick and attainable. Codecs get very little credit from the public, because no one even acknowledges the work that goes into displaying movies and music. We use codecs every day, and we need to remember how important it is.