YORK
After half term, we went to York to see short films at the Aesthetica Short Film Festival and to attend masterclasses from highly acclaimed, succesful professionals working within the Film Industry.
Edward Hicks - Head of Television and Film RADA
Screenacting
Acting, directing relationship and casting.
London Film School
Editing, sound recording, shoot/digital film. You have to think carefully about the choice of lens to get that shot of your actors.
Worked for a Film Production company.
Worked as a runner for commercials.
He had the experience of directing puppets and had the pleasure of meeting Miss Piggy from The Muppets and famous pop stars.
First set of meetings with you persuading the people who provide the money to make your film are positive but then as you move on to your last meetings, they are hopeless. They will try and change the ending of your plot, the character's names, the aim or moral the narrative, storyline or the title, etc.
He also pointed out that Film Schools and Drama schools are different. Technical people who work on the lighting, DP, sound, etc. they do not normally talk to the actors. The Performance Side VS. The Technical Side.
You also must think carefully about your casting. Good actors connect with their characters and be in the moment. You should give actors time to do their preperations eg. characterisation, physicality, voice, mentality, etc.
Now film scripts don't show much of their acting which is why actors should think outside the restrictions of the script or dig deep into the script. An actor has to convince themselves to convince audience.
Think on frame after frame but ask yourself - do you believe this character? You must make sure that they are acting as this character and not trying to do a performance, otherwise it woul just look fake. Acting and performing are different things and good actors do not mimmick.
Another improtant thing to rememeber is that there is no leader and no one has higher authority that anyone else. You work in a collaborative process - you are part of an ensemble. Remember it's an ensemble work and collaborative process which means you are part of a team.
Actors are experts in bringing people to life so if you are looking for actors to bring life to these characters you created, then find actors that you admire or ones that interest you. Normally, you would choose someone you already know, therefore you would already have a relationship with that person. However ideally, it would be much more interesting to go out there and meet new and like minded people. Just as long as they are professional.
Find different sort of buttons to push with your actors. Directors work well with actors who have a close relationship because they know really well what ticks them off, in order to make their acting seem pure and natural. Hicks once had to direct a well experienced actor with another actor with very little experience, who did not get along. Hicks used this as an advantage because the characters they played did not like each other. He made them sleep in separate rooms, etc.
Actors are experts in bringing people to life. Bad actors look at their lines and perform them but not know the context or objection behind the lines, or what it means. As a director, you have to know the concept, content and context of the script and their subject matter. "I dunno" Is not good enough and the actor will lose their confidence in you as a guide and a director.
Actors are hugely insecure and self concious and they do beleive it is scary and exposing. Therefore they need to be relaxed when performing/acting. It's unhealhty for your mind, spirit and body to performing in such a tense position. Recreate the room to make them feel comfortable not make the actors feel underpressure.
Also preparation is key. For eg. Tom Hiddleston, for prepartation of a soldier in War Horse, he read poetry, looked at old paintings all relating to the first world war.
What Hicks does is that he offers the script 10 days before shooting. Actors come up with greater ideas than you would ever think of.
When directing the actor, ask him questions rather than just telling them what to do. But also give them alot of space. Hicks once got the camera rolling when an actor was practiceing. He didn't tell them they were shooting before he started. The actor wanted to to do it again. Actors must do their scenes as if it's the first time they were ever doing it. Acting is reacting.
Amy Smith
Framestore
Framestore is a British visual effects company based near Oxford Street in London. It was formed in 1986. The company works across several different areas of the media: feature films, commercials, music videos, feature animation and digital.
They won every award for Coputer Graphic Imagery for Film and Television.
Creativity and Technilogy
Art development or 4 founders and only 1 is no longer working.
First company in Europe to open a virtual realtiy studio.
They won Oscars
They direct or collaborate with great directors such as Baz Luhrman, Steven Spielberg, Quintin Tarintino, etc.
They are also work with huge franchises such as: Lord Of The Rings, Harry Potter, James Bond, etc.
One of their most well known work was a Galaxy Chocolate Bar commercial featuring Audrey Hepburn. The CGI replacement was considered a huge challenge. They used a Facial Action Coding System.
The face looked believable and was immediatly recognised as Audery Hepburn by the public. It was quite an achievement. It took four months to complete which was a really fast process.
Audrey Hepburn: Galaxy Chocolate Commercial
Click on the Clapper to see the Behind the Scenes footage.
That's me, right there.
The Innovation of Framestore started with dinosaurs. A BBC Programme called "Walking With Dinosaurs," they did forty different computer generated dinosaurs, processed by eight processors, whereas Dawn of The Planet of The Apes (2014) - processed on 50,000 processors.
From the dinosaurs, this led to other creatures such as the following:
Kreacher
Paddington
(which was the hardest due to him always getting into "sticky situations.")
Despereaux
Rocket Raccoon
Their most challenging creature that they had to tackle was Yorick from The Golden Compass.
They used a bucking bronco but it wasn't safe because the person riding it would have to be strapped. So what they did was animate the polar bear and add it to the bucking bronco.
They added creatures being creatures. They had to act or interact with other people. Yorick was furry and wore armour. Armour and fur do NOT mix!
Rocket Raccoon from Guardians of The Galaxy was also challenging. They kept animal elements in mannerisms depite keeping human in body structure and not in proportion. Different sort of clothing/costumes. Raccoon fur is complex.
Robbie Gibbon: Big Screen and Television Storytelling The Craft and Technology of Film Editing.
He shoots Doctor Who with Pro Rez.
Now the job of the Assistant Editor is to make the cutting the show as easy as possible. Make sure everyone understands is on the same page. Offline editing footage comes, cut together a show. Making it exciting as possible. I also learned that you need to have impeccable organisation skills otherwise you would lose your footage or misplace it.
Naming it - once you get all the information, you have to sync all the clips with the sound.
You can always track back to the master clips.
What’s interesting is that Gibbon goes on set and then he edits it so from being on set is different from looking at footage in an Editing suit.
The Editor works closely with the Director. In some shots, you have to be very DP focused. How it looks over acting. Justify why they use it, which means there is no right way of doing things. The director and the editor may have different opinions and views.
He made a short 5 minute film called Interlude where they had to shoot in 48 hours. It all had to be based on a given title, a prop and a dialogue.
I also learned the difference between offline edit and online edit.
Offline edit - Blue prints for how the sound should be. All aspects add to the storytelling.
Online editing - bringing the show once its locked.
Tim Pope - How I Got My First Break?
Tim Pope beleives that music and image work together. He wrote plays for BBC Radio 4 and opened a theatre company. He photographed the Queen and he shot a sugar puff's commercial with Kate Winslet. He worked closely with Iggy Pop and made The Crow. He wrote a song called "I want to be a tree" He made a controversial film called "Sex Dwarf."
Tim told us that he was able to get into the music industry and be more connected with these famouse artists was because it was more free that period. Now in modern days, the bands are now protected by coorperations. Tim also told us to stay true to yourself and love what you do.
YORK FILMS
From the range of films, I saw they had different sorts of storytelling. Some are linear, some are non linear. For example in What Comes After directed by Chris Dundon-Smith, starts with a boy looking at a man in a hospital bed. Then the next scene brings us to the boy talking to his friends, being obnoxious. This makes us wonder what he did and was he reponsible?
I also learned that these films were based on well known films but used in their own sense of style. I was amazed in Injury Time, when the entire film was set in one shot whilst there was a count down up to 0 which raises tension. It reminded of Birdman where it contained long scenes where it was all done in one shot. Or any long opening sequences such as SPECTRE or The Place Beyond The Pines. The countdown clock in the film suited the Thriller genre. It showed us that the stakes were raised and as if it was a matter of life and death despite it was just about a football match.
One of the films I enjoyed the most was Taxistop directed by Marie Enthoven. A French short film about Antoine who needs to get to Geneva to present a seminar on team building. But due to a railway strike, he’s obliged to go by carpooling with five opposite personalities. To Antoine, this will be the perfect opportunity to test his theories he so strongly believes in.
Antoine has character development in this film, which is what I admire. He was a pushover in the begging and never stood up for himself. He is sort of struggling to see his daughter because the mother is probably always winning the case on who lives with her. Antoine snaps from his selfless, kind, graceful attitude and explodes! This is the first time, we ever see him angry or outraged which is what makes it absolutely hilarious!
“FUCK YOU AND YOU! FUCK EVERYBODY! FUCK THE WHOLE UNIVERSE! I’M GOING HOME!”
I also admire the eccentric characters such as; Power A hippie woman who drives in her van, Flower, with a caged chicken at the back of the van. To me, Power was the most eccentric character I have ever seen in the ASFF.
From watching the thriller films, I kept witnessing a pattern that men were represented as villains who love to rape and take advantage of women whilst the women were portrayed as poor, helpless and defenceless waiting to be rescued by an outside force. Most of the Thriller films character raise a contemporary social issue: it's most popular being Sexism.
For example, A Stranger Kind directed by Oliver Murray, centered on a young woman who works in a bar, where people also perform. She is constantly being mistreated and mocked by men who she works for and is always forced to do things she never wants to do for example: when a mysterious strange, who is about to perform his "magic trick", asks for a volunteer to chop his hand off and the men force her to go up when nobody else does.
The chopped off hand comes back and kills the men one and, supposedley rescues the woman from the torture and humilitation of living with the men and now she is free to start over and move on.
The Substitute directed by Nathan Hughes-Berry which shows all the school boys empowering the female, good looking Substiute teacher and pinning them against the wall.
Also in On The Road a French short film directed by Marione Lanes, shows us of the improbable meeting in a highway restaurant of a hysterical waitress, a truck driver collector of long-distance truck drivers and a young woman with a broken heart.. All three share without knowing the same secret: they have just murdered a man. A policeman, then, enters the restaurant.
So this short Thriller Comedy film shows a woman who is a maid at the resturant who is being harrased and teased by two men, openly mocking her and also behind her back. What's really interesting is that she has a passion for meat. She says that her father was a butcher, which may show her manly, unlady like mannerisms as she vigorously bites off a chicken drug stick. She kills one of the men and delivers a witty line which makes us almost applaud her despite what she did was wrong.
Meanwhile, a prostitute, Melodie, kills a client after chucking her out of his car. (we discover it's a male drag queen in the end) This shows how heartless and cruel males can be.
And lastly a mysterious woman, who wears a helmet and biker jacket drivign around in a truck killing men on the highway. On the news they say she is a man, which shows the underestimation of what women are capable of. These three woman meet in the resturant, the first lady works in. Then all of a sudden, a police man enters the area and interrogates the ladies.
The policeman is introduced as bumbling, witless, dumb and very clumsy. However he is the likeable male and respects the lady's authorities. He even falls in love with Melodie as she does the same. It's a very parodyish "love at first sight" moment in particuluar French films. Watching this film made me on the edge of my seat, because I was worried that the policeman would get killed by one of the other two women. Thankfully he was just knocked out and his clothes are missing. And the man who was Melodie helps him up and says, "my name's Mel," then looks at the camera, breaking the fourthwall and smiles, "as in Mel Gibson." Giving us a hint that the police man will recognise him/her leaving it on a happy ending.
In conclusion, these short films, when raising awareness of a topic, use immersive and imaginative ways of portraying their characters, stories and themes.
He has a website. Click on the button below to go to it.
