Lecture #10: TRAILERS & SHORT FILMS

Lecture 10 will explore a few more forms of filmmaking and editing many of you will encounter: Trailers & Short films. We will look at some examples in class and discuss some of the particular techniques that you can use to tackle these formats.

We will do an initial talk about Genre in preparation for the final assignment, and watch as segment of The Cutting Edge.

SHORT FILMS

Short filmmaking is all about getting to the point and making everything count. Short films, like features, are also often most effective when the story is told visually — SHOW  don’t TELL.

Often shorts are considered under 15 minutes (this is the cut off for festivals like Sundance, Cannes) but can be also considered under 50 minutes.

To get a handle on how to cut short films, its good to watch lots of them. Here are a few sites with more short films and a few very well executed shorts.

Paris, je t’aime, 2006, Coen Brothers (5 minutes)

• ACT I – Opening setup
• ACT II –The conflict that the main character will face (2 minutes)
• ACT III – The resolution of the film

Broken Night, 2013, Guillermo Arriaga

Meshes of the Afternoon, Maya Deren, 1943 (13 min)

Wasp, Andrea Arnold (23 min)

Blood and Chips – Ryan Phillips – 2006

LIFT, Marc Isaacs, 2001 (20mon)

Walker, Tsai Ming-liang, 2012 (25 min)

Ryan, Chris Landreth, 2013 (14 min)

Bus 44 ,  Dayyan ENG, 2014

 

Amateur, Ryan Koo, 2013

Glory At Sea, Benh Zeitlin, 2008 (25 min)

“In 2012, Zeitlin’s debut feature Beasts of the Southern Wild swept the festival circuit, winning top prizes at both the Sundance and Cannes film festivals before ultimately picking up four Oscar nominations. Funding for the film wouldn’t have been possible, however, had Zeitlin not won an award at South by Southwest in 2008 with the premiere of his precursor short, Glory at Sea.”  16 Films that launched the careers of famous directors

Nan Lakou Kanaval, Kaveh  Nabatian, 2015

The library has short film collections of Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry, both worth checking out. Also check out the whole collection Paris, Je t’aime.

Small Deaths, Lynne Ramsay, 1996 (11 min)

Bottle Rocket, Wes Anderson, 1994 (13 min)

Anderson’s original 1994 black and white version of Bottle Rocket has likely done more to launch its director’s career than any other short film ever.

Books on Short Filmmaking

• Cowgill, Linda J. Writing Short Films: Structure and content for screenwriters. New York: Focal Press, 2006.
• Irving, Davide K. and Peter W. Rea. Producing and Directing the Short film and video. New York: Focal Press, 2006.

Cutting Trailers

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Mashups and Remixes

Mixing and re-mixing, referencing and re-making are fundamental to aspects of innovation in film-making. Video Mashups are one way to do this. Editing is a key tool for taking something old and transforming it into something new.

Check out this documentary RiP! A Remix Manifesto about what it’s all about:

SCM’s own IP Yuk-Yuk did this mashup in 2006: “PSYCHO(S) is a live remix of Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO and Gus Van Sant’s remake in 1998.  Running on custom software that edits the films in real-time, PSYCHO(S) juxtaposes and condenses the two films that were made almost 40 years apart into a hypnotic stream of mirror images. The images and sounds, drifting in and out of sync, create a perpetual state of cinematic déjà vu that haunts and confuses both the original and its double. PSYCHO(S) recycles the original narratives, forming new poetic associations in an endless cycle of parallel edits.”

Click on this link to see PSYCHO(S)

Try re-editing the famous shower scene in Psycho in Psycho Studio

Or check out this interesting YouTube remix by Eduardo Navas of 30 Radiohead Lotus Flower video samples.

Trailer Mashups

‘Drive’ 2011 Trailer Mash Up

‘Drive’ Original Trailer

The Shining as a comedy

Willy Wonka as a horror

Breaking Bad as a Romantic Comedy

CLASSIC TRAILERS 

Taxi Driver

Psycho

The Shining

300

Spider-Man (banned after 9/11)

Eyes Wide Shut

The Godfather Part III

Strange Days (teaser trailer)

Fight Club

The Matrix

The Piano

Chungking Express

Lecture #9: Sound & Music | VR 360 Video

This week we focus on the use of Sound & Music in Editing. Sound editing, music and mixing are key components of the art of editing.

In this session we will learn about diegetic and non-diegetic sound; recording sound (mic placements, POV, room tone, thumbprint recording); mixing sound (what you can and can’t solve in the mix); elements of sound editing; stages of sound production and post production; working between picture and sound edit in advanced editing, and more.

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Birth of Sound of Film. Scene on June 9, 1922, in lecture room 100 of the Physics laboratory, when Professor Joseph T. Tykociner gave the world’s first public demonstration of sound-on-film movies. His work caused the old system of “pictures on film, sound on phonograph discs,” to be discarded. Tykociner is behind the desk, looking at the horn microphone. Beside him is the first sound-picture camera. At far right of the table is the first sound-picture projector. Headphones hanging from the table or a loudspeaker were used to hear the sound. Credit: Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, courtesy AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives.

VR 360 video:

We learned the basic techniques to stitch 360 video on AUTOPANO VIDEO

Reading:

Chapter 2 “The Early Sound Film” The Technique of Film and Video Editing: History, Theory, and Practice.

Links:

http://www.filmsound.org/links.htm

This is a video discussing in depth the Sound Design in STAR WARS EPISODE II.

WALTER MURCH talking about Soundscapes with Composer Charles Amirkhanian and soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause.

If you ever question Walter Murch’s talent, listen to his incredible sound design in the opening sequence of Apocalypse Now

Lecture #8: Discontinuity & Critique

This week’s lecture will be split into three parts:

1. In-Class Critique of Assignment #2
2. Discontinuity Editing discussion
3. Introduction to Music Video Assignment #3

The flip side of making editing invisible: Discontinuity.  Discontinuous editing is the deliberate or accidental violation of the rules of continuity.  Discontinuity has many interesting effects that can heighten the feeling of a scene. Typical approaches like jump-cuts, which once seemed very aggressive and shocking, are now very much part of film language. We will look at a few examples

Check out the other music video examples on the MUSIC VIDEO page, and add your favourites.

We will spend most of this week’s class looking at the work you created for Assignment #2.

Learning how to critique editing will be part of the focus this week. What are you looking for when critiquing the edit? How can we learn to spot errors in continuity, pace, rhythm and other elements we have learned about thus far? What is the difference between constructive criticism and non-constructive criticism?

To learn the art of criticism we will practice  on the Major Lazer music video which was shot in Jamaica by SoMe and produced by Iconoclast.

Major Lazer – Get Free ft. Amber of the Dirty Projectors

Screen:

Last Year at Marienbad (1961) Alain Renais

“Not just a defining work of the French New Wave but one of the great, lasting mysteries of modern art, Alain Resnais’ epochal Last Year at Marienbad(L’année dernière à Marienbad) has been puzzling appreciative viewers for decades. Written by radical master of the New Novel Alain Robbe-Grillet, this surreal fever dream, or nightmare, gorgeously fuses the past with the present in telling its ambiguous tale of a man and a woman (Giorgio Albertazzi and Delphine Seyrig) who may or may not have met a year ago, perhaps at the very same cathedral-like, mirror-filled château they now find themselves wandering. Unforgettable in both its confounding details (gilded ceilings, diabolical parlor games, a loaded gun) and haunting scope, Resnais’ investigation into the nature of memory is disturbing, romantic, and maybe even a ghost story.”

http://www.criterion.com/films/1517-last-year-at-marienbad

Screen Excerpts:

Jump Cuts in  Snatch, Old-boy & The Ring

The Cutting Edge: The Rules in Editing French and American New Wave

Jump Cuts in Sergei Eisenstein & Georges Méliès

The Man with a Movie Camera (1929) – almost made entirely of jump cuts

Pierrot Le Fou & Breathless by Jean-Luc Goddard, examples of discontinuity editing and jump cuts with the French New Wave

The Dick Cavett Show – Jean-Luc Godard

Reading:

The Technique of Film and Video Editing: History, Theory, and Practice.

Bordwell, David and Thompson, Kristin (2006) Film Art: An Introduction. New York: McGraw-Hill.