Sunday, 27 January 2008

JOE DASSIN, AN INSPIRATION, A LIFE-STYLE

Joe Dassin, This man will hopefully be responsible for the feel and emotional state of the film. Dassin is romance in it's purist form. He speaks the language of love, He loves animals, He has good hair and he spaeks from the heart!






The song which gave me so much inspiration as to were this film is heading is this one, L'ETE INDIEN. It has a very nice flow to it that i think will match perfectly the long, slow and sweeping shot in our film.
Watch and listen for yourself.

JOE DASSIN "L'ETE INDIEN"

Monday, 21 January 2008

DOCUMENTARY MEETS ART HOUSE IN 1970

This is a concept that really interests me. In 1970 Jean-Luc Godard filmed the rolling stones recording Sympathy for the Devil and turned it into somewhat of a political/cultural piece of film.
Here is a synopsis of the film from the website uk.rottentomatoes.com who explain it a lot better than i ever could.

"Jean-Luc Godard's SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL is an exhilarating, provocative pastiche of a motion picture. While the focus of the film is on The Rolling Stones song after which the film is titled, a series of abstract fictional vignettes in the second half of the film allows Godard to probe topics as diverse as Black Power, pornography, and the irony of interviewing celebrities. These extended sequences elevate the film above a simple portrait of the English rockers, constructing an intimate examination of the cultural and political movements of the '60s. It is also a fascinating study of the intellectual aesthetic that Godard developed toward the end of the decade. This film can actually be viewed as two movies in one. In addition to the aforementioned vignettes, the film shows The Rolling Stones in a London studio rehearsing "Sympathy For the Devil," a song that became one of the era's most powerful statements. The band (Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Charlie Watts, and Bill Wyman) takes a loose outline of this song and turns it into a stirring, fully realized creation. Beginning as a ballad, the track gradually acquires a pulsating groove, which gets Jagger into a rousing vocal display of soulful emotion that Godard is lucky enough to capture on film. Showing that rock & roll is more than just partying and goofing off, SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL is a brilliant portrait of the creative process at its most collaborative and arousing."

Here is the trailer for the film to give you a slight insight to the film, it's pretty strange!



This is an excert from the film and demonstrates quite well the blend of documentary film making and the slightly more arty side to it.



For me personnaly i really like the long continuous shots in the studio which i think really helps to show what it's like to write and record a song. But whats even better than this is the way Jean-Luc Godard continues this on into the staged scenes of the film, I think it works really well.

THE ART OF EDITING

This video is a prime example of how editing can turn something simple into something amazing.

'Drumb and Drumber' by Michel Gondry,



The best thing about this video is that all the edits and effects are very basic and all are things we can do easily at the college, you've just got to be creative with your edits.

FILMS THAT INSPIRE ME

I'd like start off by showing clips or trailers of films that inspire me creativley.

The films i would like bring to your attention are pretty much anything by Wes Anderson. Starting off with his most recent work 'The Darjeeling Limited' of which i was lucky enough to see a previewed screening of at the '21st Leeds International Film Festival' last year.


'The Darjeeling limited' film trailer,



The main story that runs throughout this film is the relationship between 3 brothers on the road to enlightenment and finding their mother which they have not seen since their fathers death. The beauty of Wes Andersons films is how without even realising you can very easily identify with all the charachters despite their larger than life and very idealised personas. Saying that all his films are done with incredible subtlety and integrity. For instance, it took a second viewing of this film to realise the similarities of the relationship between the brothers on screen and that of mine with my brothers.
Another one of Wes' films which inspires me is 'Rushmore'

'Rushmore' film trailer,



Rushmore out of all of Wes' films best demonstrates his talents as a film maker. He manages to blend all the key elements of a good film seemlesly. It's strange yet beautiful, funny yet sad, challenging yet simple and all of these elements come together in a very stylish and almost photographic manor. One thing i particularly like is how he makes what could be quite a 'geekish' film and turn into something undenyably cool with. Stylisticaly every shot is like a very well thought through photograph with amazing colour and vibrancy.

Here are some examples of that in the form of film stills from 'the Darjeeling Limited'.





Another thing i'd like to mention is the soundtrack which is amazing as it is in all his films. I'm pretty sure a lot of his scenes would have been built around the music not the narative, i think this helps the flow of his films.
But! the main reason his films are so good is because 'Bill Murray' is in pretty much all of them, and lets face it 'Bill Murray' is one of the coolest men alive!


Carrying on with the 'Bill Murray' theme, he just happens to co-star in this short film from the collection of short films called 'Coffee & Cigarettes' in which he stars opposite the 'RZA' and the 'GZA' of the 'Wu Tang Clan'. All the short films were directed by 'Jim Jarmusch' and had no real narrative just a subject and the rest was adlibbed. Most scenes have very famous people in them either from tv, film or the music industry, the main attraction of it is the throwing together of people you wouldn't expect to see together. This is best demonstrated by the forementioned scene with 'Bill Murray', 'RZA' and 'GZA'. 'Bill Murray' a very well spoken white american actor and two members of the Hip Hop act 'Wu Tang Clan'. I think it demonstrates very well how two types of people from completely different cultures at the top their games and with a whole lot of charisma can work very well together.


Here is that scene.

'DELERIUM' feat; 'Bill Murray' 'RZA' & 'GZA'



GOOD THINGS ABOUT THIS SCENE:

1: The shots of the coffee table from above.
2: The Cast.
3: The roll reversal, "your both trouble makers" RZA & GZA actualy more inteligent.