The Three Russians

Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein, born 1898 in Soviet Russia, was a film director and theorist. Known particularly well for his silent films he has since influenced almost every film maker since.
It was Eisenstein's writings on Montage in film which really captivated others. In these he says how he believed that Montage was the soul of cinema and that it could not only be used to emphasize the physical intentions of a director, but also could, by using 'linkage' of totally separate shots, could effect emotion and understanding.



Born in 1896 Dziga Vertov was again a Russian film theorist and director. He specialised in newsreel and documetry style film, whilst still workin in cinema. His practises lead the way for many techniques, none quite so famous as 'Cinéma vérité'
In french, 'Cinéma vérité' translates as 'Cinema of truth'. This is because it is used to describe a style of documentary filming that is very hash, brutal towards the topic and combines naturalistic techniques with more stylizes cinematic ones.



Lev Kuleshov was born in Soviet Russia in 1899 and was best known for setting up the Moscow Film School, the worlds first institute dedicated to teaching its pupils about Film. He, like the others believed strongly that the 'essence' of film making lay within the editing, the art of using montage to add substance to a scene. To demonstrate the power of this he came up with an experiment known as the 'Kuleshov Effect'. This was where his audience was shown a piece of film in which an actor was to have one fixed emotion for a number of different instances (ie. being shown delicious looking food, of a coffin) while the edit would cut from him, to the object, then back to the actor. Simply because the montage was well placed, the audience believed that the actor had changed, when in reality he had stayed exactly the same throughout. The audience were truly fooled and even raved about just how good his acting was!

Soundscape...?

A 'soundscape' is a term used to describe a sound or collection of sounds that have come from a specific environment. Within the media it is often used as a reference to a recording that has been made to simulate the sounds of a certain place. A soundscape can marry the sounds from all sources that originate in within a chosen situation. That could be natural sounds ie; animals, weather etc, or human activity ie; music, technology etc. When creating a soundscape composers have often chosen to use a more abstract approach, often using unique ideas such as poetry or speech to help covey the correct feeling.

The first minute or so of this video on youtube, in my opinion are a great example of a soundscape, and the lack of imagery really allows our imagination to run away with it:

What on earth is a Vox Pop?

The term 'Vox Pop' comes from the latin 'Vox populi' which translates as 'Voice of the people'.
In media terms it is used to describe a way in which broadcasters can voice the views of the general public. Typically this is done by an interviewer stopping random members of the public and asking them the same fixed question. The answers are then edited together normally to show the different points of view.

Self Portrait

In the task we were asked to take a self portrait, this was one photograph which we felt summed us up as a person.
I spent a long time playing around with photos of me doing the things i love most, such as playing guitar etc but all these images cane across far to staged, and to me seemed boring.
I settled on taking one honest photo of my room...although this seems dull as an idea i felt the image seemed far more interesting and showed my life on a day to day basis...

An Atmosphere

Our Task was simple, capture the atmosphere of a regular location using just six images.
I settled on a classic family pub as my choice...















thoughts...

what seemed like a fairly straight forward task ended up proving to be incredibly difficult. I spent a fair while playing with the white balance on my camera to help capture that dark, warm, smokey feel that most pubs hold.
I am happy with my images, although in hindsight i do feel i could have made a better choice of subject.

Audio Editing

Today we were set the task of editing a voice clip. The recording is of someone walking through the basic controls of a Sony HVR Z1 Camera.
To do this is used Garageband, a simple program that is installed on all mac computers as standard.
Below is the track its self...have a listen!

Audio Edit Complete.mp3

Garageband in action:

Do I really need...

We were given the uncompleted title 'Do I really need...'. We must finish the title in the hope of coming up with ideas for a television show.

After a small brainstorm I settled on the subject 'the Media'.
I like this for many reasons. It can touch on many issues in today's society from how the media can influence people, ie anorexia from wanting to be like models in a magazine, to social networking and its lack of boundaries. What makes it even more interesting is that it is Media that i am studding...

Here is an amateur video that i feel touches on some important points relating to modern day gang culture and today's Media:

Photo Marathon...

For our first project we were given a printout with twelve different subjects on. It was our job to take a photo for each of these. Before i started this i was unaware of what a beautiful city Bath actually is, however after four hours of wandering around looking for unique and complex subject matter it really hit home!
This was a great task where not only did it throw us right into the creative side of the course but it also worked as a device thorough which we could get to know our class mates as well...