Vantage point -New Movie Review #3

way to take a cool genre and transfer it to film so nicely. frustrating, exciting, high speed, and yet conscious of my occasional need to breathe.

i loved this movie because of it's creative editing that gave it such a fast pace and high energy the entire time, while still clinging to the need to delve a little deeper into several characters.

if this movie had a concept it would probably be: "from every pair of eyes their is another story—another piece to the puzzle that is the history." (which, i might add, would be a great concept for a stage production as well...)

it begins from the vantage point of what would be one step closer than the average citizen encountering the media: the camera and reporting crew of the event. after we discover the event as we would in any normal situation—by the news stories—then they start the clock over and re-tell the same story from another character's "Vantage Point." i was impressed. the 24, LOST, and Memento-ish movie made for a mini-series style engaging story that felt all too real because of the editing and filming. it made me think of how the media transfers to the people and exercises the right to censorship and editing. there will never be a way for us to see all of the angles of an event. if i had to recreate the story of 9/11 it would only seem appropriate to tell it from every angle possible. telling the story as if every party involved was the protagonist of their own story—because they are.

i might bring this up in a class about editing and how we film what stories we want to tell. how can the stories be best represented? how else can we tell a story rather than the one story line in a linear form? or we could talk about how to write stories: how can we connect characters to each other or intertwine separate characters' stories into one?

Why TMA is a college of its own:

Here is something I love: mixing genres.

I love when we can play with the audiences' knowledge and they get to choose how they create meaning of it.

The BYU production of Berlin was fantastic. (Yes, if you look at that link- our own Nicole Riding Bell in in the photos because she originated the role of Stephanie) I know it will be edited to look awesome and will look great on screen in the end, but I don't know that it would ever be as moving as it was for me in person. It is kind of a surreal experience to watch the live action taking place on a film set in fluid motion as a stage play, but in the acting style and closeness of film.

There were screens set up so that we could watch what was happening inside the iron-set structure that faced itself inwardly. The sound was more powerful as well because the characters were mic-ed at film quality for the shooting, and the sound bellowed through the large speakers facing us as well as surrounding us. It was like watching an action film, and a musical on a stage at the same time which kept us as audience members very involved.

I also appreciated the attention spent on dialects because they were very tight and authentic and the costuming felt very authentic as well. I guess the simple notion that the show would be filmed adds a new dimension to how the actors treat the content of the show, but it also gives the designers more freedom to be more detailed and forces them to be more accurate.

I guess I thought of how I would love to do this someday at a high school just for fun. It might be fun to have the film students and the theatre students get together like this to be able to plan a project that could benefit both. I happen to have family that is involved in both sides of the spectrum so it would be fun. I also just think that any time we can get an audience into a space that breaks the convention of theatre it broadens the view of what can be done and incites more creative thinking about the themes of the show because it creates a sense of reality, whether we are pulled into it or not.

Found myself an Emerald...

Lets say I am quite the connoisseur of good films. I love them independent and I love them documentary, mostly I think I love them when they tell very real stories that are chillingly accurate to life or that I can relate to as if they were.

Little Manhattan.
If you haven't heard of it, watch the trailer. So cute.


What is so fun about this little story is first the fact that a married couple—Mark Levin (director) - former writer of "Wonder Years" and Jennifer Flackett (screenwriter) of "Wimbelton" and "Madeline"— just wrote it and directed it and produced it. They just wanted to tell an untold love story.
I was giddy for 90 minutes straight. It was real, and it was my childhood. And yours.

It got me thinking about documentaries as well. In docs, we tell the untold stories, giving a voice to the voiceless. I think that is why this film was so fun to watch for me. They wrote a voice over inner monologue-type narration for the young 10-year-old to let us peek into his ordinary day. A good film should do that I think: allow us to look at the world they have created and make me believe it and care about it.

It would be perfect to show in a Media Literacy class because it is so relatable in many ways, and, because it is independent and such a simple story, we could talk about creating our own movies. What stories do we want to tell? How would we show the story? In this film, the two co-writers as a spousal unit decided that New York would be perfect. This maybe because of their own childhoods, and also because of the mirror image of adult life and love that is usually portrayed in romantic comedies in NYC. It was a great way to say, "kids go through this too, and the first cut is the deepest."

The special features on the DVD walk you through some of the creation process that could also be fascinating to watch with young students about the planning process of filming. The crew, directors, designers...etc. all walked through central park just filming and planning and discussing what they wanted the various shots to look like. I think it could give the students a good sense of the small steps and the work involved to get their movies to look like they want them to and to communicate what they want them to.

Highly recommend this fine new find. Netflix may be your only way to it unless you know a guy though. Which I do.

Honest to Blog!

This here is a new show: Quarterlife.
This is the first episode of the show that I got caught watching this past week. It is marketed as a "new internet series and social network". It was quite fascinating to watch for me because it was combining the two things that we usually simply don't combine: our cyber-connected world and our real one. The show is about a blogger who video blogs about her friends, spilling all sorts of information all over the internet which sets off a lot of drama of course. The stories are intertwined with a reality TV-feel camera shot inside the co-ed apartment of a handful of friends (sound familiar?) and with the internet blogs of the main character Dylan, the writer. That's the other thing: the people in the show are all some form of artistic. One is an actor, one is a writer, two are film kids working on commercials...etc.

This is how the website is geared as well. The social networking site is marketed as "a community for artists, thinkers, and do-ers." It is is a "myspace"-type communication site for young adults to subscribe to and channels for areas of interest that conveniently match the interests of the characters like photography, acting, film...etc. Hmm.

Here is the article that I found today about how well it has done: Article. (I will give you a hint: not good.)

I thought it was a good attempt. In a class, it could be fun to look at because of the conversation about blogging and the way that we communicate with the people around us. We could create blogs and talk about taking audience into consideration as we communicate ideas. What are the repercussions of sending our ideas out into the void of the internet?

Also, I think the characters in the show are so interesting. There is not a lot of depth to them. It would be fun to show to an acting class and to pull the characteristics and discuss how to deepen them. This could also be interesting in a screenwriting or playwriting class in that same regard. What could make this more marketable to a wider audience? What could deepen the characters and the story?