First College Film

My First College Short Film

We basically had to come up with a pirate joke and make a film on it!

Well thats the simple explanation.

In college for the past three weeks we have been doing activities pirate related. On the 9th we are going to be doing a pirate walk through Bath city centre in aid of Off the Record a charity that helps under privileged children in cities. We have been doing pirate leaflets, pirate maps and what you can see to the left pirate videos.

The joke for this video was why did the pirate become a rapper? …… To get more booty. I know an amazing joke but what other decent jokes can you think of for pirates! Anyway we based our short film around this joke.

I have not really edited or filmed anything apart from mountain bike films so from the start it was very interesting for me to branch out and try and different genre in filming. I really enjoyed it actually learning different camera angles and what they can show the viewer was very helpful. We started by doing lots of planing for example we did a location search which I have never done before either. It was very eye opening to see what pre-production material you do before you actually go out and film. We also story boarded what help me to get my ideas to the rest of the group.

I came up with most of the camera angles and ideas for the film and obviously my acting just made the film! Unfortunately someone from our group when filming the second day taped over some of the footage from the first day but we know now not to do that again! We managed still to get an edit together but did not make complete sense.

Overall I was quite happy with my first edit. Next time I think I will get someone els to act as I like to know what I am filming to go in my edit as I can't really get across the the camera man what to film.

Framed

Framed a Short Film

Before you read this post take a look at the short film we looked at in college called Framed. (link above) Its a very nicely shot short film. Good shots and a great storyline. The first thing I thought when I was watching this was the quality of the camera, it was crystal clear. The first thing I thought when I saw the opening few scenes is they must of used a very high tech camera to shoot this. It wasn't to the end when we saw the credits that it was all shot on an iPhone 4s! It was pretty astonishing to know we have this camera tech at our finger tips and we don't even know. This post is going to be about what add ons you can buy for your simple iPhones that can make is easy for anyone to get out there and shoot some films.

The first thing I found after browsing around was this small tripod adapter you can buy for your iPhone. This allows you to connect your iPhone to an adapter which then lets you connect it to a tripod. This is a neat contraption which is very affective. This will allow you to shoot better clips because this will eliminate the jerky shots you get when holding your iPhone. This will also allow to shoot different shots such as over the shoulder and much higher angled shots. For only £9.99 it is a must buy for anyone wanting to take top quality shots with their iPhone.

 The next product I found was the aluminium lens you can attach to your phone. This allows you to get better focused shots and most importantly you can get shots from a further distance. The zoom on an iPhone 4s goes up to 5x optical zoom. This added on lens allows you to go up to 12x optical zoom what increases the zoom capability dramatically. This lens also comes with a three legged tripod which you can attach so your shots are level and are not wobbling.

This last product was produced by apple. iMovie. Anyone that edits films or has a mac should know what iMovie is. On the mac iMovie was a simple and very easy to use peace of software which allows you to edit clips together into a movie. Having this on an iPhone now you first think, how could it be possible? How could an iPhone cope with iMovie? Apple have made iMovie even better having it on an iPhone. Putting it on the iPhone changes the way people are going to edit. This means we can film on our smartphones and then edit all the clips in one place. We can edit on the move and upload it on the was to work or while you are having your lunch time coffee. Using the clever apple gestures it makes it simple to add transitions make clips slowmo and even add effects to the clips.

So after looking around we can do virtually everything now on an iPhone. We can film, take photos and even edit now! But does this mean some day we are going to see video cameras fade away? At the moment I don't think so but as technology improves and cameras get better will everything been done on these neat small devices?

Homeland Season 3 Episode 6

The most recent episode of Homeland was again mainly focused on Carrie. In the last episode we find out that her pledged insanity was all a plan to bring in Javadi to the UK. When Carrie first meets Javadi she is taken a hooked up to a lie detector in an old grubby basement. This set the episode straight away on high stakes and brings you straight into it. When Javadi starts asking the questions and Carrie knows she wont be able to lie without being suspected Carrie flips the table and turns it on him and tells him that the CIA are surrounding the house. Javadi knows now that he is stuffed and takes quick action so non of his men know about the CIA.

Carrie then gets dropped of near her house an calls Saul straight away. They then arrange to meet Javadi in a near by cafe later that day.

When the CIA think everything is going to plan and set up people to watch over Carrie for the meeting things take a change for the worse and Javadi goes of course and turns up at an un known house. This is where things start to get tense and Carrie has to stop him from going in side.

Before Carrie and Quinn can get there Javadi gets in side and Murders them in cold blood before they can do anything about it. This reveals to us his malicious character before he goes to be interrogated. We find out that these people he murdered were the same people that Saul tried to save from Javadi. This shows that the matters between them are personal.

The next major scene in this episode is when Dana's departure from the Brody house hold. One thing that it means is not Dana has left could Chris (brother) come out more as a character. While Dana was in the house she was the centre of attention and Chris never really spoke and was loading the dishwasher most of the time. Now that Dana has left and is out of the picture could this mean Chris is going to be a main character and could we see a return of Mr Brody?