Film Making #5 (Kindness)

An edited down version of Skrines' entry to our house drama competition. I really enjoyed making the film and am very proud of the final result, winning was just a bonus. The full seven minute version is available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcsiFBhzGNA&feature=g-upl

Film Making #0 (Porterloo)

This video is numbered '0' as it was the first one that I created, when I was eleven. Using what basics I knew about Flash, this is what I came up with, enjoy.

Film Making #4 (Hartley)

Don't ask me to explain, it's on this list for a reason.

Why time flies when you’re having fun

Ok, this isn’t true at all, I understand exactly why time seems to go faster when you’re being entertained. At least I think I do, I just needed some excuse for telling the whole world my idea, which I do think is kind of obvious though:

Right, electricity travels fast yes? No, you don’t have to answer (laughs aloud) I can’t hear you. And the brain’s messages are electronic signals that buzz round super fast to tell you what’s going on? (small steps) So this means that the brain thinks about stuff faster than they happen, let me examplise (all over your face): have you ever been thinking about something whilst something else has been going on, like a song playing or someone talking, you’re surprised to find when you’ve gone through a whole film or whatever in your head, the song or maths lesson hasn’t passed very far. This fact also explains why in dreams it seems like months or years of events have passed when it’s only been a couple of minutes. So, when thinking about stuff our fast thoughts make it seem more time has passed so time in the real world goes slower. This explains when having fun we are frolicking about in real world time, participating in tangible events, touching real objects only thinking about events as they unravel at normal speed. However when bored there is nothing to keeps are minds occupied, so we resort to reminiscing or imaging stuff in our heads because there is nothing else to think about. This happens a lot faster than the boring task you’re being made to do, so real world time seems to be slower as you’re travelling faster than it. So, when having fun, our mind is occupied with real world activities that keep us at real world speed, but when bored we think of other things and so in essence travel faster than the task you’re doing so the time appears to go slower.

Take that relativity!

I am everything I am not, I am not everything I am

Why don't people with high blood pressure become blood donors?

Film Making #3

So this is a stop-frame animation video made  entirely without my input. My 12 year old brother and my older sister (aka "JA JA" because they have the same initials) spent a short afternoon taking the photos and editing the footage on windows movie maker with music and effects from clip art. Hmm, puts my stuff to shame...

Senseless persistence

I’m going to be honest with you, I wrote the title of this one quite a while ago and now, looking back at it I can’t see why I don’t, or didn’t understand it. I guess it would be a “what’s the point in fighting a war you know you’ve already lost” kind of thing, but that’s not a very good philosophy. If you feel strongly about something you shouldn’t give up. Or maybe that’s not a very good philosophy either; because what if you are wrong and what you are doing will cause serious pain. I guess this is the philosophy of fundamentalists and terrorists. But the first one is the philosophy of the underachiever. The only thing we can draw from this is that nothing is true in every situation and we can’t generalise or stereotype. That statement isn’t true in every situation either, thus proving itself, and myself both wrong and right at the same time. Is that a paradox? Because I’m really confused. Anyway, I guess I just wrote it because it’s a nice-sounding phrase; it rolls nicely off the teeth and the tip of the tongue. And I suppose I just wrote it to sound clever, they are quite big words, if you say it in conversation you’re bound to look pretty bright, unless you’re wearing a lampshade on your head...yeah that didn’t work for me.

Why My Brain takes 5 Years to Process Stuff

I only just noticed that "Love Song" by Sara Bareilles (Sarah Baralis...Zara Braless? I dunno) is not a love song! STOP THE PRESSES! BREAKING NEWS: LOVE SONG IS NOT A LOVE SONG! The lyrics are "I'm NOT going to write you a love song", how misleading. It's actually a hate song. I still like this song (I don't love it because it lied to me).

Minty Bacon

How can anyone understand minty bacon? Nuff said.

Why You Haven't Seen "Once Upon a Time in the West"

My apologies to those of you who have seen my new found favorite film, If you've seen it then you don't need to read this, if you haven't then you should stop reading and go watch it now. Oh damn it now everyone's left...that was stupid...oh well I'll just talk to this rock. So the 1968 classic spaghetti western epic is epic...and classic (and a western, but there wasn't any spaghetti) is a damn near perfect film, Mr. Rock.

The tone is set with glorious backdrop of Monument Valley and a sound track that is awe inspiring, although these things don't make the film. The brilliance in the film is a simple thing that people keep telling me to do like it's breathing, but that this film achieves effortlessly: "show don't tell". At not one point in the film does the script sit down the audience and say, "Right this is what's going on, this is how you should feel." In fact there is very little dialogue that is explicitly plot related, most of what's going on is told through the character's actions. This has the great effect of making the characters, the plot and the setting seem real because they talk as if it is real. The action is slow but well paced, each scene builds up tension beautifully giving room for character development and scene setting usually without any dialogue, so that when the brief moment of action occurs, it is powerful and conclusionary (that's not a real word apparently). This build up of tension means that throughout almost the entire first half you're on the edge of your seat not knowing quite how these seemingly irrelevant events piece together, but when they do it all makes sense and it all fits perfectly.

All the characters are bad-asses, but I'm not talking about modern foul-donkeys that are such because they can take a nuke with nothing but a fridge, that's still bad-ass, but the guys in "Once Upon in the West" are just cool, they're calm, collected, but when they pull out that pistol you know they mean business and there is reason and emotion behind it. These guys are awesome because they don't talk with their mouths but with their expressions and actions. By saying so little they become dense characters each with their own intriguing plot lines. This isn't just true for the main characters but every secondary character seems unique and real even if they die in the first scene.

This film is brilliant, that much is clear, but what I really don't understand is why it so surprisingly good. These simple techniques should be standard, yet they're rare in cinema. 40 years on, "Once Upon in the West" is still a masterpiece and an example to the cinema industry.

Did you get all that Mr Rock? Yeah, no, you're just a rock...

Why the world rejects my supreme intelligence

I’ve had a blocked dose for some time now and after blowing down my nasal passage with the force of a Chuck Norris round house kick, I concluded that the problem was the bunged up mucus was too dry and had hardened so wouldn’t come out, no matter how many lumps of brain I blew out my ears. So I tried to be too clever for my own good and remembered that when crying you get a runny nose. This led me to assume that the tear ducts in the eyes were directly linked to my nose, true or not my resultant solution failed miserably. I took this fact and proceeded to tilt my head back and pour water into my furiously blinking eyes. This water was taken from my water bottle that sits stagnant on my desk festering a zoo of undiscovered bacteria. Thus this irritant was no moisturising eye drop, but more like a lemon juice shot through the eye of some nutter alcoholic. The water didn’t flow into my nose. So I’m still sitting here with a blocked up nose although now my eyes feel like they’re on fire.

Why this guy is such a foot (Leg-end)

http://relogik.com/
Found this guy, Danjam Stankovic, a designer, everything he's come up with is awesome. Enough said, check it out.

John (Film Making #2)

This is the second film I made. Just today, John and I were messing about with the camera and using the same very basic techniques as before I managed to create this clip insulting John's intelligence. 

Film Making #1

Someone recommended that I try my hand at making movies, so that night (last night) I took about ten minutes to make this minute or so clip with the few things I had lying around my room. Though the result is admittedly pretty awful it taught me how to use the camera and windows movie maker for editing and adding music and effects. (Sorry for the poor quality I had to compress it for the web).

McCoy's Crisps

McCoy's Crisps (manufactured by KP Snacks which is owned by United Biscuits (sorry but company ownership interests me, for example did you know that Mars, makers of Mars Bars, also make Dolmio sauce?) anyway) are marketed as "Man Crisps", MAN CRISPS: KOOORRR!! PHROARRR!!! Sexism is clever gimmick also used by Yorkie Bars: "not for girls" (Nestle) that successfully increases sales because men buy the product because it's targeted at them and women buy the product because they are told they can't have it. Genius, so how do you appeal to everyone? Discriminate. But I digest...
The thing that Puzzles me about McCoy's is that it is advertised as "Man Crisps" (because they're made with men, by men, for Ben...what?) yet they also advertise, "25% less fat". Now call me a stereotyping, misogynistic, sexist (actually please don't you'll make me cry) but I'm pretty sure most men don't care about that sort of thing? That kind of bribery belongs on an Activia shot, not PHOOAR crisps. Surely this is a particularly moronic oxymoron. So KP, save me the gender confusion (that's why I don't blind date) and instead write: "McCoy's: now 25% less manly" or "McCoy's: everyone crisps" or better still just buy Walkers where you only get half a packet full, because half the price goes to stopping it being sexist.

Sundays

With so much to do my only excuse is I was too busy doing nothing to do it, what? Today I watched “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” a film someone recommended to me as the best film ever made and that I now recommend to you to not see it as the worst film ever made. It was weird because I didn’t think it was Johnny Depp because it didn’t look like Johnny Depp, but then again Johnny Depp never looks like Johnny Depp. It seems I’ve wasted far too many hours of my life watching plotless drug-romps and gaining nothing from the experience apart from don't smoke Jeffrey and don't swim in toilets. So I lay in bed watching Terry Gilliam at his weirdest, in my dressing gown, pants and kilt socks, eating chocolate, wondering when this film would end. When it did, my computer-dumb face was in a weird mood so I staggered outside in my dressing gown, pants and kilt socks, eating chocolate with my water bottle and a friend took me back inside thinking I was drunk, no idea why, wherein he asked me to help plot a model relating diseases to population development as if I understood what he was vomiting. Vomiting, great word very on-o-mat-o-p-o-e-i-a-ic like BLAAAARRRGGH! I sat on top of his cupboard and kicked his stuff about and almost fell out the window then fell back here and procrastinated more writing this in this weird Duke mood, I proablably shouldn't talk to people like this, I ploablabry should work, hu? So, yeah I had a great Sunday, how was yours?

What's Wrong With Half-eaten food

A discarded polystyrene bowl on a grass verge made me look away in disgust, the remnants of a meal rotting on its surface. Then this made me think, why was this image unappealing, I love food, what’s the difference? The answer was simple, because rotting food is not nice; it’s horrible and can cause disease, so leftovers are not pleasant. Then I suddenly answered a question I’d been wondering for a long time but never looked at in any depth. In the dining hall (not cafeteria, horrible word) at school the trays of finished meals are stacked in a mobile rack for later empting. I normally eat everything off my tray (including the plates and cutlery), not out of principle but because I love food, and so, when stacking up my tray, I happen to glance someone else’s muffin or something with one bite from it and I become hugely tempted to take it and eat said muffin. But I never do. Something stops me. I’ve always wondered why and now I realise the answer. It’s because anything half eaten is no longer the delicious meal of five minutes ago, but suddenly becomes waste, leftovers and immediately invokes images of rotting matter, bacteria, disease and all things nasty and for some reason this subconscious connection outweighs my hunger, even if the food is practically untouched, it’s not right to eat it. It’s a practical fear that separates us from the poop eating dogs and monkeys. I just realised another thing: I’ve never understood why chefs, mainly on telly always go on about how presentation is everything and if it doesn’t look nice it won’t taste nice. Now I realise that this because there is such a thin line between food and waste, and if the dish is laid out like it’s been half eaten or discarded, then those prejudices I’ve just stated come into being and a perfectly good meal no longer appears appetising, simply from its appearance.

Bridge

-The card game. I understand bridges, bridges make perfect sense, and sense makes perfect bridges... where am I? Oh, yeah on a bridge. I don’t know how to play bridge (the card game) to be honest. It seems that bridge used to be incredibly fashionabubble and instead of watching television people would play bridge for hours on end. Some still do, well those who have been cryogenically unfrozen. Also; why do, in every single pack of cards, they have an extra card telling you how to play bridge, as if people buy cards for the sole purpose of playing bridge. They should have the rules to poker or blackjack. I once tried to read that card, I’ve had nightmares ever since. And what’s with the name? Well, I believe it comes from the inventor: Bridge McBridgeson who devised the game of bridge when, whilst driving over a bridge, was wondering how he could incorporate his job as a bridge-maker into a game of cards that would grasp societies for centuries. His brilliant idea involves placing two tables about a metre apart and constructing a bridge of cards across the two and the person who puts on the last card shouts, “bridge!” to win and the world hasn’t back since. I think that fully illustrates that I know nothing about bridge.