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.