Mood Board

I have decided (by the force of school) to create a mood board for future use. This is for referencing back to when I explain different colors. These are how I see these colors, and this is how I would think it looks if not otherwise told.

When I think orange, this is what I think. This scene is from Fantastic Mr. Fox. It is a burnt orange, and I love this certain shade of orange. It's something I would use often if it was not so overwhelming at times. It fills a person with comfort.

 This is my reference for black and whites. This is from Jay Z's video of "On To the Next One." In most of his videos, this one included, he has very hard blacks and whites. But they are clean cut, and what I like to call, shiny black and whites.

This is taken from Marilyn Manson's "Beautiful People." If I think of green, I think it as something that is almost sick and sinister. It needs to be ugly and demonstrate the ugliness of the scene.

This scene was taken from Lars and the Real Girl. Although dark in this screenshot, this particular film I will use to reference for desaturation. There are no real colors in this scene, but then the colors that are there are not truly seen. They are taken away, and they are unnoticeable.

These scenes are from The Black Swan. I would use these to reference the saturation of color and the possible redirection of light. As you can see, her foot is lit up, while the rest of her is not. The colors are very deep and saturated as well.

Joshua Radin (feat. Ingrid Michaelson)- Sky (my version)

Sky from Kat DeLay on Vimeo.

Audio Project: Cindy

Cindy from Kat DeLay on Vimeo.

Break Down of the Music Video: Alt

 Each genre has its “carbon” copy of a music video. With R&B, as we’ve seen, it’s slow movement and striking colors, things of that nature. With heavy metal, it’s mostly performance with hardcore head banging. With alternative rock, it is hard to determine what exactly is a carbon copy video. Therefore, I have chose to analyze this particular genre for its videos. And there are three videos that I continually come back to for analyzing. These videos are “Love Interruption” with Jack White, “I Won’t Give Up” with Jason Mraz by Elliot Sellers (my fav DP), and “Somebody That I Used To Know” with Goyte featuring Kimbra. So, let’s look at “Love Interruption” with Jack White.

            This video is possibly one of the most awesome and simple videos I have seen. And I have seen a lot of music videos. The song is a blues song about love not interrupting the character’s life. I have broken this video down before, just speaking about the movement. And I have decided to start with that. Throughout the video, the camera is dollied around the two subjects (see Picture 1). But it’s not an ordinary dolly. It’s shaky and very unsure, conveying the unsure ground that the character lives on. It’s not just the dolly, though. Everything is slightly shaking. It makes the feeling of the video chaotic. It grabs your attention, because the shot is constantly moving.

Picture 1

Picture 2

            












      
     Let’s talk color, another big element in this video (see Picture 2). Most of everything is this grayish blue. This again sets the tone of the whole video. He’s singing about almost violently hating love and what it could do to a person. This gray shows the void he feels in his life by letting the love go.

            The set is also important (also see Picture 2). It’s basically bare, with lights set in the back, which shine straight into the camera at times. This again extenuates the bareness he feels in his life. Now, with the set comes lighting. And let me tell you, the way they lit this scene was probably harder than you would think. There are low-lit lights on almost everyone, except of course the middle. Jack White moves in an out of silhouette the whole time. And to set these people off the background is a challenge within itself. On another note, I like the cat that runs into the shot, because it adds character and makes the almost surreal stage real again.

            Okay, now that we’ve addressed three key elements in “Love Interruption” with Jack White, let’s analyze “I Won’t Give Up” with Jason Mraz by Elliot Sellers. Now, the particular video I am analyzing is the lyrical video, and it has more narrative in it than the actual video. However, the lyrical video works so much better with the song than the actual video, I believe. I’ll explain why.

            First off, the story in this one is about a long distance relationship, in which the couple communicates through letters. This is great, considering Mraz is singing about not giving up on the person. However, what makes this video so particularly awesome is Elliot Sellers and what he brings to the table. He uses focus to bring different, typically non-consequential items into the picture, he uses color, and he uses close ups.

Picture 3

Picture 4

    
















 However, with these in mind, again, I’d like to focus on the movement. The first few shots have the most movements out of the rest of the video (see Pictures 3 and 4). Sellers uses the camera as if it were a human eye moving about the room to establish the location, brining to focus mundane items, making them extraordinary. The zooming starts with the lyrics, but this is to draw the viewer’s eye to the song (see Picture 5). At the very end, he has made the lyrics into stars with fast pace panning, which shows the song is climaxing. His camera movements are slow, which tells the story of not giving up on love.

Picture 5

     I have mentioned the focal points a little when talking about the movement of the camera. Sellers tends to take small, unnoticeable, ordinary items and make them extremely significant and almost beautiful. He focuses on the clock, the pens, the guitar, and more importantly the letters. He wants you to notice these mundane things and their true beauty.

Picture 6

            His colors are always important for his pieces (see Picture 6). In this video, Sellers saturates the colors and focuses on the colors of red, white, and blue, which is much darker. He is emphasizing the story by doing this.

            Last, “Somebody That I Used To Know” with Goyte featuring Kimbra. I have started with camera movement with the last two videos. And I’m going to start talking about it again, because I can’t avoid it. It’s the first thing that happens in the video.

Picture 7

            You start with a shot of his naked feet, move up to his naked body to his face (see Picture 7). This is to show he is vulnerable, which is dictated in his song. Also, he is specifically talking about a body; at least this is what the video suggests. It stays with his face for the first verse and then moves to follow the painting of the wall and his body. They want you to know that he feels like just the paint on the wall, invisible without her acknowledgement. The pan to the right and the amount of the separation that is between Goyte and Kimbra shows the level of separation he is feeling from her. When she moves off the paint, she wants to show that she is not apart of it and wants to break free, which is finalized when the paint is slowly taken off of her.

Picture 8

Picture 9

            
















     The disjointed shots at the end when Goyte is singing “somebody” shows his amount of distress he feels about losing her as a friend (see Picture 8 and 9). He doesn’t want to lose her, but he is anyways as the paint is taken off of her.

            The colors in this video are very vivid (see Picture 10). The reason behind this might be to show the different emotions. White suggests nothingness, green suggests envy, brown suggests distress, et cetera (these are all how I interrupt them). Also, the way that the paint is put together is almost like shattered glass of a stain glass window. He is a broken man that needs to be put back together.

Picture 10

            The lighting is high and flat (also see Picture 10). He needs to blend in with the background around him, because otherwise he would pop out. They don’t want him to stand out. They want him to blend completely in. And they accomplish this with very flat, even lighting.

            These three videos are all vastly different from each other. However, this reflects the genre that is alt rock.

Who Inspires Me? Elliott Sellers!...Again!

     Elliott Sellers has the style that I want to work toward having. He has everything that I want: muted colors, playing with focus, swinging and whimsy camera movement. There is one short that he has that has really inspired me. I want to learn how to do this, although I suspect it is not hard once you know how to do it.

     Here is a video that he directed, edited, and did the cinematography. There are so many elements in this film that are Elliott Sellers, starting with the music. But we'll ignore that and discuss my absolute favorite thing. It looks like it was shot on old film.
     This is something that I absolutely love as an artist. I want things to look old and weathered, because it has been through something, some kind of an experience. This is what Sellers tends to go for. He uses the old world things to share the idea that they've been through some kind of experience, whether that's sitting in a box for years or being watched over and over again.
     I also truly enjoy the muted colors that match the old film vibe. It's almost like you're watching something from the seventies. It's incredibly retro. I don't necessarily want all my work to look retro, but I like for it to look older.
    Although he does use this older look approach, you still know that it is digital. It's so clear and beautiful. This is not something a film camera could do.
     I like his use of multiple filmings of different subjects in the same area. They are coming back over and over in the same spot. It's like watching an artistic home movie. I suppose that's what I really like: finding the simplicity in complexity. It causes the viewer to really appreciate what you have done as an artist. You take a twist of something familiar and making it unfamiliar, something to experience over and over.
     Elliott Sellers definitely does this with his use of making mundane things incredibly interesting. You can't help but notice his complexity in the small details.

Elliott Sellers

     I recently have become obsessed with a certain Director of Photography, thanks to Jason Mraz's I Won't Give Up lyric video. Elliott Sellers is a master with experience in editing, sound mixing, directing, and of course DPing. His work takes my breath away when I watch it. It all starts with his colors.

     He uses muted colors in almost everything he does. I think muted colors brings more attention than something that is vibrant or even overly vibrant. Sellers does this in almost all of his work.

     Another element he always incorporates is a typewriter and an older male character with glasses. He seems to enjoy old world things, which match his love for muted colors.

    Sellers also enjoys to play with one of my favorite things: focus. He likes extreme close ups with extremely shallow depth of field. He makes things dramatic. Drama is what he goes for. He makes mundane items such as close pins, lightbulbs, typewriters into art. Manipulating the viewer to believe these items are more important than they actually are is what he tends to go for.

     He also likes smooth handheld. It seems he tries to go for a whimsy look. Another thing he does is use swinging motions to show things, which is something I enjoy. He takes a long  lens and uses his focus to pull items in and out. He also wracks manually.

    The way he films resembles that of old film, when it was actually on film. This is something that truly attracts my attention and seconds his love for old world items.

     I feel like he is a true treasure that I have found, and I love to watch his reel.

Scene Assignment: A Vine

A Vine from Kat DeLay on Vimeo.

Incredibly Epic

      I'll be the first to admit it. I'm not a huge fan of money shots. I think that simplicity is best for the most part. However, there are times when they are needed. I think, possibly, the most epic shot I have ever seen, or actually thoroughly enjoyed seeing artistically is the high angle shot in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet lying on the cracked ice.

     There are so many elements in this shot that make it a money shot. They are attempting to erase Jim Carrey's character's mind of all memories of his ex-girlfriend. The two of them attempt to hide from the people doing this, hence why the end up on a cracked ice surface. It portrays what is happening to his brain with the cracked ice. It is blue around the edges to draw your attention to Kate Winslet's hair. She is your main focus, because her focus is on Jim Carrey, the main character. The high angle is used to show someone is looking down on them, attempting to break them apart and end the memories he has of her.

     Although it is a money shot, I think that keeping things simple is still the key to success with any film. This has many elements in the actual shot, yet you would not sit there and analyze it but admire its beauty and understand what is happening with just a glance.  

Shooting for the Scene Assignment

     When it came time for me to choose a camera for my scene assignment, it became extremely clear that I should use one of the DSLRs. I wanted to work with one of these cameras to learn how to use them and to see what capabilities they have. We chose to work with a T2i, since it is a little more lightweight and accessible. It could shoot what we needed, and it would do it with ease.
      Although the main goal for this project was to learn how to work with the camera and a director of photography, I wanted to convey so much more. I wanted to convey the meaning of light, which would be great for the T2i to handle, since it and the rest of the DSLRs can make even the smallest amount of light beautiful.

I had an inside scene and an outside scene. The inside scene needed to be vastly different from the inside scene. I wanted it to be ugly and gray. The DSLR can handle this type of manipulation with the correct light and ISO setting. The inside shows what light does not actually look like, because light is not gray and muted.
     I could also place things in the background and create a space without them being in total focus. If I had chosen the EX3 or JVC HM100u, I would have had problems with the incorrect things being in focus. I can crush it and make the subjects look cinematic.

 The above pictures are part of the inside scene, however, these so a distinct difference between the two. We shot at around 4 or 5 for these two shots. The DSLR handles the orange light beautifully. The best part is it picks up the light on the side of her face and on her hair. Colors are now vibrant with the amount of light the iris can take in.

     The best part of a T2i?

     I can shoot late, around six or seven, and have shots like this one, with all the color, all the light. The camera can manipulate it and make everything so beautiful.


     I can continue on about why the T2i was the right choice for my project, but I feel I need to touch on the EX3, my second favorite camera. Why is it one of my favorite cameras? It shoots on tape, which means it can shoot for a long period of time with physical evidence that cannot necessarily be deleted. It can also shoot a lot longer than the T2i, since the DSLRs heat up much faster than the rest of the cameras. The EX3 also delivers a somewhat gritty picture that I go for in some of my work. It's great for run-and-guns as well. However, the T2i would win out over the EX3 for me almost any day.

Let's Make a Pretty Picture

     Camera choices become harder with each passing day as technology advances. Right now, I'm struggling with the decision of whether to buy the T2i or spend more to get the T3i. Although these are both Canon DSLRs, both have different perks to them, T2i being its price tag.
     I would have to say that choosing a camera, though, has to do more with what meaning you are attempting to go for. I like grainy material, things that look like they've been shot with an old film camera. To get that now-a-days, I have to get something that has good gain on it. My first response to this would be the JVC HM100u. However, I despise this camera. It is almost too automatic for my tastes. Great for run-and-gun. Horrible for any narrative film. It does have a manual setting, but the picture quality is still "ugly," as I say. This is probably not a camera I will shoot with again.    
     If I needed something like the JVC HM100u, though, I would get the Sony HDV. It shoots beautifully yet still has close to the same settings as the JVC.  But my second personal favorite camera is the Sony EX3. I like to capture with tape. It's continuous and gives me the look that I want. Although the log and transfer is difficult, it still gives me the picture quality I look for when I'm shooting one of my "gritty" narrative films.
     But my first favorite camera is a DSLR, any of them. I like to work with focus and low lighting, so this is the perfect camera for me. I can pull beautiful focus on my subjects and get the nicest light at 7:30 PM when the sun is literally about to set. I enjoy playing around with this camera, because there is so much you can do. Match it with a Zeiss prime, and you have yourself one of the prettiest pictures.
     

Let's Move

     It is, at times, completely unnoticeable. Yet is so essential to telling the story that it cannot  be over looked. Camera movement is possibly one of the most important elements of film. Rather than me sit here and continually pound this idea into your head, let me show you.

     Love Interruption by Jack White has been a large influence for my creativity lately. First off, it's Jack White. If that's not an influence, I'm not sure what is. Secondly, this video is very awesome. From the color scale to the camera work, it's a solid piece. But what attracts me to this video the most is the camera movement. The song is a blues song about love not interrupting the character's life. To convey this, the camera is dollied around the two subjects. However this isn't an ordinary dolly. They use a shaky dolly to convey the unsure ground the character lives on. Everything, in fact, is very shaky. It makes the whole thing seem so chaotic. You are paying attention, because the camera is almost constantly moving.

     I watch a lot of music videos, because they are the most inspiring to me. There is only a limited amount of time to convey a meaning, therefore cinematographers pack large amounts of information into that time period. With this in mind, Elliott Sellers packs as much as he can in Jason Mraz's I Won't Give Up lyric video. Sellers has a certain style that is a little bit off the beaten path. However, in this video, the beginning has more interesting camera movement to establish the location. The jerkiness is almost like a person is picking something up that has an eye and starts to walk around to look at the different items. Then, the zooming starts. This is how he gets the viewer's eye to look at the lyrics. At the end of the video, the lyrics are shapes of stars. There is fast pace panning to show the different lyrics, which shows that the song is climaxing. His camera movements are slow and convey the story of not giving up on love. It makes the video simple yet adds so much.


     I prefer simple camera work. You don't need a lot to get a viewer's attention, unless it's something not too noticeable. Handheld works for what I usually aim for. This is because I want things to look like you're actually watching it with your own eye. But handheld is extremely tricky, and you have to know how to work with it. Therefore, sometimes it does not work. The best example of this is the opening scene of The Hunger Games. I understand they were attempting to show you from Katniss Everdeen's point of view, but it does not work. In fact, you get sick and have to turn away. They needed better establishing shots. Tripod to handheld indicates that something big is about to happen. In the opening scene of the movie, nothing huge is going to happen except establishment. Therefore, it is not needed.

Scene Analysis: Black Swan

If you haven't seen Black Swan, I would recommend it as a must. It is filled with emotional struggle and beauty, each decision meticulously made to create this psychological thriller. The particular scene that is about to be analyzed is stage rehearsal, preparing for the opening.

Shot 1

The main character Nina is preparing and stretching for the dress rehearsal. This particular shot follows another shot where she is throwing away her stuffed animals. Her foot crushing the sand is almost like her literally "putting her foot down" on her childhood. It is over, and she no longer wants to live with it any more. She wants to become the black swan. She is choosing her career over her being stuck as her mother's little daughter, hence why she is in her ballet slipper crushing the sand down.

Shot 2

This shot asserts her authority as destroying her childhood. Yet, with a high angle such as this, it also makes her small. She is still battling with what to choose: to be good or to grow up. Her foot is the only thing in this shot that has extreme light to it. Your eye is drawn directly to it. It is emphasizing the fact that her childhood is going to be over, and she is the one that will destroy it, which will in turn destroy herself. There is also coloring to be dealt with. She is wearing a black leotard, a gray tutu, and a gray armband with feathers on it. Her ballet shoes are pink surrounded by yellow light and sand. Now, her outfit symbolizes the fact that she is still in between and still in her struggle. However, her slippers suggest that she may never truly escape it, and she will never change, despite everything. This is what may drive her insane in the end.

Shot 3

The fact that the high angle is followed by a low angle, both very extreme, again emphasizes the in between stage she is in. Her shadowing on her face suggests this as well. Half of her face is light, while the other is not. The side that is not light has the most light on it. The fact that is lighting is equal to yin-yang is because she has both good and evil inside of her. They are fighting to get out. This particular shot is a precursor to Shot 19.

Shot 4

This is basically a master shot establishing the audience is in an auditorium. What is most interesting is where the camera is placed, within the seats. It is almost like the static camera capturing the rehearsal to be reviewed later. This establishes the since of being judged. Nina constantly struggles with having to be judged all the time in order to get the performance that the choreographer wants. She is center of the frame, confirming this is exactly what is desired by cinematographer Matthew Libatique. He wants you to judge her. It is simply becoming more and more about the guilt to grow up and choose between good or evil, being naive or experienced.

Shots 5 and 6

 

The next two shots are closer, continuous shots of Nina and the company dancing. There is so much movement as the camera dances with them. Libatique wants to put right in the action right after you have judged her. He wants you to see the up-close struggle and make you wonder why you ever judged such an innocent thing. This again shows Nina struggle. The need for a continuous shot here actually foreshadows what will happen on stage in the last scene of the movie. There is so much chaos, and her dancing is what triggers it all.

Shot 7

This MCU does not look like much, but it holds so much significance as he tells Nina, "The black swan stole your love." He is stating exactly what will happen to Nina in the end. The choreographer is used as a tool to deliver the whole message of what will happen in the end. And the lighting in this shot confirms it. He is in light, most of his face evenly light while the background is completely dark, save the lights on the wall. It makes him so significant, which emphasizes what he is actually saying to the audience.

Shot 8

The attention is drawn straight back to Nina after he says this. It is confirmed that it will happen to her. The fact that she is surrounded by the dancers shows that dancing is what triggered Nina's slip into insanity, especially since most of them are white, the color of innocence, the color that Nina no longer wears or represents, as seen by the choice of color in her costume.

Shot 9

This shot, as does the continuous shot before, alludes to what will happen in the end. She is practicing her final descent, literally and figuratively. Unlike what in the last scene, she is doing as she is told by the choreographer who is almost in the middle of the frame with her. He is behind her, though, showing he is stepping back and allowing her to make her own decisions. She is middle of the frame, with a steady camera. Although the handheld throughout the film represents the psychological warfare, this steady camera says that this is the only way Nina will feel sane again. She must fall. Also, another element to notice is where the black prince and the white prince are. The black prince is behind her, while the white prince is not in the frame at all during her practice ascent. She is will fall into this darkness, and she will not be able to get out. The white prince not in frame shows that there is no hope, no turning back for her when she finally makes the decision death is the only way out.

Shot 10

While she is on the top of the ramp, the first thing to notice are the amount of shadows on the wall. Every single one of them is doing the same exact thing. The definition of insanity is to keep trying one thing over and over again expecting different results. This is exactly what is happening here: there is insanity. They are trying to be different with different proximities of the shadows, but they all still look exactly the same. Nina is going insane, and she is falling into the darkness of the shadows. She is completely surrounded by them. There is no way out for her.

Shot 11

This shot is a shot of reality. It brings back to the audience the origins of the shadows being the different dancers. A person can tell from this angle they are all different, because they are all wearing different colored things. They are also in complete light. They are sanity, unlike their shadows. However, Nina is kept in black with no light. She has already fallen into the shadows, becoming a shadow herself. You can see the different stages of her fall from grace from right to left, which follows with that of a religious sense of Jesus picking the sheep from the goats, sending them right to live with Him, or left to live with the devil. This shows the Final Judgement, her final judgement. There is the white prince, the gray of the choreographer and then the complete black. Her matching his black confirms she will evolve to become evil.

Shots 13-17

These series of shots are quick and show the mind of Nina. It is working to decide fast whether she actually wants to jump or not. She is also being told to convey different emotions. I want to draw the most attention to the difference between Shots 14 and 16. They are the exact same shots, but people movement has changed. In Shot 14, the white prince looks over the choreographer's shoulder to see what is happening. Again, the element of judgement has come into play. They judged Nina in her first stages of becoming the black swan. She was innocent and, like a child, wanted to see everything, to have control. Shot 16 explains a different story. The choreographer hides the white prince, which means the middle stages hide the innocence instead of getting rid of it completely. The dancers have also all turned around, yet they are not looking in Nina's direction. She is not being judged as much as she begins to fit into her role, to make her change. Shots 13 and 15 are the same, and again show the shadow play on the background. However, Shot 17 has added difference. The camera has zoomed in on Nina with the shadows still in the background right before she faces her decision to jump. It shows the agony of what is about to happen to her. She must make a decision and soon.

Shot 18

One particular element in this movie is space. There is a lot of space to emphasize the vastness of rooms and relationships. Here, we are met with a space between the ramp and the mattress that Nina must fall on. The fact that the dark is surrounded by white shows the black space that Nina will fall into. She cannot find the middle between the two, innocence and experience, good and evil, good and growing up. What she sees in the middle is the black vastness. She isn't making the decision to land on the mattress. She's making the decision to fall into the dark below.

Shot 19

This is Shot 3's almost mirrored image. This time, the shadowing has been flipped. The dark side is now on the right, not the left, and the light is on the left, not the right. The lighting is exactly the same in terms of where the lights are. But this time, the background is more black. She is being swallowed as she debates on what to do. The low angle shows she is the only one with the authority to make the decision to fall. But the black surrounding her suggests she cannot see the small sliver of light behind her, literally and figuratively.

Shot 20 and 21

Shots 20 and 21 only repeat exactly what Shots 13-17 are saying. The cuts are quick, Nina must make her decision fast, because the middle stage of her change will not wait any longer. Shot 21 is a little tighter than Shot 17, which shows her time is running out. It also states she is feeling the pressure.

Shot 22

The fact that this is Shot 11, yet with Nina falling, shows her final decision. Not only this, but she falls to the left, which is where the black prince is located. She has chosen the side of darkness. She has chosen to turn evil, to be experienced, to grow up. This starts her descent which all builds up to the final act of the film.

Shot 23

She is falling with straight legs. She is not ready to make this decision for real. The reason why this inference can be made is her legs are put in the center of the frame. You see her unwillingness to fall. In the end, she will be unwilling to fall but knows it is what she must do. The framing is also slightly awkward, showing again her unwillingness to fall completely just yet.

Shot 24

As she falls onto the mattress, she falls straight, without moving, again unwilling. Her face is what draws the audience in in this shot. After the fall, the audience needs to notice her emotion, her struggle to know whether she did the right thing or not. Also, the lighting is low key, with half of her face lit. She is still struggling with the decision, although it has already been made.

Shot 25

The damage has been done, and you are witnessing the aftermath. Hence why we are brought back to the static camera. It re-establishes the location while also showing you it isn't completely over yet. She may have made her decision, but we are about to witness the consequences.

Shots 26-29

These shots again show the back and forth between Nina and the choreographer. She is unsure of how she did, meaning she is unsure of her decision still. She needs approval, hence why they still go back and forth. Nina is placed in between the gray choreographer and the black prince yet again, showing exactly where she is in her stage of transformation. She is still closer to the middle stage as seen in Shot 27, but she is closer to the black prince than she was before. This is confirmed by the mirror of the shot before on top of the ramp. The camera is behind her, she is in darkness, a shadow still. The background is gray, however darker, emphasizing the stage she is in. As she awaits her final outcome, the camera pulls in tighter. Finally, she is given the thumbs up.

Shot 30

And finally she is given relief. If one looks closely, there seems to be a slight lighting change. In this shot, the lighting is brighter on her face. She has found what she is looking for, which is the light. The light is only seen at death, which she experiences in the end of the film.

All of these scenes are a precursor of what is to come in the final scenes. This is also where she makes the decision to jump. She will fall into the darkness and allow herself to be swallowed. She will become older, experienced, evil.