For our 1975 film, my group decided to produce a low budget, experimental film both directed by, and starring, Dennis Hopper. The film is a counterculture film that features many Grateful Dead references. The main character, Rubin (a reference to the Jerry Garcia Band song, Rubin and Cherise), is a relatively straight-laced guy who meets a girl, Cherise (Briggite Bardot) in a coffee shop. Intrigued by her, he asks if he will see her again, and she says only if he comes to a local Grateful Dead gig that night. She has been following them on tour as many 'Deadheads' did then. He agrees, and goes to the concert. At the concert, he trips acid, and has a life changing, spiritual experience. He then stays with the girl and follows the Dead on the rest of their tour. The movie follows his change in thought over the course of time and celebrates the counterculture movement of the late 60s and early 70s.
Dennis Hopper plays the lead role in the film as Rubin, and Brigitte Bardot as Cherise. Dennis Hopper fit the part nicely after playing a similar role in Easy Rider in 1969. Brigitte Bardot was selected as Cherise because she was known as the "sex-kitten" of the 60s and 70s, which would fit her character in the film as an attractive, young, rebellious woman. Using the standard set in Easy Rider, the soundtrack to the film is mainly popular songs of the time, mostly Grateful Dead songs. The cinematography changes throughout the film, running like a normal romance film until Grateful Dead shows, when it turns into a counterculture documentary.
The genre of the movie is very open to debate, as were many films in the 70s. The main theme is that of a counterculture film, but it also features documentary style cinematography during the Grateful Dead concerts, which the actors and crew actually attended and filmed at for the making of the film. Finally, there is a strong romance occurring through out the movie between Rubin and Cherise.
Overall as a group we agreed with everything and there's nothing I really would have done differently with this film.
The MPAA rating system would rate this film R because of the scenes of partial nudity and the drug use. As a counterculture film, this rating was inevitable, especially with real footage of what goes on at Grateful Dead concerts, particularly focusing on the drug use part (when Rubin takes acid for his first few times).
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Formal Film Studies Q2
For my second formal film studies project, I watched several documentaries/live DVDs of rock bands. I took note of the structure and organization of each one. The three I focused on were Silverstein's ten year anniversary documentary/live DVD, Decade, Parkway Drive's documentary/live DVD, and finally, for a bit of contrast, the recent documentary of the annual Vans Warped Tour. I found that each film took its own way of completing the same goal of putting live music and documentary information in a DVD.
The first of these released was Parkway Drive: The DVD. The film starts with individual members of the band and close friends being interviewed from their hometown of Byron Bay, Australia. The first hour and a half of the film follow in this vein, using old footage and pictures to go with what the person being interviewed was saying of the band's history. For this band, this was a very effective method of capturing the band's early history as they had a very grassroots beginning, often sleeping outside during their first tours. The documentary section of this film will leave viewers inspired by their beginnings. After the documentary section ends, a full video of a recent hometown show plays, without cutting in between songs, showing both the songs, in order, and the chatter in between songs. This gives the film a more realistic feel, allowing the viewer to become immersed in the set as if they were there themselves.
The next film I watched was Silverstein's commemorative ten year anniversary DVD, Decade: Live at the El Mocambo. This was filmed over 4 days: each day, the band played one of their then four released albums in its entirety, and did interviews about that time in the band's history before and after the show. This film takes the opposite approach as Parkway Drive's film in that it starts with a song being performed, then cuts to a short interview, then plays another song or two (skipping over some in the set), and flips to another interview. This is effective in putting the commemorative feel on the film as they are able to focus on more specific aspects of the bands history. Specifically, they discuss the history behind each specific album, then flip to the band playing songs from that album so that viewers can listen to the song being performed with the history behind it fresh in mind, giving the performance a more sentimental feel.
The next film I watched was No Room For Rockstars: the Vans Warped Tour Documentary. While it doesn't focus on a specific artist like the other two I watched, the film follows 4 selected artists that performed on the Vans Warped Tour in 2010. Warped Tour is a music festival that travels the country every summer. Played at outdoor venues, there will be 6 or 7 stages set up at every event, with over 100 bands on the tour. Founded in 1995 by Kevin Lyman, it is the longest consecutive running music festival in the world. Originally it focused on punk-rock groups and gave several bands, including Sublime, Blink-182, and Pennywise, their initial chance at fame in 1995. Now, there is a wide variety of music displayed, primarily metalcore (a fusion genre between heavy metal and hardcore punk) and pop-punk bands, although many rappers, pop artists, folk artists, and many more follow the tour each year. The film follows 4 artists that played Warped Tour that year in their day to day lives on the tour, making the film more a 'day-in-the-life' type of documentary as opposed to going through the tour's history, which is minimal. It also makes a point of capturing the tour's diverse line-up by following folk-pop artist Christopher Drew, pop singer Mike Posner, the (late) deathcore vocalist, Mitch Lucker, and finally the up and coming pop-punk group, Forever Came Calling, who were following the tour in their van in order to sell CDs and get their name out there. The film emphasizes Warped Tour's rich culture and history and mostly follows artists and crews on their day to day activities, and occasionally has an interview. Short clips of performances are shown to give examples of the band, but there is no actual live music section of the film.
The cinematography of each film varied according to its purpose as well. For Parkway Drives, purely factual, interview section of the film, anyone - or no one for that matter - could have been behind the stationary camera. Silverstein on the other hand used the director of several of their more high budget music videos to film and produce their film, resulting in a more technical approach. Some of the interviews were filmed in black and white, while performances were in color. The interviews would have multiple camera angles, often starting off out of focus and clearing up a few seconds in. The Warped Tour documentary featured a combination of both, having plenty of stationary interviews as well as traveling documenting.
Overall, each documentary had a different method of explaining the band or tour. The real difference was not always in content, but the way they organized it. They all featured artist interviews, documentary footage, and live videos, but they organized it differently, some relying on others more. Overall,I think the way they chose to use each of those types of footage depended on what the ultimate goal of the DVD was: for Silverstein it was to commemorate everything they've done over the past 10 years, so there was a lot of individual emphasis on each song, cutting to interviews in between each one. For Parkway Drive, it was to explain their history and show you their power live, so those to sections were kept distinctly separate. Finally, for the Warped Tour documentary, the purpose was more to show you what goes into each Warped Tour and what life on the tour is like, as opposed to explaining the history and showing live footage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_1WWJhQGbE a live song clip from Parkway Drive's DVD
The first of these released was Parkway Drive: The DVD. The film starts with individual members of the band and close friends being interviewed from their hometown of Byron Bay, Australia. The first hour and a half of the film follow in this vein, using old footage and pictures to go with what the person being interviewed was saying of the band's history. For this band, this was a very effective method of capturing the band's early history as they had a very grassroots beginning, often sleeping outside during their first tours. The documentary section of this film will leave viewers inspired by their beginnings. After the documentary section ends, a full video of a recent hometown show plays, without cutting in between songs, showing both the songs, in order, and the chatter in between songs. This gives the film a more realistic feel, allowing the viewer to become immersed in the set as if they were there themselves.
The next film I watched was Silverstein's commemorative ten year anniversary DVD, Decade: Live at the El Mocambo. This was filmed over 4 days: each day, the band played one of their then four released albums in its entirety, and did interviews about that time in the band's history before and after the show. This film takes the opposite approach as Parkway Drive's film in that it starts with a song being performed, then cuts to a short interview, then plays another song or two (skipping over some in the set), and flips to another interview. This is effective in putting the commemorative feel on the film as they are able to focus on more specific aspects of the bands history. Specifically, they discuss the history behind each specific album, then flip to the band playing songs from that album so that viewers can listen to the song being performed with the history behind it fresh in mind, giving the performance a more sentimental feel.
The next film I watched was No Room For Rockstars: the Vans Warped Tour Documentary. While it doesn't focus on a specific artist like the other two I watched, the film follows 4 selected artists that performed on the Vans Warped Tour in 2010. Warped Tour is a music festival that travels the country every summer. Played at outdoor venues, there will be 6 or 7 stages set up at every event, with over 100 bands on the tour. Founded in 1995 by Kevin Lyman, it is the longest consecutive running music festival in the world. Originally it focused on punk-rock groups and gave several bands, including Sublime, Blink-182, and Pennywise, their initial chance at fame in 1995. Now, there is a wide variety of music displayed, primarily metalcore (a fusion genre between heavy metal and hardcore punk) and pop-punk bands, although many rappers, pop artists, folk artists, and many more follow the tour each year. The film follows 4 artists that played Warped Tour that year in their day to day lives on the tour, making the film more a 'day-in-the-life' type of documentary as opposed to going through the tour's history, which is minimal. It also makes a point of capturing the tour's diverse line-up by following folk-pop artist Christopher Drew, pop singer Mike Posner, the (late) deathcore vocalist, Mitch Lucker, and finally the up and coming pop-punk group, Forever Came Calling, who were following the tour in their van in order to sell CDs and get their name out there. The film emphasizes Warped Tour's rich culture and history and mostly follows artists and crews on their day to day activities, and occasionally has an interview. Short clips of performances are shown to give examples of the band, but there is no actual live music section of the film.
The cinematography of each film varied according to its purpose as well. For Parkway Drives, purely factual, interview section of the film, anyone - or no one for that matter - could have been behind the stationary camera. Silverstein on the other hand used the director of several of their more high budget music videos to film and produce their film, resulting in a more technical approach. Some of the interviews were filmed in black and white, while performances were in color. The interviews would have multiple camera angles, often starting off out of focus and clearing up a few seconds in. The Warped Tour documentary featured a combination of both, having plenty of stationary interviews as well as traveling documenting.
Overall, each documentary had a different method of explaining the band or tour. The real difference was not always in content, but the way they organized it. They all featured artist interviews, documentary footage, and live videos, but they organized it differently, some relying on others more. Overall,I think the way they chose to use each of those types of footage depended on what the ultimate goal of the DVD was: for Silverstein it was to commemorate everything they've done over the past 10 years, so there was a lot of individual emphasis on each song, cutting to interviews in between each one. For Parkway Drive, it was to explain their history and show you their power live, so those to sections were kept distinctly separate. Finally, for the Warped Tour documentary, the purpose was more to show you what goes into each Warped Tour and what life on the tour is like, as opposed to explaining the history and showing live footage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_1WWJhQGbE a live song clip from Parkway Drive's DVD
MYST Q2 Post # 1
Memento (2000)
SPOILER ALERT
The first film I watched in my spare time this quarter was Christopher Nolan's psychological thriller, Memento (2000). We began watching this film in class and it interested me enough to finish it at home. I was not disappointed. The film follows Leonard Shelby (Guy Pierce), a man who cannot form any new memories in the aftermath of some accident. The whole film, he is determined to kill a man named Teddy, who he believes killed his wife and caused his injury. The movie flips between black and white scenes, which are portrayed in chronological order, and color scenes which are played in reverse order. While this may seem confusing at first, the end of the movie ties the two together with a twist ending. To me, this movie was great. It was interesting enough to keep you watching, despite the somewhat confusing layout of the scenes, and the ending really made it worth watching. Overall, I rate this movie 4/5 stars. The first and most obvious thing to comment on in the film is the artsy, experimental style used to both film and organize the scenes. There will be scattered close ups and shaky camera techniques at time that feel unconventional, meant to accent certain moments of the film. The use of the two different clips, the color and black and white, kept the movie feeling fresh and unique, accenting the psychological theme of the film.
There are several repeated themes throughout the movie, including loss, grief, and above all perception. While the whole movie Leonard relies on written notes, Polaroid photographs, and tattoos on his body to remember events and people, the end of the movie takes a big twist when it turns out someone has been messing with his perception of reality. The whole film he reminds himself using a tattoo on his hand to 'Remember Sammy Jankis", who he believed to be an example of his condition, but in the end turned out to represent himself.
Overall, the film is a breath of fresh air from the conventional Hollywood film and will keep the viewer interested. The twist ending really makes the film and personally reminded me of the ending in Shutter Island (which came out 6 years later but I saw first) in that it completely flips the plot. It was a solid film.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9lOnmnj0IY
This is Leonard's explanation of who Sammy Jankis was. Note the heavy irony of the situation: he refers to Sammy writing himself notes, but getting mixed up, which in the end is Leonard's case. It turns out that Leonard was his lawyer for the insurance company, and after examining his condition, he determines that he is faking it, and denies him extra coverage, earning himself a bonus. In the end it turns out the fate he thought Sammy recieved, accidentally killing his wife by forgetting he already gave her her insulin shot, was actually his own fate, and that his wife did not die in the accident he thought she did.
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