Surrealist Film

Surrealist Film

Background/Dada

surreal: very strange or unusual : having the quality of a dream.

Surrealism was European artistic cultural movement, predominant in painting, and cinema, founded in 1924 by Andre Breton.

Definition: The dictation of thought in the absence of all control by the reason.

Movement used shocking and irrational imagery and rejected conventions. 

Aimed to upset and disorientate people.

Image rather than word, feeling rather than thought

Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali - Un Chien Andalou (short film) - succession of dreamlike sequences.



John Cocteau - When I make a film, it is a sleep in which I am dreaming. - Blood of a poet

Hitchcock 1945 - Dream sequences in spellbound

Destino - Salvador Dali and Walt Disney started in 1948 completed in 1990 by Roy Disney

Walerian Borowcyzk - Mr & Mrs Kabal's Theater in 1967

Jan Svankmajer -  czech surrealist - dimensions of dialogue.

David Lynch - Rabbits


The difference between western film conventions and Surrealist film is that western film makes logical sense having a story with beginning, middle and end fitting to some set of rules. While Surrealism is irrational, has no main point, fixed meaning or story.

Surreal film crosses over into mainstream film in films such as Inception: although Inception follows a conventional storyline overall, without context it (especially the start) seems completely irrational changing scene.

Other fims such as The Matrix also at first are surreal, however again they follow a storyline and it is explained. 

Gamma

 Gamma

• Gamma is the way that Luminance is displayed on a screen

• Gamma is non linear, meaning the voltage applied to cause the luminance to increase of decrease is follows a curve:

• Gamma correction is adjusting the colour information to match the gamma characteristics.

• gamma encoding was developed originally to compensate for the input–output characteristic of cathode ray tube (CRT) displays

• Gamma encoding of images is used to optimised the usage of data when encoding an image. By taking advantage of the non-linear manner in which humans perceive light and colour.

• If images are not gamma-encoded, they allocate too much data to highlights that humans cannot differentiate, and too little data to shadow values that humans are sensitive to and would require more data to maintain the same visual quality.

XAVC H.264

Xavc & H.264

• Xavc is the 5.2 level of H.264 codec that has an intraframe compression. 

• XAVC can support 4K resolution, and up to 60fps

• XAVC has the wrapper of .MXF

• A newer consumer version of xavc has been developed by sony called XAVC S which uses the wrapper of .Mp4

On the Sony X200 camera the choice of video format can be XAVC or Mpeg2, 
Under the XAVC setting you can choose between Intraframe (I) and Interframe (L) these will be different levels of H.264 codec. Intraframe being Level 5.2.

H.264 is a lossy compression codec that uses interframe compression (with exception of level 5.2)  useing Groups Of Pictures (GOP's) as you can see on the comparison below between ProRes (Lossless) and H.264 (Lossy) the vast difference in quality.

See previous blog entry of containers 'wrappers and codecs' and  'Intraframe vs interframe' compression.

Containers/Wrappers and Codecs

Containers/Wrappers, & Codecs

Wrappers/Containers are the File Format... such as .mov .mp4 .avi

Codecs are the way in which a file is encoded/decoded:

Codecs can be Lossy or Lossless:

Lossless codecs compresses data without loss of quality and Lossy codecs are the opposite:

Lossy Compression can be Interframe or Intraframe. (See blog on Interframe and Intraframe) 

Intraframe examples are Apple ProRes (HQ) or Avid DNxHD these are good for shooting and editing

Interframe compreion H.264 is interframe compression only good for distribution because of small file size. 

*Avoid shooting in H.264 but if unavoidable convert to intraframe file codec for editing.

Shot Types

Shot Types

Wide shot (WS): establish content. 

Long Shot (LS): headroom, foot room

Medium Long shot (MLS): From the knees upwards leaving headroom

Photo was meant to be here? where did it go?

Mid Shot (MS): Waist upwards leaving headoom

Mid Close Up (MCU: Armpits upward with headroom

Close Up (CU): Collar bone upward headroom/no headroom cut head for preference

Big Close Up (BCU): from chin upward, cut top of head 

Extreme Close Up (EXU)

Composition

Composition

RULE OF THIRDS:

Position the most important elements in the frame along these lines, or at the points where they intersect.

FIBONACCI/Golden Spiral:

Ballance photo acroding to spiral:

BALANCe:

Placing your main subject off-centre, can leave a void in the scene. You should balance your subject by including another object of lesser importance to fill the space.

LEADING LINES:

When we look at a frame our eye is naturally drawn along lines. pulling us into the picture, towards the subject, through the scene.

BackGround:

a non invasive back ground that makes the subject stand out, choice of color and use of Depth of Field.

FRAMING:

Placing natral or man made objects around the subject to isolate it.

NTSC and PAL

NTSC and PAL

• PAL: Phase alternating line 

• NTSC: National Television System Committee

• PAL countries run on 50Hz A/C power while NTSC countries run on 60Hz

NTSC video (black-and-white) originally had a frame rate of 30 fps, so the timecode counted at 30 fps. However, NTSC color video (the only kind of NTSC video in use today), has a frame rate of 29.97 fps

Interesting:

Shooting video in a NTSC country using pal settings and a 1/50 shutter you will see flicker if under florescent lighting. 

• NTSC is used with a frame rate of 60i or 30p whereas PAL generally uses 50i or 25p; both use a high enough frame rate to give the illusion of fluid motion.

• PAL has a closer frame rate to that of film, so most films are sped up 4% to play on PAL systems, shortening the runtime of the film as well as slightly raising the pitch of the audio track

•  Film conversions for NTSC instead use 3:2 pull down to spread the 24 frames of film across 60 interlaced fields. This maintains the runtime of the film and preserves the original audio, but may cause worse interlacing artifacts during fast motion.

• The 3:2 pulldown used to convert film to NTSC 29.97.
• Slow down the film motion by 1/1000 to 23.976 frames
• For a two-hour film, play time is extended by 7.2 seconds
• Distribute cinema frames into video fields. At 23.976 frame/s, there are four frames of film for every five frames of 29.97 Hz video

• Every original film frame can be considered to consist of two incomplete images or fields
• One field for odd lines and one for even.
• There are eight fields for every four film frames, which are called A, B, C, and D.
• These eight fields have to be "stretched" to ten fields by repeating two of the fields
• The telecine alternately places A frame across two fields (A1, A2), B frame across three fields (B1, B2, B2), C frame across two fields (C1, C2), and D frame across three fields (D1, D2, D2).

German Expresionisim

German Expressionism

Defeat after WW1, new government wanted to revitalise film industry 

funded the UFA and was considered the golden age of german cinema 1919-1931

Films were stylised sets were geometric, costumes and makeup were unnatural, cinematography emphasises techniques in light.

Modernist approach in abstract set design.

German Expressionist Cinema 

The Cabinet of Dr Calgari 1920 - first horror film

Nosferatu 1922 - first vampire film

Metropolis - influential to later films such as Starwars and Bladerunner

The Golem - 1920

Last Laugh - 1924

Faust - 1926

M 1931

Influence from German expressionism from Makeup, set design, cinematography, 

Metropolis set design found in Batman returns 1992

Influence from Metropolis in Starwars robot C3po

  

Copyright Week 8

Getting Permission to Use Copyright Material


You need permission for use of anyone else's work, except:

• If you are using an insubstantial part (note is quality rather than quantity), 

• If the copyright has expired, 

• If it is for research, education or public administration, 

• If you have a copyright licence with with a copyright collective.

To obtain permission the cover letter must include:

• Date.
• Name and contact of copyright owner.
• Description of yourself and why you wan to use their work.
• Detailed information about the work
• Precise description of how you will use the work
• request conformation of addressee is the sole copyright owner or ask for information on any other owner.
• Ask preference how to credit their work
• Ask response by a certain date
• your contact details

Infringement of copyright

Copyright infringement occurs when all or a substantial part of copyright in ways that only copyright holder can use

If someone has infringed your copyright you should get legal advice. if your copyright is being administered by a collecting society notify organisation of incident.


decide what you want done..

• Stop infringement?
• Depose of infringing material?
• Be paid of use of work or given profits of work?

Contact the infringer

first informally as infringement may be done unintentionally and resolve between you privatly.

if this attempt is unsuccessful, send a formal letter of demand which should include.

• A statement you are the copyright owner
• how you believe that the person has infringed your copyright
• Statment of what you require
• Timeframe in which the demand must be met
• Statement that furthur action may be taken if demand is not met within stated time frame

Best to get legal advice before sending letter of demand.

Moral Rights

Personal rights, separate from copyright rights or economic rights. Moral rights remain with the creator even when the copyright is owened by someone else.

Moral rights give creators:

• Right to be identified as author of work, or director in the case of film
• The right not to have a work falsely attributed to them
• The right to object to derogatory treatment of the work

Creators of sound recordings and computer-related works have no moral rights.