Charlie's Film Journal

In this post, I will talk about generating ideas for our new project, which is a writing project. The first idea that came across my mind is to write about topics I'm familiar or interested with. I will be mostly choosing the topics based on the moments that I felt important in my life. In the end, I feel that two of these topics are what I would talk about. Talking about falling in love with cinema and films The birth of creative talent, how people and environments change, etc. The next step is to think about the writing form that I would choose. Considering all the options, the main four forms I think would fit me are: Poem Prose Prose poem Short story Having considered all the options, I feel that the most fitting balance of writing form and topic to me is a prose on the birth of creative talent, meaning I will write a story about a teenager finding his passion, dealing with life, and how it led him to who he is now. The beginning would start with his need to find a purpose as h...

Emptiness My eyes open, seeing the dark ceiling from what little light came through the gaps in the window. It's the same dark grey ceiling from which I stare when I woke up from my slumber. A temporary comfort only to remind me that I'm alone in my bed, far away in a foreign country not of my land or people. Few minutes went by, until I realized how heavy these arms and legs are, yet they feel the coldness of the room, forcing me to a sudden reaction to hug the blanket. Everything doesn't seem to be right and a strange feeling came to my head, "Oh, today's school" I said. My weak hands reaching for the phone on the bed table, showing the hour to be five o'clock. Wondering what the rest of the world is doing now, I opened my phone, scrolling down and down until the feeling of being drunk made me stop. Now then, I thought that sleeping is the better option, and yet, I feel tired of it, not after the long hours on bed I spent dreaming away, escaping from the...

I have always found myself interested in photography as an artform, and I felt really grateful when this project was given. I feel that photography translates really well into filmmaking, with both artforms being like siblings. This project has allowed me to understand photography to a deeper level, especially the idea of how it focuses on a single image and time as well as its power to capture meaningful memories. Photographs allows us to relive and feel those memories that we can no longer repeat again, especially with the emotions that it contains. It allows us to stop time and appreciate it. To understand photography means to also understand filmmaking more, the same likewise. Urban photography as a topic in particular is very easy to follow, as I found that it helps train the eyes on composition and storytelling through things we see at the moment. Especially for this project, the photograph's theme is isolation, as it lacked human beings in it, with a lot of the locations bei...

In this post, I will talk about the creation of my photo book, the book cover, and the website. Beginning with the photo book, I first went to Photoshop, opened new file, went to print, and chose A3 size with portrait. Moving on, I changed the background color white and imported an image into the middle of it. I then used transform image (ctrl + t), to change size of the photograph to fit with the white border. Then, I added a text on the bottom right, with font Gill Sans MT sized 36 pt. Afterwards I did the same process for all the photographs that I chose. Next up, I went to Canva to create the book cover as well as some designs for the website. For the photo book cover, I first made the background white, then I added the title with the font Lexend Deca, sized 58. Then, I added my name, also with the same font, sized 25. Afterwards, I added my photo on top of it that best describe the title, then reduced the saturation to 0 for black and white effect. After that, I then made some des...

Having finished taking urban photographs in class and during self-study sessions, the next step is to do quality control and curation. Before doing curation, it is important to understand what it is and its important to the overall project.  In an article on the art of curating by Tucker (no date) " The traditional definition of ‘curate’ is the deliberate selection of objects or content which are to be shown to the public in a museum or institution, most typically in the form of art. To ‘curate an exhibit’ is to create a collection of works by the same or different artists that have some commonality for an involved interpretation of the material, for an intended audience. " According to the Art Gallery of South Australia (no date), curators along with artists are storytellers in their own right. This is because curators make decisions about which works of art should be displayed and how an audience should see it. They deice the themes and ideas that the audience will experien...

After researching about Michael Wolf, I will now research about Fan Ho and how he takes urban photography. I will use the knowledge I gained from this research for my photography portfolio project on urban landscape in Leicester as this will give me a better understanding of urban photography aims and qualities in particular. Fan Ho (born October 8, 1931 and died on June 19, 2016) was a Chinese photographer known for his photographs of urban life in Hong Kong. He was born in Shanghai before emigrating to Hong Kong, in which he started photography at the age of 14 with his Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera. According to an article in the South China Morning Post, " The streets, filled with vendors, coolies and rickshaw drivers, fascinated Ho, who arrived from Shanghai in 1949. Taking pictures in a studio was the norm then, but the teenager was more interested in random, candid shots of strangers. " (Nip, 2014) Along with this, an article by Public Delivery stated that Fan Ho ...

Today in class, we looked at Michael Wolf, a photographer known for his works in urban environments. This is in relation to the urban landscape portfolio or gallery that we're working on. Michael Wolf, born 30 July 1954 and died 24 April 2019, is a German photographer. He has published more than 13 photo books throughout his career as a photographer from 1994. As stated in Flowers Gallery, " Michael Wolf is known for capturing the hyper-density of cities, such as Hong Kong, Tokyo and Chicago in his large-scale photographs of high-rise architecture and intimate studies of the lives of city dwellers. " I will be discussing one of his photo books, Tokyo Compression, published in 2010. It presented portraits of Japanese people inside the crowded Tokyo subway trains, pressed against the trains' windows. According to Wolf in an article by Independent, many of the commuters in the photos were unhappy with Wolf taking their photos but made them aware of the tight condition th...

After the urban landscape photography session I had on class, I went to Bede Island and the Westcotes area of Leicester outside of class to do my own urban landscape photography. As stated before, the main purpose is still to capture Leicester's urban landscape with a feeling of isolation. I used a Canon EOS 5D Mark II with an EF 24-70mm f.2.8 USM lens to take the images. Like before, I used manual mode only throughout the shoot. In total, I took around 45 photographs. Here are the contact sheets of the photographs I took. All of the images I took were in color, with most of them in portrait. As said in the previous post, portrait has always been my preferred style and color is used because it offers more universality. I am very fond of the photos I took, particularly in terms of composition, particularly through the use of leading lines and rule of thirds. These photos are also taken with manual setting, and compared to the previous session in cultural quarter, the raw photos here...

Following the photography session with the theme of traces, we then moved on to do urban landscape photography as we visited the Cultural Quarter in Leicester. After looking at urban photographers in class, we went out and did some photographs. My main purpose is to try to capture Leicester's urban landscape with a feeling of isolation using the principles and techniques I had learned in class. I used a Canon EOS 5D Mark II with an EF 24-70mm f.2.8 USM lens to take the images. I used manual mode throughout the shoot. In total, I took around 70 photographs. Here are the contact sheets of the photographs I took. All of the images I took were in color, with most of them in portrait. I think that taking portrait photographs has always been the style I preferred, and the reason for adding color is because if I do want to change it into something like monochrome, I can do it later while not sacrificing the color. Not all of these photos are going to be used, some of the selected ones thr...

Rinko Kawauchi (born 1972) is a Japanese photographer known for her serene, poetic style, depicting ordinary moments in everyday life. I admired her work as I felt a connection with her images of daily life. It felt as if I had shared the same mood and attachment to the subject within the image, mostly out of nostalgia. I feel that her photographs befits the theme of traces, mainly because she focuses on everyday moments involving subjects that people are intimate with. An example I will talk about the images from her photo book, Cui Cui, published in 2005. According to the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art's website, Cui Cui is " an intimate exploration of the theme of the family through 232 color photographs. The title evokes the twitter of sparrows, a metaphor for the family ties and minute events that accompany each of our lives and mark the way time flies. " Along with that, in Kawauchi's own website, she wrote that the photographs are memories of her famil...

On the previous session and post, I took part in a photography session with the theme of formable traces, which are traces of the artist himself or other people in the images.  I created this collage using befunky , containing four of the fifteen photos I took during the session. Reflection: As stated on the previous post, I felt that I should've taken more photographs during the session. I felt during that time, I was thinking of waiting to get the right ideas and setting instead of just taking photographs that interested me on the spot. I believe these four photos have expressed traces of people, mainly with how we only have a vague idea of the people in it as we can't see their faces. Along with that, the photographs I took is still connected to the style and mood I wanted to portray.

In this post, I will talk about the photography session I had, in which we learned about how to use camera settings and functions, as well as looking into photography with traces of the artist and other people in it. After that, we were given time to practice our photography for an hour, so to prepare ourselves for the photography session in city center later on. I mainly used my Canon EOS 5D Mark II with manual settings at ISO 100, f/2.8, and 1/10. I used a low shutter speed because I wanted to experiment on creating a blur effect on my friend's faces with it. The first photograph however is a photograph of me, taken with my friend's Canon 700D with auto settings.  Here are the contact sheets of the photographs I took from the session. I had only shot 15 photos, which is not enough material as I had learned. Now I will talk about some of the photos individually. Some of these photos I did some correction on with photoshop, mainly the first and last photo. Canon EOS 700D - ISO ...

I have gained a lot during the process of creating this Biteable video. It has taught me a lot, especially from my research, about the expectations that clients and employers would expect from professionals or employees. This is a reference that I feel could be useful for myself, so that I know the things I should work on in order for me to appeal as a filmmaker. In terms of the video, I found the process very easy to follow and enjoyable. Biteable as a site is very easy to use and although it is a free trial, I've gained to understand that videos like this help describe who I am to employers who had not known me. A struggle I particularly found in this process is trying to find a positive way to describe my experience, because I feel that I lacked in it in terms of professional work. I believe that I have succeeded in this project. I have already added at least five qualities to the video, added music to it, added an opening and ending slide, as well as uploading the video to my w...

In this post, I will talk about the process of my video advert using Biteable. Firstly, I began by choosing a template. I searched for a resume template, and decided that I will be using the "Corporate Jobseeker Video Resume" template. After choosing the template, I began by changing the contents inside it to describe the qualities and skills I have as a good film director. I changed all the font title to be Oswald sized 24, and the contents to be Open Sans sized 14. I then colored them white, made them middle-aligned, and put a video background related to each title by clicking on the replace background button on the right. For each "skill" slide, I changed the background to black as well. Moving on, for the opening and number slides, I changed the background to red and made the animation colors to be white. After that, I included my own picture to the opening slide by clicking on the template picture, then clicked on upload. I also changed the template person'...

In this post, I will talk about the research I've done for my promotional video. I will be looking at an employer, and their job qualifications for a film director, as I've advertised in my promotional video. The employer that I chose is Gusto, an Independent Video Production Company and Creative Video Agency based in Brighton. In the future, I might be working with independent production companies like Gusto, as such, I've chosen them as employers for directors. The job description that they've given are "You will work closely with our Creative Director and post-production team to lead the projects we bring to life at Gusto as our in-house director/producer. This will be a hybrid and varied role that leans more on the directing side but also includes producing roles depending on the nature of the project. You’ll be responsible for managing projects from brief through to delivery, including creative development, ideation and scripting, talent & contributor cast...

Hello! This will be my first post in this new term of 2023. To begin with, I'd like to write down about an important figure that have inspired me in my interests and passion, which is films.  Source: Shutterstock The amazing filmmaker and artist I am referring to is Hideaki Anno. He is notable for his animation works but has also made some live-action films. I first came across his first work, Neon Genesis Evangelion back in 2018, just when I started getting interested in films. Evangelion is an animated series and a movie about the experiences and emotions of Evangelion pilots and Nerv personnel as they prevent mysterious monsters called Angels.  Source:  IGN It was challenging and confusing to watch and understand in the beginning, because it diverts from my expectations of a mecha-action film as it focuses more on the psychology of its characters and deep philosophy of humanity. There were a lot of experimental techniques being used which I had never seen at the time, ...