The Story Thus Far

My Back to the Future post will have to wait, saved as a draft for now (a very useful function!), as I've decided that I'll catch up on all the events so far. I thought it may be too long a post, but Paul's posts have been pretty long too, so that makes it okay! Doesn't it?

I enjoyed Creative Beginnings. I'm always better at socialising if I'm working on something with people - like as part of a film crew. Creative Beginnings made up for Freshers' Week in terms of getting to know people, particularly from the other courses. The Derive is what, like many, I would say was the high-point of the fortnight. It really worked for our group! And then making an instillation afterwards was a great chance to be creative together, which was nice. Equally, the improvisation day was a great bonding session for everyone. Even though we were in our derive groups, all the new students were united in creating those performances. Those dark, warped performances.

I do agree that some of Creative Beginnings was boring, and it could have potentially been done over a single week, but the housekeeping was important. We need to have a Diversity and Equality talk, we need to talk about PDPs, and we need the ability to define beauty. Okay, not the last one, but the majority of it was necessary.

The course itself has been great so far. Every expectation surpassed all round, so I'm pretty excited to be here! We've watched a lot of films and a bit of TV so far, and whilst in the future I will reflect on as much as I watch as possible, there are just too many films so far to catch-up on: Thelma and Louise, Citizen Kane, Burn After Reading, City of Ember, Shawshank Redemption, Inside Man, The Truman Show, Broadcast News, Stone of Destiny. Below are some of the most important things I want to say about a few of them.

• Broadcast News featured two very familiar voices. I later discovered, through the magic of IMDB, that Holly Hunter (who played Jane Craig) was the voice of Elastigirl in The Incredibles, and Albert Brooks (Aaron Altman) vocied Marlin in Finding Nemo, along with numerous characters in The Simpsons.
• Both Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon were fantastic in Thelma and Louise. I've seen them both previously and liked their work, but they worked even better as a pair! I also loved the way that the story built up. If I remember correctly, Louise compares their escalating situation to a rolling snowball, and I couldn't agree more.
• When watching Citizen Kane I found myself thinking "that shot feels really 3D". Not 3D-glasses '3D', but I felt there was a lot of depth. Andy explained afterward that Gregg Toland pioneered deep-focus which created the great feeling of depth, and I really like it. It worked really well on tracking shots. And, as an audience member, I do find my eye straying onto something in the background sometimes, and so having everything in focus allowed me to do that easier.
• Following the above point, I watched Shawshank Redemption again and noticed that it used deep-focus a lot. There's a great shot where the camera flies over the prison building, and then sweeps over the prison yard, with prisoners in it. Everything was really sharp, and the motion, again, created a great feeling of depth. Plus, it's a really good film in other ways too!
  

That'll do for now, I think. I'll soon blog about High School Musical 3: Senior Year. I bet ya' can't wait!