Film Reviews

Recently I have watched Fish Tank directed by Andrea Arnold and Monster the film based on Aileen Wuornos, a Daytona Beach prostitute who became a serial killer, which was directed by Patty Jenkins .

During a Narrative and Genre lecture we watched the documentary about Aileen and I was interested to see how she was portrayed in the film version. I thought Charlize Theron's portrayal of Aileen was amazing, she looked like her, sounded like her and she had even adopted all of her mannerisms. Watching the documentary and then the film was a bit strange as I already knew all the facts and so I didn't learn anything more about the story but I still think this film was a brilliant adaption of a true story and the way it was shot fit the genre perfectly as it made sense.

Recently we had Rashad Omar come in and give us a lecture on sound. He is a sound recordists and has worked on lots of great films and documentaries, one of the big films he worked on was Fish Tank and so after hearing his lecture I wanted to watch the film to see more of his work. A few of us got it out of the uni library and watched it. We all thought that the way it was shot, the sound and the acting was incredible but we were very disappointed in the lack of story line, we got to the end of the film and realised not much had actually happened.

Commission Unit: Update

For our documentary we will be filming a new South African couple as the initial couple were no longer available. The new couple are called Ari and Rita and they moved to the UK in 2008 because they moved to the UK so late in the noughties we have decided to interview and expert as well so that we can get some solid facts about what South Africa was like in the noughties and how people were effected by the reversal of apartheid.

Last night we filmed Ari and Rita's sit down interview and it all went really well, I worked on the sound whilst Lauren was behind the camera and Jane was asking the questions and keeping a time log. This Saturday Jane is filming Ari and Rita's eldest child doing fundraising as one of our sequences and then on Monday we will be filming the families evening routine as another sequence. We will also film them early Tuesday morning so we can get a sequence of their morning school routine and in the afternoon we will be going up to London to film Renee, our expert, at SOAS the university she lectures at.

We have all been set different jobs throughout the preparation and filming process and I think we are all starting to work well together as we are all now on the same page.

Narrative and Genre: First Draft

Today we handed in our first draft of the essay, I didn't manage to get the full word count but I wanted to hand in what I had so that I could get feedback and make sure I was going in the right direction. I still need to find some more quotes on online and portable media so that I can talk about how the narrative tools are effected by these transmissions. Once i have got some feedback I will flesh out my essay and make sure I include everything I need to.

Commision Unit: Interview Practice

Today and yesterday we had to practice shooting actuality interviews and sequences so that we knew what looked good when it comes to us shooting our actual documentaries. I was in a group with Lauren Woodfall, Zee, Alex and Lauren Howard we decided to interview Vanida, the head chef in the studio's canteen. We interviewed her while she was working so that it was an actuality interview. We asked her all about her job and filmed different sequences to show what she does at work. Lauren Woodfall was on the camera and she managed to get some really good shots and they all flowed really nicely when we came to edit them together.

Here is the final film.