i feel almost guilty that i haven't made a blog for so long, but if I'm totally honest i missed bills first lecture and no one could give me any idea of what it was about, apparently it was rather pointless, so obviously i didn't write a blog for it... sorry... half sorry... not very sorry at all... lol
however im not always so lazy as to miss a lecture, the first lecture of bills was missed because of a deadline and a stupid printer lol, but alas i went to the second one... i really have NO IDEA what it was about. in fact no one i spoke to about the lecture knew what it was about even though we were all there...
very unfortunate hey? because now i'm at odds with the blogs and i'm thinking, what am i going to write my blog on? i do remember one thing about the most recent lecture. we were told to say what genre we though a film to be then we were told we were wrong... fairly pointless, apparently blade runner isn't sci-fi its film noir and starwars also isnt sci-fi its an old western... i could see the point of this, basically he was saying films have multiple genres! lol lame way of going about saying it! but there we go! lol
films have multiple genres... i dont really know what to say about this, its true we all know it is, and essentially the things pointed out were essentially large cases of intertextuality... fuck, genres are essentially a huge form of intertextuality... how do you know a films a horror film? because theres a bad guy and people running scared? how do you know if your watching a slasher movie? the black guy dies first... weve all seen these movies, its all fairly obvious stuff... scoreone for intertextuality i guess?
Tuesday, 23 November 2010
Monday, 8 November 2010
Impressive Title / Pathetic Title
Right, so here I am again blogging into the wee hours of the morning with naught to do but ramble about something no one will ever read, or will they? I hope so or this isn't going to get marked... :D
So, structuralism... or binary opposites... something like that! essentially you know all about this already its kind of one of the things that makes you human... well normal, ill bet some sociopaths don't always quite get the difference...
going off track here, right total opposites, other ends of the spectrum rah rah rah. think when your a kid and you learnt about big/small, tall/short, fat/thin stuff like that (wow Freud would have a field day with that, three different opposites that all relate to people... I'm not shallow i promise, I'm deep... haha get it?.. no? another opposite... still no? ok never mind doesn't matter... ANYWAY!) all of these are binary opposites... BUT this isn't what i care about...
What I care about are the shades of grey in between black/white. The middle grounds, or as some call it, the anomalous zone. See I'm thinking of this really hard because the idea of batman being a good guy was said to us... and i thought to myself what a dark, angry ass superhero you have picked to represent good...
SO, Batman and The Joker... Good and bad right? Well I'm not sure, The Joker is based on a clown... Clowns are supposed to be good, and funny... But Batman is dressed in black and is based on an animal that many people find scary... So already the lines between good and bad are already blurred between these two...
Lets think a bit more spiritually too... The Joker wants to do whatever he wants, and he wants others to share his ideals. Whereas Batman is all about law and order, break the law, he breaks you... and hes not the sort to let you get away with a slap on the wrist and a caution... Seems like a very contradictory way to do it to me... realistically Batman acts like a human, and The Joker in a sense acts like an animal... we've all known of evil people but would you EVER label an animal as evil?
So, structuralism... or binary opposites... something like that! essentially you know all about this already its kind of one of the things that makes you human... well normal, ill bet some sociopaths don't always quite get the difference...
going off track here, right total opposites, other ends of the spectrum rah rah rah. think when your a kid and you learnt about big/small, tall/short, fat/thin stuff like that (wow Freud would have a field day with that, three different opposites that all relate to people... I'm not shallow i promise, I'm deep... haha get it?.. no? another opposite... still no? ok never mind doesn't matter... ANYWAY!) all of these are binary opposites... BUT this isn't what i care about...
What I care about are the shades of grey in between black/white. The middle grounds, or as some call it, the anomalous zone. See I'm thinking of this really hard because the idea of batman being a good guy was said to us... and i thought to myself what a dark, angry ass superhero you have picked to represent good...
SO, Batman and The Joker... Good and bad right? Well I'm not sure, The Joker is based on a clown... Clowns are supposed to be good, and funny... But Batman is dressed in black and is based on an animal that many people find scary... So already the lines between good and bad are already blurred between these two...
Lets think a bit more spiritually too... The Joker wants to do whatever he wants, and he wants others to share his ideals. Whereas Batman is all about law and order, break the law, he breaks you... and hes not the sort to let you get away with a slap on the wrist and a caution... Seems like a very contradictory way to do it to me... realistically Batman acts like a human, and The Joker in a sense acts like an animal... we've all known of evil people but would you EVER label an animal as evil?
Futures, Made of, Inter-Textuality (sing it)
Every time I say intertextuality I want to start singing Jamerequi which is kind of annoying but at the same time, I guess its actually a good example of intertextuality! In a round about sort of way at least! For the lecture we had some examples of intertextuality, quite cool ones too! First one was Charlton Heston in the original Planet of the Apes, shouting 'Damn you! Damn you all to hell!' and then same guy in the newest Planet of the Apes, but playing the part of an ape instead of a man, saying the exact same lines! Cute hey?
Later we watched clips from Spaced, Kill Bill and Sin City. All very good, and relevant! But the idea of Sin City made me think, because its REALLLLYYYY stylised and it sticks very heavily to the graphic novel its based on! Which got me thinking obviously this whole film is intertextual as it is an entire reference almost frame for frame of the comic! With massive film noir references too, similar to other films of the same genre like Watchmen.
So then I obviously got thinking and thought about other films which follow similar lines as Sin City and Watchmen, and I thought about a film called 'REPO! The Genetic Opera' fantastic film, its a musical based on... well a musical! haha but the style it follows is very similar to that of a comic book! Infact the entire intro to the film is a comic book, showing panels and hand drawn images of the back story behind the film. This comic book style is very similar to the look of old DC comics, which in itself is a little intertextual nod toward the comicbook industry!
The whole style has a very gothic, film noir feel about it, with many intertextual links to various industries, the biggest of these is possibly toward the end of the film where a few scenes take place on a stage in front of an audience. this is intertextual because as i said this film was based on an on-stage musical!
And heres the thing about blogs that I don't understand, where do i stop? I mean its not like this is an essay, with a start middle and end, and i couldn't do that thing and end half wa
Later we watched clips from Spaced, Kill Bill and Sin City. All very good, and relevant! But the idea of Sin City made me think, because its REALLLLYYYY stylised and it sticks very heavily to the graphic novel its based on! Which got me thinking obviously this whole film is intertextual as it is an entire reference almost frame for frame of the comic! With massive film noir references too, similar to other films of the same genre like Watchmen.
So then I obviously got thinking and thought about other films which follow similar lines as Sin City and Watchmen, and I thought about a film called 'REPO! The Genetic Opera' fantastic film, its a musical based on... well a musical! haha but the style it follows is very similar to that of a comic book! Infact the entire intro to the film is a comic book, showing panels and hand drawn images of the back story behind the film. This comic book style is very similar to the look of old DC comics, which in itself is a little intertextual nod toward the comicbook industry!
The whole style has a very gothic, film noir feel about it, with many intertextual links to various industries, the biggest of these is possibly toward the end of the film where a few scenes take place on a stage in front of an audience. this is intertextual because as i said this film was based on an on-stage musical!
And heres the thing about blogs that I don't understand, where do i stop? I mean its not like this is an essay, with a start middle and end, and i couldn't do that thing and end half wa
Tuesday, 26 October 2010
semiotically impaired
So in an uncharacteristic attempt at being smart i have thought to check my notes on this weeks lecture BEFORE starting to write my blog. We'll see how helpful this turns out to be, I'm not holding much hope for it to be honest.
Anyway the theory of the lecture was to a large point based on the scale from arbitrary to iconic. Whilst this may sound like technical jargon at the moment, it does make a lot of sense. Essentially when we see something that is representative of something else, be it a photo, drawing or a name, we place it subconsciously on this semiotic scale, without ever knowing the words 'arbitrary' and 'iconic'. To explain this a bit more, if something is very obscured from the actual object it represents it will be more arbitrary, so a name, to someone without already knowing the name, would be totally useless, so its very obscured from the original object. However a photo, even without knowing what it is of in the first place would be far more representative of the object in question, and would therefore be classed as more iconic. Makes sense hey?
Now here's what intrigues me, as i have described above this semiotic scale is very much set in concrete. BUT, when the lecturer was showing slides of pictures that were on the scale from arbitrary to iconic, as he was doing this he put up a slide with various pictures of rats, the CGI rat from Ratatouille, a hand drawn rat from what looked like a Beatrix Potter novel, a photo of a rat and finally the word 'rat'. now this at first seemed fairly obvious where things would be on the scale but some clever sod at the back of the class, NOT me (shocking i know usually I'm right up there with the loud comments) said 'Isn't that a mouse?', everyone laughed and no one said anything about it... but what if they were right? I have no idea the difference between a rat and a mouse, except for by reputation, looks wise I probably couldn't tell them apart. So surely by definition of the scale, the word 'rat' is far more iconic for me than a picture of a rat... So when I asked various lecturers about this I got a fair few 'hmms' and no real answers...
Essentially this concludes this particular blog... a brief description of a form of semiotics and a big unanswered question about what I myself have just explained. But like I said semiotics is obvious stuff, it takes no real brain power or special thinking it is basically something we have known and have been continuing to learn since birth, but with fancy names on it... Which makes me wonder is this something good to know? or will this conflict with existing knowledge that I take for granted... Sometimes knowledge is good when its subconscious, but can send people made when it is brought forward to your conscious mind.
Anyway the theory of the lecture was to a large point based on the scale from arbitrary to iconic. Whilst this may sound like technical jargon at the moment, it does make a lot of sense. Essentially when we see something that is representative of something else, be it a photo, drawing or a name, we place it subconsciously on this semiotic scale, without ever knowing the words 'arbitrary' and 'iconic'. To explain this a bit more, if something is very obscured from the actual object it represents it will be more arbitrary, so a name, to someone without already knowing the name, would be totally useless, so its very obscured from the original object. However a photo, even without knowing what it is of in the first place would be far more representative of the object in question, and would therefore be classed as more iconic. Makes sense hey?
Now here's what intrigues me, as i have described above this semiotic scale is very much set in concrete. BUT, when the lecturer was showing slides of pictures that were on the scale from arbitrary to iconic, as he was doing this he put up a slide with various pictures of rats, the CGI rat from Ratatouille, a hand drawn rat from what looked like a Beatrix Potter novel, a photo of a rat and finally the word 'rat'. now this at first seemed fairly obvious where things would be on the scale but some clever sod at the back of the class, NOT me (shocking i know usually I'm right up there with the loud comments) said 'Isn't that a mouse?', everyone laughed and no one said anything about it... but what if they were right? I have no idea the difference between a rat and a mouse, except for by reputation, looks wise I probably couldn't tell them apart. So surely by definition of the scale, the word 'rat' is far more iconic for me than a picture of a rat... So when I asked various lecturers about this I got a fair few 'hmms' and no real answers...
Essentially this concludes this particular blog... a brief description of a form of semiotics and a big unanswered question about what I myself have just explained. But like I said semiotics is obvious stuff, it takes no real brain power or special thinking it is basically something we have known and have been continuing to learn since birth, but with fancy names on it... Which makes me wonder is this something good to know? or will this conflict with existing knowledge that I take for granted... Sometimes knowledge is good when its subconscious, but can send people made when it is brought forward to your conscious mind.
Saturday, 16 October 2010
First Lecture
As I've already said this blog is a response to my weekly lectures, and should be entertaining, however im getting off to a terrible start as i cant remember what the first lecture was about, which serves me right for not making this blog on the day of the lecture...
right ive just grabbed my notes for the lecture. and i remember now...ish
the lecture was based around realism, what is realism and all tha, there was also a cute little story about some ancient greek? names were something like platypus and the baddie from 300, xerxes? names arent important. the story told of how realistic their paintings were, platypus painted grapes so real looking a bird flew into the stone hed painted on! but xerxes painted a curtain so realistic that platypus went to draw it back and his fingers hit the stone painting of curtains... now i might be wrong but i THINK the moral was realism fools people not just nature... personally id have said something about my dog still barking at the mirror everytime she sees her reflection...
what got to me as a physical special effects artist was talking about CGI in movies, whilst this can be used to amazing levels and can often fool you, i just feel its too abstracted from reality, like final fantasy the spirits within, looked great but as pointed out in the lecture the people were too perfect... they didnt look real... it just wasnt right, HOWEVER when physical effects are used CGI can enhance them, but without the real thing there CGI is a pale imitation of something real
umm off subject i know... in short
-platypus and xerxes
-platypus fooled nature
-xerxes fooled platypus
-realism fools humans not just nature
-CGI
-takes life away from a target
-imitates without creation
-can be used to enhance reality
right ive just grabbed my notes for the lecture. and i remember now...ish
the lecture was based around realism, what is realism and all tha, there was also a cute little story about some ancient greek? names were something like platypus and the baddie from 300, xerxes? names arent important. the story told of how realistic their paintings were, platypus painted grapes so real looking a bird flew into the stone hed painted on! but xerxes painted a curtain so realistic that platypus went to draw it back and his fingers hit the stone painting of curtains... now i might be wrong but i THINK the moral was realism fools people not just nature... personally id have said something about my dog still barking at the mirror everytime she sees her reflection...
what got to me as a physical special effects artist was talking about CGI in movies, whilst this can be used to amazing levels and can often fool you, i just feel its too abstracted from reality, like final fantasy the spirits within, looked great but as pointed out in the lecture the people were too perfect... they didnt look real... it just wasnt right, HOWEVER when physical effects are used CGI can enhance them, but without the real thing there CGI is a pale imitation of something real
umm off subject i know... in short
-platypus and xerxes
-platypus fooled nature
-xerxes fooled platypus
-realism fools humans not just nature
-CGI
-takes life away from a target
-imitates without creation
-can be used to enhance reality
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