Ok. I know it has been a long time since there’s been a post on here. Hopefully, we can change that starting now.

I have been a big fan of the /Filmblog. I am a big fan of the infographics that they post. On Oscar night, I couldn’t pass up on sharing one on about the film industry created by OnlineMBA .

Click the image below to see the big picture:

In my video classes, I am constantly trying to empower my students with the idea of using video for change. The camera is one of the most powerful tools when it comes to changing people’s minds about a subject. At EDHS, we were recognized for this a few years back by the company in charge of Participant Media.

Last night, I was surprised to see their name in the opening credits of a film I rented called, The Soloist. It is a powerful film about the relationship a writer has with his subject. It goes a little deeper by exploring the plight of the homelessness in Los Angeles (or any other city for that matter). It uses this theme to explore tangled mess of trying to determine why people live on the street. From drugs to mental illness, the film does a great job of pointing out that is an issue with more than one answer. While you watch the surface level struggle that Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.) has with his understanding of a homeless musician, Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Fox), you are confronted with a deeper struggle to comprehend mental illness. This leads me to the true beauty of this film.

Most of us have little experience with mental illness, namely schizophrenia. The director, Joe Wright, must know this. He treats us to visual and auditory tour of the illness that effects a great many of the people living on the streets. He juxtaposes quiet shots of Lopez’ reflective moments with noisy, visually stimulating shots of the world in which Ayers lives. Take for example, the scene at the feet of Beethoven where Lopez and Ayers meet for the first time. It starts with a shot of tourists with awkward headphones on an audio-guided tour providing us an example of what it must be like to have a voice in your head. It is followed by a meditative shot of Lopez. His shot is void of much sound except soft ambient sounds of the city and a single distant violin. When Lopez interrupts his performance, Ayers imerges with a continuous ramble of thoughts as the city sounds of cars, helicopter, and people increase in volume. It is a sharp contrast of sounds. It is the sane experiencing the insane.

The film is filled with visual and auditory examples of what must be Ayers’ illness. Our first visit to LA’s Skid Row is a chaotic scene of drug dealing and drug abuse, fighting, and destitution. Is this what it looks like in the mind of someone with mental illness?

The only real peace that we see in the Jamie Fox’s character comes when he plays his music. It is in these scenes that the chaos of living on the street is replaced by beauty. When Lopez brings the donated Chello for the first time, we find Ayers in the middle of the street surrounded by honking cars screeching to avoid hitting him. He seems strangely comfortable stuck out there. When he begins to play the instrument, the noises of the city become part of the song. It is a transcendental moment for both the characters and the audience. Music becomes the common denominator.

I have been showing these scenes to my students today in the hopes that they will see that filmmaking is the sum of all these parts. Sure, we can shoot Long Shots followed by Medium Shots in order to tell the story. But, we tell a deeper story when we combine these other elements.

Using these tools, the viewer us treated to a more meaningful story. It is the kind of story that causes us to think differently. And, if we are lucky, change.

Welcome back to another year of El Diamante Video. Thanks for sticking by us during summer vacation.

This is the time of year that I like to introduce my beginning video students to the founding fathers of our craft. While we start with Edison, his Actualities, and the well-crafted films of the Lumiere Brothers, our true leap-off point is Edwin S. Porter’s The Great Train Robbery. It is no secret that this film was a game-changer. This 10 minute, one-reeler featured some of the most early uses of the pan, cross-cutting, and forced dancing with gunshots.

Students typically enjoy the film because it features a fine narrative and a little action. While everything is still in a long shot, the film also shows some of the finer special effects of the day. A favorite is the jump cut right before a poor stuffed man is thrown from a train. We see this trick a number of times the early days. It occurs when the camera is stopped and something in the scene is changed before rolling again.

The other camera trick features something that looks like picture-in-picture. The technique that Porter uses is borrowed from original Lumiere audience member, Georges Melies. It is called double-exposure and occurs when the camera operator only exposes a portion of the frame while filming the first image. They then rewind the film and expose the other portion to another image. This techniques is detailed in “How it Works” on page 2186.

Like the early viewers, my students tend to enjoy these simple effects. Filmmakers have come a long way since the early days. One need only sit through a minute of this summer’s blockbuster hit, The Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. In an effort to sell that statement, I leave you with this little ditty:

Thanks for reading!

A favorite blog that I like to follow is Film Studies for Free. The author is Catherine Grant of the University of Kent in the UK. She recently posted a great bunch of links to free introductions to film studies. The post should be useful to any student of film, even the ones teaching other students (Read: Me).

There are several links to the works of David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, the authors of Film As Art and the Observations on film art and Film Art blog. You may have noticed their names mentioned on this blog in the past.

Check out Catherine’s post and click on the links in your spare time. We all might just learn a few things.

If you know me, you know that I am a huge fan of Albert and David Maysles‘ film, Grey Gardens. I show it every year to my film students when we study Direct Cinema. While the film does an amazing job of painting the picture of what life must have been like in the ’70’s inside the 10-bedroom 1897 house, I like to show where it all took place.

Today, I was lucky enough to run across this interesting April, ‘09 NY Times article about the people that bought this incredible property from Little Edie. Sally Quinn and her husband, Benjamin C. Bradlee, bought the house and restored it to glory. If you have seen the film, you know that this must have been a daunting task. If you haven’t seen the film, check out this NY Times Slideshow of what the house looked like around the time of purchase. The annotations offer more to the story.

For an update on what the property looks like today, check out this slideshow or if you really want to see the gardens, watch this video.

The story of Grey Gardens continues to be of interest. With the new HBO film, it doesn’t look like it going away anytime soon.