Silent Films

Alice in Wonderland - 1903
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onfUau7Smbs

Witness to a Robbery
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbKAS_vTS8g

Clown Photograph Edit

Silent Movies - Research

Wikipedia - The first film was created by Louis Le Prince in 1888. It was a two second film of people walking around in Oakwood Grange garden, titled Roundhay Garden Scene. The art of motion pictures grew into full maturity in the "silent era" before silent films were replaced by "talking pictures" in the late 1920s. Many film scholars and buffs argue that the aesthetic quality of cinema decreased for several years until directors, actors, and production staff adapted to the new "talkies". The visual quality of silent movies — especially those produced during the 1920s — was often extremely high. However, there is a widely held misconception that these films were primitive and barely watchable by modern standards. This misconception is due to technical errors (such as films being played back at wrong speed) and due to the deteriorated condition of many silent films (many silent films exist only in second or even third generation copies which were often copied from already damaged and neglected film stock).
Because silent films had no synchronized sound for dialogue, onscreen intertitles were used to narrate story points, present key dialogue and sometimes even comment on the action for the cinema audience. The title writer became a key professional in silent film and was often separate from the scenario writer who created the story. Intertitles (or titles as they were generally called at the time) often became graphic elements themselves, featuring illustrations or abstract decoration that commented on the action.

Laurel and Hardy present the exact kind of slap stick comedy i imagine to be portrayed through mine therefore I have looked into some research on them and have watched some of their footage on youtube etc.

'DID YOU KNOW?' taken from Official Laurel and Hardy Website: Hardy died at 65 in '57, which is 75 backwards, Laurel died at 75 in '65, which is the age when Hardy died in '57, which is 75 backwards, which is the age when Laurel died, in '65, at age 75, which is '57 backwards, which is when Hardy died, at age 65, to infinity to the tenth power, which is how long Laurel & Hardy will continue entertaining a world in need of laughter ...

Mood Board

This is just a mood board to show initial responses to the silent film idea that I have had.

Initial Response to the Video Task

Today we were told to start thinking of initial ideas for a video. My initial responses were to use some of my photographs that I have already taken in my sketchbook. Whilst looking at the style of these photos I really started to realise what route it was I wanted to take. My initial thoughts are to use the photos of me dressed up much like the character Bronson, and develop a silent movie, cinematographic affect film. This would be about 30 seconds long if not slightly longer in which i could use both still images and maybe some moving images in which I would go out on location and shoot using a video camera. This blog will be used to document my development ideas and everything that will eventually lead up to a final finished piece of art work.

Development on Photoshop

As you can see from this photograph this has been a simple edit where I just cut out the original photo of my figure, and then duplicated it on another layer. from this I used the stamp filter that I had learnt from my previous pop art style photo, and then just added the finishing touch by changing the colour to red, which brings numerous connotations, such as violence and blood.

This photo was made exactly the same as the one below, in which I duplicated the layer, and inverted the colour. I then changed the Hue and contrast of the image to neaten it up slightly.

This image was made by duplicating the layer, and then inverting the colours and playing around with the position of the photo's.

Here you can see the original image has been taken, cut out from the original background, and then I adjusted the contrast and put a 'Stamp' filter on the image of me dressed up. This has given more of a poster art effect to the image and I feel I anchored this effect by adding in a background of prison bars to enhance the image. I adjusted the transparency of the of the background image to make sure it wasn't too overpowering on the foreground and then I tried to make it more like pop art by colouring the important features of the face, the eyes and the tear which give it more of an emotional impact.

As you can see, here all I have done to the original photo is simply use a brush to give a blood splat effect on the image to create a more violent, phsycotic feel for the image. This was fairly simple, and didn't involve much editing.