Making The Movie: Gameboy (2010)

Gameboy (2010) was a collaborative short film created and produced by Alphie, Justin, Jayne and myself. It features music by our composers, Alfred and Kyle, and background music by Alphie, Justin, Edward and the other people whom are mentioned in the credits! (I forgot... Carlo? Charles?) It stars Alphie and Jayne and there are other actors... I just don't want to spoil it. Here's the premise: A boy loses his most prized possession only to end up finding his true love after realizing what he was missing in his life... which turns out, wasn't his gameboy. However, we find that truly, Andy is not only a "gameboy" addict, he is a gameboy by nature; constantly playing on it.. even in the shower! I think that this film can relate to many people seeing as, a lot of the people born in Generations X/Y had played or seen Nintendo Gameboy's growing up.

Working as a group, we had so much fun editing and creating this final video for our course. Part of our motivation was the tight schedule which we had and the possibility that it wasn't going to make it into the art show. It drove us to our wits and ends by the time it was finished. We went out to our locations and shot scenes. It was easy to schedule our shot list considering we had mainly two actors: Jayne and Alphie. I acted as either cameraman/boom mic operator during the set and Justin played a role or did the camerawork. Either way, we all shared a part in helping create the movie. We all did interchangeable roles whether it was: Camera/sound/directing or cinematography. I think that on set, we had fun and had our laughs but it was a creative process with every scene. We shared ideas on how to make the film look better at each scene. I can recall some conflicts over creative ideas but we compromised in the end. At the same time, we knew our roles each time instinctively. During editing, we would have fun as well as edit on separate computers. This seemed like a good idea until we had to export and combine all of the scenes which we distributed on the different eMacs. All in all, it was a hectic and tedious post-production. (Which is now over on account that the files were deleted and tapes were lost in the process.)

There was some conflicts though especially with the creative visions of the composers. Although we used their music which they composed for the film, both sides' demands weren't met. Due to time constraints and therein, lack of communication, we weren't able to collaborate as much as we should have. Sometimes, we would be late sending in our material and that postponed their parts in composing. However, we did use all of the songs in which they produced for us. Since this was our first film production, I think that this was an important lesson that we definitely learned from.

During editing, I created a poster (as seen above) and our production card. We had a fun photoshoot and took some great pictures with appropriate lighting. I created both items on Adobe Photoshop CS3 / cmyk.

Check out the trailer:

The Ultimate Showdown: James vs. Cuarón

Personally, I enjoyed the book, Children of Men, written by PD James. From my experience with Harry Potter, Lord of The Rings, The Notebook (yes, THE Notebook with Rachel McAdams), Eragon, Spiderman, Batman, Romeo & Juliet, Alice In Wonderland, etc, I usually prefer the novel(s) first and foremost. If I decide after reading the book that it seems decent enough to see how a director tried to interpret and adapt it, I'll then scrounge for change enough to pay $7.50 to see it. (Or go to Cineplex on Tuesdays). To me, the book is always the best source. I am a visual learner, but reading a book helps me consider and imagine how the characters would feel and act. For me, adaptations are just another way to imagine a book's scenery. With The Children of Men, however, it was an entirely new concept which Cuarón devised. Sure it maintained the same themes of finding hope in a lost cause, looking on the bright side, a race against time and the last dying generation of human beings incapable of giving offspring; but there were new characters, new scenes and new conflicts within the movie's plot.

The adaptation in this case, in my opinion, is great. For me, I enjoyed the visual interpretation and the cinematography. If I were given the task of recreating a world of despair and hopelessness filled with illegal immigrants and pre-apocalyptic chaos, it would not look as good as the movie for sure. In the film, there were burning cows, pollution, wide pans of the countryside and technology (produced by special effects). The feel and atmosphere from the movie was well carried out and I felt it was accurate visually to that of the book, if not better. To me, Cuarón did a fantastic job because the scenes were very detailed. The plasma screens, the props, the debris and the shootings and bombings everywhere helped establish each scene and made me feel as if I was watching an apocalypse happen before my eyes.

The characters were well casted. I particularly liked watching Clive Owen act in this movie because he has played out angry and brave, yet sentimental characters before. I thought that the person who played Julian, Julianne Moore, was not only casted based on her talents, but her appearance. Unfortunately, we don't see much of her due to her death by the Omegas early on. The actress who played Kee was a decent actress since she had to fake the accent, go through birth and act scared most of the time.

The film exceeded my expectations of what I thought the book was about. Sure, Cuarón made Theo die and he added an illegal refugee to carry the baby instead of Julian, but it all made sense. I think that Cuarón did these changes to help the conflict and make it more realistic to the audience. Having the main character die is also another way in which to pull the audience closer emotionally. However, I think that we saw less of the scenes which went on in the book including the Quietus, Theo's and Julian's baby accident and Xan's antagonizing ways. This is where adaptations lose out to a novel. Since the film has to have a certain length, the events in the book have to either be shortened or cut off. Thus, the film doesn't establish the mentioned events and only mentions them briefly. The audience doesn't understand the same context or meanings as deeply as those who read the original book. However, adaptations do allow people to visualize the scenes better with either CGI, the use of green screens, set designs and props and costumes.

I guess this was all the fan-girl craze about Twilight was about. The original book by Stephanie Meyer versus the movie starring Robert Pattinson and Kristin Stewart. I suppose Edward was too much of an idolized and dreamed after persona to be portrayed by a lowly human being such as R-Patz.

 Image Source: http://theoatmeal.com/story/twilight

WinterCity 2010 - NFB Stop Motion Video

This holiday season, the film/idp classes made promotional videos for Toronto's WinterCity festival. I actually had the opportunity to volunteer for this event. Anyways, the IDP people came together and produced a short over the span of two days. Our video is the first short that plays in the above video. Needless to say, we had fun working on it as a team alongside the NFB professionals.

I thought that our video was interesting and had a great romanic and interracial twist to it? Well, it was multi-cultural featuring people of different skin tones. Either way, our NFB commercia was played throughout Toronto's downtown core. It's relevant to winter because of the setting: Nathan Phillips Square with an ice rink. At the end of the video, their skating movements form the words, "WinterCity 2010". I think it was a nice 30 seconds of effort well done.

Lesson learned? Don't procrastinate. Be organized. Learn to manage your time effectively.

A Play On Words.

When we first started experimenting with making word clouds, I thought it was fun. The site made our poems or text into visual groups of words; with differently sized words which depended on its frequency. I thought that it was also neat how we could change the colours, arrangement and fonts of the words. I kept playing around with my free verse and sonnet until I came to the final results. I think it was smart of the IBM employee to create an application based on "tag clouds" on blogs and websites. Unknowingly, it has become a great art form. With playing with typography, we could make clouds from Obama's speech for example. Another example would be an outline picture of Rihanna or Darth Vader created from her song lyrics and the screenplay of Star Wars. There can be many art creations from making word clouds.

I also learned how to print-screen on a Mac: Command-Shift-3!

My poems were simple and plain and with wordle.com, they became alive, in a way. My first poem, Letter To A Doppelganger, was a free verse on mistaken identity, ranting, and trying to find some individuality. I wrote it partly because I have been mistaken for another person and I was inspired by Diane Chea's video which we watched at NFB. After importing it on wordle.com, it formed a mask like a Venetian mask. Get it? Identity and holding or hiding behind a mask to hide one's actual feelings. Also, the biggest words were: "Identity", "Name", and "Receive".

My second poem was a sonnet based on how much I dislike sleeping. Honestly, we could get so much more done without having to stay in bed for 9 hours everyday. In that time, I could've finished 1.25 units! So in this poem, I chose a dark background and some reds, grays, dark blues, and light blues to match with the themes of lack of energy, bloodshot eyes, and being nocturnal beings. With this poem, the most commonly used words were: "Sleep" (obviously), "Without" and "Less".

In the end, word clouds were fun and easy to make. I can't wait to get started with LiveType and Final Cut Express to make them appear animated and alive. It'll probably take long with rendering though. :S

Here's both poems superimposed onto wordle.com:

"My Child, My Land" (1998)

When the child starts chasing the chicken into the field of landmines

This short cell animation directed and written by Francine DESBIENS shows two different families living in different parts of the world.


Within the 4 minute short, it started off as a suspenseful tone with the typical American family playing: the son was playing, the mother was cooking and then the mood changed; the father was making some sort of weapon. In fact, he had a whole stash of bombs, grenades within his shed where he was producing them. Then the scene changed to an Asian home. I'm assuming Vietnamese because that was where the US/Vietnam War took place.



Again, there was a happy family and their house (which was surrounded by a fence and landmines). A mom was taking care of her baby while her two sons were outside feeding the chickens. She had a flashback about the war and soldiers who fought in the war. The America soldiers planted antipersonnel bombs throughout the land. I really liked how the animation showed an entire army planting bombs everywhere. It put more emphasis on how many numerous land bombs were planted.


Later, the father returns with crops on his bicycle. The older son, mother with child go to greet him in the house while the younger son is outside unattended with the chicken pen. Suddenly, he picks one of them up and it starts to run away. He chases it into the land filled with potential bombs. He sets one of them off and it explodes. The whole family watches in horror and surprise. Then the animation goes to the American family eating and talking over dinner. It ended with a depressing, ironic end.


I thought that the animation was meaningful and sad. It's message holds true because in many war-stricken countries in the world, it's a reality that there are landmines everywhere. In fact, hundreds of people die from it every year. I thought it was sad because the son died from innocently chasing the chicken and unknowingly triggering the bomb. However, it's ironic because the source of the bomb is a source of income to support the Western family. Its further irony comes from the fact that the Americans were in the war and they produced in the first place.


The animation itself, was well-drawn. When the mom looks out into the window, the window transforms into a flashback. I thought that when the soldiers were planting the bombs, it was further emphasized by the grid. I also liked the smoke effect when the father carries his child. I liked the animation for its message and I think it came out very strong.