"Without the dark we would never see the stars..."

So what makes a movie star? I thought this question would be a lot easier to answer than it actually was in class last week, since then I have been pondering why this is so...

I came to my own conclusion that a movie 'star' is much harder to define nowadays because we have a much larger breadth of film genres and categories compared to many years ago. We no longer have stars such as John Wayne who will forever be connected with westerns. It seems that actors nowadays are constantly wanting to challenge themselves to prove their diversity and range. This makes it harder for a modern day audience to connect a specific star to a specific genre of film. They no longer want to be labeled or typecast in this way.
I don't think this makes them any less stars however you do get the impression that they are somewhat 'watered down' in comparison to the stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood.
I do think that to be a star you really must possess that certain "Je ne sais quoi" quality, that certain spirit that makes you completely unique in the eyes of the puplic.
I think this picture above of Marylin Monroe perfectly illustrates what a 'star' is to me. Just look at her, she's just radiates this luminous glow that immediately makes you what to be her or at least 'have what she's having', she completely sells the fantasy that her life is amazing.

Marilyn couldn't act if her life depended on it, not to mention her far from perfect singing voice and yet her personality completely transcends these 'minor details' on the screen, when she's on the screen she has the ability to completely charm & beguile you. To me, this is what made her a true icon. She was one of the first voluptuous women stars at the time made her stand out from the rest, it added to her persona of being this bubbly, sexy pin-up. 
During our Chaplin phase in 1st year we spoke of how you could draw Chaplin's The Tramp with three brush stokes and someone could guess who it was making him an iconic figure. I think the same goes for marilyn, her platinum blonde hair, beauty spot, red lips, the white dress that got lifted by the breeze of the subway vent. You could easily make a caricature of her that people would guess, this is one of the main factors of an icon, instantly recognisable and unique. 

So no, I don't think we have the same star system we had years ago. It has become to easy to be in a movie or famous without being either really unique or extremely talented. This means that the stars we do posses are lost in the murky waters of reality TV stars and talentless robots. They are still shining out there somewhere, merely harder to find. All is well, we still have Meryl Streep, thank God for Meryl Streep! 

This is a photo of when I saw Monroe's star which was placed on the Hollywood Boulevard on February 9th, 1960!!!

Concept to Character...

The importance of costume - "Costumes are never clothes. Unlike fashion, which is designed for our three dimensional world, costumes are designed to appear in two dimensions on screen, needing the enhancement of colour & texture, to 'read' a screen"
The fifth element is one of my favorite films. I think it is one of those films, that for me, I love because it was a big part of my childhood. I used to watch it with my sister over and over again and whenever I see it now it reminds me of those times. The costumes in The Fifth Element were designed by the GOD that is Jean Paul Gaultier. This man is one of the great fashion designers, a truly talented man with a vision like no other. These amazing costumes are a huge part of the film. I think people are always aware of the fact that if your film is set in the future you need to think about how different the world will look and production design is very important for this obviously. However it is equally important to think about what people will be wearing this far in the future. I think for Gaultier this job must have been a dream come true, you get the impression that there were no constraints in his designs, he was given free reign to create wonderful wacky costumes as noone knows what the human race will be wearing in the future. His costumes are interesting because he uses very modern materials like plastic, rubber and spandex. All of which are very flattering to a good figure, they provide a stylish silhouette. When these materials are caught on camera they look incredibly modern and futuristic which is exactly what makes them work so well in this movie. I think Jean Paul Galtier is interesting also because he seems to have an obsession with the female form.
All his costumes, even the ones not for films but music performances, such as 'the Madonna corset' (that has become so iconic a costume) really emphasises the female form, not in a crude way but with real love for shape. He creates shapes that accentuate the form of the body which I think is really effective and different. Milla Jovovich's costume to the left looks so simple and yet it works so perfectly for the scene. It also works with her body, as it looks like the bones of a ribcage. Galtiers designs for the airhostess are great too! Again, they have cut out bust sections to create a more modern, more sexy costume. The colours used makes the actors almost look edible, like candy. These two look like parma violets! (even the wigs are very modern. We now understand modern fashion to be clean cuts and defined features, silhouettes and clear forms. Galtier has done this perfectly while keeping things fun and quirky.) 

"Fashion is a visual art of enormous creativity. Fashion is about commerce, change, individuality, and standing out from the crowd. This makes it easy for the public to confuse actors with the characters they play..."

In the film version of My Fair Lady Cecil Beaton won an academy award for his costume designs and it's no surprise why...
Cecil Beaton started off as a photographer and was soon asked to join Vogue (which trust me, is an honor few people are lucky enough to receive) He took many fashion photographs and portraits, mainly of The Royals & celebrities. After the war Cecil designed costumes and sets for the stage on broadway then moved into film design.
His designs are very classic and utterly glamourous. We have come to think of black and white as the classic colours that ooze class and sophistication. Cecil Beaton has to create over 100 costumes from scratch for the Ascot Racecourse scene. A designer could easily make 100 costumes, but what makes this scene so  amazing is the amount of design that obviously went into each and every costume. The scene almost turns into a fashion show as you are shown each costume, all inkeeping with the same colour scheme. Its really mesmorising and what secured the academy award for best costume. 

Audrey Hepburn play's Eliza Doolittle in the film. She is such a graceful, fawn-like star that the combination of her and this amazing costume is just magic on screen. As she started off as a dancer she has this natural agility and grace on screen, she doesn't simply wear the costume, she and the costume come together to create the character. 

"So much to reveal in small cinematic moments..."

Here is Cecil Beaton taking a photograph of Audrey Hepburn during a costume tests.

The concept art for the Ascot Racecourse scene. The scene is to show the difference in class and how the upper half live, the costumes provide us,a s the audience with a lot of information on the social background of characters. Within seconds they can paint us a picture of each character before they have even uttered one line of dialogue. Making costume very important.
I would like to also mention the film Down With Love. Although not thought of as a 'great film' I have to say I really enjoyed it in the context of production design. The costumes and sets for the film are perfect for the mood and style Peyton Reed wanted for his pastiche of the Hollywood/Doris Day & Rock Hudson comedy's of the 60's. This 'candy coated' technicolour look of the period and fashions is so inviting and fun. in this film the production levels were given great priority by the director, so much of the budget must have been spent on these lavish sets and costumes, but they really do work as an aid to draw you completely into this world that's so different from the one we know today. 

The costume Designer was Daniel Orlandi. It is obviously important to remember that a costume designers job is not always to create really lavish, theatrical costumes. All films, even the everyday ones set now need a costume designer. As I loved Orlandi's costumes I further researched his designs to find that all his other film credits have been very humdrum in comparison, this really was his only very over the top job with design, which surprised me as he's obviously very good at it. 
You can tell a lot about a character by their apartment! I think the production design in both apartments were taken from Ken adam in many ways, parts of both rooms remind me of certain James Bond sets, with the use of circles and tall rooms that tower over the characters dwarfing them.

Adrian Greenberg designed the costumes for The Wizard Of Oz, he would never have anticipated how iconic his ruby slippers would become. During our Chaplin stage in 1st year we spoke about how you could draw Chaplin with three brush strokes, he was that iconic.

I often wonder what it is that makes something or someone iconic? The design of the ruby slippers and of Madonna's corset will be remembered forever and I think thats the magic of design...

The Importance of Typeface...

Superimposition is when an image or video is placed on top of an already-existing image or video...

This is usually done to add to the image being presented on screen, but can also be used to conceal something (in movies superimposition is often used to place an image over the original footage, and effectual technique often used to add things like ghosts, backgrounds, foregrounds, modelled animation and computer graphics to a film.)

I watched a music video for a Talking Heads song called (Nothing But) flowers, I thought the use of words on the moving images in this video were quite unusual. I found a book in borders which explained some of the uses for Superimposition in moving graphics. This music video uses selected lyrics from the song which appear on screen at the same time as they are being sung.

In this case I think the music video hasn't aged very well, it looks extremely dated. Mostly I think this is to do with the type faces used, you really notice how much time has past when you look at the styles of type used in films and short videos. Like everything else fonts and type faces come in and out of fashion and can quickly look very outdated. Looking back at this music video, released in 1988 (so not that long ago at all) we seem to have advanced so much stylistically and technically. It's exciting to think what we'll be able to achieve in another 20 years, with everything advancing so quickly. Parts of the Talking Heads music video is done with actual live projection onto the band members faces. I find typefaces very interesting, aesthetically you can get such beautiful typefaces especially when they have been specifically designed and done by hand or printed on a letter press.

A family friend has a small printing press, all invitations and thank you cards are made from scratch and each one is such a lovely work of art. Everything has been specifically selected, the colour of ink, the typeface used, lovely hand made paper, the distance between each single letter can make such a difference aesthetically to the overall image. Layout plays a big part in producing something wonderful, it really makes all the difference.

Not only layout but also how something feels, printed typefaces can be very pleasing on the eye due to shape of the letters, but having them embossed, glossy or particular parchment will affect how they feel to the touch which can really make something truly special. I have always been particularly interested in book cover design. A book cover can completely sell a book to a person. The choices in paper used, the layout of the title, the quality of the spine, even the size and spacing of the font used for the text. All these things can really seduce you whether your consciously aware of it or not. I think it's wonderful.
We went on a filed trip to the Glasgow Mitchell library to look at the archives and what information is readily available to the public.It was really amazing, a different sort of trip from the Panopticon, but a good one none the less! There's really nothing like seeing first hand documents, some of which were so old and in excellent condition because of the care taken over them but the library. I love history and looking back at how things have changed. My favourite thing to look at is how hand writing has changed over time, some of these documents had such a beautiful hand, most of which were more legible today than most. We have lost the art of calligraphy in present day culture, only a select few seem to still hold an importance for this art. I blame computers mainly, with this new technology we have lost the importance of ink on paper and hand printed type. With endless reels of fonts readily available to us on the computer we have learnt to skip past the effort and time it takes to do this by hand.We were shown some books that were really incredible in terms of design, one of which was a photo album for wealthy family's who could afford to get photographs taken. The book had a gilded golden design printed into the paper, it must have been quite a job to make at the time and again the craftsmanship really shows how wealthy this family must have been to own one.This got me thinking how the world today would have been so different without the invention of the printing press, something we completely take for granted these days. Without which we wouldn't have mass production of books or newspapers.
Johannes Gutenberg is thought to be the inventor of the first printing press. The printing press originally had replaceable/moveable wooden or metal letters in 1436. This invention not only revolutionised the production of materials such as books & newspapers, but it is also the cause of rapid development in the sciences, arts and religion through the transmission of texts. In Tv shows such as Deadwood, the episode where they set up the newspaper in town, you can see how having a printed newspaper changed things. Knowing what's going on in other places was a massive step forward for society & culture. The Gutenberg press with its wooden and later metal movable type printing remained the standard until the 20th century.

Gundrun Zapf Von Hesse is a typographer who's work is very detailed and beautiful.

Gundrun Zapf von Hesse is a contemporary German calligrapher, typographer and book binder. She has designed many fonts that are used worldwide today such as Diotima, used in Adobe software.
The Sherwin Beach Press is a small fine press company specialising in nonfiction prose. Their books are really beautiful. The detail that goes into their craft is to an exceptional level. They really show printmaking to a high standard.This last picture shows an ornamented initial cap, this detailed first character of a paragraph can sit above, below, to the left of, or even behind the main body of the text, and can be set in a contrasting weight, style or colour. You can have a lot of fun designing this letter, it is often part illustration or very decorative.
The Barbarian Press was founded by Crispin & Jan Elsted in 1977. This small press and book binders have produced many books with hand printed text and illustrations.
The Barbarian press are printers and publishers of fine press books and limited editions. I think limited editions are interesting because as the designer you really have to consider what will make this edition limited or special. It has to be a more precious book to make it limited and this will be down to it's design. The text inside is usually the same it's often just the presentation that makes it limited.

This was the original printing press shed in the back garden!

I am very interested in the Barbarian Press in particular. The Press started out in an old shed in 1988 with leaking roofs and collapsing floors! The shed was later converted into a 1,000 square foot shop containing a pressroom and composing room. Barbarian Press is run by two people, Crispin & Jan. The design and typesetting are done by Crispin, and the presswork by Jan. The barbarian Press is amazing because the type for the books is set entirely by hand. 'The first book bound by The Barbarian Press was the 1996 publication Rufinus: The Complete Poems, which won the Alcuin Society Citation for Excellence in Book Design in Canada.'

The wonderful looking printing press room where Crispin & Jan create these works of art and book bind.

The use of movable type was an improvement on handwritten manuscripts, once the type had been laid out it allowed quick production. Taking a fraction of the time taken handwriting each manuscript. Woodblock printing revolutionised European book-making.
The oldest surviving example of a printed book is thought to be the Diamond Sutra, printed in China as far back as 868 CE. This won't be the oldest book printed, many were found but were undated...

There's Always a White Knight to save the day...

Speaking of White Knights...

'The Searchers'

The Searchers is a 1956 Western directed by John Ford. The original story was based on a book by Alan Le May. The Searchers follows the protagonist Ethan Edwards, a Civil War veteran played by none other than John Wayne. Edwards spends years looking for his abducted niece Debbie accompanied by Martin Pawley, his 8th Cherokee adoptive nephew.
I missed the class screening of The Searchers. I knew that the follow up Monday class had been about reading the frame, composition and character analysis. I returned home for the first time in ages this weekend knowing that my dad had the DVD, it's one of his favourite films, so we watched it together. I tried to watch it bearing in mind what had been discussed in class. I had actually seen it before but a long time ago when I was quite young, I remembered the attack scene, where the most of the family get murdered by the Indians. I found this film very enjoyable, I think John Ford and John Wayne had both come a long way since Stagecoach. John Wayne's name on the poster is just as big as the title showing how much of a star he was and how he could sell the film the the audience. Wayne has such a strong screen presence, when he's in a shot you have to look at him because you can feel him there, your eyes don't have to do much work to find him in the frame, they seem drawn to him automatically. I find this interesting because you can't explain why this happens in films, some people just have that effect and they are the true movie stars. In The Searchers they both seem very comfortable in the genre they've defined. Everything fitted exactly into place. The pacing was great and I felt that the performances were exceptional. I really enjoyed watching John Wayne and Jeffrey Hunter's relationship develop onscreen, Similarly with Jeffrey Hunter and Vera Miles. I thought their scenes were very funny and there was a real warmth and chemistry between them.
I thought all the characters were really well cast. I think Jeffrey Hunter was a perfect actor to play Marty. I found the fight between Marty and Charles at the wedding hilarious, going between being such gentlemen to complete brawling. The shot of Laurie secretly enjoying them fighting over her was again very real, unlike a lot of films from that period, I felt this showed her as a very real character. I have always found women in westerns to be a bit flat, but I felt that Laurie behaved just the way any woman would nowadays, especially her reaction to his letter and the first time she say him after so many years. I thought the shot where he tells her he has to go with Ethan and she is clearly distraught but knows he has to go. So she gives him her horse and acts perfectly as though she doesn't care but she's fooling noone. Then we see a shot of her crying and his horse riding off behind her. It was really emotional.
I also noticed how effective Ford's use of not showing the audience important things was. We didn't see the body of Lucy that Ethan discovers in the Canyon. We don't see the body of Martha in the burnt down house. We don't see Brad getting shot as he rides after the Indians, instead we are shown Ethan and Marty's reactions which was so much more emotionally effective. I really enjoyed The Searchers, I thought it had a cracking story which provided excellent drama for very human characters.

Jeffrey Hunter was of course the first Captain of the USS Enterprise, Captain Christopher Pike!

'12 Angry Men'

12 Angry Men is a 1957 American film directed by Sidney Lumet. The film follows a jury made up of 12 men who need to decide the fate of one young man who is being accused of murder. What was interesting about this film was the fact that it pretty much remains in the one room. This would make it extremely difficult fro the director to keep the audience interested, Lumet manages to do so. The only exception is two short scenes at the beginning and the end of the film which shows the court building steps and two scenes in the jury bathroom, apart from that the entire movie takes place in the one jury room. The problem is that the jury's votes must be unanimous. They have to decide whether a young teenage boy from the city slum, murdered his father. The jury is told that a guilty verdict will mean the death sentence by electric chair for the young boy. i felt the film was very much about morals and the price of a human life and whether other human beings really have the right to choose to end one. The film was interesting in terms of watching characters onscreen, we see the twelve men move to the jury room and start to discuss the case. It is in the middle of a heat wave. As an audience member you could feel how humid it was, the room feels very claustrophobic to watch and the men start sweating more and more. It is evident that some of the jury members just want to get out of there no matter what their decision means to this kids life. They don't even want to question the evidence or witnesses. Showing that some people will always turn a blind eye to that which doesn't affect them directly.
Henry Fonda's character is presented as a white night (he literally wears a white suit) and is prepared to be the only man to stand up for the young boy. He questions the witnesses stories and tries to convince the others with logic rather than getting all irate like some of the other jury members.
I thought this film was interesting, I didn't enjoy it as a film too much. I can put it into context and appreciate it as a good example of directing and composition however I could tell straight away that this would have originally been a stage play. I felt that Lumet did a good job of making something that could have been fairly static quite tense and exciting in places but compare to films not originally written for the stage I think it is less enjoyable. The most recent example of this would be a movie such as Closer, which I really loved but I think it was the stars that made it work on screen. I can't help thinking that without them I wouldn't have enjoyed the film as much.

The Conversation

The Conversation is a 1974 film about audio surveillance, written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. 

We watched this in our screening following our sound day with Cammy. The film is about a paranoid surveillance expert called Harry Caul who runs his own company in San Francisco. It is evident through out the film that Harry is very highly respected by others in the surveillance line of work. However Harry Caul is obsessed with his own privacy. We first see his apartment as he unlocks his triple-locked front door, I thought he must have some valuable possessions inside his apartment but it was almost completely bare.
Walter Murch edited the picture and mixed the sound on The Conversation. We watched the film to pay particular attention to the sound design during the movie. As a complete film this film would struggle with todays audience in terms of story and plot. Watching from a sound design perspective you could appreciate the care and precision taken over the sound in the film, the relationship between what we see and what we hear and how the combination of both really heightens our viewing experience and the overall emotional sense that we get from a scene. Andy had mentioned the use of silence in films, I must admit I'd never thought about that before but it is so evident now. We are so used to sound in films, background noise, wildtracks, continuous background music that we are not often left in complete silence. When we are we really stop to notice it.At one point in the conversation, when Harry has been bugged unknowingly by another surveillance expert at the moment when he actually opens up and talks quite personally to a woman in private. The moment he angrily snaps the devise in his hands the sound goes so muffled that you can't tell what's being said. This use of sound design really worked with the character of Harry's anger, like he was so angry that he couldn't hear straight.
I thought this film was interesting in terms of sound design but I didn't find it crazily enjoyable as a film that is to entertain. In context I can appreciate it but It's the kind of film I now feel I don't need to ever see again unless it's to further research sound design or editing.