Hunger

Tonight I watched the film Hunger for the second time since I got the DVD a couple of years ago. Hunger is one of few films about the 1981 hunger strike in the Maze prison in Ireland in which ten prisoners died. This particular film focuses on Bobby Sands, the leader of the hunger strike and the first to die. The film was released in 2008 and won numerous awards such as a BAFTA and other awards at film festivals like Cannes.

It's a very arty film. It doesn't follow a lot of the conventions of other films. For example, there is a sixteen and a half minute shot where the camera doesn't move at all and focuses entirely on a conversation between Sands and the prison chaplain. Other scenes are very visual and have no dialogue but a strong use of imagery instead. In the first ten or fifteen minutes of the film hardly a word is said but this is quite effective, I think. One of the first shots of the film shows a prison warder in his home in the morning dipping his hands into a sink full of water. He is clearly in pain at the time which evokes sympathy from the audience. A similar sequence is then repeated not long after however, this time his knuckles are bloody and bruised from having just beat up a number of prisoners.

I had a brief conversation with Harry about the film a few months ago in which she said she didn't like the film or its director Steve McQueen because she thought it glorified Sands and the hunger strikers. I don't really agree with this at all. The film is actually very unbiased, I find. It refuses to take sides and I think for the most part shows what actually happened without trying to glamourise or dilute the truth in any way.

As with any historical film, there will always be small inaccuracies and many of the characters are fictional representations. There is a scene where some of the prisoners are attending Mass in a communal area and all the while the priest is speaking the prisoners are all talking to each other over the top and drowning him out. This scene, I think, was included deliberately by McQueen to show that the conflict in Ireland is not a religious one and that although British propaganda paints it as a sectarian war, the IRA's war is against the British occupation of Ireland. However, factually, although a lot of prisoners were probably not deeply religious, scenes like the raucous behaviour at Mass wouldn't really have happened.

For me the film was a little short and lacking in a lot of detail about other events that were happening at the time. The fact that Sands was elected as a member of parliament during the time of his hunger strike is completely omitted from the film and the only mention of it is at the title cards at the end. The story itself seemed to lack quite a lot and at times it seemed like more of a graphical and artistic depiction of the conditions in the H-Blocks rather than a strong narratively driven film about the hunger strikes. The first time I watched it I can remember being quite surprised when it ended as it seemed to miss out so many important details and almost glaze over everything else that was happening during the hunger strike.

It's most certainly not a nice film to watch. In fact many parts are disgusting and brutal. It's not a film you would sit down and watch with the family and it's not really enjoyable viewing most of the time. However it is very well filmed and a lot of work went into it. Michael Fassbender for example, the actor who played Sands, went on a crash diet of ten weeks and lost about fourteen kilograms in order to make the film look truly authentic. Some of the images are quite shocking but this is intended of course and I think overall, Hunger does a good job of portraying the conditions of the H-Blocks in 1981.

Misfits

On 12 November last year, a small group of us sat down in Meg's room in halls to watch Misfits, the new E4 programme that was showing that night. At the time I hadn't heard of it at all and even though I'm a television student, I still didn't have any great compulsion to sit and watch it. I didn't know anything about the new show, what it was about or anything so the only real reason I went to watch it with everyone else was for something to do and not to miss out on anything.

As with most things we watch in a group people are coming and going in and out so you're not always 100% concentrating on the screen. But I still quite enjoyed the first episode. For anyone who doesn't know, the basic premise of Misfits is five young people who are doing community service are caught in a freak storm which leaves them all with different superpowers. The storm also has a powerful effect on their probation worker who turns into a killing menace and ends up killing one of the community service workers and trying to kill them all. As a result they end up killing him in self defence and burying his body under a nearby fly-over. This is all in a single 45 minute episode.

So after that, due to not having freeview in halls and not being overly worried about seeing another episode I never saw the show again. Until last Sunday when I decided to download the full first series onto my iTunes for £10.99. I don't know why I suddenly decided on this purchase. I think in the debate last week, Misfits had been mentioned as an example of contemporary television that has potentially shocking content but is no longer shocking to audiences these days. So when I was reminded of the show then, I was browsing on iTunes at the weekend and saw it and decided I had to buy something with the vouchers I had got from Santa.

Over the next few days, I watched an episode a night and found myself really enjoying them. The first episode is more of a general story in terms of characters but after that each episode focuses on one particular character slightly more than the others. Although the premise is quite simple, I find the storylines really clever and gripping. We've been told we should be watching new material as this is obviously the best exemplar of what is popular now. And I've enjoyed this new programme, especially when it can loosely be described as homework. I've just finished the series there and am happy to hear that it has been commissioned for a second series.

All that practical jazz

In the past few weeks, I've done by far the most practical work I've done since our course started. On the third week back of term, we didn't have many classes, however on the Monday I was involved in a small two-camera shoot in the conference room. This featured a guest speaker who was giving a masterclass to TPA students. Our four man crew consisted of myself and Murray as camera operators, Amelie as camera assist and Sam as the boom operator. We also had 4th year Steven Ferguson to help us with sound.

So at 2 o'clock we set up all the kit in the room in preparation. Then at 4 o'clock the talk started. It was a good experience to be actually filming something real for once. Up till then we had had our fair share of technical classes with Ray, but never actually had a shot of operating the camera in a real situation.

Another big practical activity came on Thursday when the whole class was involved in filming the Bum Clocks gig. We were all assigned roles for this collaborative event with Kelsey, Meg and I the editors. So although I didn't have a particularly hands on role in the gig itself, it was still good to be there on the night helping prepare the kit with everyone else.

Last weekend, I also took out some of the kit to practice over the weekend. After three journeys up from Sam's car to the sixth floor of halls I was starting to regret taking as much stuff, and made a mental note not to specialise in roadieism. On the Saturday, Meg came up to get some practice with the kit. The only problem was, we didn't have any idea what to film. Obviously we could have just practiced setting up all the gear but it's always better when you've got some sort of project to work on. So after sitting about for a wee while wondering what we should film, Meg came up with an idea for a small story that we would be able to film without leaving halls. Obviously when you've only got two people and the fairly small rooms in Liberty House, it's quite awkward maneuvering big Kino lights and cameras and tripods and monitors around but we seemed to manage quite well. We also managed to get Flick down as well to help with the project which helped a lot. The basic story involves a man who is in his flat preparing for a romantic Valentine's Day dinner with his girlfriend. He places chocolates, a rose and a card on his bed then goes through to the kitchen to prepare dinner. Not long after, his girlfriend goes into his room and we see her eyes lighting up as she sees the chocolates. The man then returns to the room to find the box of chocolates empty and his girlfriend with chocolate smeared all over her mouth. So we filmed from about two o'clock to six o'clock without stopping and managed to get the whole story complete.

On Sunday, we managed to get the help of Sam and his car so decided to go on location. With the whole city of Glasgow and beyond as our oyster we weren't sure where we wanted to go. But we put faith in the fact that Sam always seems to know some cool place to go in the city. So we ended up at the old shipyards on the south side of the river. We came across an old derelict building with no roof and decided to film some sort of horror movie. We filmed for a few hours there until the rain came on and we had to leave. And when you film for hours and end up filming probably less than a minute of actual footage, it really makes you realise how much hard work it actually is and how much work must go into making a feature length movie.

Television - The Small Screen (Summative Statement)

Since the start of my time at the RSAMD, my view on television has changed quite significantly. For the most part, my change of feelings towards TV has probably been subconscious and I don't feel as if my view has changed on it. And to be honest, my overall thoughts about television have not changed too much, but the way I look at TV will never be like it used to.

From the start of this module we've learned about people's attitudes to television, why people watch it etc. Obviously there are many reasons why people watch television. However I think the reasons are best summed up in the BBC's mission statement phrase "to inform, educate and entertain." Many people use the TV as a source of knowledge, for example, the news and other current affairs programmes. There are also many educational programmes on TV like documentaries and even things such as cooking programmes which can still be classed as educational. Obviously there are also thousands of programmes out there that are designed for pure entertainment and it can be argued that most people these days are only interested in this latter aspect.

Throughout the module we've also looked at the different varieties of shows from their infancy right up to present day. The origins of the sitcom with I Love Lucy through shows like Porridge and up to contemporary sitcoms like The Inbetweeners. Also other programme genres like cop shows, game shows and reality television.

Overall I think I've changed my view on television, whether this is a good thing or a bad thing I don't know. I certainly view things in a much more critical light now and understand the reasoning behind a lot of different shows that I would never before have questioned. And although I was forced to argue the opposite view during the debate, I definitely feel that television is more than lights and wires in a box.

The Writing Week

For the first three days of this week we were quite excited to know that Richard Smith, our screenwriting teacher was back from living it up in LA to teach us for three intensive days. This was quite exciting as we had all recently submitted scripts to him and were looking forward to getting back into the writing classes as well as hearing feedback on our scripts.

Monday morning started in the traditional AGOS 9 where Richard eagerly awaited our arrival. The first exercise we had to do was simply to warm up our writing muscles so we did the statue game where a couple of people of the class stand up at the front and are arranged in a certain way. The rest of us then have to create a story around these muses. After this we revised all that we had covered before Christmas to refresh our memories on things like three-act structure, theme and character. After lunch we then had the opportunity to do an entirely new exercise which Richard promised we would enjoy. He had prepared sheets of paper for each of us with sixteen stages of a story on it but each of the stages was blank. We had to all sit in a circle and each fill in one stage of the story and pass the sheet to our left then fill in the next part of the story and so on. At the time this exercise was undertaken very seriously and strategically and after all the sheets were eventually filled in, Richard decided we should hear a couple to see where some of the stories went. Sitting on the end of the row, I had to read out the first story which, when reading it out just made us all realise how funny all the stories had become. And so, after we all agreed that we should hear what happened in every story, we went round the class and everyone read out the story they had in front of them. Almost every time the stories became more absurd and extremely funny ranging from a woman who breaks her leg and ends up in hospital to a claustrophobic submarine driver. It was at this point that Richard probably questioned that we were some of Scotland's best potential writers and wished he had stayed in his beach house in Santa Monica. After a crash course in visual storytelling and then symbolism that was us done for the day.

Tuesday's writing class began with us sharing two brand new premises we had come up with the previous night. After the usual process of going round the group twice, we managed to devise a shortlist of premises that could potentially be made into good short films. The ideas were then put under the microscope and it turned out that they might not be as simple to write scripts on as was first thought. After this we learned more about the essentials of writing, specifically focusing on character and dialogue. For character we had to do some simple but interesting exercises where we saw a photo of a person and we had to answer questions about them such as what the contents of their fridge was and what type of underwear they wear. This turned out to be quite stereotypical for a lot of it although there were some interesting results. As for dialogue we watched a couple of excerpts from films then discussed all the technicalities of dialogue. Visual storytelling was a main factor that we concentrated on which was really interesting because people automatically assume that a "script" should have dialogue and lines for actors etc. but in fact visual storytelling is very important and often much more effective. It was here that I really wanted Richard to just say "Okay you can go and re-draft your scripts," because with all this new knowledge it made me slightly less excited to have the script feedback tutorial. And yes, I now understand why Andy had showed us all these silent films.

A slightly strange task was set for our homework for Wednesday. We had to come up with three things that we don't like or would change about ourselves. Any other uni course and you would probably be questioning this but anything goes in screenwriting and this turned out to be quite mild compared to the day with the post-secrets and beliefs. So after going round the group three times and sitting in a nice wee circle listening to each other's flaws, we treated ourselves with some chocolate and cookies. After this we watched a short excerpt from some weird but classic horror/thriller film which led us nicely into learning about conflict and tension in a story. After this we arranged our tutorial times for later in the day so that Richard could give us feedback on our scripts. In between this I went to see Up in the air - the quickly released sequel to Pixar's latest phenomenon - with some of the others at Cineworld. My tutorial with Richard was quite good. It was fairly short and he didn't give a great deal of in depth feedback but we both agreed on the points that were good and the points that could have been improved on. Later on, I saw the film Brothers at Cineworld with Murray and Sam which, despite what Sam says I thought it was quite good.

On Thursday, we continued with the intensive week of writing with a visit by the BBC producer and writer John York. I found this class to be quite good and even though it was very fast paced because he was cramming a lot of information in, it was interesting and informative. A lot of the things we already knew from our work with Richard about three-act structure and the like but he told us a lot of other things like the five-act structure. In the afternoon we then had two history of cinema classes crammed into one and Andy had our attention from the off by telling us that if we remember anything from our three years in the academy we should remember this if we ever make films. We're up to the Russian Revolution kind of era in this class and we learned about the Kuleshov effect which I found quite interesting. This consisted of the Russian film maker, Lev Kuleshov, filming an actor looking at different objects such as a bowl of soup, a dead child and the Soviet flag. Each time the actor would have the exact same passive expression. However, when the audience saw the different clips they thought that the actor was very skilled. This experiment then revealed that the audience will actually feed in their own emotions to a film which I think was the main message that Andy wanted us to learn. The audience will provide their own context for a film, they don't need to be told everything and in fact often like it when they have to make an effort to add their own details even if it is subconsciously.

Friday started off with another screening of Charlie Chaplin in one of his final movies City Lights. Talking pictures had already started and Chaplin, refusing to bring the little tramp into talking movies, stopped his movie career not long afterwards. I think out of the three Chaplin films we have watched so far, this was definitely my favourite. The story was really lovely and engaging and of course there were some greatly funny moments in it as well. And the score of course was really good, especially compared with the likes of Battleship Potemkin. Fair play to Chaplin, he was a bit of a legend.