Long ago I took a filmmaking course at the University of Wisconsin Green Bay. The campus was embryonic in those days. I learned the basic tricks of cinematography with an enthusiastic instructor and a close friend who was mad about animating dinosaurs.
Now, in the digital age, like everyone else, I have a camera that can take both still shots and movies. Until a few days ago I had not gotten around to exploiting my little Canon’s moviemaking abilities. It took the cumulative effect of various upgrades some time to sink in. Suddenly it hit me: Oh, I can do this — I have enough drive space, Windwoes will not hork up because I have sufficient RAM for every process, I have a decent video card. I can eff around!
And so I have been effing around. I am pleasantly surprised at the quality of the Canon PowerShot A550’s performance. IMO it does very well, for an affordable (barely, on my budget, when I got it) point-and-shoot. Of course all depends on the steadiness of my hand and the readiness of my eye, with a good measure of luck thrown in. Anyhoot, the short movie clips I’ve shot so far are at least good enough to play with.
I have lost my YouTube virginity.
I shot these iris pans during a long insomnia session this morning, stitched them together, and uploaded before I crashed. The original shots are much better quality, but bandwidth is a resource that I believe should be used judiciously.
Or — since the embed seems reluctant to function for me right now — Morning Irises
The flowers are just around the corner from my house. The sound is what I live with.
I haven’t been much of a moviegoer/watcher for a long time. No TV, no money, no car. However, I do have a computer, so once in a while I do get hold of something. Lately it’s been happening more often. DSL helps, LOL. So does having a regular job and my property taxes paid up. Last year I bought the Lord of the Rings. This spring, I’m feeling a bit livelier, so I can walk to the library. That means even more movies.
Yesterday, I had returned Apocalypto and was browsing the shelves. Couldn’t find anything that jumped out and said “Watch me!” so I decided to take 10,000 BC home and see how bad it was.
It surprised me — it was better than I expected. It could have been better yet, had it been called Godslayer, or Legacy of Atlantis, or some such thing befitting the (sadly abbreviated) epic fantasy that it wants to be. Because it is certainly not a story about what might have occurred anywhere, anywhen, around 10,000 years BCE.
Consider the fact that it apparently covers at least three continents, on both hemispheres. Points lost there, big time.
That mammoth hunt. Cheese and tripes, it is amazingly bad. These are experienced, profesional mammoth hunters? They expect to eat tomorrow? The lead bull — ROFLUIH! Just that alone is so sad.
Proportions — yes, mammoths were big, but really. And the pussycat. Not to mention it looked kind of silly bouncing away in its last scene. I rather liked the Androcles-and-the-lion bit, though.
D’leh — how can you say it without thinking “delay”? He wasn’t such a bad character, just needed a little common sense behind him. I’d like to have seen the whole storyline fleshed out a bit instead of glossed over with see next paragraph
The sporadic narration. I’m on the edge of writing a flaming rant about movies that tell instead of showing. Talk about pitiful. There is no place in the body of a film for that sort of thing unless it is autobiographical. While 10K is not as bad in this respect as the Clan of the Cave Bear superfail, it’s bad enough. For God(dess) sake, look at Quest for Fire. Please. It’s an amazing masterpiece, or at least tour-de-force, of paleo-fantasy. QfF is a rare phenomenon. With no understandable dialog, it hasn’t even the slimmest chance for an as-you-know-bob, and there is not one word of intrusive narration.
And speaking of dialog — fscking Tribalspeak! With an accent, yet, and oodles of rolled R’s. Don’t get me started.
Army marching through desert with no visible means of support. Numbnuts who can’t follow the stars until another numbnuts points out something stupidly impossible. Mammoths working their big hairy butts off in a desert with no mile-high haystacks in sight. People, listen to me, if an army marches on its stomach, a mammoth sees their rations and raises them a hundredfold. Pachyderms are eating machines.
And then, after all that, one of the African types hands over a baggie of corn. Zea maiz, primo cultivar of the New World. Where T. F. are we? Kansas?
I could take 10K, I could love it, as a Conanoid fantasy. But I’d like to clean it up a lot even for that.
Going to have to watch Apocalypto again to take the taste of stale joke out of my mouth. Except for certain little details of the moon, that one is everything I could want in prehistorical film.
E.T.A.: I forgot to mention the galloping mammoths in the climactic scenes. ZOMG. Galloping . Mammoths . *groan*
Let’s postulate a peaceful tribe of Noble Savage warriors descended from carnivores. Send them an Honorable White Man with a selfish motive. Let’s have this HWM, this super Everyman’s Gary Stu, be sucked right into their neo-aztec NuAge culture and impress the tits off them. Yeehah.
Uh…too oxymoronic for you? Okay, let’s pile on a shitload of gaudy color, make everything three times as large as life (except for what has to be ten times larger than life), and keep the action fast and violent. There. Now the unbelievability factor has increased to the point of stupefaction. You have to accept it because…because the gimmick of 3D is so cool.
But…but…waitaminnit, what about the truly awesome Message? Mustn’t we be mindblown by the Oneness of all these bloodthirsty creatures with their too-grand environment? Shouldn’t we have the tits impressed off us by things like the straight out of Disney’s Fantasia tree seed scene? I mean, hey, all this NuAge wonderfulness is in direct opposition to the horrors perpetrated by lying politicians and greedy corporate entities, right?
Right. Let’s fight lies with bigger lies until we smash ’em all flat!
The Message doesn’t apply to the real world. Take off the goggles, walk out of the theater, and what do you have? A lot of wishful thinking. Baby, your buttons have been pushed.
You want a pristine environment? You’re probably going straight to Wal-Mart afterward to blow what’s left of your entertainment money on plastic crap. Then you’re going to your overheated home to eat junk. It’s too much effort to change your habits. Too hard to think about the connection between what you do and the consequences of your actions. Yes, Ducky, your actions. Not Those Other Bad People, you.
You want peace? Let’s kill the enemy, blow up their stuff. There’s a Message for you.
Avatar is going to help make this world a better place to live, you betcha. For liars. So lie to yourself, hang onto those fantasies of pure unobtanium, but don’t let them intrude into your Real Life; don’t look at them too closely. Just believe in lies, and keep the big liars rolling in money.
