Research - Week 12

30/04/2019

Bex mentioned to us about the day trip to Dunedin that Traci mentioned about yesterday in screen arts. We will be visiting the Hocken gallery, a 3D dome, have guided tours of the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, and Patrick will take us to some filmmaking places. The bus will be outside the Downtown campus and we will be leaving at 8am, so we need to at the campus at 7.45am.

The projector was playing up by being unusually noisy today, so the presentations today became one-on-ones with Bex and the class was welcome to come up, watch, and give feedback. The one-on-ones that we did this morning made the PowerPoint presentation that I spent all night on last night, redundant. 

Kathryn came into the class, in which she also came up, watched, and gave feedback.

I presented my recent blog in my one-on-one and I discussed about my observations that I had made on Natural Born Killers and how it was relative to my research subject. Kathryn and Bex's feedback was as I expected, which was that I needed make connections from these observations to my project and note how these observations will affect or change my project. Will it change the direction of my project? 

They also suggested that the notes in my blogging should stay close with the images and other notes that it is discussing about. I appreciated the feedback on how I could blog, but I prefer to blog in a chronological order.



I caught up with some research that I mentioned at the start of next term, but is excluded from the blog because I didn't record it, but I realise now its relative to my subject. It's about colour films that have had been in black and white, black and white films with colour added, and the response concerning both types of films.

Black and white Logan (2017)

When James Mangold was directing Logan, he captured black and white photograph for social media, only to find that the more production photos he took in black and white, the more people on social media wanted to see the film in black and white, rather than in colour. Mangold wanted this use of black and white to bridge between Old and New Hollywood films because using black and white in film suggests nostalgia. 

"I think black and white focuses you on character, in a way, it reduces the amount of eye candy, of color and distraction, but I think what it really is for most of us is a chance to connect the movie with movies of the past. It suddenly feels connected to Westerns and noir films that I wish people would watch more of." - James Mangold

The black and white version of Logan was intended for DVD and Blu-ray release. Theatrically, it was only released in the United States.

https://screenrant.com/logan-black-white-or-color/

Couch, A. (2017). 'Logan': Black and White Version Coming to Theaters in May. Retrieved from https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/logan-black-white-version-coming-theaters-may-998565

Flint, H. (2017). Is Logan Better in Black and White? Retrieved from https://screenrant.com/logan-black-white-or-color/



Mad Max: Fury Road - Black and Chrome Edition (2015)

This film was envisioned by director George Miller as being in black and white, but because of studio intervention, the film was released in colour. The film became a massive cinematic success, but Miller still believed that the black and white version was the best version of his film and as a result believed that use of black and white in film are reserved for independent and arthouse cinema, likely because they don't have studio intervention over their creative control.

Warner Bros initially refused to release A black and white version of the film in the DVD, claiming that it wasn't enough room on the DVD. As a result of the film's massive success, the black and white version was released through online streaming (iTunes) and its own Blu-ray.

George Miller found the use of black and white applied in a version of this film to be elemental and authentic.

Lyne, C. (2016). Mad Max: Fury Road getting black & white edition because it’s the ‘best version’ of the film. Retrieved from https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/mad-max-fury-road-getting-black-white-edition-because-it-s-the-best-version-of-the-film-a7309506.html

Hooton, C. (2016). Is Mad Max: Fury Road even better in black and white? Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/nov/12/mad-max-fury-road-black-white

During a break from class today, I went for a walk and came with an idea with implying the observations that I had made on Natural Born Killers towards my project, which is to be have colour used in the shots that one character dominates and use black and white in shots that dominates the other character. It's something that I could practice with in post-production and will visually support each character.

I would go ahead make progress with my script / story this morning, but my mind can't comprehend stuff like that at the moment and being on a computer in The Cell, in the middle of the class isn't a good environment for me to work well mentally, when it comes to something like a script / story for this paper.

This afternoon, we discussed about our roles for the exhibition at the end of next month and I volunteered to do advertising and social media. Jacqui, Oisin, and Bethany also volunteered to do the same. The other roles included pack away, installation, design, meet and greet, and food and catering.

We will be responsible for distributing and printing the artist statements, posters around the campuses and on social media. Each sub-role will be organised internally, like who will be printing what and posting online.

They were talking about the design team doing the templates for artist statements and then said sternly that we need it done by a particular date. I got confused. I tried to ask for clarification, but they thought I was trying to volunteer for another position. I eventually got an answer and that it will be my team whom will be printing the artist statements because the design team would have enough on their plate.