It's a sunny day here in Birmingham and you are all still far flung
10 places over on Wordpress where the Translations live
https://michaelgcaseyfrombirminghamengland.wordpress.com/2020/05/15/all-in-one-place-translations-galore/
and a few more places over here on my Blogger
So thank you.
I'm glad the Translations seem to work, so thank Google
A relative in Australia was asking about Prepositions
And that's the quick way of spotting non English readers/writers
They get the the prepositions wrong
Meanwhile sat at the other desk my small daughter is doing
a very serious essay for French, if you are doing A level French
you may very well be doing the exact same thing
Bon Chance
As for me I'm enjoying my https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Guys_(TV_series)
But it is perhaps too violent for some
The genre is very oriental, shades of Dark Rain with Michael Douglas
but far more violent, but some of the quotations are worthy of note
If I put my film critic had on
Which reminds me of a piece from years ago
So I'll bring it back, while I relax, and talk to my Bolivian builder
Casey Film
School ©
By Michael
Casey
Now in our house we watch loads of films, 5 a week
and more maybe, and with Sky+ box you can record many more. I watched loads as
a child too, in black and white in them days. I think I was 25 before I bought
a colour tv for the family. Children
nowadays won’t watch anything not in colour.
I saw a documentary on tv with Keanu Reeves, the
programme was all about Film, as in the physical piece of material that goes
through the camera. It was comparing film to digital. There always is a “look”
to a film, I used to say you can tell if a film is rubbish just by the credits.
The old fashioned Technicolor as in Robin Hood, had
colours so rich it was as if a child had used wax crayons. Then there are
washed out colours for effect, to give a feel and a meaning to a film. Some
films are so dark you can hardly see a thing. Alien the first one seemed so
especially dark.
Most films I’ve seen on tv, we do have a good tv, I
spoilt myself 20 years ago and got a good tv, I was earning good money then and
I had interest free credit for a year. Toshiba is all I will say, just go to
John Lewis, get free 5 year guarantee and get a Toshiba. Our current Toshiba
replaced the old one a few years ago.
Now does the average person notice all the nuances
of the cinematography? I’ll say no, though I’m still on a learning curve
myself. I’ve watched a ton of films and as my girls grow up we talk about Film in the advert breaks, 3 mins
on satellite, but if we have recorded the film we zap through the ads.
Do you like
the way the actor does this or does that, could you see where the scary bit was
going to happen. Could you see how something was telegraphed? Telegraphed
things are probably the most we’ve talked about. I hope I don’t spoil the joy
of the thing with all this “Casey film school” material.
When you have seen Maltila, or Willy Winka or The
Mummy, all versions, then you too will become a little film buff. We really
hate it when ITV4 cuts the bit from the Mummy where they haggle for O’Connor’s
life, just before he joins them.
Getting back to the documentary, can modern digital
technology be trusted to give a good look? Technology gets better and better
and will be good enough for everybody in 10 to 15 years time. This is what I’m
guessing after listening to the experts. You also have to save some of the
machinery so that in the future you can actually read the film in whatever
technological format it has been shot.
Modern cameras, digital cameras are so light that
you can go anywhere with them, Danny Boyle was talking about one of his films
and he had 10 cameras for one section of one of his films. I didn’t know that
normally film cameras only have enough film in them for 10mins of acting
normally. Then they have to cut.
So imagine the actor has to get himself all worked
up and in the zone then the film camera has to be reloaded. How can the actor
get back to where he was emotionally after being stopped in mid flow. It’s like having a streaker in the middle of
an event, it would certainly put the vicar off his matins. So how can an actor
be expected to get back to where he was.
Now with digital the actor, male or female or both,
can keep on performing without fear, it’s not as if mom is knocking at the
bedroom door demanding entrance, while sonny is with Cher doing the same. So
digital allows uninterrupted performance.
The look and feel of the film is almost the same as
Film, because digital is improving so much. As an audience we may hate the look
however filmed because the film may look too trashy, or too slick, and so on.
The director and the cinematographer must have loads of discussions on how to
get it right, but when it IS right it really IS right.
But this now brings me on to the most important
thing of all, THE WRITING, speaking as a writer, awaiting news on my 1st
screenplay for a film, I think it’s the writing which is the most important
thing. If the story is weak or badly told then no amount of pretty looks will
save it.
It will look like a commercial, a bad commercial.
Film scripts as such are very bare, mine isn’t it gives plenty of direction.
I’m hoping its idiot proof and that the director and cinematographer can just
tell the actors “say the words” and if they follow their nose WE will have a
success.
Perhaps I’m a little naïve, a virgin on the bed of
cinema. However a writer is taking a chance that the film of his book &/or
script matches what was in his head and was put on paper. In a way the writer
writes the score and the director then has it in his head. And just like a
conductor the director is getting actors and cinematographers and everybody
else to play their instruments, their bodies if you like, so that the result is
Mozart.
When it works it really works, just as Amadeus
really worked, the look, the style, the music, the words, the everything. A
director has to be like a general, a prostitute or a pimp, just to squeeze out
the right performance.
It all starts with words on a page, then with
pictures and together you have FILM.
*****I wrote this 8 years ago
