Nothing to do with horror, just some interesting short films

These videos are inspired by discussions on Radiolab, a radio programme. I think they are beautiful. And interesting. Check them out: what do you think?

Symmetry from Everynone on Vimeo.

WORDS from Everynone on Vimeo.

If you like these, check out Radiolab and also Everynone's other videos on Vimeo. Hope you are all having a great holidays!

How to make a horror movie...

Some of you came up with awesome ideas for films: Cowboy Zombie face-offs, submarine love stories, accounting love stories (?). But now that you have your concept, what's next? Here's a handy flow chart that makes the whole process simple! (it is an advertisement for a French TV channel).

Here's a bigger version so you can read the words.

There are also similar flow charts for action and animation.

Screaming or laughing? It might be in your genes...

So I know that some people (like me) are terrified by horror films and have nightmares. I had to turn my television towards the wall after watching The Ring. But other people just laugh. Well, research has shown that it is genetic! Check this story out: Horror film gene that makes some scream while others laugh

Do zombies make your skin crawl? Or do vampires make you helpless with the giggles?

Rebecca Black: talentless teen or radical visionary?

So by now, you will have seen Rebecca Black's embarrassingly bad, over produced music video of "Friday." I personally can't wait until the time comes when I can say "it's Friday!" without hearing an echo of "Fun fun fun fun!" (or gang fight, gang fight?) Here is Rebecca Black re-imagined as heard by a lip reader:



However, I thought it is worth risking getting that song stuck in your head again to point out this: http://www.theawl.com/2011/03/arms-so-freezy-rebecca-blacks-friday-as-radical-text <------- This is a hilarious close reading of the music video that suggests Rebecca is challenging our materialistic, superficial culture to the core. Try not to overthink your own close reading this way, but appreciate the funny!

Do you feel sorry for Rebecca Black? Will people always remember her? Or is she just going through her fifteen minutes of fame? Is all the negatively towards her deserved? How has the internet enabled this? Why have so so many people watched her?

Movies made into barcodes

Check out this awesome tumblr site: http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/

It has movies reduced to barcodes, so you can see the colour palette! You can also order prints. Pretty awesome.

Compare Inception:

With Kung Fu Panda:

But, Ms Kazimi, I can't get onto YouTube on the school computers!

I know, that's frustrating. But sometimes in life we need to just accept the things we cannot change and then find ways around them. (That's how that quote goes, right?) So here are some sites that are not blocked by the school that you can look at videos on (some of them don't seem to work on all the computers, and some only work on Firefox because it has more things installed than the school Explorer browser thing). If you can't find it on something else, you can find a youtube link at home, because I can look at youtube clips. OR you can bring the DVD to school and watch it over and over and over again with no waiting to download. Be pro-active: solve the problem.

Art of the Title (especially the ones that have vimeo clips, since Quicktime is not installed on all the school computers)
MetaCafe (um, some of these videos don't load on some computers and some are a bit dodgy, but hey, it's kind of like YouTube!)
Vimeo (not everything is on here, most of this is created by people instead of just copies, so you might have a hard time finding scenes from movies, but give it a shot)
Daily Motion (like YouTube)

And of course, ask the other students. They might just know other good websites or ways to get things working.

Everything is a Remix

Yes, everything has been done before. Think that baseline or that camera shot looks familiar? That's probably because it is. Everything is referencing something and every media product is part of a larger media story. This is relevant to what we are studying because we are looking at horror films, which are part of a genre and part of a tradition. Here is a link to an amazing project looking at how music and films are remixes and sometimes even knock-offs.

Everything is a Remix

Everything is a Remix Part 1 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.

Everything is a Remix Part 2 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.