Filming & DVD Sleeve....

So after the absolute madness that is renting equipment this week i had a minor set back which has put me back two days but i've got a camera ready and waiting for me tomorrow so i can film at the Broadway tomorrow lunch time. This means i've got the camera all weekend, so i'm gonna try and blitz out a lot of the magic footage. Anyway, after not being able to get my hands on a camera on wednesday it gave me a few days to knock these up. A few rough drafts for my DVD sleeve. I look like faaaar too moody on the front page but as Andy Love said this morning, it's not who you are it's what you're trying to say, and in the hit and miss world of magic you've got to pull this sort of nonsense. There are two ways to go when posing for magician photographs, wacky or moody. I am firmly in the moody camp and would rather sell my soul than look like this tit.........



So these are my moody sleeve drafts, with the working title "illusions of grandeur". If anyone even looks at this thing then let me know what you think.......

Click to make bigger......

Sleeve One :




Sleeve Two :



Sleeve Three :


Sleeve Four :

Today was a good day.....

Well, today was a good day. First i went to Broadway cinema about the possibility of filming in there one day this week. I spoke to the arts director who was more than happy to help and let me film and she also suggested screening in the Broadway when it's finished, which would be immense ! Thankyou very much Broadway......



Then i went down to the Playhouse and asked about using one of their stages, the woman on the stage door told me to put it in writing, so i went away and wrote a letter explaining my intentions, printed if off, went back down to find a new woman on the stage door reception who told me there would be no way because there are sets on the stage at all times and they're running until June sometime. Thankyou very much the first woman on reception !

That was a waste of an hour. You have no idea what it feels like to print out a letter, put it in an envelope, then ask someone to put it in the bin for you before it's even been opened ! It's great i can tell you that.....

But the trip wasn't completely wasted as i managed to lift my gloomy head to notice the Playhouse bar ! went in there and spoke to the manager who was, once again, more than happy to let me film. That's three locations confirmed with a possible fourth waiting in the wings.

I wish it was summer so i could just film people outside. But i don't think Derren Brown himself could get people to stand in this freezing cold and watch magic !!

Hopefully, i should have a real good understanding of what i'm working with by this time next week......

Apple Colour

This week we went out filming again but i have spent most of my time trying to tweek the footage..... It's really quite hard to get it looking really good. I've been in talks with the Broadway who might be letting me film in there some time next week. I really want to get all the filming done so i can step back and really look what i've got and start putting it together for the final cut. Might have an intense week next week and get a good percentage of it done.

Anyway, this is my progress so far on apple colour. The footage still looks a bit washed out and if the rest is done in HD this sort of footage could look really cheap. I don't think this is at an acceptable standard but this is the compressed version for youtube, the HD version does look a lot better. Also i've completely ballsed up the compression. If anyone knows how to use Apple Colour well any tips would be a god-send ! I'm still only in the very early stages of using it.....

Interview & Photoshop.....

I was looking at my itunes the other day and noticed this little mirrored album sleeve sort of thing so i spent an hour last night trying to copy it..... i duplicated the layer, flipped it horizontally, distored it slightly then dragged one of the corners down. Finally, i used the black to white gradient tool and dragged from the middle to the far corner..... I think it looks alright but i could probably improve it.



Now this on the other hand is more important. This is the interview for my client DVD. YES i am aware the microphone is in shot ! this was due to a) forgetting the pistol grip and b) a certain Oli N. no, thats' too obvious errr o. Nodwell, not noticing ! clown ! shouldn't be too hard to get rid off..... This is the last bit of the interview. Obviously not going to use this, just wanted to show people the location. The interview went quite well i thought. Tom asked me questions and then we done 15 minutes easily so i decided to do it again but this time i would know where i was going with my answers and cut out a lot of the nonsense i spoke the 1st time round. Although i didn't iron out all out it.....



i'm not so rude or arrogant in the real interview part.....

ps : i've just played about with some filters to try and get this footage looking better. I've added some soft edges to hide the microphone and i've also added the desaturate filter while playing around with the contrast and brightness...... Early doors yet but i think it looks so much better already....

Third Artifact......

With my previous artifacts I felt I have concentrated on the first part of my question and neglected the second part somewhat. How the relationship between reality and narrative effect the audience’s understanding of the art form, I feel I have gained some knowledge on the subject with my previous artifacts but I wanted to use this artifact to explore how important the value of narrativity is in the representation of reality.

I decided to write two short stories, both very different from one another. I would leave the stories by starting a sentence and leaving a …….. for the participator to complete. For example, the first story finishes with “straightens his tie and steps into…..” as the second story ends “David turns around and….” These prompt the participants to dive straight into the story instead of thinking of a whole new sentence to carry the narrative on with.


The first story is a dream-like narrative, which jumps from both first person story telling to third person story telling. Giving the participants free-reign to continue with the narrative in any way they saw fit. The first paragraph is from the third person, describing the location and sights whereas the second paragraph I jumped to the first person and described emotions, feels and a “reality check” as the character looks at the clock. Within the borderless world I was sure to put details of a house and a dead father, in order for there to be some connection with the character.
The second story is about a man in the toilets of a restaurant as he composes himself before asking his girlfriend to marry him. The narrative in very linear and is set in one location. I used a lot of inner-monologue and flash back-story telling. There is lots of speech in this narrative with conversations between the characters.

The results show that when offered a reality in which anything can take place, 80% of the participants chose to take the story back to reality by referencing details of the narrative from previous chapters and placing the character back in a familiar place (home/bed…etc…). With the second story 90% continued the narrative in the reality in which was set.

These results add even more fuel to the theory that the value of narrativity is important in the representation of reality. If we look back over the last three artifacts now, in a short summary :

1.) The participants arranged the film stills in the correct order and the results show they had a better understanding of the narrative the further from reality it was based. The realistic narratives scored poorly and the fantasy narratives scored the best.

So from these results i wanted to test if the understanding of narrative would continue in moving images. So i made the obvious progression to films......

2.) The films, Malcolm and Barabara, Downfall & eXistenZ, showed a steady increase in the understanding of the narrative as the representation of reality decreases. A fair understanding of the narrative was present throughout but eXistenZ scored the highest and the audience were keen on expanding on their answers and using much more imagination in the questionnaire.

So from these results i wanted to test the audience's imagination and see what representation of reality they would come up with themselves when given the brief story with hints of narrative.

3.) And as shown above the results were that 80% of the participants chose to pull the narrative back from a boarderless reality and 90% chose to continue with the linear narrative presented to them.

Location Sorted.....

After a week or two of trying to bag this i've just got off the phone with the Royal Centre who have agreed to let me film the interview section of the DVD in their dressing room. They're dressing rooms are nice and look like this......



minus the girls....

Messing around with Colour

This is my first attempt on apple colour. I'm not gonna call it 'color' on general principle. This is very early doors, all i did was play about with the shadows, mid-tones and highlights. It's not at an acceptable standard yet but hopefully if i get to grips with the FX panel i can change the contrast and grain and all sorts..... i need to learn it very quickly though.

Motion & Colour

This week i've been trying to get my head around motion and colour.....

i wish i lived in the matrix where i could just ask for the knowledge of something and have it five seconds later.......

pain in the arse !

Magic Trailer

This is the trailer for my magic DVD. I could only use the footage shot in the hall from Muse Bar on this because i haven't got Apple Colour on my machine yet. I've ordered some more RAM for it which should be arriving it any minute now and when that happens we are ready to roll ! The audio is through a clip mic on my lapel but in the real shoot we'll be using a boom mic as well, would have used a boom mic in this shoot but FORGOT the pole ! so..... pretty useless. The boom mic, not me.....

Didn't know what to write on the titles and only wanted to tease so here it is......

Once again, the brilliant Amon Tobin provides the soundtrack.....

Listen to the man have to explain that it's only magic and it's not spirits about 30 seconds in !! i liked that woman..... she says she was "terrified" of me.

Enjoy.....

Second Artifact Evaluation

For this artifact I screened three films, each varying in their portrayal of reality and asked the audience to complete a short questionnaire about the film. My reasoning behind running this artifact was to see how much of the narrative the audience understood when presented with different portrayals of what is “real”.

I researched into the design of questionnaires and found that open-ended questions were best used to gather a precise judgement of each individual response and closed questions were used in summarising the answers in order to produce an overall viewpoint of your audience. It was important that the audience didn't have any options they could use just to skip the question if they didn't know the answer. It was important to not give them any encouragement or clues and really test how much of the narrative they understood.

The first film was a documentary called Malcolm and Barbara – Love’s Farewell. The documentary followed a couple through their struggle with Alzheimer’s. My results show that the audience got confused with dates and the time scale of the filming. They were, however, very emotionally attached to the characters within the film and believed there was a clear boundary between director and characters. This is quite an interesting result as they felt a clear boundary between the real people and the production team. In the plot questions section they audience scored 7/15.

The next film was Downfall about the last days of Hitler. I chose this film because it is a piece of history that everyone familiar with on some basic level. I wanted to explore how the audience would respond to a very real piece of history in a film context. The film is in German so is subtitled which the audience all agreed made the narrative seem realistic. The score was 8/15 the plot questions. All of the audience agreed they felt like they were watching a piece of history.

The third film was eXistenZ. A film that toys with the ideas of reality throughout. In this questionnaire the audience explained their answers in great detail and were much more inclined to elaborate on their ideas. The audience scored 9/15 on the plot questions showing a steady rise in their understanding of the narrative the looser it is based in reality.

In conclusion, it seems that the audience is much more willing to accept a reality that is placed in front of them rather than try and follow a narrative which is set in a version of reality they are familiar with. With the Malcolm and Barbara documentary the audience felt emotional attachment to the characters. Does the representation of reality effect the audience's emotional attachment to the narrative ? Interestingly though, this was the film they remembered least about the narrative. The next film on the list of Downfall. The film was very 'real' in it's stark portrayal of the last days of Hitler, like the audience, i felt i was watching a real piece of history when viewing the film for the first time. And even more interestingly the narrative which was understood the most, is the one based in a completely implausible world of several layers of reality portrayed within. The audience were willing to expand on their answers in much more detail than the previous films and even spoke of the symbolism throughout the film.

Leading on the results obtained in my first artifact it seems that the audience is much more comfortable in a narrative based in a foreign version of reality. Is this audience escapism at it's very based ? does an audience interpret narrative in a different based on the representation of reality ? Only time will tell.......

First Shoot.....

Well, last night Tom, Oli and myself went to Muse Bar armed to the teeth with a HD camera, Sennheiser clip radio mic and Marantz flash audio recorder to........

a) test what the lights looked like when shot
b) test different exposures in the lights
c) test the audio
d) have some cheeky beers (a cocktail called an 'Old Fashioned' comes highly recommended)

the results were interesting and it is brilliant to look back at what works and what doesn't so when we do the real shoot everything can go to plan. Some plus points from the night were that an amazing amount of people really don't mind being recorded and are actually quite up for it. I also get to watch me performing magic for the first time, this is very interesting as i can see what is good and what need improving. Another GREAT plus from the evening is that after testing some exposures it looked like i'd have to turn the gain right the way up so that the film was quite grainy but you could see what was going on. It was either that or use a 1.6 iris and turn the gain off and compromise the lighting so that the audience might not see exactly what was going on. However ! today, with a little tweeking in Apple Colour i can add some light to the good quality footage making it look pretty good. I'll upload the footage tomorrow, i'm also in the process of making a trailer which should be up tomorrow or Monday. I used a clip mic for the audio and found out that it's really sensitive. I thought it would be the exact opposite so clipped it high on my collar, right in front of my throat. This made my voice sound so loud on the audio track i think i'm gonna have to move it down on my top and use a boom pole as well. I also need to pay attention to the camera when i'm doing it, on the footage i pay little or no attention to the camera what-so-ever, i don't wait for the camera i just race on which makes for zooms and camera movement that sort of looses the narrative of the trick. Next time i will be paying very close attention to it and as Tom suggested "treat it as a person watching the trick". Stupid that i didn't in the first place but that was the whole reason for the night. See what worked and improve what didn't. The night proved to be quite useful in terms of networking as well as i spoke to a few people who suggested locations who they thought would be really up for letting me film in there. I'm going to approach these places on Monday.

So, all in all, very good night. Enjoyable and valuable. Roll on the real shoot ! I must get my hair cut.......