Films & Kicks!

As you can see from my earlier post of my submission for the Foot Locker competition, film is not my only passion. Thus I felt obliged to write a blog post combining the two, I've decided to write a post about when films and sneakers cross each other's paths, starting with Spike Lee, as he is a man who shares both of these interests and much more productively and creatively than myself.



Spike's love for the athletic shoe has been prevalent in many of his films, often being written in to his scripts, from his Mars Blackmon character from She's Gotta Have It (1986) going to bed in his Air Jordan Is or Buggin' Out in Do The Right Thing (1989) starting a fight over someone standing on his Air Jordan IIIs. As Spike Lee was giving free advertising to Air Jordan brand in his films anyway, he was given the role officially with the introduction of the 'Mars and Mike' ad- campaign, using Spike Lee's Mars Blackmon character.






Spike Lee's involvement with the Air Jordan brand was furthered in 2006, with the release of the Air Jordan Spiz'ikes, which combined different parts of the previous Air Jordan 3, 4, 5, 6, 9 and 20. As well as featuring a picture of Mars Blackmon on the left heel and the logo of Spike Lee's production company 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks on the right heel.





Spike Lee, however, is not the only link between the two worlds, with films having an impact on the sneaker world and vice versa. A good example would be last week's much anticipated release of the Star Wars x Adidas Originals collection, a lot of which sold out on it's opening day. These are by no means the only film/trainer collaborative effort, the last couple of years having seen collaborations such as Ghostbusters x A Bathing Ape and Hellboy II x Adidas Originals. The limited quantities that collaborations, such as these, are released in appeals to the sneakerhead and film fanboy alike, for whom it is vital to have in order to further build their collections.




Companies such as Nike, have long seen the potential for advertising in movies. This is particularly obvious in 80's and early 90's movies, when you often see a close-up of a character pulling on or running in a Nike trainer, as this is the time when Nike were fighting against the likes of Adidas and Reebok to be the leading sneaker brand. This fight was fought both subtley and unsubtely. A more subtle example would be White Men Can't Jump (1992), which featured all the best and newest Nike trainers throughout the film; whilst they were heavily featured (as you can see in this article) they weren't focussed on, unlike in Back To The Future Part II (1989). With Back To The Future Part II they went as far as creating their own sneaker (not the Nike Air Pressure as some people believe) for the sequence when Marty McFly travels to the year 2015, which prompted a long-running online petition for the Nike McFly to be released and someone even created a fake Nike McFly trailer to accompany it!



Trainers have also been the subject of a documentary film called Just For Kicks (2005), exploring the history of people's obsession with them. Which if anyone is interested in gaining any further knowledge on sneakers is available to watch on YouTube:



Hope the off-topic from planning & making a film blog post was educational and incidentally my blog's name Ecstasy is named after the 1986 Adidas sneaker and not the drug!

Writer's Block

Over this festive season I have been writing my script, which is aptly named Writer's Block. The plot follows an artist who is having 'painter's block' and spends his days staring at a blank canvas seeking inspiration, but only finding distraction in his surrounding appartment. After a few days the artist starts taking to the streets at night hoping to find inspiration, until one day he comes across a group of graffiti writers (hence the title) and goes along with them as they paint the city. He ends up finding his inspiration and painting a huge spraypaint mural on a wall overlooking the city, before returning home elated that he can finally paint again. On sitting in front of his canvas again he finds himself back to square one, with nothing to paint.

There were a few films in my head as I was writing this, the main one was Martin Scorsese's Life Lessons (1989), along with aspects of The Driller Killer (1979) & Quality Of Life (2004).






As my script doesn't have any dialogue it has been a struggle to write without directing it, due to this I feel that it has ended up rather short and I am unsure as to whether or not it is a satisfactory length for a visually driven piece or still running just under. To remedy this I have toyed with the idea of adding a voice over narration, but as of yet have not commited to doing so. I intend to do some test writing and see how it works first, with hopefully a well-timed narration not taking too much away from the visual and audial aspects of the piece.

The Edit

The Last couple of weeks have been spent locked away in the editing suite (as well as editing in front of the TV from home) with Myles. As Myles was more experienced with using Final Cut, I played the part of Assistant Editor, offering suggestions and learning some of the more basic controls; enough so that I could just about string together a rough-round-the-edges edit. The end result was quite satisfactory, unfortunately there were a couple of things that we felt let it down.



The first of these was the music; after hours of searching royalty-free music sites, with a song in mind from Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) we settled on an 80's sounding track we found in the dying moments of the edit, when in hinesight we probably should have scrapped that idea and chosen one of the smoother 50's or 60's tracks that we came across. The other major issue was more out of our control, due to the weather on the weekend of our filming, this caused some inconsistency in the lighting of our film, which needed to be colour corrected. This was particularly the case in the alleyway sequence when Andy gets caught by Jay stealing a CCTV camera, as it was towards the end of the Saturday and the sun was just starting to set.

We had also intended to use the photos that Andy takes with the disposable camera in the film as an accompaniment to the credits, but ended up deciding against it. So I uploaded the photos to Flickr, so that they can still be enjoyed.

On the whole I am pleased to have the edit done and it has given me a better idea of how to prioritise our time better on the next film, such as looking for music earlier and perhaps knowing better when pick-ups will be needed on our shooting weekend. Anyway here is the final product.

Sneakers For Life!

This week Myles and I entered a short film/trailer competition on YouTube. It was an online competition across Europe by Foot Locker, with a grand prize of a lifetime supply of kicks (lifetime supply being 65 pairs over 5 years!). Already owning an ever growing ammount of trainers, the prize sounded very appealing and was an excuse to make another short film, my first to be entered into a competition. Here is the competition outline.



This was the first film that me and Myles had made in an advert/viral style, which I had been waiting for an excuse to do for a while. In the end it worked out well, despite some minor concerns, the main one being the slightly washed colour of the film, which was a result of a few factors, such as poor lighting conditions in the kitchen, which was made worse with a large window next to the fridge. This lighting was further made an issue, due to the difference in appearance on the Z1 monitor, the MacBook it was edited on and how it appears on YouTube, which made colour correction even more difficult. There were also things improved during the shoot, such as the ending, which was originally supposed to be an ambitious 360 pan of the kitchen (which probably wouldn't have worked as well in hine sight). Anyway here is the final product. Written by Gustav Newby, Directed by Gustav Newby & Myles McAuliffe Camera & Sound by Myles McAuliffe, Performed by Gustav Newby, Edited by Myles McAuliffe and original score by Tim Crosbie.






Peace!

That's A Wrap!

This weekend we finished the shooting of our short film, Man Without A Movie Camera. It went a lot better than expected, despite the worst imaginable weather conditions! The first day of shooting started off quite dry, despite reports that there was going to be heavy storms throughout the day. Due to the surprisingly nice weather we decided to start with our outdoor shots to ge them out of the way before it turned, which it did on setting up our shot and would continue to do every time we wanted to film outside. Our second day of shooting, however was perfect filming conditions with a clear blue sky and great lighting, unfortunately this wasn't great for continuity with regard to the previous day's weather, but gave us a chance to do some pick-ups at the end of the day for some of the stormier shots of the previous day's shoot.

In the end our planning paid off, with time left at the end of each day's schedule meaning that we didn't run out of time on either day and had time to do multiple takes of every shot, to give us some leeway if anything is to be wrong with the footage when it comes to editing it. Some looseness in the structure led to us achieving some of our most creative feats of the film, such as a few of our best shots and a strengthening of the script being forced through an extras absence on the second day. One of our shots, which we came up with on location ended up being by far our best shot of the shoot, which was a tracking shot filmed from the boot of one of the extra's cars, as you can see in the photo below with Myles holding the camera while Luke drives.

Next step is the editing, which will be started after another short film for an online competition is made this week, which should be completed for viewing in my next post, so keep your eyes peeled!

Pre-Production

The pre-production process is going well so far, with nearly everything sorted for next weekends shoot. As producer, my main concern this week has been regarding locations. Me and Myles went on a scouting mission during the week, taking photos of possibilities. The main location we were seeking out was a Car Park, and we managed to find two possible candidates. Unfortunately our decision wasn't made any easier on talking to security/owners about their availability over our shooting weekend, as they were both readily available for us!
When we make our final decision on which of the car parks to use, I am going to put them into my new toy, the Hitchcock iPhone application to start storyboarding. It's a nice application, which lets you storyboard films including all the extra details, such as where a tracking shot/zoom will start and finish and lets you add templates of cast and what directions they move. Anyway, here is a video showing what it does better:

Team D!

This week, we have been assigned to rewrite the Shoes script as a group. However, as we only came up with a rough idea as a concept at the end of last weeks session, we haven't yet been able to meet as a group due to many of us having had group presentations for other modules and other prior engagements away from Bath. Hopefully in this weeks seminar, we will be able to extend our script ideas when we are all together, so that we can each go away and start writing up preliminary ideas for the script and combine the best bits.
We each assigned ourselves roles within our groups in last weeks seminar, and I chose to take the joint role of Producer, with Alfred Letley, as I was interested in the choosing of locations. I also intend to help out with the direction and technical sides, as well as much of the script writing. At the moment our roles are still up for debate, with things susceptible to change in our next seminar, when hopefully everything will be decided.