Journalistic Integrity in Roman Holiday

Roman Holiday, for those who have yet to see this classic film by director William Wyler, is about young bored Princess Anne (Audrey Hepburn). She escapes her glad-handing responsibilities while in Rome and stumbles, quite literally, in the hands of reporter Joe Bradley(Gregory Peck). Bradley recognizes the princess, but leads Anne to believe otherwise. He later brings in photographer Irving Radovich (Eddie Albert) to try to get an in depth story of the princess, but things don't go to plan when feelings start to get involved.

The black and white 1953 film was well received earning 3 Oscars, one of which earned Hepburn her Oscar win for actress in a leading role. This was her big breakout major role in a film and was a clear winner that year for the Oscar, so much so that Peck convinced producers to give her top billing. The other two wins was for writer Dalton Trumbo (originally credited to friend Ian McLellan Hunter) and for famed costume designer Edith Head (if you haven't heard of her you should definitely look her up).

The film by today's standards is pretty old hat in that it uses the convention of sacrificing a story to protect the source or subject of the story, but its charm lies in the comedy that ensued between Peck and Albert stumbling over each other. This was usually done so Anne wouldn't get wise. There was a lot of playfulness between the three, probably signified in the brilliant one take wonder in the scene with the mouth of a stone carving. 

It was beautifully filmed on location in Rome, which earned it a nomination for cinematography for a black and white film (but lost out to From Here To Eternity, which swept the Oscars that year, as was the case with many of the films other nominations).  The cinematographers (Franz Planer fell ill during filming, which led to Henri Alekan taking over) brilliantly captured the aura and romance of the city, with its historic buildings and bustling streets, most notably presented in the iconic shots of Hepburn and Peck riding through the city on a Vespa.  In fact, it was feared that the picturesque backdrop of Rome would upstage the characters, which is why it was not shot in color (though I would gamble, had it been, it would have narrowly won against Shane).  

The project was originally slated to be directed by Frank Capra and later George Stevens, but both passed on the film. When Wyler was presented the film, he had been stuck in a dramatic rut spanning back to his 1929 comedy The Love Trap. He was only too happy to take up the film. This was also true for Peck who had not yet done comedy on film. To me, the role he played had a lot of similarites to a character Cary Grant would play, but Peck filled the comedy shoes well. (Frank Capra wanted to cast Grant and Elizabeth Taylor when he first optioned the film)

As before, I mentioned Dalton Trumbo credited his writing to his friend Ian McLellan Hunter, which was due to his blacklisting as one of the Hollywood Ten. It was only later in 1993 that he won the award, posthumously presented to his wife Cleo. It's speculated that Trumbo's penning of the screenplay was one of the major reasons that Capra backed out of the project. Wyler wasn't afraid to work with Trumbo's material, however he did fear shooting in Europe and being prosecuted by the infamous House of Un-American Activities Committee. 

I saw the film for the first time before writing about it here, and I was well familiar with the storyline. The film was really wonderful and gave me that nice warm fuzzy feeling that comes from watching a classic Hollywood picture. For the countless other films to come later, a lot of credit is due to Roman Holiday in that it was arguably the first to set up this journalistic convention. So, if you have not seen the film, I highly recommend this classic and hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

- Kevin Carr - AKA Perforated Carr

It's Been A While

Hopefully this won't be my last blog. Sorry it's taken me so long to get on here again. I just want to blog to discuss what I am trying to do with my film.

Working Title: Avatar?<---I wonder what the actual definition is...

Anyway, i think I first got the idea for my film when I was actually flying. I get an unusual feeling when I fly, not of fear or anything, just weird thoughts. Like, if this plane crashes, who I would try to contact on the way down to my death, to have that last contact with them to let them know, that they meant something to me. Would I enjoy this kind of death? I don't know.

So, I got to think about just flying in general. I considered whether other people think about dying when they fly, why people enjoy flying, and eventually got to the point where I believe that humans have always been obsessed about flight. So, that's what I wanted to study. Human's obsession with flight.

My next challenge was how to show this through found footage. Ideally I would've wanted more footage of people actually trying to fly, but failing, like those pictures of strange contraptions people would make to give them flight. A man running around with feathers would've been great. But, with found footage, you have to work with what you got.

When I found this film made about a handicapped person constructed in a way that you believed he wanted the same mobility as everyone else, I decided that this was a great starting point. So I cut up shots from this film and used continuity editing to set up he was looking at the world around him, and seeing people moving about and flying about him.

I really like where the film is going. I like the idea of the sound fading in and out. It almost gives the film some humor of the world this man is living in. I have to find more footage of sound now though in order for the sound to be constant throughout and not just at the beginning.

I still don't really know about the first shot. I really like it, but I can see how it needs to be integrated more throughout in order for it to work. I have plenty of footage of it, so it shouldn't be a problem. It really speaks to me though, but I don't know that it will speak the same thing to everyone else. Hopefully, by integrating it more, it's meaning will become more apparent. I wonder if it could just be fixed with a more descriptive title. But somehow, I don't think something like "Watch my shoes while I fly" would fit, and would take away people's individual perspective of what those shoes mean.

These are my unorganized thoughts.

Avatar (noun)

- a manifestation of deity or released soul in bodily form on earth

- incarnation/embodiment/ or manifestation of a person or idea

Does it work? Other title suggestions?

Thanks.

Hmmm...

I don't really have a lot to say about the three shot edit, at least the one I did. Maybe I would if I had spent more time on it. I looked at Rice's though, which was a very nice edit. You could make a whole feature film based on that 3 shot edit. Making continuity of time and space out of basically nothing. That and what I would call the relational edit. The edit that (...insert Russian guy here), just kidding, it's Kuleshov, don't think I spelled that right. This "relational edit" is something we make mental associations with. Like those lovely beakers we saw. It has no real relationship to the white people coming onto the land of the native peoples, but when we see them together we make the association of, "something here is disturbed," "some sort of friction that will eventually catch fire and spread." These ideas interest me a lot, and is really what found footage film is all about. However, I think we'll find out that this is just the base level. For instance, the film "Decasia" as a phenomenal film about the natural decay of film using an array of rotted, damaged, found footage. It's a really beautiful film, that we maybe should check out as a class. But, perhaps not. I think that the medium of this film is really the message, not so much the images there, but the images also speak well to eachother, using revolving or spinning as a motif throughout. I'm sure there's a good article that covers the film better than I can though. I think It's something we can think of if we plan to do a found footage film, which I may well be doing. I haven't been able to browse the recycled images locker, but I'm sure there's some films that are decayed, faded, etc. that you could apply some sort of message to the visual ascetic as well as the image content in the film. Anyway, that's all I have to say about that.

Home is where the heart lives...

I think home movies are really interesting to study. It's sort of like an unexplained watered down documentary. Home movies have had a pretty big impact on my life now that I think about it. The first camera I got my hands on was my family's Panasonic VHS Tape Recorder, where I did some of my first video making. I think I or my parents still have all that footage around, and I have gone back and watched some of it. One instance I love, is a tape in Florida for Christmas when I was around 6 or 7 maybe, my mom was filming...i think...and after awhile of pointing the camera at me and my dad and brother, the camera is set down, but the camera is still running. For those minutes, you can hear life as it was in that moment, yet watching the balcony of the condo, without any sort of playing towards the camera. I've always had the desire to sort of dig into my past as well as my family and make some sort of narrative of those home movies, or to see if there is a hidden story like in The Future is Behind You. In doing so I may manipulate how I see my own past, which could be good or bad, but probably have an indifferent outcome. I think the experience could be very personal, educational, and interesting. Anyway, that's my thoughts on that matter. I probably won't do my three shot edit until Monday or Tuesday, but I will put some effort into it in any case.

Car Wash

So last class we were given a piece of film to alter however we saw fit. Well my strip like others had clips of cars. So I thought to myself 'what do we do with cars?' and answered 'we wash them.' So I decided to give the cars trapped in the film that was fading and deteriorating slowly a nice car wash. And that is what I did. I placed my filmstrip in my dishwasher with the dishes and washed the film. Afterwords I took out the strip and decided to dry the wet emulsion in the clothes dryer by itself. The film looks pretty interesting now, so I'm looking forward to what it is going to look like.

Montage General Thoughts

Montage is a really important, interesting, and unique aspect of filmmaking. The juxtaposition of images can really speak a lot to what you are trying to say with your film, whether it's simple (insert russian name here) things about representing hunger, or anger, or something more complex like the fetishization of violence or sex. Bruce Conner showed how montage could really enhance your experience of a certain time and space, by repeating the moment several times back to back in Report. I got sucked into the rhythm of images of the car passing in the motorcade, and Jackie Kennedy going to open the door, but finding it locked. Though I had not experienced the moments leading up to the assassination first hand, I felt the images were somehow more present and haunting, as if I was seeing them repeated over and over on the TV. The power of montage was also very apparent in Connor's A Movie. Where he was able to create little massages and big themes in his film by only juxtaposing different and unrelated images.

I am very excited to see what gems I can find in the recycled images locker, and really excited to be working on the Steinbeck, sp?, again. I really want to play with altering the image in subtle as well as drastic ways as well. That's all for me.

General Thoughts...relating to visual music

Often times film has been thought of a medium built much like music. A time based medium, that has rhythm or pulses, but instead of hearing we see the rhythm and "melodies." Editing is one of the ways where rhythm can be created. However, for our class, we can create rhythm simply by coloring or scratching the emulsion. With our experiments, I think this is something I want to strive for in my films. To create rhythm, a melody developed by a certain style, using a combination of instruments to make that melody really sing.

I think that when you want to do this, you cannot think of music, but you have to think of film. How many frames do I want to carry on this motion, before i transition into the next segment of the film. Should I use paint or dye? How can I achieve a certain kind of texture? By asking questions like these you create your film, and by that way you create a musical feeling. Visual music should come through naturally when making a film, because film is inherently musical. By experimenting in this class we can all learn what makes a film more musically pleasing for the eye.