Erik Batkiewicz: Film 100 Blog

After spending a few weeks on organizing, planning, filming and then editing this short film my group and I made, I was actually happy with what we made. Everyone in the Group (myself, Ishaan, Francisco, Aidan) seemed to care what kind of product we were putting out. Everyone pulled their weight in this film and contributed enough. The origin of this idea started when Fransisco suggested that we do a crime film are we could not decide originally on the genre. From that point, I came up with the foundational idea about a framed murder that detectives needed to figure out. From that point much of the idea and stylistic choices were made somewhat on the fly. We wanted to make this as organically as possible because we all felt that is where the best movies come from.  On the day we did most of our filming, we shot right on campus in the Basement of Wentz Science Center. Found some great rooms to film our two main settings (Murder site, and Detective Room). Those shots went by really f...

Most people know Jake Gyllenhaal as "the guy who got swifted" and thats about it. Maybe some people know him from some movies. Gyllenhaal as been acting for most of his life and has no signs of slowing down. One of my favorites of his is NightCrawler, where he plays a OCD, antisocial person who films major accidents in the L.A area for news stations. He becomes obsessed for getting the perfect shot and has no regard for any other person. He even indirectly kills his partner after a dangerous night filming. I am just so drawn to his acting style in the film.  Another Film that comes to mind is The Zodiac and he plays a young, intelligent (and a bit strange)  jouralist and trying to solve the murders that "The zodiac" committed. Again, he is appealing to emotion acting style, where he uses his skills to draw us in. I tend to favorites actors who lean more on emotional rather then "technical skills". Gyllenhaal is underrated in my opinion with how well he act...

 Diving into chapter 7, which talked about sound helped my understanding of film. This chapter broke sound down into different parts that included Recording, Editing, Mixing and Music. First in Sound Recording, the author talked about the different people that are involved in Sound Production department. I guess I had no idea that it broke down into many parts such as,  Location sound recordist/mixer or sound technicians. Secondly in Sound Editing, I was already that editors of sound capture sounds using different sounds that they appear in the film, by doing single takes with random objects that sound similar or use a sound board that has prerecorded sounds. Third with Sound Mixing, in my opinion is the most important part of sound production. I liked the example brought up with Raging Bull, director Martin Scorsese decides to make one entire scene silent to capture a particular moment in Raging Bull. He certainly could have just kept the normal atmospheric sound in but it wa...

After reviewing chapter 5 about Cinematography and watching Get Out in class last week, I can use some of the terms to describe one of my favorite scenes from the film. This conventional thriller film pushed new waves on our interpretation of this genre. Diving into the iconic scene where Chris goes into the "sunken place" after Missy hypnotizes him. Popular director Jordan Peele and cinematographer Toby Oliver carefully crafted the stylistic choices with Chris and the setting. The main characteristic of lighting is Artificial lighting with fill. The lighting was established when Chris was sinking into the darkness and the light was from the viewpoint of what he was seeing beforehand.  It casted the dark void Chris was slipping into gradually losing light. The depth of field was chosen to be casted far away from our character to establish the "sunken place" idea with a high angle far shot on Chris. The slow movements the chracter was making created a vision of him b...