Creative Brief Six- The Cinematic City
“To have real knowledge, one must understand the essence of things and not only their manifestations.”
- Daniel Barenboim, conductor
“The beautiful image today means nothing. It’s worth shit. In fact, it’s almost as if it has the opposite effect, because you’re just like everything else out there.”
- Wim Wenders, writer/director/producer
A good cinematographer will be able to make the most banal, everyday and mundane things beautiful. Through the techniques you have started to explore in previous tasks – lighting, composition, camera movement, focus etc. – they will be able to make their audience see things they had previously taken for granted in a different way. They will be able to give a sense of depth to something that most people would pass by without looking at or thinking about.
The task this week is a simple one: individually or in pairs, go out into the city with a cinematographer’s eye and take a range of shots of the city that make the mundane beautiful but also ‘say something’ about what it is you are shooting.
Your shots will be posted up onto Vimeo and will form part of a larger piece of work similar to Britain in a Day (see link below). Each shot should be at least ten seconds long. You may chose to work through one theme and shoot shots in a different style, as per the Guardian’s Your Pictures page (see link below) or you may choose to explore a number of different themes.
If you are stuck for themes, you might want to use some of these as prompts:
- Reflections
- Chance and accidents
- People
- Light and shade
- Movement
- Dirt
- Buying and selling
- Crowds (think about what the date is today!)
- Night and day
- Danger
Although you will only be expected to post three shots onto Vimeo, we would expect you to take many more than three and choose the best.
This week’s Obstructions:
- The shots must all be taken on one day (Monday 5th November)
- The shots must all be taken within the Ring Road in Coventry
Research Resources:
The Guardian Your Pictures:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/series/in-pictures?INTCMP=SRCH
Britain in a Day:
http://www.youtube.com/user/britaininaday/None
Uploading your work:
When you are finished upload it to Vimeo and add it to the Cine Collective Vimeo page by midnight on Monday 5th November. We will be feeding back on as many as possible during next week’s morning session.