Pi and A Serious Man: Two Films that Challenge the Quest for Meaning

Since I'm done with trying to make sketches for now, I'm going to use this blog to tell you guys about some of my favorite movies. Two of these movies, A Serious Man and Pi, both challenge the need for us to figure out what many consider to be the most important question in existence: What is the meaning of life? Now, by endorsing these films I'm not necessarily advocating their message. In fact, I love thinking about all of the why's in life. Still, these films are very enjoyable and thought provoking. And they don't really criticize the search for meaning, but rather the obsession of searching.

A Serious Man (directed by the always amazing Coen brothers) is an absolutely hilarious film. The story itself is like a modern-day retelling of the book of Job. The film follows Larry Gopnik, a middle-aged father of two, as his life quickly begins to fall apart. Larry reaches out to three rabbis to find out why he is suffering for seemingly no reason. Without spoiling the plot, I'll just say that the key message of the film comes from the third rabbi. When Larry's son Danny is speaking to the rabbi, the rabbi begins repeating the lyrics of the famous Jefferson Airplane song Somebody to Love. This scene is incredibly funny, but it contains an important message towards the end. The rabbi's answer to the question of "'When the truth is found to be lies and all the hope within you dies' then what?" is to "be a good boy". This is a message which I can support. No matter what the meaning of life turns out to be, it can't hurt to try to be a moral individual. The humor coupled with the message makes this one of my top 5 movies I've ever seen.

Pi is on another end of the spectrum. There is nothing funny about it and it will really get your mind working. There is a lot of uncertainty about reality found in Pi. If you like films that aren't as linearly structured as your typical movie, then you would probably really enjoy Pi. The soundtrack from the film is also really enjoyable. The music really goes with the scenes, and it all comes together to form a very stylistic whole. While A Serious Man focuses a lot on finding answers through religion, Pi is more concerned with finding answers through mathematics (There is religion involved, but it plays a lesser role than in A Serious Man). The end result is largely the same as A Serious Man. Again, without giving too much away, the message of the film is to live life rather than spend it lost in the search for meaning. Pi differs slightly in that it exalts the importance of finding pleasure in life rather than being a moral individual, but the basic message is still the same.

What I've Learned

So I haven't posted in a long while. This is partly because of my overheating issue with my laptop, and partly because of schedule conflicts. But since it is the end of the semester and I still don't have enough posts on my blog, I will be doing a few more posts. These posts will be keeping with the theme of the blog (movies), but will be about movies I've seen rather than movies I'm trying to make.

In regards to making videos, I've learned just how hard it is to get a group of people together in order to film a skit. I have plenty of rough drafts of sketches, but none of them are really up to the quality I was shooting for. Part of that is my fault. I still haven't found a good way to film indoor scenes. I just never can seem to get the lighting right. Another part of that is due to the fact the majority of my friends just can't act. When they are on camera they just freeze up. Anyway, I'm not letting that get me down. It has still been a lot of fun filming what we did do, and that's all that matters to me. Maybe some day this summer we'll actually get something that I could post online, but for now I'll just be content with the fact that we had fun trying.

Birds, Birds, and More Birds

I have recently discovered that birds are fun to film. I have no idea why. Maybe it's because, being a beginner at all of this, filming them is still a challenge for me, or maybe it has something to do with how easy it is to find birds. Like I said, I have no idea why I like filming them, I just do. Anyway, they serve as a great marker for my improvement in filming. As you may recall from one of my previous posts, I took a video of a robin that was very shaky and somewhat out of focus. It was very difficult for me to film it with a tripod, so I ended up just going without it. Over my spring break, I decided that I would try to film some birds using my tripod. At first, it was difficult. Whenever I tried to get to close to the birds, they would simply fly away. It didn't help that the birds would only remain in the same location for a very brief period of time. Usually by the time I had my camera actually mounted to the tripod, the birds would have already moved on to another branch, this time far out of my camera's reach. To fix this problem, I ended up leaving my camera connected to my tripod and keeping them in reach of my back porch. As a result, I was able to capture several different kinds of birds without them ever knowing I was there. They still would move fairly often, but I managed to get three decent shots of the birds standing still:

The first bird I was able to capture was a blue jay. Although my view of him was obstructed by branches, I was still able to maintain a decent level of focus on him.

I'm pretty sure the birds in this next video are a type of pigeon. Once again, a small branch was in my way. The branch was a lot less of a problem compared to the ones in the previous video, but it still made a difference. I was just happy to have been able to film two birds sitting next to each other. I've never been able to film that before.

This final video is of a cardinal sitting on a tree branch. Fortunately, no other branches were in the way this time. The cardinal spends most of the video sitting with his back to the camera. Towards the end, however, he turns to face the camera and chirps. At the end, the cardinal flies away.

I'm going to be filming more wildlife in the following weeks, so stay tuned for more videos....

Post-Break Update

For those of you reading, you may have noticed that I haven't posted anything since the beginning of my spring break. Unfortunately, my laptop just hasn't been able to handle the stress of editing videos. It has been overheating to the point where it just shuts off entirely whenever I do pretty much anything graphically intensive on it. So, I've just had to let all my videos sit on my video camera. 

Pictured Above: What happens when I try to get anything done

I did a bunch of research and found out that my type of computer is notorious for its overheating issues. Both the GPU and CPU in my laptop are coated with a special kind of thermal paste. This paste prevents both parts from becoming too hot. Here's the problem: Asus, the company who made my laptop, is known for their shoddy pasting jobs. The thermal paste that they used was simply not applied correctly. Thus, I'm left with a half-functioning laptop. Fortunately, the problem can be fixed relatively cheaply, so I lucked out there. In the meantime, I have temporarily fixed the issue by updating my video drivers and spraying out the fans with condensed air. I am in the process of uploading all my videos right now, so I should have multiple posts up by sometime tomorrow.

Spring Break

Spring Break is almost here, which means I will be hard at work filming several videos. First of all, I'm going to go up on Monte Sano to try to film the goats again. I was disappointed in the fact that I wasn't able to get closer to them, but hopefully this time will be different. Secondly, I have at least one sketch idea that I want to get filmed. My friend Michael, who will play the lead in this sketch, will finally be available for filming. If any of you have been keeping up with my previous posts, this will be the sketch involving the suit that Michael had left at his dorm. Finally, I will be teaming up with my friend Daniel to shoot a music video for a band. One of my favorite bands, The Mars Volta, is having a video contest for a song off their upcoming album, Nocturniquet. The winner gets a gift card to Best Buy, merchandise from the band, and most importantly, recognition from the band. I have a good feeling about the idea we have for the video, I'm just worried that we won't be able to find a suitable location in time. I'm linking the song down below for anyone who wants to check it out.

Goats!

This past weekend I went hiking up on Monte Sano, like I had mentioned in my previous post. The trip was an overall success. I ended up finding the goats that I had wanted to film, and even managed to get a few good shots of them. But more on that later.

Before setting out for the mountain, I took a few practice shots in my backyard to try to get used to the outdoor lightning on my camera. I found that late afternoon/early morning were the two best times for shooting outdoors, since the glares caused by the sun are a lot less harsh around those times.

The first video was an easy one. Just a clip of my dog laying down in the sun. Her complacency made it extremely easy to get a nice, stable shot of her:

The second series of clips were a little more difficult to film. I chose to film some birds in my backyard. All of these videos were zoomed in almost to max, because I could not get too close to the birds without them flying away. As a result, I shake the video camera a little too much than I would have liked. Still, I believe that I was still able to get some decent shots:

Finally, at around 3:00 p.m., my friend Cole and I headed up to the mountain in search of goats. After only about 30 minutes of hiking, we found them. This early success led me to believe that the hard part was over, and that the rest was going to be incredibly easy. I was very wrong. The goats, likely seeing us as predators, made sure to place a great distance between themselves and us at all times. Every time we took a few step forward, no matter how carefully placed those steps were, they quickly bounded off into the distance. Realizing that we had to change tactics, Cole and I separated so that we could corner them. Fortunately for us, it worked. Cole was able to scare the goats right to me. Unfortunately for us, I had forgotten to start recording when they bolted towards me. At this point, the goats decided to change tactics too. They hid directly underneath the rock face we were on top of. Seeing this opportunity present itself, I decided to climb down the mountain while Cole stayed up above the goats. After I made my way down to the goats, I found a decent hiding spot and began filming. In my mind, I was going to stealthily make my way towards the goats, so that I didn't have to rely solely on an extended zoom. Unbeknownst to me, however, Cole had grown impatient of waiting. He had also climbed down the rock face. Cole was able to bridge the distance between the goats and himself to a mere 10 feet, something that I was in the process of trying to do. If he had been the one with the camera, our footage would have been much more clearer than it is now. So what did Cole do with this extraordinary opportunity? He scared them. In an attempt to chase the goats towards me, Cole let out a series of yells, which caused the goats to go fleeing not towards me, but in a parallel line towards safety. It was then that I decided that the goats had had enough excitement for the day. We packed our things and headed home.

Although we didn't exactly get the shots that we wanted, we ultimately succeeded in getting what we came for. I was able to improve my grasp on outdoor lighting and even got a few semi-decent shots of three goats in the process. Plus, we now know what does and doesn't work when trying to film wildlife. Hopefully, this little excursion has made us much more prepared for round two.

Baby Steps

Since I have decided to wait until Spring break for most of my filming, I'm temporarily shifting my focus to filming techniques rather than actual material for sketches. This weekend, I will be hiking up on Monte Sano Mountain in Huntsville, AL. I will be bringing my camera along in hopes that I'll be able to shoot some visually appealing shots. I have hiked on this particular many times before, so I have some particular shots in mind that I want to capture.

A stream up on Monte Sano

For starters, I would like to be able to film some deer while I'm up there. There is a trail I take that usually has a good amount of them. Hopefully, the weather will be nice enough for them to come out. Secondly, even though I am deathly afraid of them, it would be cool to film some snakes. I have (fortunately) rarely ever seen a snake up on Monte Sano, so I doubt I'm going to be able to capture one on film. Finally, I 'd like to be able to film the goats that live on the mountain. Fortunately, I know a place a little ways off a main trail where the goats will gather from time to time. I've tried to get several videos/pictures of them before, but every time I have the opportunity I have only had my iPhone with me.

Extremely grainy photo of goats

It's kind of hard to tell that there are goats in the above picture. The first one's head and neck in poking out from behind the tree (it has a black head and a white body). The other goat is directly above it in the picture, standing on a rock face (it is mostly brown, with a dash of white).

Deadlines/Outdoor Lighting

Okay, so I haven't been able to produce as many videos as I had hoped to by this time. In fact, I haven't actually completed a single one. However, I'm not going to let that get me down. As I have stated in previous posts, availability has become a major challenge for me. It's just very difficult for a group of students who, for the most part, go to different colleges to find time to meet up and shoot videos. Right now I am hoping to release my first video by spring break. There is a good chance that we will have a video out before then, but if not then it will definitely be up during the break.

In the meantime, I have been learning a lot about certain camera techniques that will allow for better quality videos. These past two weeks, I have been focusing on finding ways to manipulate lighting. I can tell a noticeable difference in the videos I shoot indoors and outdoors at night. However, I'm still working on outdoor lighting. My particular camera model just doesn't perform how I would like it to outdoors. To combat this problem, I am testing out various factors which influence lighting, such as built-in camera settings, editing techniques, and even the time of day. This week or the next, I plan on uploading some before and after shots to track my progress.

Slow on the Draw

Another weekend has passed without me finishing a sketch. It seems that every time I think of a relatively decent, possible sketch idea, something just gets in the way. This most recent obstruction can be attributed almost solely to a string of maladies, which a vast majority of my friends have seemed to simultaneously succumb to. Unfortunately, those left untouched by illness were only safe because they spend far too much time working to get sick (excluding my friend Ben, who claims that he can never get sick because "he has no weaknesses").  So, with a huge portion of my cast depleted, what more was there to do than to sit around and come up with new ideas?

Since I'm not ready to show any video clips yet, I thought that I might use this week's post to explain how we write our sketches. My friend Ben and I are the ones who come up with most of our ideas, so the process usually begins like so:

1. One of us thinks of a joke or funny situation that he has heard/experienced/came up with in the past.
2. The idea is then presented to the other person, usually with a basic sketch structure already in mind.
3. If the idea is funny, we bounce the idea back and force. If one were to witness this event, they would probably describe it as something akin to watching two monkeys try to forcefully shove several mismatched puzzle pieces together until they fit.
4. Typically, Ben is the one escalating the level of ridiculousness involved in the sketch, while I am the one pulling it back towards reality. 
5. When we are happy enough with the resulting product, we explain our idea to whoever is nearest to us at the time. If that person happens to be involved with the skit, he or she will likely add their own unique spin to their role in the sketch.
6. We then wait an indeterminable amount of time. The closer we get to filming, the more the sketch starts to change. When we get closer to the actual filming, limitations arise. These limitations actively morph everything from the plot of the sketch to the people involved.
7. Before the sketch is ready to be filmed, we do a whole bunch of test runs. These test runs are all filmed, so that we can review the sketch and make changes where necessary. (This is slightly different from how we did it when we were younger. Back then, we would almost never do a test run of the sketch)

Andrew: Doing a practice run of a character he came up with

Michael: Practicing the voice of character through a monologue

After all of that is done, we are finally able to begin filming the actual sketch. After that comes the editing process, but I will go more into that when I actually have a finished video ready.

Complications

It's funny how our limitations change with age. When my friends and I were making videos in middle school, our only two limitations seemed to be our imaginations and our wallets. If we could think up a relatively cheap and funny sketch, we would spend an entire day doing nothing but filming. Since none of us had a job, actor availability was never a problem back then. Not that we considered ourselves actors in any way. In fact, none of us had anything close to an acting talent, but we always managed to find ways to deal with that. We would often rely on editing techniques to make up for our poor acting abilities. Although these techniques allowed us to work around our limitations, it also severely limited the types of sketches we could make.

Nowadays, our limitations are almost completely reversed. Almost every single one of my friends has a job, which has greatly affected the video making process. We now have a larger spending limit for our sketches, but it comes at a price. It has become increasingly difficult to plan a time where everyone is available for filming (not to mention the fact that a majority of these friends go to different colleges than me). 

This past weekend I hurried over to Huntsville when I learned that my friend, Michael, would be coming in to town. He only lives about an hour and a half away from Huntsville, but he rarely gets to visit due to homework and duties with his frat. Michael is one of the two best actors we have at our disposal. So when he told me that he wanted to shoot a sketch over the weekend, I didn't hesitate to return to Huntsville. Unfortunately, multiple complications arose before we could finish a full sketch. Right off the bat, I learned that the sketch I had written for him had been done before. When I was telling my idea to another friend, he informed me that a major part of my sketch was too similar to a scene from a movie that he had seen. Slightly discouraged, I began scrambling to quickly write another sketch. 

By Saturday we had a multitude of ideas, but none were simple enough to be filmed in a day. We either lacked the time or the props necessary to finish an entire sketch (by the way, if anyone knows where to find a realistic looking dove, let me know). Finally, an idea came flying out of nowhere. It was short, simple, and required a bare minimum amount of props and people. Unfortunately, another complication soon cut the reality of that sketch into pieces. Michael's character would be wearing a suit for the sketch. The only problem was his suit was all the way over at his dorm room, one and a half hours away. At this point, I realized that there was just no way we could finish a coherent sketch before the weekend was over.

Defeated at last, we resigned ourselves to practice that weekend. No matter how frantically we tried to stitch a good skit together, it just kept falling apart in our hands. It wasn't all for nothing, though. We got a lot of good practice shots in, which means that when we finally do shoot the final version, we will be much more prepared than just starting from scratch.

Starting From Scratch

This week I'm going to give you guys a rundown of all the film making tools I have at my disposal. I was hoping to have a video posted by now, but time constraints and schedule conflicts have prevented me from doing so. My friends and I have a lot of great sketches in the works and I'm excited to finally be able to film them. Until then, I'll just have to bore you with the technical details.

For starters, this is the camera that I'll be using to film a majority of the videos that will be posted here:

The camera is a Sony HDR-XR160 Handycam. It's nothing special, but it's more than capable for what I intend to use it for. I chose this model based on several factors: It has a 30x optical zoom, which means that I can zoom in fairly close without having to resort to switching to digital zoom (which severely lessens the quality of the video); it has a 160 gigabyte hard drive built into it, so I don't have to ever worry about constantly changing out SD cards while I'm filming; it performs great in low-lighting situations, so filming at night will be less of an issue; it's able to film in 1080p, which means that the image quality shouldn't ever be grainy (which is something my old videos always were); and finally, it's relatively cheap. While I would absolutely love to have a $2000 camera, it just isn't in my price range. Even though I've been saving up for this for several months, there is just no way I could have justified spending over $1000 on a video camera.

Most of my videos will hopefully be edited using Sony Vegas Pro 11. I say hopefully because I don't actually own the program. As of right now, I'm only using the trial version of the software. Now, you might be wondering why I don't just use an editing program I have access to, such as windows move maker, to film my video. My reason for this is that Sony Vegas is simply amazing. When used properly, it can make an amateur video look like an official Hollywood production (or at the very least a second-rate, Bollywood production). Unfortunately, this amazing tool comes at a steep price. For me to actually own Sony Vegas, I would need to shell out $600, which is $100 more than I paid for my actual video camera. So right now I'm just going to savor the trial while I can, and at the same time I'll be keeping my eyes open for any freeware programs that might serve as an adequate replacement.

That's pretty much it as far as filming tools go. The only other things I can think of are a stage light that I'll be  using for low-lit scenes, a few extra camera batteries for filming over long periods of time, and the tripod that   I'll be putting my camera on. I should have a video posted by next Sunday at the latest. If I can't get a full sketch posted up here, I'll at least post some of the technical demos I've been doing to get used to filming.

An Introduction, A Disclaimer

First of all, I would like to say that my name is Holden and I love to make movies. Second of all, I would like to admit to you all that I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. Let me clarify. When I was about 13 years old, my parents bought both me and my sister a video camera for Christmas. It was an unexpected gift for me, and while I was certainly excited about it, I wasn't quite sure what to do with it. My first few days spent with my new camera were spent taping anything and everything I could. Even the most mundane moments managed to find their way into my camera. There was no order, no set patterns, no structure, and yet there was still something beautiful about the whole experience. I was seeing the world in another light for the first time in years.

As the weeks went by, the moments that my camera captured became more and more predetermined. The novelty of a second sight had worn off by then, causing me to find other ways to use my camera. That's when I decided to start filming with a purpose. Being kids in middle school, my friends and I possessed the amazing ability of having a middle school sense of humor. Many videos were spawned from this shared talent, including several that we ended up submitting as class projects. Even though very few people outside of our school actually watched our videos, we still had the time of our lives making them.

And now, close to 5 years later, we've decided to begin again. In this blog, I will be documenting my attempts at learning how to film. Each week (hopefully) I will be posting a new video and an explanation of how I filmed it and why. Most of the videos I post will be tracking my (hopeful) improvement at filming and editing, but every so often I will be posting comedy skits with my (hopefully) improved sense of humor.