Contextual research: Directors

TAIKA WAITITI

Taika Waititi is probably my all time favorite director. I fell inlove with his work after watching his mockumentary about vampires in New Zeland called "What We Do In the Shadows" and I'm very excited about the sequel " We're Wolves" (we're wolves - werewolves - that's genius). He's also well known for mastering happy sad cinema. He believes that when the atmosphere is tense and uncomfortable that is when we feel the need to laugh most, his goal is to find the lighter form of tragic. Great examples of this kind of tragic comedy are his films "Boy" and "Hunt for the Wilderpeople". Recently he's known for directing Marvel's "Thor: Ragnarok" which was received pretty well by most (some are unsatisfied because it's more of a comedy than an action film, but that's one of the main reasons why I, personally, liked the film so much). His directig style includes, as he himself has said, very mundane comedy and usually he tweaks the given original script a little bit (shortens the scene: ends it when he starts getting bored by the scene, adds some jokes or comedic situations). He's also known to act in his own films, it may not be the main character, but he writes himself a part. He said, he does it because he's an egomaniac (From experience in this project - acting in something you're directing is way harder than he makes it look).

KEVIN BRAY

I chose Kevin Bray because he has directed the pilot episode of "Suits" and that is the episode I chose to redirect for this project. Up to this day he has directed 12 episodes of the show, although he stoped directing it in 2016. From looking at the list of other shows he has directed I noticed that there were a lot of detective type of shows ("Suits", "White Collar", "How to get Away with Murder", "Chuck", "Criminal Minds", "CSI:NY" ) a lot of which I've seen and although I have seen numerus episodes that he has directed I can't really tell what is his unique way of directing. Could be the fact that he worked on shows that had pretty much set style of directing (establishing shots, wide shots, shot reverse shot and CU shots). Personally I think that directors can put more of themselves into film and make it their own for example in the films that he has directed ( "All About the Benjamins", " Walking Tall", " Linewatch") has a lot of POC actors and deal with simmilar issues - a cop/detective/sheriff fights against a mob that deals drugs. These films has some comedic aspects but are mostly action films.

Comments

Influences DOPs and the genre

BEN DAVIS DOP in numerous superhero films, such as Kick-ass, Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Doctor Strange, and Captain Marvel. The films I want to focus more on is Kick-ass and Captain Marvel because the audience gets to see how the main characters become superheroes and that is more relevant to our project "The 7 Billionth Hero". In "Kick-ass" all of the superheroes are just people who don't have any special powers. The Protagonist decides to become a superhero and fight crime and starts a new superhero trend. There's a lot of interesting POV shots Mirror POV, when he's practicing what he's gonna say to the bad guys. Phone camera I particularly like this film for lighting. Most of the fight scenes are filmed in low light and there's a contrast between his everyday life and his superhero life. It's bright, warm and slightly yellowish, but at the same time is very monotone to show the boredom a...

Studio Idea

Personally, I found it really difficult to come up with an interesting studio production idea. But because "one idea is not enough" (Brown and Duthie, 2010) I came up with 3 initial ideas: 1) Guess the song type of game show, but instead of guessing pop songs, the contestants would have to guess classical music. I got this idea from a game my friends and I loved to play and the way my music teacher used to test my class. 2) Travel guide about how to make the most of your trip, places worth visiting and places that are overrated and not worth your time. I got this idea from my sister who travels a lot and from the way she does loads of research about each and every place she visits. 3) Debate/Game show where 2 groups of people debate about nerdy topics ( whats better Marvel or DC, which Doctor was the best etc.). The idea comes from noticing how much rivalry there is between comic book lovers and overall 'nerds'. I feel like this idea is the stronge...

Evaluation

As with most of my projects, I wouldn't say that I'm completely satisfied with the finished result, because I know that if we had a little bit more time, it could have been so much better. I know that during the shoot I did my best, however, I wasn't at my best and I feel like that reflects in the footage. But due to how much time we had left, there was no time for me to be sick and for us to reschedule the whole day. I was using a new camera which was both scary and exciting, but I chose to shoot this with a DSLR deliberately, as I never used it before and wanted to see the difference between a DSLR and other cameras I have used. And it is a very big difference and personally, I found it hard to get more comfortable and confident while using it as it didn't have the features I was used to seeing in other cameras. I found it really hard to focus with a DSLR when it came to tracking and other moving shots where the focus needs to change, however, I think I did a ...

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