Welcome to the Triple A Learning blog for DP Film. The most recent blog posts are listed below and you can access the blog archive by following the appropriate link in the panel on the left.
My attention was drawn to this link on Gizmodo this morning. I was struck by how alien it felt (scuse the pun!).
It seems so…, uncritical, non-ironic, even celebratory. Certainly it reveals more of its time than the time is represents. Released in 1983, towards the end of Ronald Reagan’s first term this trailer exudes uncritical self-confidence and not a hint of irony in its assertion of American enterprise and pioneering spirit. I wonder how a trailer for this movie might be made today?
Last week I was showing Looking for Eric [Loach UK/France/Belgium 2009] to some friends and neighbours, and in my introduction to the film I was struck by how I’ve grown to like Ken leach’s movies the older I’ve become. I always found his films rather preaching in tone, I realise on closer inspection that the politics or social reality of his films, firmly take second place to the drama involving the characters. The difficulties I faced earlier was the discomfort I felt with the level of engagement with the characters that Barry Ackroyd’s cinematography requires audiences to confront eye to eye.
This entry is an adapted version of my personal blog entry which can be found at: http://pandetoomslaws.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/looking-for-ken/
Here at Triple A Learning, we’ve always supported the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) cause. With a mission to “empower the world’s poorest children through education“, who could fail to be moved by its ideals.
How many IB Film students begin their movie with the main character waking up to the sound of an alarm clock? Far too many. There are so many creative ways for our students to open a film, but using an iPhone instead of a clock is not one of them.
This got me thinking about how directors open their films – either in terms of the title sequence or the opening scene. I will never go into a cinema where the film has already started. What the director chooses to show (or not show) first is a very important choice. Here are some of my favourites:
Just a couple of quick notes this time, about two famous directors Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick.
In my classes, students tend to become obsessed with work by Hitchcock and Kubrick, frequently imitating their camera set-ups and narrative devices. Once there was a very clear division between Kubrick fanciers and Hitchcock fanciers in the class, with many arguments put forward about who was ‘the best.’
There is a great timeline of the Film Noir here at Film Noir studies.
Triple A Learning is delighted to announce the publication of the first batch of its student and teacher BACCpacks.
BACCpacks are cutting-edge downloadable e-learning resources.
“We stand on the shoulders of giants…”
One of the most significant sources of inspiration for our students’ practical work is the work that they study in the film language and film history/film theory parts of the course. It is natural and expected that artists will copy those artists that came before them in their quest to find their own voice. (Certainly, the year we studied Kurosawa’s ROSHOMON almost every student film had a shot of the sun through leaves, and the year we looked at Kubrick’s films, almost every student film featured at least one scene in balanced, classical composition.)
Although it wouldn’t be a great idea for our students to use this Film School Thesis Statement Generator – it might actually help in a few cases.
Triple A Learning is running the following IB-approved workshop, beginning 21st February and lasting for 6 weeks:
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