Thursday 15 December 2011

Lecture Seven - High/Low Culture.

Avant Garde
  • Idea of doing art that is innovative or progressive.
  • A group of people that are being innovative.
  • Losing its currency/meaning.
  • Two approaches to avant garde. Art for arts sake and social change progression.
  • Innovation, experimentation, originality, creative genius.
Artists and Art
  • Fauves - all self taught painters, attack on art, order and critics.
  • Whistler, Nocturne in black and gold - beacon of aesthetic beauty, no politics, no engagement with the world, separation between artist and viewer.
Avant Garde in Russia
  • Seen as a major problem as it runs the risk of being elitist.
  • Stalin banned avant garde.
Kitsch
  • Seeks qualities of art but fails for various reasons.

Saturday 3 December 2011

Lecture Six - Italian Vernacular Cinema.

Italian Cinema
  • Audiences.
    • Prima visione and seconda visione - cinemas that attracted a middle class sophisticated audience usually in major cities, audience selected a film to watch.
    • Tera visone - less populated areas, cheaper tickets, audience went to cinema based on habit rather than selecting a film. Films were more formulaic and popular films. More like a television audience.
  • Historical and social context.
    • Italian working classes in the 1970's would go to the cinema every night so the Italian film industry needed a lot of films.
    • Conventions of film watching are different. People may talk, drink and eat during the film. People enter the cinema at beginning, half way through, near the end.
    • Cinema is a very social space.
    • In some churches mass was conducted in a similar way.
  • Economics.

Fellini
  • Taken seriously as an auteur.
  • Comments on the superficiality of middle class existence.
  • Films are associated with style and sophistication.
  • Seen as worthy of critical appraisal.
Filone
  • Similar to the term genre but not quite.
  • Based on the idea of geology - layers of veins within a larger layer.
  • Examples of filone:
    • Giallo - based on detective novels. Italian for 'yellow' and stems from the series of cheap paperback crime and mystery novels with trademark yellow covers.
    • Spaghetti Westerns.
    • Mondo/Canibal film.
    • Poliziottesco - police proceduaral.

Lecture Five - French New Wave Cinema.

Who were the new wave?

  • Group of French filmmakers.
  • Jean-Luc Goddard, Francois Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette and Eric Rohmer.
  • All once film critics, background in film theory.
  • All wrote for Cahiers du Cinema.
  • They were reacting against the French film of 1940's. They were against films shot in a studio, films that were set in the past, films that were contrived and over-dramatised, films that used trickery and special effects.
The French New Wave (late 1950's - early 1960's)
  • Henry Langlois and the Paris Cinemateque.
  • Andre Bazin and the realist tradition.
  • Cahirs du Cinema.
  • From Critics ti Auteurs.
  • Against the 'Cinema of Quality.'
  • Discovery of American genre films. Celebrated this because of how it reflected contemporary urban life.
  • Cinematic, rather than, literary values.
  • Importance of personal expression.
  • Spontaneity and digression.
The 'Look'
  • Shot on location.
  • Use lightweight, hand-held cameras, sound and lighting equipment.
  • Faster fim stocks, less light.
  • Film shot quickly and cheaply.
  • Experimentation and improvisation was encouraged.
  • Casual, natural look.
  • Available light and sound.
  • Mise-en-scene: french landscapes, cafes.
Editing Style
  • Free style.
  • Didn't conform to editing rules.
  • Discontinuous, jump cuts.
  • The overall goal was to make the audience remember that they are watching a film.
Existenialism
  • Philosopher Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
  • Stressed the individual.
  • Experience of free choice.
  • Absence of any rational understanding of universe.
  • Sense of absurdity in human life.
  • In indifferent world, existentialist seeks to: act authentically, use free will, take responsibility for all their actions, avoid playing out roles pre-ordained by society.

Lecture Four - Auters.

Auters
  • A theory where the director moulds the film.
  • French for author.
  • Like artists, original work, creative control, personal film language, visual style.
  • Technical competence of the director and interior meaning.
Alfred Hitchcock
  • Long career, started in the beginnings of film.
  • Joined film industry in 1920, started off drawing sets.
  • Influential in later genres.
  • Well known for expressionist lighting, story telling visually in silent era, use of the subjective camera, clever use of montage and cutting to create to create tension, cameo appearance, obsessive use of blondes.
  • Dolly zoom.
  • 'The Lodger, 1927' first fully acknowledged film, silent.

Friday 2 December 2011

How To... Chili Recipies.



How To... Growing Chillies.

From our research into growing chillies, the group thought it was necessary to know how long it would take to grow chillies as it would be important in what we would include in our pack. I took the initiative to email some experts on the topic. A specialist chilli website and a seed company...

From this it became clear that it takes longer to grow chillies than we first thought, because we would like our audience to be able to use our product immediately we may have to include grown chillies in the pack as well as some seeds so they wouldn't have to wait a number of months.

Here is some further information on growing chillies...





Types of chillies...

  
 Jalapeno – A thick-walled pepper of medium heat often used as a pizza topping. Great pickled.

Cayenne Pepper – Long, thin and red. Medium heat. Best eaten either fresh or dried and crushed into flakes.

Habanero/Scotch Bonnet Pepper – These are intensely hot but also flavorsome Peppers used a lot in Caribbean cuisine. Best eaten fresh or made into hot sauces.

Naga/Bhut Jolokia – Thin and slightly shrivelled these are amongst the hottest chillies in the world. User very sparingly in cooking!

How To... Packaging Research.

Here are some packaging ideas that I have found. I think they will be very useful in the development of our project...


Here is quite a basic idea of seed packaging and I think the structure will be quite easy to make. I don't really like the design of them though and I don't think the illustration style will be suitable for our audience. The textured paper background is attractive though and is possibly something we could incorporate into our design.


Here is another quite simplistic structure but I think this version has a better style. I like the simplicity of the black and white line drawings with the introduction of colour through the fabric tie.

This example has a very hand rendered illustrative style. I think this would be suitable for maybe the more traditional audience but not for ours of students as I don't think it would appeal.



I am really happy that I found this example, I think it is something that could really work well with our idea. I like how it includes lots of different aspects to create on complete project. I like the idea of having seed packets and an instructive poster that link together to form a pack. We could also look into creating other aspects that could also be included.


I like the alternative structure of this packet it is a more innovative approach. I also think the patterned surface is really attractive and is a design feature we could develop with our own style.



Here is another pack idea, it is a simple structure that will be easy to create and store multiple items inside. I like the bellyband as a piece to contain all the contents together which can also be made into a design feature.