Week 7 brought with it our mid-semester critiques, in which each student must present their achievements and goals so far this semester to a panel of tutors for feedback! The critiques proved very insightful for my PB3, as I was able to figure out a number of ways to enhance my war film video sketch.

My presentation began with my research into the boundaries of genre, and then led into what I had done so far in my sketch. I discussed how I decided to make scene from an anti-war film beginning with a scene where an ex-soldier sits in a room with a psychologist and begins to tell his story. I aimed to explore the theme of sacrifice, while showing the effect of war on society and it’s inhumanity. I also wanted to include mateship in the story. A lot of these things, I tried to show through dialogue. I also used the actions of the actors to show how they were feeling. I also used a number of war sounds, including guns and helicopters to show the effects of war still present in the soldiers mind. The panel stressed that there are many ways other than dialogue to tell a story, especially the story/battle in the soldiers mind who may not be able to verbally explain what he has been to. I was given the film Waltz with Bashir(Ari Folman, 2008) as an example, as it uses animation to show events which are too dark and hard to explain. The main person in the film slowly unravels his stories/memories as he gets deeper and deeper into the story.

This advice helped a lot as I had trouble writing the script(I had no idea about how a psychologist and a soldier suffering from ptsd would speak). Watching some footage of the show in-treatment  also helped.

In our second class, we analysed the vampire genre, and looked at how much it has changed over time. What was once a myth turned into a staple of popular culture. Themes of skin and blood were prevalent in each of the films shown. I was very intrigued by how the original dark Dracula has evolved into hunky young characters like Edward Cullen in Twilight.

All in all, it was an interesting week to kick-start the second half of the semester. Below are some shots from my sketch ‘Guns in Trees’. Enjoy!

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