Frank the Bunny

By far one of the darkest movies in recent times Donnie Darko. The cinematographer of this movie is Steven B. Poster, he does a fine job in keeping the main theme of a really dark and twisted film. He does this by making scenes with low light and for the most part the main parts of the movie take place either at dusk or night time, with very intimate settings with minimal action. Often going between very wide angle shots in order for the viewer to get a grasp of the seemingly dismal and bleak settings that the main character was in, then into a closeup shot of the subject, in this is where most dialog is made and with low key lights even the most angelic of expressions (smiles) come of as sadistic and dark. By using the low key light it gives a very deep expression by creating very deep shadows on the actor's faces.
In one specific scene Donnie is in the movie theater and he gets into a conversation with Frank the Bunny, a character from Donnie's imagination/alternate universe, it is in this scene they constantly shift between a wide shot of the entire theater in which you realize that it is only Donnie, a female companion, and Frank. This helps show how very lonely and dramatic the setting is, being all alone. They then go into close ups of Donnie's and Frank's face, by doing so this creates a very scary and awkward feeling to the point you kind of want to look away as the expressions on both actors faces seem extremely defined, this is done with the low key light creating one of the darkest scenes in the movie in my opinion.

Museum of the Moving Image

Stop motion film is one of the most creative things in the realm of media I think I ever participated in. At the Museum of the Moving Image I participated in a demo in which I sat beneath a camera which shot one frame at a time, and by using a few simple buttons, a back ground and a cut out frog I was able to create a Monty Python-like six second short. Another cool activity at the museum was the virtual flipbook. You stood in front of a digital still camera that took consecutive photos one after another creating a life-like flipbook.

This is probably the easiest and most fun I have had thus far in creating media. I never could’ve thought something as simple as moving pictures and capturing them in consecutive still pictures would amount to something so artistic ad creative. Whether it was the live flipbook or the stop-motion short. This form of media is something any person can do and I encourage those to try. The frame-by-frame demo showed a very fun way to create movement and give life to everyday objects

The whole process was done by sitting at a desk with a suspended camera above the desk that was focused on the background or backdrop of the short we made. We then placed our paper cut outs onto the desk and moved them in whichever way we wanted but moved it in small increments to help create life like motion, but you could take less frame with bigger motions to depict a more animated approach or as if segments were missing. Fun and simple with a very intricate aspect.