Pencil vs Camera?

Really cool photographs I found whilst researching for my FMP (final major project).
Totally original idea, very smart and great execution.
Ben Heine - Pencil vs Camera set

A Long Goodbye - Film Review

A Long Goodbye (1973) is a private eye detective film directed by Robert Altman and starring Elliot Gould as detective Phillip Marlowe. Based on the novel which came out 20 years earlier, Altman has developed everything the novel saw except Marlowe. He's a guy who still believes in the kind of moral code that comes with a license of being a private eye detective. A guy that stands up and defends his friends, even when they're on questionable grounds and maybe at his expense, (the plot). A guy that casually says "here's the address where I'm going, just in case you lose me in traffic" to the muscle hired to follow him. A guy who doesn't stop smoking, he does in every single scene by casually flicking matches of inanimate objects that he happens to pass by. His general attitude just doesn't seem to belong in the modern world of 1973 to what he is based on 20 years earlier. But he doesn't mind.
The whole film follows Marlowe around, beginning with a 3am drive to the 24hr grocery store to try and find his cat the specific brand of cat food it likes. Whilst on his way he walks past these very attractive, always semi naked girls who he doesn't seem to notice throughout the film. I think this is the start of an ongoing joke running through the film showing his very laid back attitude and being a detective in general.

With the whole film being very slow and laid back Altman did introduce a couple of rather shocking scenes to wake the audience up in my opinion. This included the head gangster hitting his wife with a coke bottle which made a lot of the audience jump as it was completely out of the blue. It was very smart of Altman to include scenes like this as most parts had cheap slapstick comedy which I did like but were rather obvious and kind of easy to full asleep to.
My favourite part of the movie would have to be the scene just after Marlowe shows what he is really capable of by shooting one of his best friends; Terry Lennox. He then strolls away down a long path with the camera panning out whilst he plays the theme song 'A Long Goodbye' on his harmonica and as he does this he passes Eileen without saying a word. I thought this was a great ending to the movie, as he's let all his anger out on Terry and on his cat dying.

During the movie I noticed the camera is always constantly moving, even if its slow which I think sums up the title and presentation of the film. This is followed by the theme tune 'A long Goodbye' which has a constant eery occurrence throughout the film which may be slightly annoying for me whilst I was watching it but it does help link different pieces of the film together, especially the end sequence.

FMP-final major project...

So the final major project is looming closer and i've started coming up with some ideas for it, i want to deicde on a brief tomorow so I can present my idea to tutors and the rest of the group on tues.

First idea based on the phrase

.......'Road to nowhere'........

My mobile network is the best!

So when i top up on o2 with £10 i get to play a little game which i thought was very smart and included decent advertising images. Basically i really liked the whole concept, I took a couple of screen shots of the game.

I GOT ME A FISH EYE LENS

So i got myself a fish eye lens, it was quite cheap, only an adaptor (fits on the top of my other lens). So its not one of those really expensive ones that are around £2000. BUT I LOVE IT. Started messing around with it....
The picture with the hand is mine and the one below is an amazing landscape picture i found using a fisheye lens. I'm definitely going to be using this lens everywhere i go!

I been SLACKING

I've been slacking a bit with my blog,  I need to post more on my blog instead of looking on other people's blog. So quite a lot has happened over the Christmas/ January period.
Over the christmas I did a book project which i will soon upload once I upload the photos.
Next was a short creative project where we worked in pairs (mine being the very inspiring Katherine Jenkins, not the singer) to create a machine that prints. I will explain further when i upload photos of our machine.

And now today i got a wake up call, from the 1st year degree students who presented us with their foundation portfolios which helped them get into Chelsea. Moral of the story is i need to start preparing my portfolio for upcoming interviews (hopefully) and to do some more work and stop playing XBOX in my free time. I'm glad i had this wake up call, time to do some serious work!

Typography

My next project was all based on typography, we weren't using the computer to create type and instead we were told to produce it by hand on a big layout pad. I was able to experiment with different typefaces, cases, bold, italics, layouts, everything really. Throughout the process i begun to like certain typefaces a lot more than others and i ended up choosing the typeface 'Caslon 540 bt' in italics. This typeface was very elegant, smart and i really enjoyed using it. I tested out a lot of different layouts and certain ones stuck out for me. It all ended up in one final piece.

 This 'S' above is not yet finished but will be done in the next few days. The 'I' below though is finished. The large letters are made up of all lots of the same lyrics that i had put together.