Action. This is a word that is thrown round entertainment whether it's related to the director's vocabulary or the genre of a film, whether it's a verbal term or a theoretical term. This word has become a cornerstone in every known piece of cinema. There has been a widely debated topic whether action has being going in a downward spiral of overused storylines, boring characters and the Wilhelm Scream for decades and only a few daring filmmakers have tried to break the genre out of that but no mater how great that attempt may be, an action film comes a long that's the equivalent to Konami's Press Conference at E3 2010 in excited and thrills. If you go to any blog or video stating the "Worst Actions Film Ever" you won't be surprised to find some ripping on only modern day action movies instead of the even worse ones that were made in the "golden" era of films. No matter if it's the killer action year of 1987 that delivered some of the classics that we know and love today or the decade defining year of 2012 which saw the birth and conclusions of some of Cinema's best action films, every year has it's dark sides. Action holds the same conventions in every medium like TV and Video Games so it's no surprise as to why it's so widely debated over. Let's analyse the 3 major nook and cranny's in what makes Action such a deep and cunning genre and why it may be considered one of the hardest genres in cinema. Story It doesn't matter whether it's an action film or United Passions, every film needs a compelling, gripping and in some cases, a realistic narrative. It's the thing that keeps us focused and makes us want to continue watching to know what is going to happen. Is the bomb going to be disarmed? Is that character going to die?! Is there going to be a happy ending...or a sad ending...or an ending at all?! A good story is the quintessential component in keeping your audience engaged but what a lot of action directors do sacrifice story for this... OK, not all of the stories of the films in that compilation suffer at the hands of their action but Transformers 2, it definitely does. I'm not saying that having eye candy explosions and satisfying gunfire in a films means that the story is bad. A good example is John Wick where the action and story go hand in hand to create a masterpiece of a film. However, a lot of action films tend not to care about their plot and only focus on action and this is a mistake that many filmmakers make or in other cases know that they're doing it and just want to make money off what every demonic fantasy loves to experience; Chaos. Just out of control, random Chaos. But that was then. It may of worked in the dawn of special effects where CGI action was becoming a sight to behold but nowadays, CGI has become a casual acquaintance in films with some special effects even getting too good to realize it's even there but more on special effects later. The sad point being that most directors see action as just something to push the film on. They don't spend time making the action something meaningful and actually somethings that is applauded for but because story has suffered in most cases, action has also suffered as well in the hands of people who just worry about money and treating their audience like it's a dumbed down version of the Turing Test. There are stories in Action films that try to be unique and intelligent but there need for a mindless explosion every 2 minutes takes us away from their storytelling and in turn, makes their story in valid to our enjoyment. An overused but perfect example of this is Transformers 2, a story that makes it out to be "The Matrix for a new generation" from Michael Bay himself but the problem with that is 1. it failed and 2. there was another film in works that would put that statement to absolute shambles. Like I talked about before, there is a common theory with the film industry that the audience is dumb and that a complex story would not would fit the demographic of the action audience, a theory that Christopher Nolan ripped to shreds with Inception. Inception is one of those films that comes along which you have a difficult time finding a true flaw in especially when it comes to action. There is no randomness to it, there is no wasted moment. The formula to creating a story that your audience will be fully engaged with and appreciate is that each moment has to push forward the story, not differ away from it and that is THE problem with action in stories. Inception uses each one of it's action sequences to tell the story, unravel the world and develop the characters and it does that in a manor that is complex and may require a few repeated viewings to understand but in a manor that is respected and masterfully crafted. Action and Story should go hand-in-hand, not be the subject of conflict. Character No matter if it's the main character or an extra, every character is important. Stories do weigh heavily on characters. It depends on the character and film but most commonly in action, a lot of characters have to be interesting, motivated and importantly, they have to kick ass. A lot of people believe in the structure that the main character has to be the freak of nature that is insanely badass and unbreakable which isn't a bad thing but there are a lot of examples of main characters who don't have any of them attributes and are scared and weak that have worked. A good example of these features are most commonly in War films. Their stories and characters usually depict the new recruit just coming from home being joined with a group full of war torn, beastly soldiers who bully the recruit and therefore pushing the character development in changing the young, scared, weak recruit into one of their own. I would give an example but this is literally in every War film, pick anyone and what I've just told you will be in it. The basic character arc that some action films face and that War films mostly face with their main characters is the Heroes Journey. The story in which a character grows from being a zero to a hero but with a lot of action main characters, we start their story after their heroes journey, when they are already badass, know how to throw some punches and fire a rifle at accurate proportions. Why is this? Maybe because some people believe that in action films, if the main character isn't already an action hero from the start then the character or story or sequences are boring which is really stupid. Action films like Kingsman: The Secret Service falsify this theory by having a character that is cool, slick and fun and make him into a charismatic badass all without any boring moments. The problem with this theory as well is that not all the action has to come from the main character. Supporting characters to background characters all have to have their taste of action set pieces, that's what makes their characters memorable. The delicate matter with characters in Action films is that they have to obtain every quality in the book that makes a great character but also has to include the action-orientated skill and ability to be memorable . Special Effects vs Practical Effects Ah, this old chestnut. This age old question has been tossed around modern cinema in every action film that has ever been known to man. Which is better? The truth is it all depends on budget and directorial style but no matter how hard you jam that down peoples throats, they still come back with even more and more judgement. With special camera equipment like IMAX and Arri Alexa, capturing these two daredevils of reality has never been so beautiful and awesome but when it comes to which one is better, hardly anyone can seem to be in the neutral zone and appreciate both of them for the massive stepping stones of cinema they are. Special Effects (CGI) breaches the possibilities of reality that allow us to witness true beauty and spectacles that we can only experience in our dreams. Whilst Practical Effects makes us appreciate the inner workings of physics and reality as we behold actual monumental set pieces that leave us scratching our heads in disbelief thinking that what we actually saw is what actually happened in real life without any help from Computer Generated Imagery.
In action movies, both of these effects play major parts in the what makes them visually stunning and a lot of action movies nowadays let's them both be a valuable part in them and and how they can make a film special. Practical is reality whilst Special simulates reality. Most of the majority will choose Practical Effects just because of the shear scale and audaciousness of it but most can be fooled as the most simplest of features such as a car or even a person can hide itself to be real when really it's all CGI. That is the true mystery and awe of cinema, especially in action.
Conclusion Action as a genre is a tricky one. It has built masterpieces and created garbage but lessons can be learned from both. From the very first action film The Great Train Robbery in 1903 to the most recent masterclass in action, John Wick Chapter 2, it is a type of film that has gripped us, shook us, adrenalised us, empowered us, failed us but hopefully entertained us. Action is the white knuckle genre of cinema and will continue to shine that way even through it's darkest days. As to whether it is basic or misunderstood, I would say it's both. It's a genre that is up there with the originals and it's always obtained the same elements that it began with. Many have tried to shower in new innovations and ideas and many have failed but that is a good thing because if this genre was easy to master then it wouldn't have the quality of exceeding expectations and it wouldn't hold the beauty of crafting something new. It is a misunderstood genre that people have immediately disowned but it isn't a dying genre. All it needs is the directors and writers that know how to handle it and obtain it. I believe it's the filmmakers and the industry that have let this genre down and have let it gone down the hole of disappointment but there some few that can bring it back up and produce the classics it once upheld.
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Darious Britt is an acclaimed filmmaker from North Carolina who has directed, written and starred in a short film, Seafood Tester (Darious Britt, 2012) that has been featured in 4 film festivals including Aspen Shorts Festival to positive reception from critics. He is currently following up from that with a feature film called Unsound which is a feature length adaptation of his short film, Seafood Tester. Although not released publicly yet, it has played at 20 films festivals around the world and has won 7 awards. Darious Britt's filmmaking success has not gone unheard of from his fanbase but along with it, he began to venture into YouTube. He began his journey to YouTube by publishing his channel on August 17, 2013 going under the title, D4Darious. Since then, he has accumulated 122,000 subscribers and garnered 4.4 million views as of the date this blog post was published. He focuses his channel around his filmmaking experiences with tips for young and aspiring filmmakers and analysis videos on directing, scriptwriting, story structure and cinematography. His content has generated mass approval from his audience and whilst his upload schedule can be inconsistent, he delivers with great videos and content that any film buff can enjoy. In today's YouTube community, the amount of analysis channels that are associated with breaking down and exploring films and the industry is growing now more than ever. With big film analysis channels like Every Frame a Painting and Nerdwriter1 taking up reigns of this topic category with both of them accumulating over a million subscribers each, their audience is becoming more invested within their workings and are both their channels along with channels alike them, are generating more of a loyal fanbase, including Darious Britt. Like with Lucas Raycevick, I started my journey with messaging Darious via YouTube. To be honest, I didn't expect any sort of reply. I thought it would just get past over and I would get nothing. I was thinking this guy would be perfect to interview especially because of his 2 focus points, YouTube (which I am progressing into) and Film making/studies (which I am also progressing into) so I was hoping for a reply but not begging. Then I received this after a day of sending the message... It is very (VERY) similar to the email I sent to Lucas but that doesn't take out the truth from it. I just wanted to save some time and create a message that would fit both of them but obviously altered a little. However, on with my quest. I was so excited that he got back to me which again, I really didn't expect. I emailed him through Google and we organised an interview date for next weekend on Saturday 4th February. I followed the formula I used for my previous interview with Lucas. I asked questions about his YouTube channel and lifestyle career in general but since Darious's filmmaking was part of the bigger picture, I wanted to ask him a lot about that to get a feel for both aspects of his career. I also asked Pivot Questions and recorded it using an easy to use software called OBS Studio which I both used in my interview with Lucas Raycevick. So came Saturday and he hadn't replied stating if he was still up for the interview so I asked him on the day, hours before the scheduled interview time at 8:00pm (1:00pm for Darious) and he responded that he was ready to go and so he was... After the interview ended, I left feeling that it went really well. I definitely appreciated and was intrigued by his knowledge of film and the industry. I was so focused by everything he was saying about it and he expressed it very clearly and on a level everyone can get behind. The Pivot Questions worked out really well too. Even though they weren't as efficiently detailed like Lucas's were, I still liked his response and it gave me a great and deeper insight into his personality.
I feel like this interview felt more professional in the sense of his responses and the atmosphere. I didn't feel as relaxed in this interview as I was with Lucas (maybe Darious thinks the same). Maybe it was just me getting nervous because he's known to be more prolific but still, I feel like the responses that he gave were exactly what I wanted. I didn't want both of the interviews to be similar in a sense, I wanted them to have different vibes, personalities, responses, knowledge etc., and I think that's what I got even though they both relate to entertainment but are in different mediums. What I found very informative was his brutal honesty. He expressed how hard it is to even just got on his standard of marketing and success and you wouldn't say it's easier than he stated because he is at that stage. The fact that he has such a unique perspective in the industry with being a Director/Actor in his films, it gives him that expanded range of experience and knowledge that he transmits across well through the interview. When I got to the editing process, I had a very similar style to Lucas's interview in terms of humour. It's just something I like to do that adds a little bit of light humour to it and offers more watchability. It isn't as detailed as Lucas's because Lucas had a lot more references in his interview about other videos and content but I wanted Darious's interview to still have just something other than an interview in it and make it more unique. Overall, I would say I'm really pleased with how the interview with Darious turned out. Even though I think the interview with Lucas was better, I still appreciated and took a lot of knowledge from Darious. I thought his answers were insightful, educational and that offers a cool look at what Darious is like outside of the videos and films. I think he's an awesome and educated guy and I would love to meet and even work with someone that has such passion and enthusiasm as Darious expressed in the interview. With starting a YouTube channel, you're often going to have to branch out into other platforms such as a Facebook page, Instagram, Snapchat etc. These global social networks have grown into the most viewed and active mediums in history with Facebook having 1.18 billion daily users beating it's rival, Twitter out tremendously by 800 million users but what makes them so different and why is Facebook winning by so much?
Why has this happened? Facebook has stayed as a social media platform. What Twitter has done over the years has moved away from Social Media and more towards News. Twitter keeps people updated whilst Facebook builds social relationships. We see this with the fact Twitter doesn't do much about social friendships and only really situates around following certain topics, people and conversations that are relevant or interesting to them but the downfall is the overall engagement period. It is statistically shown that 92% of all activity with Tweets happens within the first hour of the post whilst Facebook status updates can be popular and active for hours and even days upon end. Twitter centres towards reality and real life conversation lengths as apposed the Facebook which is more of a conversation you will "get to eventually". Also another big difference is optimal times for posting and engagement. Studies show that Facebook's optimal time for status updates are 12:00 PM whilst Twitters optimal time for tweets is 5:00 PM. This can also be broken down into days too with Wednesday's being the most popular days for Twitter and Facebook being most active on Saturday's. Just by this, we see the point of difference between the News factor of Twitter and the Entertainment factor of Facebook. We see this with Twitter's news and activity always progressing, altering and changing with what is important and what is happening now. Twitter is a place for constant news whilst Facebook is less focused on timing. In terms of updates and user satisfaction, this is where Facebook triumphs especially in the 2015 update period. In 2012, updates for both Twitter and Facebook were about even in terms of quality. Facebook has a new layout and allowed brand pages to display "Welcome" tabs to encourage likes. Twitter also followed up with an updated layout and advertising the "Hashtag" a lot more as their Unique Selling Point. In 2015, everything changed... Facebook integrated everything with Facebook Live, support on 360 videos, allowing users to label hoax stories as "false" or "misleading", supercharging their own like button to include six emoticons as well and also allowing users easily which pages, trends, friends etc, they want to see in their news feed. Facebook dropped a bomb with satisfactory updates that aloud much more expression and freedom on Facebook. Whilst Twitter did extend the period of searching for past tweets from 7 days to as far back as 2006 which was a good feature, Twitter made a big call where they decided to et rid of their infamous star button and replace it with a heart. May seem like a small change but in the eyes of avid users, this equaled to uproar since many argued that the star button was one of the things that made Twitter different and made them stand out. This was the start of Twitters downfall but something else also came into play. With Social Media growing and being proven to be a big set piece for marketing, advertising and popularity, it led the way for other social media platforms to form and arise. Two of the biggest players that were introduced were Instagram and Snapchat.
In April 2011, Snapchat is formed in a similar fashion to that of Facebook. The app was created by Stanford Graduate Students and grew at a successive rate. It raised almost $150 million (£120 million) in funding and by November 2013, the number of snaps sent to other users grew to 400 million per day. With it's rise, key features are added such as video sharing, Snapchat Stories, and ephemeral text messaging. Snapchat continues to raise funds continuously and grows to overwhelming popularity. Along with this, the app begins to update aggressively with introducing stickers, a chat 2.0 update and upgraded monetizing strategies. This led to Snapchat's daily video view count growing from 2 billion in May 2015 to 6 billion in November 2015 to 10 billion in April 2016. Even though Snapchat has a net worth of $25 billion (£20 billion) that just shies under Instagram, Snapchat still continues to grow quicker and quicker than Instagram and is predicted to become a leading Social Media network within the coming years. These two platforms became especially popular within the business community with Instagram favoring more towards Photographers, Artists, Personal Brands etc., whilst Snapchat favors more towards Entrepreneurs, Authors and Writers, Vloggers etc. when it comes to distributing and gaining popularity within Social Media. Personal Practices With my Final Major Project focusing a lot on personal branding, I decided to venture more with Snapchat. I began in early January with starting talking about motivation, film reviews and daily events in my life through my snap stories. This led to great feedback from my followers which were initially at about 20 - 30 and were made up of friends. After my first story, I decided to experiment with the differences between video stories and image stories and with apps orientating around Snapchat. I found some very cool apps that helped expand the community of Snapchat. The apps that I found the most interesting and had the most potential were Ghostcodes and Snappd. Ghostcodes allows you to upload your Ghostcode (which is the equivalent to a profile picture on Snapchat) and people can download it and scan it to find you and follow you. You don't have to upload anything but that and you get notified on who likes (Kudos) and downloads your snaps. It's a cool way of integrating a new following without spending much time on it. Snappd reshapes stories on Snapchat. Instead of your stories going away after a 24 hours period and sometimes being forgotten, you can upload them to Snappd which allows you to post your stories and keep them on that apps forever for people to view. It's a great way of looking at past snaps from other users and see their development and personality. I liked the concept and ideas these two apps represent. Ghostcodes has grown to be quite a popular app but since Snappd is a very new app, it isn't at an insane popularity figure just yet. I keep updating Snappd though and since it's new and I've uploaded 12 stories as of this post date, I'm already one of the most active users on the site which is pretty cool to admit as a fact. However, I haven't gained as much of a following from Snappd as I have done with Ghostcodes. As of this post date, I have obtained 82 kudos and 22 downloads which is pretty great for me as well. I have gained more followers through it and although Snappd is a great app, I believe it's a lot more cut off from Snapchat at the moment than with other apps like Ghostcodes. I have conceived a growing following on Snapchat and because of my active rate on Snapchat and branching out into other communities and apps, I have gained 30 - 40 new followers within the first month. I have also had amazing opportunities that have grown from this including being apart of a launch team for Kevin Kruse and his upcoming book, Snap Me! Text Me! and being apart of a 30 day positivity challenge set by a big Snapchat user known as StringStory and have gained a following off them both. I have also met other users such as the ones already listed and James K Crawford and SoulPancake. Separate from Snapchat, I have taken part in a new business associated app called Whale which is an app where you can connect and ask questions to leading businessmen, entrepreneurs, experts etc., and get public advice off them through video. I signed up to this and asked questions and got helpful and positive replies off most of them. After a while and a mass growth in confidence and knowledge, I decided to apply for questions and as of this blog post, only have got 2 questions but have answered them with honesty and have got great feedback from them. I believe this could and already is potentially, an app that can branch out to be very popular within multiple communities. Conclusion After going through this whole process of research and practices, I have come out of it having such a better understanding on how to connect with a fan base and grow as a brand. I have also gained some much needed confidence on social media and in real life with the way I talk to people and I have actually become quite a motivator if I do say so myself. I have helped an amazing artist who is my friend eventually distribute her work on social media which I hope will come to great success. Taking part in Snapchat this way has been one of the best decisions o for a while and I hope it continues to further grow. |
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March 2017
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