...Well ok perhaps I haven't been doing any interstellar traveling but I was really busy shortly after the first post and then forgot I had this page...then I remembered I had it but couldn't remember what my login password was and now I've finally remembered where I wrote the damned thing down so I'm back on the air! (or net as it were) anyway one of the reasons that I created this page/decided to get back into it was that I needed an outlet to vent sometimes about things or wanted to share things that are perhaps too meaty for a V-Log or facebook post. Lately something weighing on my mind was the recent and unexpected death of one of my favorite professors in the Television & New Media classes I attended at Loyalist College. And so in one of the most blatant tonal shifts since 1983's Pod People jumping from horror flick to kid friendly E.T. Rip-off (if you don't know what I'm talking about type in "MST3K Pod People" in Google Video and watch the full 97 minute one); I'm going to talk about Kevin Sansom.
For the past three days since his death I've been reading tributes and eulogies about him on facebook (they don't use a capital 'F' so neither will I damn it!) I even shared a story of my own but the thing is after writing it I got thinking that what I wrote wasn't my favorite memory of Kevin. No my favorite memories, the moments I cherished the most were the small ones that don't really make a great story and don't mean much to other people but certainly mean a lot to me. Kevin Sansom taught computer classes and the like and so whenever a piece of editing equipment would break or act strange the catch phrase was "Quick go find Kevin!" You could usually hear this battle cry coming from the halls of the editing suites if you hung around long enough and I often found myself either saying it or following it. This was so common an event that in the facaulty offices of the television department there were signs with arrows leading to Kevin's office saying things like "KEVIN IS THIS WAY!!!" (someone was obviously a Loony Tunes fan!) anyway back to my point, my favorite memories of Kevin were the ones that took place during those moments. When I would eventually track him down (if he wasn't teaching a class) we would hurry back to wherever I was working and often times he would fix the problem in under two seconds. Occasionally though he would get a little stumped and have to try different things to get it to work. When that would happen we would both try to solve the problem together. Now maybe it's because I'm a guy but I actually love problem solving when a solution is eventually found. And so whenever something would go awry even though I'd want to get back to work quickly deep down I'd secretly hope it would take Kevin several minutes to figure it out and that his first couple guesses wouldn't work (plus not feeling like a complete idiot was nice too). I remember there were a couple occasions where it was the first time he'd encountered that specific problem before. Those were my favorites because we would just make small talk while we worked on the problem with the occasional "...ok try that..." thrown in and when we finally would find the solution he was one of those people who would make you feel like it was both of your accomplishment even though in truth he did the lion's share of the work (he'd say things like "See? Even I learned something new today!")
Last night as I walked home from work I was thinking about these times and was pretty sad when I thought I'd never experience them again. Then I thought that reaction was a bit odd considering that I was finished with the program since April and wouldn't have had these moments again anyway but then it occurred to me that no one will ever get to experience those brief moments of panic followed by Kevin's calm reassurances and random conversations about nothing in particular ever again and that made me really sad! You know often times, too often in fact, in life we are so focussed on the "big moments" that we forget about the little ones. Especially in times like these and that's really a shame because that's what 90% of our lives and our relationships with other people are made of; just small random otherwise insignificant moments of enjoying each-other's company. In my quest to think of a good story to be read at Kevin's memorial service I kept brushing aside all those small moments in my memory for that one good "story" I'm glad now that I went back later and realized just how important those small memories were and always will be.
And now we reach the end of this article where I sum everything up for you. I hope in reading this you found at least a little inspiration and laughed a little (heck I'd consider "almost laughter" as a victory!) because that was the kind of guy Kevin Sansom was all over, a confidant yet quiet individual who could both calm your nerves with laughter and wit or inspire you to do great work depending on what the situation called for and that is why so many will miss him, I doubt I will ever meet anyone quite like that again.
As always,
-I'm Adam Shaughnessy and Adam Dingman
Thanks for reading!
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Know Your Noir Part I: A Brief History...
Hey gang,
When I went back on this site to write my tribute to Kevin Sansom I found this article still waiting in the draft section. I had completely forgotten about it and apparently the last time I worked on it was around June 9th, 2011 at 12:56am. Originally it was going to be a pre-curser to a classic film review V-Log series I was going to start making but ended up indefinitely postponing in favor of using the time I would have spent on it to work on my comic with Lucas Jones instead. I decided I'd show you what I had done on it and then in a different font conclude it for you Enjoy!
-Adam
Thanks to the huge hype that the video game L.A. Noir has been getting lately I have been thinking a lot about the Film Noir genre and watching (or re-watching) some of the ones that I own. I thought it would be good to do a review of some of those films and give you an idea of what Film Noir actually is since many of you have probably heard of it before but never had it explained to you properly.
When I went back on this site to write my tribute to Kevin Sansom I found this article still waiting in the draft section. I had completely forgotten about it and apparently the last time I worked on it was around June 9th, 2011 at 12:56am. Originally it was going to be a pre-curser to a classic film review V-Log series I was going to start making but ended up indefinitely postponing in favor of using the time I would have spent on it to work on my comic with Lucas Jones instead. I decided I'd show you what I had done on it and then in a different font conclude it for you Enjoy!
-Adam
Thanks to the huge hype that the video game L.A. Noir has been getting lately I have been thinking a lot about the Film Noir genre and watching (or re-watching) some of the ones that I own. I thought it would be good to do a review of some of those films and give you an idea of what Film Noir actually is since many of you have probably heard of it before but never had it explained to you properly.
To understand what it is it helps to understand where Noir came from and how it came to be. Film Noir can trace it's roots back to the late 1800s. Thanks to the industrial revolution many cities had become little more then cesspools. The air was full of ash and soot, the people worked in sweatshops and then went home to their disease filled over crowded slums and open sewage even flowed through the gutters. As a result moral depravity and indecency of all sorts became wide spread. Heinous crimes like London's Jack the Ripper filled the newspaper headlines. Obviously you can't have all that happen without it affecting the culture and soon literature began to reflect more the world around it and became darker and more gritty. For entertainment people began reading pulp magazines which were becoming more and more popular. Pulp magazines cost next to nothing to publish thanks in part to the fact that they were made out of recycled cheap pulp paper (hence the name pulp magazine). The magazines flourished and evolved. Many famous heros and stories of the day were started in the pulps which continued right up to the 1950s. Authors like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler published some of their most famous works originally as monthly pulp novels or novellas (every month the books would release a new chapter like comic books do today). By the 1930s and 40s the predominant hero of the books was the hard boiled private detective. Many of the most famous noir films are actually screen adaptations of pulp stories.
Ok so here's where we come in with the continuation on November 13th, 2011. While the characters of noire may owe their lineage to the British and American pulps of the nineteenth and earlier twentieth century the distinct look and style of the films can trace it's roots to mainland Europe.
Around the same time that Pulps were becoming popular an artistic movement known as Expressionism was coming into prominence. Paintings like The Scream By Edvard Munch, Nollendorfplatz by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner others began using exaggerated shapes and heavy shadows that were far from reality in order to establish mood. The movement became so popular it later went on to influence not only paintings but sculpture, dance, literature, theatre, architecture, music and most importantly of all (to this article) film! Following the first world war new social realities in the Weimar Republic (pre-Nazi Germany) began to seep into art. Filmmakers and filmgoers alike became drawn to the new film movement sweeping Germany. While many of the earlier films of the German Expressionist movement like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari look just like the paintings they were influenced by, later ones such as Nosferatu and Metropolis for example, toned down the surrealist sets in favor of using shadows and weird camera moves to capture the expressionist mood (I acknowledge that there is still a little expressionist influence in the set design though). These films not only influenced German filmmakers but a whole new generation all around the world. Since many artists of all kinds including filmmakers were highly political (or seen to be) and promoted ideas that countered National Socialism (Nazis) many of them had to flee Europe when or shortly after Adolph Hitler came to power. Eventually many of them made their way to Hollywood where they started to work their European (many Czech and other Europeans started copying the German expressionist filmmaking before exile) styles into American films. At the same time the American born filmmakers who were either influenced by imported films when they were starting in their early careers or were later influenced by their peers from Europe were starting to be put in the director's chair themselves. This amalgam of European and American film styles slowly but surely gave birth to the Noire genre we know today.
The term is credited as being first used by Nino Frank, a French film reviewer in 1946. Since there were trade embargoes on the Third Reich, no new American films had been seen in France after it's fall in 1940. Watching a plethora of the Hollywood films that were coming in from the last six years Nino Frank noticed how different the American "Police Drama" films had become since he last had seen any. He called the new style "Black Film" because of its use of heavy over exaggerated shadows and dark cynical subject matter. The term wasn't well known in the States until around the 1970s (prior to that they were just seen mostly as ordinary "melodrama" films).
Originally I was going to end this by mentioning L.A. Noire again and my hopes for that game but since it's already been released and I've purchased and beaten it I can't really write that ending anymore now can I (that game was awesome by the way!)?! So instead I will say that I hope this was interesting and that it was written in a style that I probably won't use as much since it's not exciting or zany enough and I want to attract a wider variety of readers. Oh well this was written and planned while I was still trying to find what tone I wanted to write in and it was an experiment so I don't regret it. I may continue the series (Know Your Noire) at some point but I haven't decided yet. If you didn't get bored and are still reading this and want to see more articles like it you should let me know in the comments section I'm always eager to see people's feedback!
Until next time thanks for reading!
Sincerely,
-Adam Shaughnessy (a.k.a. Adam Dingman)
Ok so here's where we come in with the continuation on November 13th, 2011. While the characters of noire may owe their lineage to the British and American pulps of the nineteenth and earlier twentieth century the distinct look and style of the films can trace it's roots to mainland Europe.
Around the same time that Pulps were becoming popular an artistic movement known as Expressionism was coming into prominence. Paintings like The Scream By Edvard Munch, Nollendorfplatz by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner others began using exaggerated shapes and heavy shadows that were far from reality in order to establish mood. The movement became so popular it later went on to influence not only paintings but sculpture, dance, literature, theatre, architecture, music and most importantly of all (to this article) film! Following the first world war new social realities in the Weimar Republic (pre-Nazi Germany) began to seep into art. Filmmakers and filmgoers alike became drawn to the new film movement sweeping Germany. While many of the earlier films of the German Expressionist movement like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari look just like the paintings they were influenced by, later ones such as Nosferatu and Metropolis for example, toned down the surrealist sets in favor of using shadows and weird camera moves to capture the expressionist mood (I acknowledge that there is still a little expressionist influence in the set design though). These films not only influenced German filmmakers but a whole new generation all around the world. Since many artists of all kinds including filmmakers were highly political (or seen to be) and promoted ideas that countered National Socialism (Nazis) many of them had to flee Europe when or shortly after Adolph Hitler came to power. Eventually many of them made their way to Hollywood where they started to work their European (many Czech and other Europeans started copying the German expressionist filmmaking before exile) styles into American films. At the same time the American born filmmakers who were either influenced by imported films when they were starting in their early careers or were later influenced by their peers from Europe were starting to be put in the director's chair themselves. This amalgam of European and American film styles slowly but surely gave birth to the Noire genre we know today.
The term is credited as being first used by Nino Frank, a French film reviewer in 1946. Since there were trade embargoes on the Third Reich, no new American films had been seen in France after it's fall in 1940. Watching a plethora of the Hollywood films that were coming in from the last six years Nino Frank noticed how different the American "Police Drama" films had become since he last had seen any. He called the new style "Black Film" because of its use of heavy over exaggerated shadows and dark cynical subject matter. The term wasn't well known in the States until around the 1970s (prior to that they were just seen mostly as ordinary "melodrama" films).
Originally I was going to end this by mentioning L.A. Noire again and my hopes for that game but since it's already been released and I've purchased and beaten it I can't really write that ending anymore now can I (that game was awesome by the way!)?! So instead I will say that I hope this was interesting and that it was written in a style that I probably won't use as much since it's not exciting or zany enough and I want to attract a wider variety of readers. Oh well this was written and planned while I was still trying to find what tone I wanted to write in and it was an experiment so I don't regret it. I may continue the series (Know Your Noire) at some point but I haven't decided yet. If you didn't get bored and are still reading this and want to see more articles like it you should let me know in the comments section I'm always eager to see people's feedback!
Until next time thanks for reading!
Sincerely,
-Adam Shaughnessy (a.k.a. Adam Dingman)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)