P.O.V Problems

With the release of Paranormal activity 3, I would like to give my  thoughts on  Point of View/ found footage cinematography or P.O.V,  My main point isn’t with Paranormal activity, since I have only read and listen to reviews by various people and critics, from what I’ve seen from the movies aside from the first one are pretty promising.  The directors and cast have  gone into a great deal with trying to make the movie seem  very realistic with characters that we, the audience, do not want to see harmed or killed in anyway, while also building up to a climax. Which is what P.O.V should be, a realistic movie that has the characters filming the events going on around them or have it where the movie was told completely through security cameras in a building? The problem however is that filmmakers tend to focus more on the found footage , which ruins most of the suspense of the movie by letting the audience know that, yeah the people that filmed the events that are about to happen are already dead. Also if the movie involves a monster the person using the camera, somehow become selfish and risks the safety of others or quickly dropping in a hundred IQ points, such as in Clover field, when one of the characters grabs the camera points it upwards at the monster instead of running away before quickly getting attacked, or in Diary of the dead where the main character decides to wait by his camera and film instead of helping his friends. This takes away from the realism since in real life the person would of tossed the camera knowing that their life and their friends life is more important than a capturing a few minutes of film. Also if it’s not on a tripod it goes from not moving to shaking all over the place making it not only annoying, but also boring, frustrating to watch. This main problem was the reason I walked out of clover field twice.

Why can they simply make a movie that from a first person’s perspective? It wouldn’t be too hard since they make headsets that can hold a camera, allowing it the person filming to use both of their hands. Course the argument would simply be that it would be like watching someone plays a videogame. And because of this I will ask a question. Would you rather sit in a chair watch a first person view of a video game or what looks like a poorly done home video where the person holding the camera has trouble keeping focused and steady?

Recent zombie movies... ehhhh

I’m really tired of some of the releases in the zombie genera since the beginning of the twenty first century. Wait here me out, I said some not all. Movies such as Zombie land, 28 days later, Shawn of the dead as well as the resident evil, Dead Rising, and dead space game series are good. They have great characters that most of the audience can relate with, good settings, good plot and sense of direction, breaking some zombie clichés such as a member of the team or group of people in the story has to get bitten, by a zombie of course, turns, then is either shot or causes the death of another character. Zombie land is a good example of this by not killing or biting any of the main four characters of the movie, allowing them to live at the end.   However many of the ones released to day seem do only be ripping of movies that have come before it. Rec and Rec 2 for example while they are both good movies about  people trapped in building with people possessed by demons, as was reveled in rec2 inserted of zombies, which also act and infect almost the same way. Was first used almost exactly in demons and demons 2 where in the second one people were trapped in a large apartment complex and the tenants became possessed with a demonic entity.  Or the miniseries dead set which took place in Britain on the set of big brother and clearly ripped of zombies in the night and dawn of the dead movies as well as the sprinting rage infected zombies of 28 days and weeks later.  I just don’t understand why they couldn’t easily be original. It wouldn’t hurt having a movie where people kill zombies in original ways or show how much they care about the fans my making one that’s just one big spoof of zombie movies, while referencing others without trying to rip the originals off.

               

Fall Days

If I was to pick one of my seasons to be my favorite, I would have to pick fall. Fall is one of the seasons when the days are warm and the nights are cool for a few months allowing the leaves on the tress to give off beautiful colors before they completely fall off and are covered in snow by winter. I enjoy the feeling of leaves crunching under my shoes as I walk along trails, seeing them spinning and tumbling in the wind before they fall back to the ground. If I’m lucky I can see animals, such as crows and squirrels moving everywhere to stock up for winter. I guess this is in a way why I hate it. It’s the last time I’ll be able to see any animals outside, aside from the rare coyote and deer. Fall signals the coming of the cold dark weather of winter and the death of summer, like the life of one year is nearing its end. I guess I could say that what fall does give me is the contrast of life and the Yin and Yang. The end of the long hot summer days give way to the cold long summer nights where all of time seems to stand completely still, with the wind being the only sound for miles.

some of my veiws on todays horror

It seems to be that over the years, design of what makes horror movies have diminished greatly. Simple things such as building tension, character development, as well as the use of good story plots and script have seemed to almost disappear in today horror movies. In the past some of the great horror movies, such as the original Bram stokers Dracula,  Mary Shelly Frankenstein, the bride of Frankenstein and the wolf man  all seemed to be very quite like and focused more of body language and dialogue, feeling more like a play, which the movie Dracula was based off of , and like a silent film. Unlike almost all of horror today these movie had barley any death in them, Dracula and Frakensitne only had two. This was mainly because of the censorship at the time was more strict then it was today as well as the film industry being still very young. The problem is that in the recent decades, especiaily in the first decade of the 21^st century most horror in general have changed. Course the film industry has changed over the years not just horror, due to the changes in film, special effects, cameras becoming smaller  and introduction of cgi and hd camera, and so on.

Today horror movies tend to focus mainly on the gore and death aspect. Back even in the late seventies there was a limit to what could be used in movies, if it became to gory then they would cut the scene out and make it work without it. Now it feels like the death scenes were created first then the movie was created around it. Also all of the character development and likeability of the main characters seem to have disappeared almost completely. Why is this bad? One might ask. Wouldn’t make the movie more enjoyable since the audience can’t wait to see who will die next? While that might would in a parody of a slasher films or in one may two horror films, almost all horror films seem to have characters like this. All of Rob Zombies movies and Eli Roth’s characters aside from a side character are made so that the audiences are supposed to hate them. To me it shows how uncreative and lazy the filmmakers were with their product.  Why not spend a few more weeks writing the characters or making the story more enjoyable for the audience?

cost of comic books

I’m really annoyed by how much comic books cost. Depending on the issue comics can cost up to 3 to 4 dollars which is about a third or a half of the cost of a paperback book or a dollar or two less than a wired or national geographic magazine. Now I usually didn’t mind having to pay this much for comic, but as of late I noticed that comics seem to also have less and less pages while increasing ads and having things like thicker pages and a thicker cover, and  filling the issue with more padding  with each issue. As a comic book fan this pretty much makes me feel like I’m getting ripped off.  There really isn’t a reason for doing this aside for only trying to make the customers buy more comics.  The comic book industry could easily lower the price of comics while increasing the amount of fans by lowering the quality of the materials used. It doesn’t have to be the same quality as comics in the 30s which were almost like newspapers, but just enough so that they looked almost like they did in the mid to late 90s. And charge only two dollars or at most $2.50. However the companies running the comic book probably would still raise the price anyway.

I have adhd

When I was about three years old, I was diagnosed with ADHD. ADHD or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is a chronic condition that effects about three to five percent of children 30 to 50 percent still have symptoms in adulthood. Like I said, I was diagnosed at the age of three and even though I take medication for it, they really only seem to cover the hyperactivity part of it and only slightly helps with everything else. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad it at least takes care of that. I would rather learn to cope with having trouble focusing in class and getting distracted when working on home work, then having trouble staying in my chair, both at home and at school. I also tend to have difficulty remembering things and often getting very confused or having difficulty understanding things. I don’t mean I’m completely clueless, just that I have to ask for help or look into things further to make sure I’m doing them right. Sadly this has caused me to do poorly in my classes in college lately. I end up putting assignments off until late in the afternoon and often put less effort into them then I should or I completely forget to do a project or assignment until the day before. But recently I’ve been talking to people at pathways, a student help center of sorts at my college as well as my sister reminding me to put due dates on my planner as well as helping me put the school email on my phone so I can access it when I’m in a hurry. Hopefully this can help me manage my time better so I can do better in my classes.