Wings of Barbecue

Well, the Xeno thing sort of died at the starting gate, but never mind. I've got enough on my plate at the moment without worrying about non-course related stuff.

Namely, composition. I've got an assignment in Drama class to do a drawing with characters exhibiting joy, sadness and anger as part of a single image that tells a story. So what to do? Well, it starts with clear storytelling, and that means composition first and foremost.

I'd been planning to study film and composition starting over the Xmas holidays, but this pushes my timescale up a bit. Whadda ya gonna do, eh?

Anyhow, I started tonight by doing thumbs based on scenes from the first 15 minutes of Wim Wenders' classic film, "Wings of Desire". Being a story about an angel who walks among humanity, there are a lot of lingering images of people in a variety of emotional states as the angel observes it all, which made it perfect for a bit of practice.

So here's the page I did earlier, before getting started on comps for the Drama assignment. They're a bit on the rough side to start, but toward the bottom two rows I was getting a better idea of where I was going with it.

Ran

I watched this movie back in the 80's, when Wormwoods Dog and Monkey Cinema was still on the corner of Gottingen, right across from the Red Cross. I loved that location, and really didn't think much of the choice to move to the old Rainbow spot, where the place eventually died. Bad move.

In any case, my Enviro instructor, Pops, has been talking a lot about filmmaking and composition, so when I pulled this down and started watching it, I could see a lot more than I was aware of way back when. And, in fact, I was compelled to take a few notes on a handful of scenes that really caught my eye. Sort of like crude storyboards. It's a skill I need to develop, honestly, so I might as well get started on it.

They're not much to look at, but if you know the movie you might recognize the scenes.