Ryan Perry's TVP Blog

 

 

Magnolia – Paul Thomas Anderson: Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia is his third film and it is truly where his trademark style fully comes into play. It tells seven interconnecting stories about family, love, loneliness and lies which all tie into an unpredictable and biblical finale. The film is large in its scope and could be almost described as an “Epic”. It tells all of these stories over a three-hour run time allowing us to grow to know the characters as is customary with Anderson’s films and with so many characters, it makes sense for this length. Anderson’s trademark visuals usually consist of fast paced dolly shots, ethereal crane shots and even static long takes allowing his actors to just perform and sell the scene they are performing. Anderson’s storytelling has changed dramatically since this film and some of his other early projects, his projects now tend to be high concept period pieces rather than his previous intelligent and ambitious Comedy Dramas. Anderson’s appro...

Watch the my edit of the Trailer for Tell Me No right here!  

It’s safe to say the final completed project of Tell Me No is far from what we expected it to be, but that is definitely not a bad thing. Obviously due to COVID-restrictions, we had to change it up a bit and make the story fit a digital setting where we could still shoot it. We decided to change the project to a trailer, we chose this because we realised that it would be difficult to make a two person zoom call visually interesting and excitingly edited, whilst with the trailer we could keep up the tense energy we wanted in the originally planned scene. This was a very well thought out decision by us and I think we have come out with a very good final project. I took on the role of Director as had been planned for the scene we were going to shoot, prior to filming I had to put together a storyboard for the trailer which would help guide us through shooting and help me capture an Idea of what to shoot and how to go about shooting it. We shot the zoom conversations all back-to-back o...

The Camera Workshops have been a huge help to me, to our group as a whole. It’s helped build trust, team spirit and helped us decide who is really good at which roles. Specifically, Director, Director of Photography and Editor, as well as actor of course but in the actual circumstance of doing a shoot one of us will probably not be acting. The Sitting Game: The first workshop we were tasked with doing was for a scene where a person sat down in a chair, the brief was as simple as that, it was up to us to make the story as visually interesting as possible. For our first bit of work as a team, I think it’s not that bad, rough around the edges for sure, there are parts where the footage is a bit over exposed but this was the second time any of us had used the camera so there was bound to be some technical inconsistencies. We made use of our limited set which had a large number of chairs which we used to comic affect implying that the person in the video is a “chair tester” and is sick ...

My Production Paperwork: Storyboards  As Director on Tell Me No, my part of the production paperwork was to do storyboards. This has helped me visualize how I hope the finished trailer will flow in it's pace and shot style.