Surrealism: A World Of Art and Realism

Okay so looking at the title you automatically think that this is probably not going to relate at all to media. But actually it does and this is how and why.

So I call myself an artist. I’m a photographer, filmmaker, writer, and a wannabe actor (just stuff I’m wanting to do in life) and being an artist one of the things I love is surrealism. Surrealism is a movement in art and literature that sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind. I’m someone who is a big fan of metaphors, analogies, and many other words we heard in English class. And I’m a big fan of art films, films which usually dive more into creative aspects of filmmaking, not always the films you see at the Oscars, but films that sometimes are created to tell an underlying story and get noticed at other film festivals.

So surrealism has always been a part of filmmaking, it started in the 1920s as a movement as has always told a story through means from the human consciousness that many of us maybe don’t always think about. Its weird and sometimes makes us uncomfortable when we watch something surreal but its engraved in our heads what the message of the story was within that work of art when we finally understand it. Many films a lot of us like that have a form of surrealism are probably any films from Alice In Wonderland, Pans Labyrinth, An Andalusian Dog, and many more.

Its also been in many other forms of media like advertising. Even though advertising is a sense of media and helps us become interested in a product or brand is still in a way is the art form of many media centered companies. Surrealism has been known to pop up in many of our advertisements telling a story in just an image and making us interested in that brand or product more than we were before.

In so many cases we see surrealism but don’t know its surrealism, like this ad many people could probably think of 200 different explanations of what this add is conveying but it will most likely lead into the same story. I didn’t even realize that surrealism was influencing a lot of our media today and I’m happier to know and sort of understanding that, still a learning process for me. But surrealism does a play a part of our everyday lives and its a form of storytelling many of us don’t always pay attention too.

Youtube Your New Online Film School

Schools can always be expensive when it comes to applying, and then if you are accepted in you are spending a ton of money for each semester for your classes and many other things you get on campus while also being able to stay at that campus. Film school is no exception to that and film schools are generally way more expensive than your average college, many students who are interested in going the filmmaking route aren’t always able to go to school and some who do, drop out and do their own thing. It depends on the aspects of different people. Now, this isn’t a critique on film schools, there are plenty of benefits to going to schools catering to help future film creators and honestly going to college is always beneficial sometimes for whatever you want to do in life.

But there’s a new film school on the rise and it’s cheap/free for many new filmmakers interested in walking into the filmmaking world. What is this new free film school you may ask? Well its none other than our good friend YOUTUBE!!!! Yes, Youtube. Now, Youtube is a great source of entertainment that always generate a big audience every single day, so it makes sense that there would be Youtube creators who would create videos for our next generation of filmmakers. A lot of these videos teach our next filmmakers to be able to understand different camera angles, how important a script is, and many more techniques that are extremely important for a filmmaker to understand and learn. Youtube also has different channels that are great for people interested in filmmaking to check out and subscribe to, to learn many different techniques and different things that are important.

For myself, some Youtube filmmaking teaching channels I check out are DSLRguide, D4Darious, and FilmRiot. These channels help me out a lot when it comes to perfecting my craft and actually adding new techniques into my filmmaking that I’ve honestly haven’t done before. Youtube is a great place for filmmakers, one filmmaking channel I love is Bertie Gilbert, he creates interesting and intriguing short films that always make me interested in watching them, the characters, acting, storylines are beautiful and I hope to be just as good as he is.

But Youtube is a good site for new Filmmakers, Youtube does help out a lot when it comes to content being produced and people seeing the content. Granted it takes a while before you are able to see millions of people watching your work, but its all worth it in the end. I’m still perfecting my craft and uploading whenever I actually complete a project. To the new filmmakers out there, watch some youtube videos, take notes, pick up a camera, and film.

 

Social Media Wasn’t Ready For Chanel

Within the years and of coming years, many different brands have been using social media to advance their productivity. Social media is a great way to reach your general audience and reaching an audience that a brand didn’t even have, it also reaches a variety of people around the world. When a brand gets attention from a variety of people it helps them grow, causing them to allow more productivity to a variety of people they didn’t even think about.

Chanel is one of the most popular fashion and luxury brands out there, many people follow Chanel to see what new things are coming out and which one of their favorite celebrities is going to see which one is going to be in a Chanel campaign. I use to follow Chanel on Instagram and I was always interested by their aesthetic, everything has always or was always so clean and polished. It makes you intrigued on whats going on and what Chanel’s new campaign is selling or trying to sell. Their Instagram is a lot of portrait photos of different models and videos of new products, quick Instagram campaign videos, and short films that they create and post on their Youtube and Facebook page.

With being the most popular fashion and luxury brands, they are also the most followed brands on social media, with 20.6 million followers on Facebook, 26.4 million followers on Instagram, 1 million followers on Youtube, and 13.5 million followers on Twitter. They have about 300 million views from their commercial’s and short films on Youtube and Facebook. Since video advertisement is something that’s a lot more popular with connecting to audience members on social media, they really use video to their advantage in the commercials and advertisements. The marketing team has payed close attention to how Youtube operates and what can get the most attention on, so what usually gets attention to your page is posting regularly because if you post regularly people pay more attention to you page on Facebook but mostly Youtube. So they have learned and mastered how exactly how to do that. Which makes things a lot more useful for them.

When it comes to their video strategy for Instagram they actually don’t have a whole big production strategy that goes into it, and so we have see a lot of single shots for some of their videos on Instagram and even maybe in their campaigns and that gets just much attention as commercials that have a higher production value. Chanel has mastered the art of social media in ways that as someone who is growing up with social media hasn’t even figured out, and I think how they execute their knowledge showcases throughout all of their work online.

The Evolution of Filmmaking

As someone who wants to get into the film industry, learning about new camera’s being created and released excite me for the possibilities that filmmaking can go into. Hearing of new technology that helps the film world is super cool because I get to think to myself, “I can’t wait to play around with this one day” and think of the cool things I could create with the advancements in a film. There are some pretty cool advancements I’ve found when it comes to filmmaking.

https://www.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network/2015/jun/12/film-technology-evolution-film-making-3d-printing-vr-motion-capture

One of my favorite films is Ex Machina, a film involving the concept of A.I’s, I didn’t really know that a lot of things created in and for the film were done by 3D printing. I’ve never honestly thought that 3D printing would be something that could be contributed to filmmaking, usually from what I’ve seen with 3D printing is used for fun and do really whatever, but also to help people out in forms of medical work. So seeing 3D printing happening in a film is really interesting to see from someone who wasn’t paying attention to any of that. It’s also cool to see how Virtual Reality and Depth Sensors is having play in filmmaking as well. Of course, they say that Depth Sensors don’t work for all types of films but for many, they do play a big hand in what our new CGI standards for filmmaking could look like. Especially if in some way it becomes less expensive to do CGI for filmmaking.

So how would this play into social media? Well, Filmmaking isn’t just a creative path, its also a business. Many marketing firms are using videos to help their businesses grow and to help further their connections. Filmmaking is all about who you know, and getting good connections, in social media it broadens your spectrum on getting connections, videos get a wider audience than many other things in social media, its right there and straight to the point. And its easier to share a video then a really long post. The Stars Wars: The Force Awakens Movie trailer gained about 1 million views in the first 23 minutes that it was posted on different social media platforms. Granted people are always excited to see Star Wars but it does play a key role in how social media is to react to videos more than post.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-m-kirby/the-role-of-social-media-_b_10571026.html

The Marketing of Videography

Videos have always been a form of entertainment that has engaged us, even from our younger years when we didn’t even understand it. A film entertains us and engages us in a story that we’ve wanted to see, from the first time the movie was talked about on social media, to the trailer that showed the story and the cool graphics, and to the final production of the movie an audience gets to see. When it comes to the sense of videography and marketing on social media companies or people who create online content would want to create videos that are engaging for a social media audience to want to be interested in. Video has also become an interesting marketing strategy for companies when it comes to different social media outlets. The only thing about them is how to maket the videos on different social platforms.

As someone who wants to become a filmmaker, one of the many things that I don’t understand is marketing myself, especially on social media. Social media can be pretty complicated when you don’t exactly understand it and theres actually a way to do that. In Gary Vaynerchuk’s article he talks about how he uses different social media sites to help me with his business. It’s actually pretty interesting to read, other than giving the different social media platforms a persona, he goes into detail about how he uses the different social media outlets to help promote his videos to market himself.

On Facebook there is a sense of relevancy that he has when he’s posting his content on there, Youtube is great for videos as many people have seen throughout the years but with many people using Youtube its complicated to have people gravitate to your videos and to watch the content you create. Twitter is more direct and more engaging and videos helps out with that, snapchat is all video, and allows people to be creative, you have to artist and people using snapchat to their advantage.

https://shonduras.com/

https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/the-rise-of-video-marketing-on-social-and-how-it-affects-your-business/