"Manhattan"

I've always respected Woody Allen for his uncanny knack for story telling. His wit and neurotic charm make almost every single one of his films, save for a few (I'm lookin' at you, "Whatever Works"), unbelievably enjoyable. From all the Woody Allen films that I've seen, the story has always come first, and all the other aspects of the films seemed secondary. However, after watching "Manhattan", my previous notions of what a Woody Allen film is like were completely turned upside down.

Simply stated, the cinematography completely blew me out of the water. Shot in completely black and white, "Manhattan" is a love letter to New York City under the guise of a quirky romantic comedy. The iconic bridge scene, plastered on movie posters and DVD boxes, should be enough to make anyone think New York a magical place.

The contrast between light and dark is near perfect, making the image beautifully pop off the screen. For the first time ever while watching a film on Netflix, I had to stop and screen-capture certain shots because they were so well composed.

Many films have great lighting, but what I think sets this film apart from others is the interesting way that the shots are composed. In particular, I thought the scene in the planetarium was spectacular. Each shot blew me away, transitioning from very long shots to close-ups easily, whilst still accentuating the planetarium itself. I posted the video of the scene here tentatively, as I don't think the quality of the video does the scene justice.

Overall, I think that "Manhattan" is brilliant, and perhaps one of Allen's greatest films, vying with "Annie Hall" and "Midnight in Paris". It's definitely worth a watch for anyone interested in cinematography or for anyone who simply enjoys a good movie.

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

And so we end up back on campus for another year at Ithaca. I must say, I am very excited for this class. Even the six word exercise got me excited because it was something I never would have thought to try and do in order to accomplish the task of telling a story. I was very interested in this because it was so out of the box. So yes, I am very excited for this class.

Anyway, the title of this blog post is in reference to internships. There are good ones, bad ones, and then just the plain ugly ones. I'm sure you can figure out which ones are good and the others, well, not so much. But I'm going to tell you anyway how my summer went:

I start my summer really excited because I got an internship at the Jeremy Kyle Show in Manhattan. I had to say, I was the most excited I could be because it was my first internship in college as a production intern. I got there super early because I was so excited because I knew that I would be able to take something away from it and have a great experience. Well, let me tell you: I got an experience alright, but not exactly the one you are thinking of. I ended up pretty much becoming a slave. I had to build cabinets, chairs, paint rooms that were rarely used, go on runs, go on extra runs to get a receipt, etc. The list goes on but I'm not going to get too into detail. So like I said before, I ended up a slave. I got nothing out of this internship that I was able to use in the future, except for the fact that I had to make approximately 1000 phone calls over the course of 2 months. So I guess that may have helped with the being on the phone fear that I never had.

It was possibly one of the worst experiences I have ever had. The part that made me the most angry was that I saw posts on Facebook about all of my friends interning elsewhere talking about how great their internships were and how they got to work in the control room and how they got to work on the set and work with someone that actually worked there. Yeah, not me; I had to build cabinets and go all the way to the other side of Manhattan to go buy a lamp.

So I would think that it is obvious that all of my friends got "The Good" internships and I got "The Bad" AND "The Ugly."

Hopefully, if I'm lucky that is, I will be able to intern at a place that will actually let me experience something worth while and help me in the future.