A Journey to the Center of Procrastination : YouTube and Historical Rap Battles

      Much like  I had mentioned on my previous post, I am a busy college student. Very busy. By that, I mean that I peruse YouTube and completely ignore most if not all of my responsibilities as a student and as a functioning human being in today's fast-moving society. Anyway, what I'm getting at is Epic Rap Battles of History. Due to the fact that I'm genuinely a child, I get an incredible amount of entertainment out of these videos. Often laced with more offensive material than an internet troll could muster, ERB is usually rather educational and incredibly pleasing to the eye. Or not. There's really no in between. One of my favourites was a finale episode where they pit five monumental directors against each other in the form of, you guessed it, a rap battle. Honestly, why not. Warning: it's very NSFW with its profane lyrics. Sorry. Not really. It is a good watch, though.

    

       One of my favorite parts of these videos are the loads and loads of behind the scenes that they upload alongside the main photos. These videos usually showcase anything from the recording process, the post production, the costumes, and even just a full dance cover version. I enjoy seeing how much effort goes into the backgrounds because they tend to build them from scratch and usually use the same small things over and over but in different ways so the normal viewer wouldn't notice. Overall, I find it a very unique idea and really inspiring and I love learning their little shortcuts and reasonings when creating all of the aspects of their project.  I wouldn't wanna work on it myself (I actually really would), but it is very nice to see all of the steps that go into creating the special effects and backgrounds for these videos. 

"The Look of Saul Bass: Title Designer"

Saul Bass is a major influence on the rise of title sequences for feature films. As a graphic designer and a filmmaker heis best known for his title sequences, film posters and corporate logos. He made title sequences for Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese. His sequences started a trend and moved title sequences in a new direction.

"He did something very simple very graphic very modern. And he did that with very economical means."

"To set up a context. To take you from the time when you're getting your popcorn to to bring you to the place where you need to be to follow this story to put you in that context."

"People kind of woke up and said, hey the main title sequence can be a vehicle by which he artist may express himself...he did something that was graphically innovative."

His simplicity, but very telling and purposeful titles re invented another aspect to the entire art of storytelling.

Extreme Detail Used in Movies

So a few of my friends were sending around this article that Cracked.com just put out. It's called "7 Movies That Put Insane Work Into Details You Didn't Notice"and it shows some rather nice work.

The first one they list is a movie that we talked about in class and actually had a chance to view the process of the title sequence: Se7en. We got to see a little more than what Cracked talks about, but the article does talk about how the creators wrote the journal entries, found and attached pictures, and actually bound the pages together.

Continuing on, Cracked.com talks about a beautiful animation that I have never even heard of. The Thief and the Cobbler, which inspired Disney's Aladdin, was written and directed by Richard Williams. It was about 30 years into the making, but was never finished. Animation World Network Magazine even had an article on it in 1997 talking about the work and background of the story.

Now even if you don't read the article, you should definitely watch this animation because the detail is really quite amazing.

Cracked.com continues on the examine Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Stanley Kubrick's Filmography, The Matrix, Ghostbusters, and finally Akira Kurosawa's Entire Filmography. 

The article is a bit short and not as detailed as I would like it to be, but it definitely opened up my eyes a bit more to the detail that goes into these movies. I've watched Ghostbusters since I was a kid and while I knew that the terms they were using were real, reading the article really emphasized how each director, writer, designer, creator, and producer should really look into even the simplest details in order to make a production that much better. When creating something, no matter what your job is, the project will always come out better with a little more research. Not only will it make it more realistic, but sometimes it will even inspire you to create something else. Detail may seem futile or unnecessary, even out of the budget, but creating something with such depth can really pay off in the reception of the final product.