TD 313 – Basket Weaving Basics

TD 313 – Basket Weaving I

TD 313 – Dress Making Process Part 1

The wool is dyed and then left out to dry overnight.

Once the wool is dry it is then brushed together.

The same method of wet felting is followed.

Once the wet felting is complete, the same technique of shrinking the hat is applied to the dress: hot water and force.

The dress is then left to dry before trying it on and stretching the fibres to fit.

TD 313 – Hat Making Process Part 3

Following the standard procedures of creating felt I made the pattern shape of the hat and then used hot water and force to shrink it to the correct size.

To create the space for the folds at the back I began to shape the brim and cut the appropriate sections away.

So for the meantime I have the basic shape created and the next part is for the decorations to be added.

TD 313 – Hat Making Process Part 2

The same process is followed as pre-felting. The wool is layered in opposite directions and then merged together with soapy warm water.

The piece is then rolled, being rotated each time you unroll it.

TD 313 – Third Project

Originally we were supposed to make a mask to complete this trilogy of felt projects, however we have now been given the freedom to make whatever we would like. After a peer of mine designed some boots to match her hat, I decided to keep going with the 1920s theme and create a dress to go along with it. Once they have both been made I will model them before handing them in to be marked.

TD 313 – Hat Making Process Part 1

I chose the red and mulberry wool I dyed to create the felt for this hat. Firstly I separated the wool and laid the colours out on the brush.

Next I merged the fibres together by gently brushing the wool.

By brushing the wool in the same direction instead of opposite directions, it folds up and comes off of the brush.

By following this formula I was able to create the correct size for my pattern.

Next I drew the pattern to scale and cut it out.

FMS 321 – Italian Neorealism

Background

• “Neorealism” first used to Visconti’s Ossessione (1943)
• Post-WWII Italy (1945-53) height of Neorealism
• Rome Open City (1945), Paisan (1946), Germany Year Zero (1948) – Rossellini
• La Terra Trema (Visconti 1948)
• Shoeshine (1946), Bicycle Thieves (1948), Umberto D. (1952) – Vittorio de Sica
• “Contemporary social, historical, and political subject matter”
• Protagonists consist of poor or marginalised groups
• Low budget, low production values
• Ordinary individuals in oppressive political/ socioeconomic conditions
• Location shooting
• Emphasis on non-professional actors
• Narratives typically focus on quotidian details of life; less emphasis on plot, more emphasis on occurrences/ events

Context

• Social, political, economic
  • Reaction to prewar, Fascist influence on Italian cinema. Typically light/ indirect treatment of political issues
  • Centro Sperimentale in Rome: Attended by Rossellini, Antonioni, and other practitioners of postcard Neorealism
  • Cinecittà
  • Political gap left after Fascism filled by Christian Democrats
    • 1944-48 Centrist coalition of:
      • Italian Communist Party
      • Socialist Party
      • Liberal Party
  • Alcide de Gasperi, Christian Democrat, Prime Minister 1945-48
  • 1945-48 brief window for Neorealists
  • 1948 Christian Democrats separate from the Communist and Socialist parties.
  • Oct 5 1945: Fascist film laws repealed.
    • ENIC was dismantled
      • Loss of monopoly on distribution
      • Hollywood films return. 1949: 369 (73% of box office receipts). 95 Italian films released.
  • 1949: Undersecretary of Public Entertainment, Giulio Andreotti
    • “Andreotti laws”
      • Import limits, screen quotas
      • Pre-production censorship
      • Script approval for funds and export licences
    • Chastised and punished Neorealists
      • “Washing dirty linen in public”
      • “Slandering Italy abroad”
• Aesthetic
  • Verismo. “Objective” presentation of life; lower classes; unadorned language.
  • Postwar resurgence of relish in Italian literature with novelists such as Italo Calvino
  • André Bazin “An Aesthetic of Reality: Neorealism”
    • “Reconstituted reportage”
      • Compares Neorealism to modern novel (Faulkner, Hemingway, Malraux, Dos Passos, Camus)
      • The modern novel reduces “the strictly grammatical aspect of its stylistics to a minimum”
      • Compares cinematography to Bell and Howell newsreel camera.
        • “Almost a living part of the operator, instantly in tune with his awareness”
      • “Air of documentary, a naturalness neared to the spoken than to the written accounts, to the sketch rather than to the painting
  • Il Bandito (Lattuada, 1946)
    • Travelling streets, discovering what is left
    • Focus on environmental, panoramic shot. 1st person.
    • American music.
  • Paisan (Rossellini, 1946)
    • Sound made on-screen, except voice over narration, very documentary
    • All on location
    • Longer takes

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Roberto Rossellini

Biography

• Born in Rome, Italy 1906
• Son of a wealthy Italian architect
• Went to Cinema Corso as a child a lot
• Worked as an apprentice in film; gained experience in sound, dubbing, set design, editing, screenwriting
• Directed his first short documentary in 1937
• Close friend of Vittorio Mussolini, son of Il Duce

Fascist Trilogy

• Italian armed forces: The White Ship (1941), A Pilot Returns (1942), Man of the Cross (1943)
• First two funded by Fascist regime
• “Fictional Documentary”
  • Documentary footage
  • Staged action shot on location
  • Focus on contemporary narrative events

Rome, Open City (1945)

• Shot in 1945, while Italy was still at ward
• Story centred on three anti-Fascist protagonists during the Nazi occupation of Rome. Struggling to survive.
• Based in part on true events

Paisan (1946)

• Financed by international investors, distributed in the US by MGM
• Follows progress of Allied forces from southern to northern Italy
• Composed of 6 segments connected by newsreel footage

Germany, Year Zero (1947)

• Follows a 12 year old boy struggling to survive in post-war Berlin
• Financed by French production company
• Dedicated to his son
• Real settings, rough script

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Other Neorealist Filmmakers

• Visconti La Terra Trema (1948)
  • Family in Sicily mortgage home to buy a boat to catch fish and sell
  • Everything is real
  • Encourages dialect
• Zavattini, primarily a screenwriter
  • Most vocal proponent of Neorealism
  • “Some Ideas on the Cinema” – article on ethical responsibility of filmmakers
• de Sica, starts as a romantic/ comedic actor in white telephone films. Noted for work with non-prof. actors as leads. Il Signor Max (1937)
  • Locations are in tact
  • Order and structure
  • Lighthearted subject matter. Humorous

TD 313 – Initial Felt Hat Design

TD 313 – Hat Inspiration

Pócs Judit   

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Cloche Hats