John Howe
Howe was born on August 21st, 1957 in Vancouver, British Columbia. He began drawing around the age when he was in pre-school. As he got older, his expectations of art had made him frustrated at himself and his mom. Who helped him with enhancing his drawing skills. When he graduated from high school, he attended college in Strasbourg, France at the Ecole des arts decoratifs.
His most well-known work involve with the work of J.R.R. Tolkien. His partner in crime Alan Lee worked Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy from 1999-2003. He has also done artwork for board games, card games (Magic the Gathering), books (Beowulf), and other works.
Some of his early commissions included political cartoons, magazines, comics, animated films, and advertising.
He has a very unique style of drawing. All his works have sense of sketches within the finished piece. Very organic feel to them, this is the style I like a lot to replicate or hopefully incorporate into my own style.
FILM
Art has its own sense of evolution, from paintings in caves of the primitive man to the height of pieces blasted on the sides of buildings. People have their own way to express their ideas and visions in art. Some draw, some write poetry, some paint, and some even create it through music. For me, I favorite way to communicate art is through film making.
There are many components that go into making any kind of film. It could be a narrative (science fiction, fantasy, war, romance, comedy), a documentary, visual art piece. There is a process, and one must know and understand the stages to become successful at making it into the film industry. Yet, most don’t know the history
In the early history of film making, we can look as far back as 1832, when the zoetrope a small optical toy that is a rotating drum and, on the inside, has successive phase drawings of things in motion. Eadweard Muybridge popularized this technique with his very famous “moving picture” reel of a horse at full gallop to see if horses did in fact have all four hooves completely off the ground at some point. This technique was used to settle a bet between two rich men, one saying that all four feet leave the ground while the other did not believe him.
Even when you understand the history behind film, knowing the five stages of processing is a whole other thing. There is development, pre-production, production, post-production, and distribution. However, when you are just talking about the building process, you only need to worry about the middle three.
Pre-Production: In this stage you work out your filmmaking idea and how you will tell your story. Before filming can begin, things have to be finalized. This is where the director, producers and the executives come together to figure out how to proceed with the story. Crew and Actors are hired, set building, location scouting, story building, and many more, its all done during here. Once all the legal steps are done, it is time for the fun to begin with filming!
Production: This is the stage where you go out on location or use a sound stage to film out your story. The director works with the actors and instructs them on how to portray their characters. While giving them creative control to be able to tell the characters story. Being able to tell the story over the course of a set number of months can have its own challenges. Within those challenges comes obstacles of things not going they way they are suppose to. But as the director, it is their job to come up with solutions and consult with others if they need help. Remember, this is meant to be a team effort. In the end, it is meant to be fun going out and shooting footage. Note to have, you should shoot a bit more than you need, but if you shoot hours of footage it’ll take you forever to sort through it to find the bits you want. For a one-minute drama film you might need to shoot between three and five minutes of video. Documentaries – where you can’t control what there is to film – will need much more than this.
Post-Production: This is where all the footage is brought back to the studio and lined up in a sequence to what the film is going to be like. Then the next stage is to add the effects to make the picture come to life. Making it the best film that it can be depending on the budget and the skill level of everyone involved. Do a ‘rough cut’ of the whole film (if it’s short) or individual sequence so you can get a sense of the bigger picture.
Sure, you can make your films on your own, but when your looking on getting into the industry. There are many avenues you can go and jobs you can take up to have a good career. Some of the most well known ones include and not limited to Editor, Cinematographer, Colorist, Director, Actor, Producer, 1st Assistant Director, and many others.
Research material
https://www.careersinfilm.com/
https://www.britannica.com/art/history-of-the-motion-picture
