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Les Misérables - Video Post

January 4, 2013

Les Miserables is a musical that carries a lot of weight for me.  I read an abridgement of the story first when I was in Mrs. Hill’s grade 8 class, I have seen two professional stage versions of it, read a much longer abridgement of it twice and directed the musical twice.  For me it sits at the pinnacle of what musical theatre can be.  It has a story which really matters, music that grabs your soul and twists hard and it is all brought together in a package that is wonderfully exhausting and completely worthwhile.  So the prospect of seeing it in a movie is something that I was, mostly looking forward to, but also somewhat afraid of.  This music, this story is very important to me and I did not want to see it sullied.

I loved Anne Hathaway.  Her performance carried a fragile grace that is so painful to watch as it is broken.  “I Dreamed a Dream” is not so much sung as torn from her by the tigers in the night.  Jackman could have paid attention to her example of acting into the song without loosing the melodic thread.  Many people have commented on the excessive use of close ups, I did not find this to be distracting for me.  The musical is a large grand thing but it is very much the story of individuals and being able to see their faces as they sing in a way that it is impossible to when you are watching it live was engaging for me.

There were some things that disappointed me.  Hugh Jackman tries to act into the music so much that we sometimes loose the melodic thread.  There are some expositional elements added to the songs to help the uninitiated through the story and I didn’t mind that until Gavroche goes on a narrative streak in the second verse of “Do You Hear the People Sing?” the was just pure exposition.  The song that they added in during Cossette and Valjean’s ride to paris did not fit with the musical themes or the tone of the musical; it was very out of place.  Javert did not bristle with the righteous intensity that his character demands and then he pins his medal on Gavroche’s dead body, I felt that that was completely out of place.  Aside from Jackman’s interpretation these are relatively small things and I really enjoyed the experienced of seeing this musical on the big screen.

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The most important thing this movie did for me was to send me back to Indonesia, to the last time that I directed this musical.  It was a small international school, I think about 40-50 in the high school and they had never had a theatre program there.  Many people had trouble believing that it could be done but the talent that we had to work with was remarkable and the willingness to work hard was incredible.  I remember so clearly that everyone was on stage in bare feet during a dress rehearsal and we were doing “Master of The House” and someone broke a glass and everyone just kept going, dancing around the broken glass.  I remember that we had 3, well 2, wireless mics and the mic changes where sometimes had to be tricky and very quick.  Kayla coming up to Song-Min right down stage, pretending to talk to him and removing his mic without anyone noticing, Jenna coughing up her mic in a bowl as she died, Sam Ee crawling under the stage to deliver his mic.  I remember how great they all sounded when the chorus broke out in to full voice.  I remember Song-Min holding Megan then carrying her off on a severely injured knee.  I remember Ari stuffing jewelry and a giant blanket? down her blouse during “Master of The House”.  I remember Korey rushing over to me to explain some disaster during a performance in Korean.  I remember Peter Seow saving our young vocalists if they got a little lost.  I remember “Confrontation” as Sam Ee and Johnny, our two vocal thoroughbreds went at each other.  I remember the way the last note of “Do You Hear the People Sing?” ringing through the multi-pupose room until the applause broke out.  I remember seeing our young inexperienced cast hear the applause and know that they had told the story well.  That they had sung like angels and danced with all their hearts.  It was a wonderful experience.  Thank-you to all of the Papua kids who shared it with me.  I have put together a little clip collection of some of the highlights of the show.  Hopefully it brings back as many good memories for you as it did for me.

-Russell Berg

In Portrait, Video Tags Papua, Hugh Jackman, Movie, Musical, Les Miserables, Review, Anne Hathaway, Performance, Stage
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Beginning

December 21, 2012

The prow points out into the morning mist. Canon EOS 7D EF-S 10-22mm at f/4.5 1/30 ISO 200

A photograph needs contrast to produce an interesting image. There is something special about the contrast of colours and textures. The hard smooth wood (1) of the prow pointing off into the soft vaporous mists (2) is accentuated by the shift in colour from the warm reds and ochres of the cedar (3) to the cool blues and whites of the water and the fog (4). I pushed up the contrast and the saturation values to increase the difference between the two tonal ranges in the photograph.

-Russell Berg

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In Landscape Tags Seascape, Morning, Boats, Ocean, Mist, Voyage, Begin, Still Life
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25 Years

December 20, 2012

Young lovers in a stream.  He has set the timer on the camera and scrambled over the rocks to be there on time.  The shutter clicks and they sit on the edge of the water, talking.  They sit on the rock and they are unaware of so many things.  There is the sparkle and shine of a new relationship and the whole world is lit with that light.  They don't understand what love means or how it changes a person.  They don't know that what they have is only the beginning of what it will become; for their love will have time to grow and breath and become something else entirely, something so much more real.  The babies will come and the lovers will see in each of the children a little of themselves, a little more of the other to love in the small hand that reaches up to grasp their finger.  Their love will be tested and tempered in a furnace that produces a new thing that is once again different, and beautiful and strong.  They find in the other the better angels of their own nature and they look forward to what is next.

-Russell Berg

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In Portrait Tags Anniversary, Stream, Portraits, Marriage, 25, Lovers
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The Banjo King

December 19, 2012

A lonely busker sits on the street, plucking at his banjo. Fuji X10 28mm f/2.8 1/1000 ISO 200

There is something that rises inside of him and pushes against the inside of his skull.  It is almost an ache, a presence there in his brain that is only relieved when his fingers are moving, when the sound comes and the vibrations pulse.  Music sits deep inside him and it must find an exit.  This creative impulse is at the centre of himself and it must needs find a way out.

Sometimes getting a good picture is simply a matter of having a camera with you.  I was driving around Victoria and stopped at a light.  I looked over to my left and saw this guy sitting on the sidewalk.  I grabbed my X10 out of my purse and quickly snapped off an image.  I wanted to put him off centre and to have a large empty space in the sidewalk so I composed and snapped before the light changed.  The amount of thought and planning I put into the image was minimal but having my camera with me and ready to go made the image possible.

-Russell Berg

In Portrait, Urban Tags Victoria, Street Life, Busker, Banjo, Sidewalk, Music, Sitting
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Mother & Child

December 17, 2012

A mother seal gently nudges her pup in the waters of Departure Bay. Canon EOS 7D EF 70-300 at 300mm f/13 1/200 ISO 100

I went out into Departure Bay to get some good images of seals. From my kayak I saw them sunning themselves on the shore. We stayed back quite a ways but many of them were quite curious animals and a seal pup popped up quite close to my kayak. I noticed this and as I pulled up my camera to get a photo the mother popped up right beside and gave the pup a little nudge. It was a great moment that dramatically improved the image I got. The long telephoto, 300mm on a crop sensor camera really brings the image in, gave me a lot of detail and I cropped it in a little tighter when I got home. Photos of wild animals are always interesting but finding a way to tell a story with the image or reveal a behaviour makes them more dynamic and compelling.

-Russell Berg

In Wildlife Tags Pup, Ocean, Mammmal, Mother, Animal, Child, Seal, Departure Bay
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