The original idea
of experimenting with ‘dreams’ was from a lesson where our group decided to
suggest random ideas and concepts to see how we could develop them. If an
idea didn’t take-off, then we would move on to the next suggestion. I
came up with the idea of a dream and Perpe suggested possibly experimenting
with a dream becoming a nightmare. I immediately envisioned the look of
our film to become similar to that of ‘Ink’ by Jamin Winans. Winans has
created a few short films and two feature length films. ‘Ink’ is a
feature length and uses editing techniques to portray dreams. It too
shows the golden glow of a good dream as well as dark greens, blacks and blues
to represent a nightmare. The effect used at the beginning of the film to
show a good dream, is similar to the look we achieved with our dream sequence.
Our short film
included a small cast of three which conforms to the conventions of short film
as they don’t usually need a large cast.
Also, the use of a simple cast contrasts with the complexities of the
story. The use of handheld camera shots
accompanied by static shots gives the film a realistic and gritty feeling. In addition, in order to make the most of the
short length of the film, we overlapped many shots so that we can be seen to be
telling two stories at once – the dream and real-life.
Our film was aimed
at teenagers and we tried to appeal to them by casting actors in their
teens. Also, by using bold and vivid
colours we thought this would keep our target audience’s attention as they can
have a tendency to be easily distracted.
The lack of speech and
random shots can leave the audience unsure of the exact story. This is purposely done to represent the
complexities of the human mind and to give the audience their chance to
interpret the film their own way.
In Jamin Winans’
films and shorts, he uses non-diegetic music to create emotion in his audience
and, as our film didn’t include any dialogue, non-diegetic music was extremely
important for helping the story to come across to the viewers. We included few diegetic sounds but, where we
did, they were often accompanied by non-diegetic music. However, the use of the tap dripping at the
end, against silence and escorting the dark images, slows the film down by
building anticipation before the reveal of the ending.
I believe we did
well to overcome our problems during filming, especially on our first day of
filming when our film camera stopped working. It showed that we could
work well under pressure when Perpe and I came up with the solution to film the
scene using photos and I think it worked just as well as if we’d used the proper
film camera.
As I acted in the
film, I tried to give as much creative input to the shots used as I could. Also, any shots that I was not appearing in, I
would either film or try to involve myself in some other way, such as directing.
Because the dream concept of our film
was my idea, I had a strong idea of what the film should look like. However, acting in the film made it difficult
to achieve the final product I had imagined, because those filming the scenes that
I was in had their own version of the scene in mind and, when it came to
editing, we had to combine our visions.
At times, editing
proved difficult, but we managed to achieve the look we wanted in the
end. Some effects we spent more lessons on than we maybe should have but,
once we’d conquered them, it made other effects easier to work out how to
achieve. We spent a few lessons figuring out how to make it appear as if
we were looking from the female protagonist – Raine’s – point of view, as she
was blinking. And, once we figured out how to use cross fades to achieve
this, we were able to improve the look of the cross fades in the rest of our
film. Also, when we had established how to adjust the colour and add
effective vignettes to the dream sequence, it improved the intensity of the
pictures at the end by knowing how to achieve the ideal look.
During the editing
process, we all gave our input and I was never afraid to edit a section to show
my group how I had envisioned it. If we
disagreed, we always tried to compromise so that we were all satisfied with the
final product.
When our MACs were
stolen, it meant that we lost our flow of editing and, when we returned to
finish our short film, we found that we took a while to familiarise ourselves
with the film. Also, we had to remind
ourselves of how to use Final Cut Pro and the entire look we wanted to achieve
for our short film.
In conclusion, I believe
that our final short film successfully appealed to its target audience as well
as achieved the ideal look of the dream sequences. However, if we hadn’t have had the issue with
the film camera or had the MACs stolen, our film could have been more successful
as we could have achieved the film that we envisioned originally.
