Monday, 31 January 2011

Evaluation

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.

Monday, 29 November 2010

What's left to do...

  • Finish editing the colour of the nightmare scenes 
  • Finish the Overlays within the nightmare scenes (for example find a suitable position for the knife) 
  • Edit the visual of Raine and the Seductress running from the bench – it is too long. 
    • Cut down the visual of the candle  
    • Maybe visual of the vodka? 
  • Edit the stop frame pictures (i.e. make them darker etc, and more shadowy) 
  • Put a voiceover over the nightmare scenes (i.e. the candle) 
    • Find a scream/add the one that we recorded 
    • Put the sound of the tap dripping on the stop frame segment 
  • Create a soundtrack (dream like music which transcends to music that represents a nightmare) 
  • Photoshop of the title Raine

Thursday, 18 November 2010

Editing Process So Far

We began the editing process by watching through our clips and labeling what we thought were our best clips.  Also, we marked in some of the longer clips so that when we returned to use that clip we would know what part of the clip we wanted to use.  We laid our chosen clips on the timeline in chronological order so that we had a basic beginning middle and end.  We then started checking continuity and cut down/lengthened clips so that they flowed better.

When we weren't long into the editing process I think we all realised that some of our shots didn't work or weren't filmed as we'd imagined or that we'd missed out a shot that we hadn't thought of in between a change of scene.  Also, some of our shots were filmed as it started getting dark so aren't as good quality as other shots and we rushed them slightly to get all the shots in, so we didn't have enough shots to choose from.  Any of these issues are bound to affect our final product, however we have tried and will continue to try and create the film we envisioned and overcome any issues we come across.


Recently Perpe has researched Final Cut Pro techniques in response to effects and looks we want to give our clips but couldn't seem to achieve through experimentation.  This will improve the results we get at the end of the rest of our lessons and hopefully our film's final look will be something we are proud of.

We've had ups and downs, but in the end we've always ended the lessons with something we can all agree on and are happy with.

The Filming Process

We planned to film for at least four days (Monday-Thursday) in the second week of our half term.  Depending on the availability of our female protagonist would decide when we filmed in each location.  We decided that we didn't have to use our protagonist for the 'bathroom scene' as we don't see her face and we could use someone else's hand.  We wanted to spend two of the other days filming in the park and the other day of filming by the tunnel.

Thursday, 11 November 2010

The Presentation: Raine












Notes for our Presentation

Presentation Notes

Notes typed and edited by Perpe


Synopsis:
·      When trying to create a concept we wanted to explore the two extremes of sleep (a state on vulnerability) and thus merged the idea of dream and nightmare.
·      We wanted to do something different and approach the subject of suicide from a different angle and felt that this was unique because it was created using a more realistic feel.

Actors:
·      In creating Rain, we’ve delved into the fine line between reality and dreaming and created this obviously troubled character. The name choice came quite naturally and it reflects the instability in everything surrounding her.
·      The seductress is one of those characters that you know as soon as you see her is trouble. The iconic white dress, adds to her surrealism, yet she is the one thing that stays the same, because what we see with her, is exactly what we get.
·      The Boyfriend is the ultimate deceiver. Aside from the seductress, we have created a character that Rain can fully trust, which we see in the way she responds to him and once that is taken away from her, the question is what is left for her? And by keeping her ambiguous the question is did she ever really have anything?
·      The small cast, allow us to focus more on Rain’s feelings etc.

Location:
·      We have decided to film in a massive park (Finsbury Park) so we can get to different extremes, the woodland and the more public access parks.
·      By keeping it simple, we help retain the realism.

Props:
·      The water bottle is integral to the whole film, because it is the core from which everything expands.

Storyboard for Raine