Timothy Pearson's evaluation of short film sequence:
Our sequence is set near the beginning of the film where our main character interacts with a character from the fantasy type world, and then the clip ends as she falls into the fantasy world.
Genre/sub genre has influenced the decisions we have made by giving us an insight into how our genre (fantasy) has been used in other films, so that we learned the best way to portray ours, for example our clip from our film is based on an 'Alice in wonderland' type world but a sort of 'Pan's Labyrinth' type plot. An example of this is where you get the part where the man in the hat appears, he is a kind of representation of the 'mad Hatter' from 'Alice in Wonderland'.
As the director I have developed the narrative by listening to everyone in the group, as well as contributing my own ideas. I have aimed to make everything run smoothly so that we would not be set back by anything, as the group decided to do the shooting in my village, I had to make sure that they all knew where my house was, how to get there and what time to be there. This was quite effective as we all knew where we were going to shoot, we had all the equipment with us, and everything ran smoothly with the shooting. The only real problem was was, that each member of the group arrived at different times.
I worked with the editor to help him, when using the editing software keep to the storyboard, but also to change anything that we realized doesn't work as effectively, an example of this was the shots where you get the girl looking over the edge of the roof, at first it was quite plain that she looked over the edge however it was not the most stable of shots, we placed a second clip of the same view on top, so that it looked as though in the girls point of view shot she was seeing double image, I worked with the sound man, as we created the sound track to fit the actual clip by contributing my own audio files, as well as helping in the recording of a voice over. Lastly I helped the person behind the camera by scouting for locations we could use for filming, and by supplying a HD camera for good quality footage.
As we completed the our set task, we change our plans in many forms for example, when it came to shooting the footage, we changed our locations so that we would all be able to get there, we decided to use a better quality camera shot for certain shots to stand out. When it came to editing this footage we decided we did not have enough so we went back to re shoot certain aspects of clip.
Lastly when we had all the footage and when editing we had make some changes to what was going on in the storyboard, to create a better, visual image.
I wanted to the audience to respond positively to the Directing of the sequence and locations, with the use of Mise-en scene, as they both show the required specifications for the scenes and they work well with the actors, in portraying the story.
The props we used also shows the audience the type of film that it as it gives a strange sense to the film, having something peculiar in an average place. The costumes also emphasize to the audience positive directing as the costumes help portray the scene. for example the clothes that the man wears, are weird, having a large brimmed hat and a waist coat. The performance all together, shows good directing because it holds everything together making the audience understand what type of film this is.
The feedback that we received told us that the editing and sound were well done and did what was expected. Viewers commented on how they recognized that it had an 'Alice in wonderland' type theme. However, some people said that the music was to based on the piano and needed more variety of instruments, we received comment on how the camera work was rough in places and could be improved. These comments have told me that we edited our clip quite successfully to produce a good and understanding storyline, however there are some aspects that could be improved.
I think my technical skills have enable me to make the creative choices, as I have used my camera to take extra footage for our group so that we would not have to repeat the day shooting the majority of our shots, this put our group at an advantage of having lots of footage giving us a lot of options to go by. In class we needed an audio dub, the room wasn't quiet, so that we couldn't record. Luckily I had my laptop and the required software so that we could record the dub somewhere quieter, without any interruptions.
To conclude I believe that we have as a group worked hard at producing our final clip to high standards. Thinking about what it is about and what we where trying to achieve to give it a weird 'Alice in Wonderland' type feel, in which I think we have accomplished this in not only the visual aspects of the clip but in the sound as well.
Good use of angles sloppy panning good use of close up
Mise-en-scene
good when she changes clothes guy was well dressed and mysterious not noticeable that she fell into a new world good use of setting and shots good costumes
Editing good panning mental people? very good editing liked double vision
Sound
Trippy soundtrack good use of dreany voice filter nice use of Diagetic sound (birds) little bit linear (only piano tunes)
we have completed a second rough draft of our film, we also have agreed that there are still several improvements to be made before the final cut. We added a piece of footage to replace one of the less refined shots at the beginning and it now looks much better. We are currently working towards our final cut for the deadline.
Unfortunately, due to weather circumstances, we have missed a weeks worth of lessons, due to the college being closed,and students not being able to get to college. to catch up, we will work on editing for our final cut, and blog and everything else at the same time.
The extra footage that I had to go back to shoot as I had my own film camera, so that we could add more to the Rough Cut, consisted mainly of footage, walking up to the roof top, the scenery around that particular roof. I took an estimated five minute of footage there. as well as that we choose that should also go down to the fields, to where we shot the last few scenes in our rough cut where the girl falls to. I was too shoot some scenes where you could see the surrounding area, so that we could incorporate it into the final rough cut. I spent another five minutes taking footage of that surrounding area. On my way back from collecting this footage, I heard some very clear and loud early morning birds, so I put my camera to record outside my house, for about two minutes to gain some good clear wildlife sound, the actual imagery that I recorded, would not be of use to the group as it does not work with anything else that we had caught on tape. When I brought this footage into class, we unfortunately only had enough time to upload the footage of the wildlife noises, however we did manage to incorporate them into our rough cut quite successfully. So the things that the rest of the footage that I captured will be used in another Rough cut where we will be able to use footage, that is much steadier, as the previous footage that we used for our first rough cut is a bit shaky, as we had trouble using the tripod up on the roof and in the trees, even though I did suggest to the rest of the group that we could use my guerrilla pod, we have then decided in future because of our mistake we will use the guerrilla for when we are in the trees or on the rooftop. We will also use more of a voice over for the other cuts of our film, so that we can make the sound quality much better. For in our first rough cut we found that we did not have a great quality of sound because the camera did not pick much of the sound, because of the sound of the tape recording in the background. Another way we could remedy this situation would be to use My HD camera a bit more because it does not have a tape making noises in the background, and this will benefit us in more than one way as it has better quality of picture, you can adjust the amount of sound that the camera picks up and you can adjust the image according to the type of weather it is at that point in time so you don't have a dark home movie type image.
The sound is a bit rough at the moment but for the final cut we will voice over most of the piece. The music works particularly well in this extract. We also wanted to add some more establishing shots and exchange one of them as it's a bit shaky. Some of the piece may have more effects added in, mainly to the audio.
the rough cut is nearly finished, we are just checking it through to see where we can add the new clips that Tim got, at the moment we are converting the new clips
We have sorted out our schedule for this sunday. Our filming will take place on sunday and we will be using a location of Tim's, Most of today has been spent figuring out how to get to there and when. We will be needing actors from outside the class, Lloyd has been in charge of them but if they can't make it Vonnie will attempt to find someone, and if that fails Tim can get someone from his village.
Vonnie has some elements of clothes that will work with anybody so costumes is sorted and Tim has a top hat and waistcoat for the male character. Because the lighting may change we may have some lighting equipment to help. Because Vonnie is the camera person it's her job to bring it on sunday.
The Locations that we have decided to film at have a varied, scenery as well as ideal location types for the sort of film we are doing. These locations are in the village of Harston, five miles South of Long Road.
1. Black Screen -hear a girl humming a tune title appears 2. close up girl- humming tune profile image of girls face 3. Wide shot slow pan- trees, wind rustling, girl humming 4. Medium shot over shoulder- girl humming, view from behind 5. wide shot- park rides move slowly creaking slightly 6. long shot- hows girl sitting on roof, looks cold, uncaring still humming 7.close up of girls eyes- girl blinks several times 8. POV of girl- shows edge of roof, music starts 9. close up of girls eyes- last blink is distorted, camera moves quickly 10. Long POV shot- man appears at roof edge 11. close up profile shot- expression unchanged, long lasting shot 12. close up of man panning- man smiles, hat covers right eye 13. close up of man -he speaks and face is a bit more visible 14. close up slow pan- girls expression blank but seemingly confused, man speaks 15. Long shot, slow pan- music quiet but gets louder, man speaks 16. close up of girl- she looks away sad, nearly nodding 17. Medium shot, long of man- excited, he speaks, energetic 18. medium shot of man- voice becomes distorted 19. close up of mans hand- quick shot 20.close up of girl- stares at hand for while than gets up 21. close up- hand reaches for his, camera cuts before they touch 22. medium long shot- man disappears, girl moves hand back confused, music loud 23. close up of girls feet- she walks to edge of roof 24. high angle from ground- she looks down 25. long shot from side- as above 26. high angle POV- showing ground 27. close up of feet- jumps 28. extreme face close up- falls 29. close up of girl hitting ground safely- (costume/location change) 30. V. long shot of girl- girl confused looks round
we intend to book the camera for the following dates: 22/01/09 - 25/01/09 Rough cut deadline: Thursday 29th January Final cut deadline: Thursday 5th of February
The film extract which I have chosen I think shows you a good example of Directing, is from the film "Atonement". The sequence in this film which I have chosen is the 5 minute long camera shot of Dunkirk, where you see the camera panning around the beech, showing the soldiers, waiting for boats to take them of the beech. The main characters do appear in this shot but they are not the main attraction.
The reason why I believe that this clip is a good example of directing is because, it is quite a challenge to do a 5 minute camera shot without any cuts, without getting something wrong, especially as they have hundreds of people to look after making sure that they know exactly what they are doing at any given time. Also when they want to so a retake, they have to set up hundreds of people back to the start of the shot, which would have taken, over an hour to do with the scale of the shot, in fact they did four re shoots in one whole day. It is has good directing, because without it the scene would have looked a shambles and would have not have brought such a great impact to the film.
For our mood board we used images that were dark and some that were strange and surreal. There are some pictures of the northern lights as they are a naturally strange occurance. Most of the pictures are characters reminiscent of the mad hatter, as this is a character similar to a character in our film idea, there is a significance of the hat in the film so there were quite a few hats. The girl on the roof is similar to a shot that could be done in a part of the film. There were also some shots from Donnie darko and pans labyrinth (inspirations for the film) and quite a few evil looking women from other films.
The music is slow and meant to be creepy to fit the mood of the film and images.
Journey through the depths of a mysterious wonderland as Olivia struggles with her understanding of reality. Following Black, a strange man with an interesting hat, Olivia's concept of what is real and what isn't unravels as the line between imagination and reality becomes thinner.
- A short pitch for the film, exposing as little of the film as possible but still leaving it interesting enough for people to want to see it.
Possible taglines for the film: What is real? The line between worlds is breaking Do you know what is here? Do you know what is real? Where is reality? Dreams can come true
Possible names: Crack in the line Dream hole Crack in the light Final dreams Last dreams Rabbit Break in the line
Initial ideas: The story starts with a young girl with apparent mental health problems. The girl follows a man she thinks she sees in her mind and starts to retreat into this fantasy world more and more, however as the film goes on the line between fantasy and reality becomes thinner until it becomes obvious that there was never fantasy only reality. Because of this the girl turns more insane and ends with her in a prison imagining her family in a normal setting as it once was. The film is focusing on fantasy and reality and how people can never understand what is real and what isn't. The scene that we could do would be the beginning which shows the first switches between reality and fantasy when she goes to wonderland or possibly the end where she is sitting in a prison alone.
The main character: Young and female, between 15 and 20. She lives in an ordinary home. A male character refers to her as 'rabbit'
Inspirations: Donnie Darko - Surreal events Pans labyrinth - strong influence Alice in wonderland - white rabbit type figure, wonderland Kubla khan (poem) - poem that doesn't make sense, creepy
Vonnie camera work. In most projects I have worked in before I have been the camera person and have done story boarding as I do it often in my own time and am a fast drawer. When it comes to camera work and storyboarding I always have a clear idea of what the shot will look like, how to achieve it and what meanings particular shots/props/positioning can convey. Also I have many of my own props and enjoy making them, and have lot's of lighting equipment. I am also learning to design and create costumes as well as already owning quite a few costumes, as I used one in the film swede project. Responsibilities:
Set up, use, looking after equipment.
Shot types/positioning
Following storyboard
movement shots (zoom pan)
Background noise
Costume/props/storyboard
Book out camera
Insurance forms
Tim director. In my role it primarily involves stage directions as well as helping out with other peoples roles as advising and helping everyone understand what they are suposed to do.
