In preparation of our short film project which we will be directing, producing, editing and perhaps even starring in ourselves for some of the groups, we did a mini filming exercise last Tuesday in our groups. Ant, James and I went out to film around campus using a script written by Mike Johnston himself about someone who receives a phone call that brings mysterious bad news. We did this in order to get used to filming in a way that doesn't break the cardinal rule of filming: the 180 degree rule. Each of the groups were given a different direction to keep true to, ours was to be shot going from left to right, making sure that we never broke the 180 degree rule. Here is our finished product (which was heavily edited by James at the end to make me sound like I was making some sort of animal noise!)
After this, Mike had us do a collaboration with another group that was doing the opposite direction to us to show how the continuity of direction would be broken if we did ever pass the 180 degree line. We linked up with Ed, Mike and Kirsty to do our joint collaboration, shown below:
This is good to know since it's the small details like this that make films work. We don't realise how much needs to be taken into consideration so that the finished piece will make sense to the audience, so this exercise was good for hammering the golden 180 degree rule into us for the future. It was also loads of fun filming it and gave us some directing, filming, producing, editing and acting experience.
Here is the finished product, with our own twist on the ending...enjoy!
On Tuesday we all went to Paintworks Studios in Bristol, where much of the 3rd year work will take place, to pitch our ideas for our short film projects to the director of Paintworks and Mike in a semi-formal setting (at least more formal than we're used to!). We created a PowerPoint presentation to present our proposal, treatment and influences of our piece, shown below:
This was a good experience for us since it prepares us for what we might do in future jobs if we go into this sort of work, pitching ideas formally and preparing every aspect of the story. Some pointers that we were given were that we need to definitely decide on who will be the main character of the story; we need to make sure it's doable in the 5 - 7 minute timeframe and not complicate it too much; and our presentation should have been more legible and appropriate for presenting - less words, more impressions. All these things are good to know for the future and will definitely be taken into account for the next time.
Our next group project is making a short film. We brainstormed our ideas and put ourselves into groups depending on which idea we wanted to use and after some deliberation I joined with James and Ant. We decided to do a short psychological thriller piece entitled So It Goes, following the last few days of a schizophrenic man's life through his own journal entries, found by a mysterious woman who seems to be obsessed with finding out about this man for reasons we only find out at the end.
It took us a while to get all the details of the plot and storyline down, since we started with a much simpler idea but have since modified it to try to make it more original and avoid the trap of predictability. We decided after speaking with Mike that if we only made it centred on the man, it would follow a storyline that's been done many times over. By introducing the mysterious woman though and making the film mainly about her and why she's trying to find out about this man's life, we hope to put a twist on the plot and make an original, interesting and thought-provoking short film (full details of plot, proposal and treatment can be found in the PowerPoint presentation in the blog about our pitch at PaintWorks Studios).
When we spoke with Mike the first time about our idea, he suggested we go by an acronym used in script writing: CDOG. He said that we need four elements to make a good storyline: we need a Character, there needs to be a Desire, there then needs to be an Obstacle to them getting that desire and finally there needs to be a resolution, reaching the Goal. This helped us in forming our storyline below:
Character - We decided to put a twist on the story and instead of the man who is narrating the piece be the main character, make it the mysterious woman seen in the beginning of the film.
Desire - This character's main desire, that we only realise at the end, is to try to find out what is wrong with her mentally by following the footsteps of the man she suspects has the same mental condition.
Obstacle - The obstacle will be that as soon as she realises that there is someone else that is suffering from the same symptoms that could be able to help her, she starts following him attempting to find a way to approach him. However, she loses him in the city and finds out later about his death by reading about it in a newspaper. This shatters her hopes of finding out what it could have been they both shared in common, but she is determined to still find out all she can - hence the obsessive collecting of anything to do with him we see scattered across her desk in the title sequence of the film.
Goal - After stumbling across his diary of his last few days before his death, she finally realises after reading the last page that he had a split personality - and leaves with a newfound hope realising that this is the condition she had as well, knowing that now she can finally get help for it now that the mystery is put to rest.
We would like to shoot this film in a style influenced largely by a music video shot to a song by the band The National, called Daughters of the SoHo Riots:
We would like to film the main part of the film which takes place in the past through the man's narration in black and white as shown above, using specific lighting to highlight certain areas and black out others. We want to emphasise the contrast of his different personalities by using high contrast in the filming and make use of silhouette lighting as much as possible.
Timeline -
Proposal and treatment for group video project 22/01/10 Pitch for group video project 02/02/10 at Paintworks Complete peer assessment of group projects 23/04/10 Complete group projects 04/05/10
Each of the groups were given a different direction to keep true to, ours was to be shot going from left to right, making sure that we never broke the 180 degree rule. Here is our finished product (which was heavily edited by James at the end to make me sound like I was making some sort of animal noise!)
