This project has been very different to anything I've tried to make before. I feel as though it has really challenged me in tasks that I have never thought to attempt before and even though they may not have ended up the way I wanted, I'm glad that I've at least had the opportunity to try out new things. The general plot for my film was to touch up on a few things, I'll start with the character of my film first. The reason as to why he wears a blue morphsuit is because I wanted it to resemble being just plain and bland, only one colour meaning only one feeling. Everything was neutral. Moving up the character to his face and his stitched mouth and the reasons for it. I wanted to symbolise how a lot of people in the modern day are too scared to say how they truly feel as they are worried about the outcome and consequences. That lead to the meaning of the cable and the monitor, I feel as though a lot of people can only speak their mind as long as theres a helping hand (i.e. The man is unable to speak due to the stitches and must communicate by displaying his thoughts and fears onto a monitor). I tried to link the thoughts and fears to modern day problems which is why I included the clip with Donald Trump as he is a very intimidating character in todays society.
With regards to the post production, I feel as though I have just been very unlucky, especially on the filming day where I had constant interruptions and in the editing stage where I had to wait for my special effects friend to get back to uni. Having said all of this, I feel as though I coped very professionally with all of my problems that I faced and produced a relatively high quality film which I am quite happy with. Obviously I am not completely pleased with it because I would have loved to have filmed more takes so I feel like the start of the film works very well and is very well paced and edited but towards the end I feel like it is very rushed and that it is very noticeable that it is rushed but other than that, I am pleased with how my film came out and if I had the chance I would love to go back to it and finish the project with as much time as possible to really make something I'm proud of.
Tuesday, 25 April 2017
Monday, 24 April 2017
Experimental Film - Editing Part 2
Once it got to the part of the project where I had to edit the special effects it was the most difficult thing I've ever done. I've never used After Effects before so the whole software looked bizarre to me so instead of trying to press a load of buttons I didn't know, I looked up tutorials on how to do what I wanted. Even after doing this I realised that I was using the newest version of After Effects, different to what the tutorials were showing so a lot of the buttons and options were either out of place or not available anymore. Because of this I had to turn to a friend who specialises in After Effects to teach me what to do as I was still clueless on how to do everything and asked if he could show me how to do it myself. The two things that I needed doing was to have second hand footage playing on a monitor as the camera zoomed into it and to also change the eye colour of my actors eyes. My friend showed me how to create a mask for the monitor and how to track its movement with the camera as it zoomed in. He also showed me how to make null objects and how to follow the path of the actors eyes without doing it frame by frame which was extremely convenient. The whole editing process was very lengthy but was worth it in the end.
Experimental Film - Editing Part 1
The editing stage for my film was very different to any other project I've worked on. This is because it was my first time properly using Premiere Pro so of course, learning the software as I go along was a challenging task. With this project I really wanted to try using foley sound a lot more and so for this reason I only used the camera whilst filming, evidently making the film practically silent as there was no use of exterior microphones. I started piecing the silent clips together and it all went well. I then hired out a Zoom microphone and started recording sounds. The first sound that I really wanted was an ambient buzzing sound; I got this by leaving the microphone next to a powered fridge in a large kitchen which gave it a nice textured echo. I then saw that there was little sounds that I had forgotten to include like the fact that the actor is wearing a lycra suit, meaning that he would swish slightly when he walked. After realising this, I used the exact suit that the actor wore and as I watched the footage back I swished the suit in time with his movement and to my surprise it worked really well. It isn't the most overpowering sound but it is an essential one that you may not notice at first.
Sunday, 16 April 2017
Experimental Film - Filming
The filming process for this project was a very difficult one. I had planned as much as I could have and everything looked okay on paper. My first encounter was through no fault but my own which was that I had previously thought that the costume/makeup would take about 10 minutes maximum whereas it took about 40 minutes. Baring in mind that I only had the room for 2hrs 30mins this was quite the setback. The filming began and everything seemed to be going well; the communication between the cast and crew was good and we were slightly ahead of schedule. We had filmed about half of the film right up until things started to go downhill. A fire alarm went off meaning that the shoot had to come to a stop and everyone had to be evacuated from the building. We were stood outside for about 10 minutes and once we were allowed back in, the fire alarm went off a second time, meaning that we'd lost about 20 minutes in total. After all of this happening I then had a teacher let me know that he had the room booked from 1pm for tutorials with his students even though I had booked the room out until 1.30pm, meaning that this cut off another 30 minutes of filming time. Because of all these unfortunate reasons, it meant that we had to rush a lot of shots just hoping that we could get everything we needed.
Overall, considering the amount of unwanted setbacks we had, resulting in losing about an 1hr 30mins of filming time; I feel like we coped with it very professionally, not just throwing the towel in and actually made use of the 1 hour film time that we ended up with. Obviously if I were to do the shoot again I imagine there wouldn't be so many inconveniences on the day. In a sense, I am happy that what happened happened because it has helped me a lot as a film maker, forcing me to make decisions in a short amount of time, making each minute count.
Overall, considering the amount of unwanted setbacks we had, resulting in losing about an 1hr 30mins of filming time; I feel like we coped with it very professionally, not just throwing the towel in and actually made use of the 1 hour film time that we ended up with. Obviously if I were to do the shoot again I imagine there wouldn't be so many inconveniences on the day. In a sense, I am happy that what happened happened because it has helped me a lot as a film maker, forcing me to make decisions in a short amount of time, making each minute count.
Tuesday, 4 April 2017
Experimental Film - Relative Work (Eraserhead)
Going back to the beginning of this unit, I remember watching a clip from the 1977 film, Eraserhead directed by David Lynch. The film was shot in black and white and was the first ever feature film by Lynch, continuing from a series of shorts that he had made prior. The genre of the film is a "Surrealist body horror" film, meaning that there are a number of disturbing scenes in the film which interested me a lot seeing as I have been very keen to see how directors achieved a disturbed looking film in the earlier years of film. Lynch does a magnificent job of creating tension using minimal dialogue which is at the top of my list for things I want to achieve when filming my film. There is a scene in the film in which the main character, Spencer is in a room with a small alien like creature which quickly becomes covered in flies, symbolising that it is sick. This is a very disturbing scene which is created predominantly using sound and realistically I would like to be able to achieve a successful scene creating the same tension and atmosphere as David Lynch did in this scene.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKhURjt9x5A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKhURjt9x5A
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