Reflections on tutor report from Assignment 1

Some positive and very useful feedback from Peter.

Key areas highlighted:

• The value of using “what is reasonably to hand as part of the creative process” can lead to better and more relevant work. It is all about the micro-niche these days!  Problems and defects can also spark the creative process.
• Use visual references to add more to the sequence.
• A simple story can be very ambiguous.  Embrace this to leave the viewer space to come to their own conclusions.
• Difficulties of directing – keep control.  “Input from others is often welcome and productive but if you are the director/auteur you want the mistakes to be all yours!”
• Pre-planning and filming many alternatives is a very good idea.  But be aware of issues over continuity.

Developmental feedback

“There is an uncomfortable cut at around 1min when the poster is removed.  I know that you were trying to keep to the five scenes but if you are going to cut you either need to be absolutely certain of your continuity or, better, make the cut more obvious by changing the viewpoint of using a cross fade or something.”

“Back lit scenes (the indoors shot with the villain and ‘his’ cats) can be tricky.  On a film set they will often use a lighting rig to balance the front light with the light behind but we have to take a different approach as often as not.  The simplest thing is to expose for the shadows (over expose) and let the background burn out but often we can find a way of rigging up some sort of reflector, out of camera shot, that will reflect enough light back in too open up the shadows enough for us to either shoot straight or to over expose a bit but not burn the background out too much.  One of the difficulties with using lighting is that you have to balance the colour of the light as well as its strength.”

Conclusion

There were a few suggestions from other students that it would have worked better if Matt’s character had been revealed by peeling the poster off so the camera would have been in the same position. I think this is an excellent idea. This would also have avoided the awkward cut that Peter referred to.  Part of me wants to reshoot this and the cat-feeding scene to improve on that but I suspect my (very limited) time will be better spent on more research and practice rather than getting too obsessed about creating the perfect initial sequence.   I have learnt a lot from this assignment and am feeling confident and inspired to crack on with the rest of the course.

Reading/research

http://www.deathoftheauthor.com/

http://www.maiaconran.com/Term.html

http://www.maiaconran.com/stage.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_with_a_Movie_Camera

Deeper theory: the place of the moving image in visual culture and various critiques of cinema, video and so on. 

Laura Mulvey  - takes a predominantly feminist point of view and develops the theory of the gaze into the moving image.

To see how film, TV and video and new media are sited in visual culture - the final chapters in Visual Culture by Howells and Negreiros (Howells, R. & Negreiros, J., 2012. Visual Culture. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Polity.)

Leighton, T., ed., 2008. Art and The Moving Image. London: Tate. ("pretty dense and not dealing with box-office much")

Hint for next assignment: "use the ‘every day’ in a creative and incongruous way…."

New Wave/Neorealist films

Jean-Luc Goddard (French New Wave):

À Bout de Souffle (Breathless) (1960) this scene is perhaps relevant

Weekend (1967)

Vittorio De Sica (Italian Neo-realist):

Bicycle Thieves (1948)

Assignment 1: The Poster

The sequence

The Poster from Helen Rosemier on Vimeo.

Planning

The brief for this assignment was to produce a short sequence of no more than five shots, which tells a simple story using images alone.

I ran through several ideas and eventually settled on one which utilised my immediate resources: a good friend, a grumpy husband and three black cats.

The basic story is that a woman has lost her cat and, as part of the search, is putting up ‘Missing’ posters in the neighbourhood. We see a busybody looking at the poster and then removing it. Later we see him with several cats and finally watch him add the poster to his collection – the implication being that he is stealing the cats.

I scouted out suitable locations nearby to film the first three shots and then spent a huge amount of time trying to get the cats to all be around at the same time for the fourth frame.  It also became obvious that on top of the frustrations of working with animals, it is not always a good idea to enlist an opinionated husband!

I introduced key props (such as Sara wearing a hoodie and Matt wearing a shirt and tie, spectacles and smoking a pipe) to add atmosphere and to assist in conveying their characters.  We prepared the posters and then tried various options for showing all three posters at the end as this was the critical chilling moment: the reveal.

The storyboards

Evaluation of finished sequence

With hindsight this was quite an ambitious project for my first assignment. It relied heavily on two people and three cats which certainly created stressful challenges.

My aim was to tell a dramatic story in just five frames. I wanted it to be intriguing and slightly creepy at the end.

Frame one was shot from the top of our building, revealing a woman walking around erratically holding a piece of paper. The high angle was chosen to show her as small and isolated (lost?) but with the added dimension of it almost seeming like CCTV footage. This person in a hoodie is acting quite suspiciously. I hoped this would hook the viewer right from the beginning.

The second frame shows the woman walking towards the camera. We still don’t know what the small poster is about and the actor looks mean and moody.  This static camera angle with the actor approaching quickly and directly was designed to increase the mystery and tension.

Next a fussy looking man in a wheelchair (possibly a war veteran?) rolls up to look at the poster and then removes it from the telephone pole and takes it away. The framing and angle were slightly to the side of the poster this time to create more empathy with the man, whom we assume, at this point, is an overly-enthusiastic Neighbourhood Watch type of guy.

The fourth frame shows the man in his home, lovingly feeding and stroking his black cats. This begins with the camera moving in from the hallway as I wanted to convey some sense of voyeurism here to maintain the tension and intrigue a little. This is a neutral camera angle to allow us to watch the apparently harmless man with his pets.  For continuity he then looks at the poster again and smiles.

The final frame shows the man adding the poster to his collection of missing black cat posters, including one drawn by a bereft child, and admiring them as he smokes his pipe. This was positioned to show his (slightly crazy) satisfaction and to give the audience time to look at the posters and fully realise that he is a cat thief.

I think the framing worked quite well to convey all the information that I need to show and to maintain interest throughout. Hopefully the viewers will follow the story and be entertained by it. The last two frames were the most challenging. I would have preferred to have been able to focus in on the cats more, without showing the man so blatantly, which I think would have been more interesting and dramatic. It was not possible to make that work with just five frames so I hope that this final version is an acceptable solution.

The key area that I need to develop is in planning everything more thoroughly before the actors get involved. I need to give myself time to try different angles, all lens options and a variety of approaches to get exactly the right shot. This will help me to be a better director and to stay true to my vision even when other people are making suggestions about how things should be done.