One-shot film: And the winners are...

...those who made it to the final cut! Now, I`m keeping the rest of the footage we shot during those two days with the group real close just in case I get some more ideas to experiment with, but after a fruitful and labour intensive week-end, I have two new one-shots to show off. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, let us make this a brag-a-lot-blog!

The first runner up is a the short movie entitled Pillars. As you might recall, the location for this one was the passage between the castle and the multi-level car park that Alex has spoted. Initially, the location was meant for a remake of the Package shot we did during our first one-shot seminar. It was at the end of a tiring day, and the guys didn`t seem very keen to redo the whole choreography of the scene, so inspiration struck me when I saw the pillars on site and I put on my Melies hat and tried out a morphing act. The idea and possible story behind the scene were both very vague, but the trick could be used for its symbolism and that meant it had some serious potential, at least from my point of view.

And that is exactly what came through in the final editing. Whenever you have actors performing relatively simple actions, in this case, walking, it seems that there is a very good chance of giving that action a symbolic value. Why? Because the more complex a routine becomes, the more spaces are filled in with details by the viewer, the more specific that action becomes, and it ends up being...disenchanted. It`s like magic: the minute the audience knows the whole procedure of the routine and the actions you are going to perform and why you are going to perform them, they lose interest.

The basic idea of the scene can be outlined through a few keywords: journey, metamorphosis, experience, apotheosis. I have chosen to represent each stage in the story by what I thought would be a befitting verse. There is a parallel drawn with the Plato`s allegory of the cave. We find ourselves part of a group, a micro-universe, a garden that we call home and cherish for all its shortcomings. We cling to it, and find ourselves striken with nostalgia if we get to leave it behind and find ourselves confronted with new worlds because the garden offers us security, one of the most basic human needs. It also disturbs our idea about what we know. During high-school, my mathematics teacher came into our class, draw a small circle on the blackboard and said: `The contour of this circle, is the area of contact with what you saw as the unknown, the yet-to-be-discovered when you were 6 years old`. Then, he drew around it a bigger circle: `This is you when you are about to finish high-school. As you can see, the area of contact with the unknown has grown. So, basically, we are making it harder for you...`. Well, yes indeed. Back to our shot, this is where we get the juxtaposition of the previous image of our world, the `majestic pillars` and the shock and sometimes horror of realising how petty, small-minded the garden we have cherished really is when one takes a step outside of it. Compare that to the prisoner who has gone out of the cave and sees the forms that actually created the dancing shadows on the cave`s walls. And finally, apotheosis...because we all like a happy-end, don`t we? Don`t regret nor despise the past and what you have left behind, internalise the lessons and continue your journey (yep, there is another one, and another one and another one ahead).

This is the Story board :

When editing, I decided to use duochrome, focusing on greys and purples. For one thing, these two colours appear in the verses I used as subtitles, and also, again, when going for the symbolic, less is indeed more. The reason is fairly simple. Symbols are simple because they have to appeal to people, and to do that, they have to be stripped of the many nuances and details that one actually finds in real life...to cut a long story short, they are abstractions of barely sketched ideas that sound familiar to all of us. The music is part of the late 90s action-adventure game Outcast. It matches with the development of the action and given the fact that I`ve used a verse from Dante`s Inferno and the track is called Heaven in Adelpha, it was just a nice paradox. Here is the video...

The second video is a DOS adventure games nostalgia. What I basically tried to do, is to create a scene from a game called `The Meeting`, with loading screens, menus, MIDI soundtracks, sprites, cluncky and funny looking animation, pixelated backgrounds, a reduced pallete of colours, subtitles instead of voice-over, a bit of a story line to it and playing around with the cliches of the genre. How did it all work? Well, for once, I`d wish Premiere wouldn`t smoothen the movements of the characters. I was thinking whether reducing the frame rate would have been a good idea to re-create the robotic movements of the characters, but I`ll try that some other time.

The footage I used was part of the CCTV idea. Alex was in charge with the camera and coreography on this one, and I picked one of the four takes we did. The location for this one was a tunnel leading to Broadmarsh bus station. All the rest of us were involved in the scene as actors in some of the scenes, but in this scene, Umar is the only actor. The other character in the video is `an innocent by-stander` I`ve incorporated into the shot.

And here is the video. Enjoy!

One-shot film: The Good, The Bad and The Draft

Yesterday we had a second shooting session. I`d say it went pretty well. We did the sleepwalking scene, with James and Will as actors, Umar helping with our improvised lighting and lil`ol`me clumsily handling the camera. We shot the scene at Maltings, took over the kitchen, made it into a darkroom, got hold of a lamp and a blue plastic lid and...voila!...we had our moonlight scene pret-a-shoot (don`t mind me, I`m just making up words here).

This is the `raw` video, with soft blue-lighting and sound effects provided by Sleepwalkers Records Ltd.



Now, let`s get all introspective and see what was the motivation.

1. Soft blue lighting: we tried different ideas out, like using a lid just to soften, not colour the light, or different positions for the light source. In the end, the blueish light seemed like the best idea because the scene is supposed to take place in the middle of the night, or in the early hours of morning, and we thought this would be the most realistic thing. Plus, having only one source of lighting, and even that dimmed, it was possible to recreat the way a person who has just awaken during the night sees things.

2. Camera position: we had to make some serious compromises here given the limitation of one camera movement per shot and because there was a pillar in the middle of the kitchen (yes, how very inconvenient indeed). The `coreography` had to be just right, in order to have everyone in the frame.

3. Story: the basic story, the starting point as it were, is sleepwalking. They used to call sleep `the little death`, and indeed, what is fascinating about dreams, sleepwalking or any other night time (in)activity is that your brain is there, yet it chooses to dictate its commands in a whole new key, while still dropping in some of the usual lines. Motivations become blurred, or disappear altogether, revealing the mechanical nature of many activities. Of course, we are talking here about things that we take for granted, like moving around or handling objects. But I guess it is something that makes you ponder about whether or not many of the decisions you take or desires that you consider as your own in a conscious state are there as a result of a consciencious process, and not a script that keeps you going.

Alright, enough of that! Let`s see what we have here. This is my first attempt of editing yesterday`s scene. I don`t have Adobe Premiere so I used Magix Music Maker 2005 Deluxe for editing. As you might have guessed from the title, it is primarily a sound editing programme, but it has some basic video effects options too. If there is anything that is good about the experience of making this edited version is that I got to play around with the sound tools. Now, I`ve always been the more visually oriented person in the family, and my cousin was the sound master, child prodigee. I also took piano and guitar lessons, but never really got over the fact that I`m a dilletant. This little soundtrack I made for this version has not helped my self-esteem, but just reminded me how nice it is to actually get all experimental and then end up with something slightly decent.
About the visual part of the video. I had two video layers, with different colouring and with a slight delay between the two of them, that`s how I got the shadow/ghost look. I changed the tempo, making the movements slower and then added an echo effect, so that each movement of the characters could leave a trace. Why? It makes it ambiguous because one can think of the scene as the meeting of the ghosts, but also as the sort of scene, or the way you perceive a scene in your dreams.



So, we had the Good and the Draft. Now, for the Bad. Couldn`t get hold of the previous footage, the one from Saturday. Apparently, there is some sort of problem with transferring the video unto the computer. But...but, we should meet on Thursday and get that (hopefully) sorted out.

One-shot film: the pieces are coming together

I dare to say today was a good day...for shooting! And to my surprise, we did manage to shoot most of the scenes. We`ll still have to meet up on Tuesday to shoot the Sleepwalking scene, but the rest are pretty much done.

We made some on-the-spot changes too. The tree scene was shot from above, the package scene turned into a following and we tried a new scene that involved interchanging characters and the camera following their trail. By the end of the day we got all experimental and had a go at double exposure just outside the Boots Library, near the tram station and under a spotlight that made the scene quite intriguing. I don`t think though that one has come out well, but we can try it again on Tuesday. It was a rather rainy and gloomy day, which was good for most of our shots and it suited the locations we chose very well (cheers Alex for doing the scouting! ):

1. The tree scene: Arboretum
2. The speedcamera: across the bridge from Broadmarsh station, on one of the streets
3. The following and the interchanging characters: Broadmarsh bus station and the surroundings 4. Double exposure: near Boots Library

The team was really dedicated and I say we thank the brave camera man on two of our shots, Will, for risking life and limb (sort of) to get all the crazy camera angles right. We decided not to use any lighting, because most scenes were set outside. Also, some of the locations just had dramatic shadows that we can use to tell the story and lighting would have made it too artificial.

I think we should try to do some experimenting with the lighting for the indoor scene next week. That could give us some really spice up the whole idea and could really add to the story.

One-shot film: the light at the other end of the tunnel

So, I guess you`d expect me to deliver some good news finally. Well, yes and no. I must admit, it was interesting experimenting with all the lights and given that we had what was labelled `la madre di tutti cadri` to provide with lighting, we probably did pretty well (Chris at least insisted we did...guess we have to take his word for it). I remember having read just a week previous to our lecture and seminar about 3 point lighting, so it wasn`t a surprise, but it was useful putting theory into practice.

Afterwards, we had another group meeting (yes, another one!). We have decided what we are going to shoot tomorrow, booked out the equipment and discussed some of the details regarding the story lines for the scenes. Now, I`m really curious how we`ll manage. The guys have been fairly optimistic, in my humble opinion, stating we should try to do 4 different scenarios (tree, speed camera, the package and the sleepwalking). I say, quantity is secondary, I`d really like to have at least 2 shots at the end of the day that I could be satisfied with and that would inspire me for next week`s editing. Well, here we go then...

One-shot film: working hard or hardly working?

They say a student`s life is a long, sinuous road, full of ups and downs. The downs are notorious though. I figure I might be experiencing my first significant down since uni began. I always knew that team work would be a hard lesson to learn since I`m the `lone wolf` sort of person with regards my work, I like to take full charge and responisibility for what I do, and this `let`s get together and just talk about stuff` is somehow still not working. I mean, it`s not that we didn`t come up with any ideas. Oh no, plenty of those. We have made lists of our ideas at each meeting we have had so far. The problem is, it just doesn`t seem to take off. We now have two lists of ideas, but I personally still am confused about what the storyline, guideline, motivation, red thread, the life-giving something that makes them come to life and actually make sense...still elludes me. I was thinking, maybe it will all come together when we start shooting (that`s scheduled this week-end) and we can then each of us create individually a background story when we`re editing the material. And it might be like that, we might get away with that, but I still feel frustrated and guilty of not having any consistent idea. Well, guess it`s no good getting upset over this, it might just be that the Muses have decided to delay their visit and will eventually show up, but until then, I`m still very much angry with myself for being such an idea wasteland.

Ok, so what have I done until now. I was thinking about a scene that would involve some sort of performance art. I read Hugo Ball`s Dada Manifesto, and I thought I should have a speaker read out some fragments of the manifesto. Then, as he would call the public to observe a demonstration of the principles presented by the manifesto, he would point to one side, camera paning along the indicated direction, and we would see a group of actors. What would then follow, and make up much of the shot, would be the actual performance, which I imagined as a sort of pun, or playfull, non-sensical, irreverent renditions of classics (paintings, sculptures, even music). For instance, Michelangelo`s Pieta could become a person lying on a Virgin Mary-shaped sofa. Lighting colour could change at every new rendition (though that would mean more people handling lights) but even lacking that, we could still create the idea of different tableaus by adding different sound effects or music to each piece. Of course, coreography would have to be exercised quite well, as the shot is supposed to be continuous, so that each person knows what pose and move to make to create the next scene with the minimum movement.




During today`s meeting, we have come up with some other stuff. Again, only ideas, we couldn`t find a definitive and convincing narrative for them...yet.

1. We`ve heard all the big stories about inventions, love, world changing actions taking place under the welcoming shadow of a tree (or more), but what does a tree think of all these? What would a tree`s reaction be to Isaac Newton and his apple, with the reaction that followed? Do trees really like activists who hug them? Or do they willingly offer or accept to host the sleepwalkers meeting every night? Hopefully, we`ll be able to find out the answer to all of these while shooting the story for you, from the T.P.O.V. (tree`s point of view). Probable location: Arboretum

2. Sleepwalking...just what exactly can you be up to when you`re brain is not in on it? This could be funny, scarry, or simply routine-like, and we could try out each version, with different lighting and different music. Location: student halls

3. The annoying narrator...this is basically a scene that would involve two or more actors, engage in an argument. Suddenly, they would freeze, the narrator would step into the frame and start making comments on the true motivations, hidden feelings, moral dilemmas of the characters involved. Location: Byron Lecture Theatre or Waverley.

Really hope things will work out a lot better while we`re shooting the actual thing. Come one Diana ol`girl, wou have to make this work, you can do it, you can do it...I mean, YES, WE CAN!