This week my task was to film the other half of the breakup narrative from last week.

My constraints were,

Using a female aesthetic/feminine perspective

and

Only closeups

Also I had to use a tripod where possible

Female aesthetic/feminine perspective was a bit of an abstract concept and so my idea was just to avoid using any kind of stereotypical ‘male gaze’ i.e eroticising or objectifying the woman. My second idea was to give the female character a bit more agency compared to the first obstruction within the narrative. I think I accomplished this concept fairly well during production, I also think that only using closeups complemented this to a certain extent as the spectator becomes closer and more sympathetic to the female character.

Only closeups was a constraint that I feel has a very complex set of implications so I’ll just mention a few that I considered. It restricts to detail or perhaps reorders a view or comprehension of space as it becomes impossible to capture large areas within a single shot. Exposing a space then requires multiple shots or complex camera movements which also imposes a different set of implications to the rhythm, pacing and narrative. It also limits large figural movements in a single shot and changes ideas for multiple compositions in a single shot with focus again becoming on the details.  In my case I attempted to highlight details of facial movements and as they would be the center of the emotional expression within the scene. By almost exclusively focusing on the female characters face I prioritised the narrative and pacing over exploring the space. Perhaps in hindsight I got caught up too much in the narrative and I might have been able to challenge my sense of decoupage a little more by peeling the focus onto other objects and not showing the conversation as much as I did. After discussing the clip with Robin I think part of the motivation behind the close up constraint became clear, it aimed to let the viewers imagination develop a sense of space for the character rather than showing it as I did in the first obstruction.

I had the idea in preproduction of alternating between the female characters point of view and looking at her and I though about distinguishing them with differing depth of field, however I did not really follow this idea up as much, you can see I used it for the opening shot and I also ended up picking up similar shots but did not incorporate them as I felt they would have needed cues within the action (looking in a specific direction) which I did not include when filming.

I planned to use a lot of soft low key lighting to define the space and I think I executed this concept quite consistently. I knew a lot of the shots were going to be the female characters so I also wanted to try adding quite a lot of movement in various parts to keep the frame from being too static. To solve this I used a few tracking shots and kept the character pacing around the room to create different compositions. Another idea I tried was creating multiple compositions in a single shot which I did twice, once as a static shot which the actor moves from closeup to extreme closeup and the second shot right afterwards time through panning the camera to follow the movement. Another concept that I pulled off was having a mirror a couple of shots i.e a shot of the top half of her face is balanced later with a shot of the bottom of her face, a track moving in front of her is mirrored later by a track from behind her. Although admittedly this idea didn’t have any purposeful motivation behind it, perhaps it would have been more significant if I had gone through with the alternating POV idea. In retrospect I also did this ‘mirroring’ technique in the first obstruction, or at least had it in mind when I was filming but I still am not sure why I am subconsciously attracted to this idea.

I should also note that The action or blocking of the second obstruction was fairly similar to the first, in regards to the character moving from one room to another. In the first obstruction the movement the purpose of the movement was to indicate the conversation was becoming more personal by changing to a more private space, it also gave me a chance to change the lighting as the demeanour of the character also changes with the turn in conversation. In this second obstruction the movement was mostly just to create some movement as well as change the lighting set up. In a way I feel I kind of stalled by not creating a new course of action especially because I was aware I was using the same movement during planning, however I guess it wasn’t really specified by any of the constraints to create a new course of action although maybe I should have constrained myself once I realised.