Studio Prompt: What is lost and found if we disassemble the conventional relationship between screenwriting and filmmaking?

Twelve weeks ago I looked at this prompt and didn’t really know what to give as an answer to this question. I said that: “I think what this is trying to ask, is when writing scripts, what can be lost or gained in translation to the creation of the actual adaptation film. For example, this week we were asked to write a short story, and when turning that story into a script, the perspective and details of what the character was doing had to be changed and added”.

This entire experience played on “the unconventional” occurrence of five unprofessional “film-makers” being placed in a group together with no knowledge of each other whatsoever. We collaborated to disassemble the elements of what best constructs different aspects of film. Some groups chose to focus on genre, some focused on different styles of camera, and in Squadron’s case, we had a strong focus on location and how that can influence a films overall look and feel in conjunction with the Thriller genre.

Upon reflection i’ve discovered that in Week One I really didn’t know much at all about what it takes to create a film. A major idea that comes to mind, is when a writer’s script is placed in the hands of someone else – the production will likely be nothing like what the writer had intended if they aren’t there to monitor it. In Squadron’s case, Jackson’s script was edited, cut down, and given a makeover. We loved what he had written however the way we interpreted the script put emphasis on parts that he didn’t see as important. Alex edited the script, taking out parts that Jackson loved but we didn’t see as necessary. Putting creative control in the hands of someone else is decidedly unbearable for creative people like the Media students and Creative Writing students, but for the sake of collaboration we pushed on.

In all honesty, i’m not sure if I really do know what it takes to make a film. This process has taught me just how hard it is to really construct a well-polished film. I have learnt what it takes to make a good film teaser/trailer, but I feel that i’m still a long way off being the next Spielberg.

 

“This will be a group project”

*Groans of 30+ young adults who are all equally displeased about the thought of yet another group project*

We know they exist. We know it is impossible to go a semester without submitting at least three group projects. We know we can’t avoid them.

So when we were faced with the idea of our major work being a collaborative work, I think we all united with uncertainty and reluctancy towards our ideas being shared and dissected among four others in our group.

I didn’t know any of my group members. Myself and Laura were the two Media Students, and Sarah, Alex and Jackson were all in Creative Writing. I took one look at Jackson and thought “this guy is probably in a band”. Turns out, band or not, this guy can write one hell of good script. Same goes for Sarah, Alex and Laura. I had no expectations of them but I knew if they were here in this class with me – they obviously shared similar interests.

Like all group projects, we tediously sorted out, week to week, a time that would suit all five of us for shooting, meeting and things of the like. It was a process that involved us devising an entire spreadsheet just for potential meeting and shooting times:

I would say on a communication level – this group has excellent communication skills. We managed to talk out every single issue and iron out every crease in our plans and ideas. We found harmony in every situation and were able to achieve goals that combined our individual goals. We successfully divided responsibilities and roles evenly, and even if we were designated one specific role such as me as Camerawoman for our shoot – we interchanged this on the day so that we all got a feel for it.

Of course no group assignment is perfect – so on the note of finding a happy medium between different ideas, it occasionally got a little bit “majority rules” when someone with a different opinion spoke up about it. For example Laura was very keen on shooting for a second time while the others including myself didn’t see it as necessary. After talking it through with Jasmine that week who suggested we don’t shoot again, we were all happy with the resolution. Sometimes it just takes a bit of teacher/tutor authority to steer us in the right direction.

That being said, there was never a week or even a day where I questioned the potential success of us and our project. Squadron made me laugh every single week, even brought me into tears of laughter when Sarah thought it’d be hilarious to rename the project Back Fat instead of Black Flat (It sounds stupid but it was hilarious for us I swear!). I never once questioned whether someone was pulling their weight, and if anything at times I felt like I could be doing more, but that’s just my controlling personality because I love to have full control over a project but it was sort of nice to share that responsibility with four other like minded people for once.

This collaboration was a very long group project as far as others have gone, and it’s strange to say this but it was a really memorable experience that will certainly stand out as a highlight of my second year of uni. It’s nice to be able to say i’ve made four friends that i’ll bump into around uni next year and have that semi-awkward chat about life/uni/work but then remind them of that time we cried with laughter over the project title.

 

Another aspect to the presentation which I wanted to include was a potential teaser/trailer poster that could accompany the film should it be made feature length.

Laura had pasted two files into the google drive folder that I wanted to play around with and see how creepy I could make them. While I didn’t record the step by step process of making this poster, I have the base images;

Its sort of hard to say what I did to make the poster. The explanation in my head is simply “I clicked a few buttons and cut out Christina and put some text over the top”.

I’m sitting here a bit confused as to where the entire semester, even more-so the entire Uni year went. Today was the day of our Week 12 Presentation. In the week leading up to this after our final group consultation, we met with Stayci who recommended that we focus on including as much detail we could about what we thought we could have done better during the entire experience. We were also told that this is a professional pitch. The following is a list of the designated roles for each of us:

For presentation;

• Jackson- talk about there for beginning and end, sound design, editing
• Laura- AD, editing shots-why we picked these shots, chronological of process; ending,
• Bonnie- Camera, location, chronological order of process; middle/shooting, changes in shooting, poster with tag line; if you go down to the woods today…
• Alex- editing the script, directing the shoot,
• Sarah- chronological order of process; the beginning, sound, collaborations and communication between us

From here we each went away to devise 2-3 minutes of speech + accompanying powerpoint slides for the presentation. We discovered through much deliberation that showing two scenes while also getting our individual points across would be well over the time limit. Here’s some evidence of that discussion:

 

 

 

We all went slightly crazy after that – but ultimately decided it’s just best to talk as fast as we could. We knew that what people wanted to see most was our final scenes. So we decided to not show any slides for Alex’s section and instead silently play scene one. It was a good decision. Here’s a copy of what I said for my part (which I felt average about r.e the delivery on my behalf). This is slightly longer than what I actually had time for in the presentation.

Bonnie [2:10mins]:

A major aim for Squadron was to explore location, to influence our shot decisions and build our production using the surroundings out in Warrandyte.

We had endeavoured to film Tuesday of Week 9, which (quite literally) by the force of nature, we were forced to reschedule the shoot because of hail. This in hindsight was a blessing in disguise. It gave us a chance to regroup, and discuss important changes such as the addition of both male cast members – Chris and Scott.

One week later we were able to reattempt the shoot on a thankfully hail-free day. Our call time of 10am had allowed us 5 hours of shooting between the two major locations of the day. Location One down by the river provided mixed weather conditions and saw me as camerawoman have to ensure that the cloud coverage remained constant throughout the shots, to avoid cuts going from light to dark. This ensured the all important continuity element of the teaser.

It was also important to consider the presence of people walking by. As expected in such a lovely walking area, we were accompanied members of the public passing through our shot. This provided us with many outtakes featuring dogs running into frame. Counterproductive for the shoot, but a bit of entertainment for us. This location took us upwards of 2.5 hours, which was longer than we had anticipated, but really showed how important it was to ensure we got the shots we needed.

Progressing onto Location Two out at Black Flat, we knew time was of the essence. We decided to use the spider-like Gorilla Tripod to at as a stabiliser for handheld shooting. This was incredibly effective for us. We managed to wrap the shoot on 3pm. This gave us just enough time to get the equipment from Warrandyte to RMIT. We agree it would have been to our advantage if we allowed more time for the shoot in the morning to avoid the frantic rush back to the city after importing the footage.

 

Week 11 was largely uneventful on my end, considering the editing process was now in the safe hands of Jackson and Laura.

In our weekly consult with Jasmine on Monday, we discussed shooting and editing, specifically regarding whether we would need to shoot again with just one week before the presentation. We decided that as this is a teaser, it is not an issue that we don’t have every single shot that we set out to get. Part of this process is of course learning about what worked and what didn’t, and as a result we can now reflect on the fact that consolidating our ideas is at times the only option when faced with a deadline.

I think what was most challenging for some of us was having an unfinished teaser. We are so used to filming, writing, etc and having some sort of conclusion. This was something different for us – ending on an unfinished/unresolved point in the narrative. Through going away and thinking about it, I have decided that this is essentially what a thriller teaser/trailer is. It shouldn’t give you everything you need to know – it should leave you wanting more. You could present something that is ten seconds long but gives a glimpse into what the story is about, and your viewer could be left in suspense and wanting answers. That is the beauty of this genre.

Lastly in that meeting we discussed the 15 minute presentation of our entire project. We were told we needed to discuss what the outcomes would be, individual roles, collaboration, scripts and locations shots, tests cut together, the way we approached it, reflections and how we communicated throughout the process.

I thought i’d digitise a copy of a few things just for reference:

During today’s group consultation we discussed several factors that have had major influence over our filming. As decided in last week’s meetings, we agreed that we would film tomorrow (Tuesday). On Tuesday last week we all thought this would run smoothly, however looking at the weather forecast of HAIL, we decided this really couldn’t be worse for us. More importantly upon reflection, Laura and Jackson (our editors) agreed that scrapping two characters and otherwise compromising our final outcome in order to do something that is “achievable” was stopping us from creating something more authentic and true to the script.

We have since discussed that Laura is able to source some male cast members who she knew in high school and did theatre with her, and she also suggested that we refer to the “Warrandyte Business & Community Network” on Facebook for people who post about all kinds of things, and we may find someone interested in helping us with filming. This is also very convenient as the people are all residents in the area.

In our meeting with Stayci, we discussed the process of writing a script then filming, and how we could look at this from the reverse angle – filming, then writing a script based on what we saw. For Jackson, it will be interesting to see the way we interpret his script – since he won’t be on set on the day we film, us four girls are in some ways, in charge of his baby. This conversation reminded me of the exercise we did earlier in the semester, where we took the scripts of the creative writing students and then filmed. More often than not, the result had a far different tone than what the writer had envisioned or intended.

We decided that a major intention as part of our filming was to capture what was written on paper, but also film some more dramatic shots. With sound playing as such a key element in the thriller genre, we believe that some silent shots, with non-diegetic soundtrack over the top will fit perfectly within the script itself. A key element to thriller trailers is to pose questions in the dialogue. Unrelated, short questions such as “Where are we” “How could he do this to us” type questions grab the audience’s attention and add suspense.

Today we presented our Thriller pitch to the class. It was a really good experience listening to what other groups were creating. To know that we have a concept quite different from everyone else’s is also quite exciting. Even the way in which we approached presenting our pitch stood out from the others.

I was really happy with our overall feedback from the class and from the teachers. This seems like a final comment to make but overall it reassured me that my contribution to the pitch was effective. The fact that most of the feedback was in relation to the video I had produced, tells me that it was memorable to people. The moving image is something I always look for when choosing a method of study, and as this is a film class, it seemed like a logical way to resonate with my fellow peers. Looking closer at their feedback, we got advice from others about different Australian landscape films which have names I can’t remember (but will follow up on with Paul who has an impressive knowledge of so many films), and also advice from Jennifer about ways in which the feature length films such as Goodnight Mommy (which she has seen in full) differ from the Thriller trailers we presented.

Of course this pitch was about more than just inspiration, it was about hearing feedback from the people who will decide the marks. I think one important piece of advice was that we were wrong in our decision to make a trailer, because we are essentially creating a short /a series of mini scenes as opposed to a 2.5min trailer. This was a collective decision because for us, we would rather film more and understand more about our narrative, rather than creating something solely for advertisement.

 

On Tuesday of our mid semester break, myself and Laura set out to the beautiful Warrandyte in search of locations for filming our trailer. The weather couldn’t have been more perfect. The sun was shining with not a single cloud in the sky….it was almost TOO perfect (that’s a lie, after 3 months of Winter we truly deserved some sun) #pale

We found ourselves a variety of very interesting locations. The first of those being down by the river, which we liked but thought that it looked very man-made, with the perfectly aligned rocks to create steps etc:

Location Number 2 was FAR more interesting and although apparently quite well known to the Warrandyte residents, I found it very cool. It was a large “waterfall” (more of a stream passing through a dark scary cave). We considered this for our filming, and while we know it would undoubtedly create some unwanted diegetic sound in the filming, we thought it would be great for some scenic shots in between dialogue scenes:

Location #3 took us away from the water and into the bush. We found ourselves up a hiking trail that is well known to the locals. It was a slight hike (admittedly we both stripped down to t-shirts and calories were burned) but we found a really nice fork in the road, which we agreed would be perfect when our character has the choice to run in one of two different directions:

 

 

 

The final location proved to be the most promising, so much so that we scrapped #5 because we were so happy with this place. We definitely didn’t expect a small hike trail to lead us to this mad place. It was what seemed to be some sort of sink hole area, where people had come to dump their old appliances. There was strange rusted fridges filled with bright green pond-matter, and stuff that Laura and I weren’t game enough to get close to. Although I did go as far as to sit between the two sink holes:

We showed all 119 photos (a tad excessive) to the group and now Laura is in charge of assembling them for the Week 7 pitch!

 

 

 

This week in class we were introduced to STARNOW, the casting call website set up for us to choose cast members for our group projects. We were asked to select one of the eligible cast members and write about them and a situation they were in. I selected Mackenzie:

I first wrote out a couple dot points about who I thought she was, and where I thought she came from: 

• Mackenzie, 19
• Australian
• Attends La Trobe Uni and is studying Literature
• Long red hair, blue eyes, pale complexion
• Interested in reading, hiking, watercolours, fine art, scrapbooking

 This is my “situation” that I wrote for her. I didn’t go too in-depth as we were pushed for time and I didn’t want to sort of go into the plot but not get to finish it:

She hated identifying herself as a “social outcast” but that’s exactly what she was. For as long as Mackenzie could remember, she was a long red-headed girl with skin like porcelain and eyes that would stare you down from a mile away. There was something incredibly misunderstood about her. She had a gaze that would haunt you as soon as you locked eyes with her, and nobody knew why this was the case. It was almost as if you had just seen a ghost, but instead seen the face of a girl standing right in front of you. Mackenzie knew that people looked at her like this, but she, like the rest of us, never knew why.

 It was three weeks into her first semester of university. As expected, Mackenzie found herself at a distance from most of her classmates who all seemed to have formed small friendship groups. She looked at the other girls in her class, and wondered what made them so special. She never dressed any differently to them, always following the trends in the hopes of finding herself friends.

Then we were asked to fill out a sheet talking about our character:

I found this process interesting. I had briefly outlined for myself who I thought Mackenzie was, but it was fun to work backwards because you sort of have to build a profile for them without actually knowing the person in real life. Kerri-Anne made this point in class, which I think most of us would agree that working on knowing our character’s situations instead of their outline can lead to a very different kind of story.