This week on Monday we had our first group meeting with Jasmine. Just before the meeting we had decided on a combination of Laura’s Prose and Jackson’s Prose, so this meeting was really valuable for us so that we could have our first discussion r.e major roles as individuals and essentially what we want to create.

• From our consult we gained the following things:
• We will all look at trailers and research the location (Warrandyte). 
• We should be thinking of it not as something to produce, more as an open ending and catering to a trailer, then we can focus on the mood, lighting, sound and space etc.
• Myself and Laura are in charge of location, filming and editing (The media students) 
• The script will be written by both Alex and Jackson
• Sarah is in charge of creating some general research and overseeing the project/stepping in to film/write when needed.

FOR OUR PITCH IN WEEK WEEK 7 WE NEED:

• Photos of location, montage of trailers that we’re inspired by (a moving mood board) and a working script, concept, thinking at the moment, general approach.
• Our main question we are asking is – “What are the best elements for making a good thriller?”
• The roles for our presentation are:Laura and Bonnie= photo montage of location photos, into a powerpointBonnie= movie inspiration clips (moving mood board)Jackson and Alex= writing draft of script 

  Sarah= question, concept, general research.

 

Today, SQUADRON was formed – Myself, Laura, Jackson, Alex and Sarah. We decided on the thriller genre, and selected the beautiful Warrandyte to be our main location. We created homework for ourselves (haha) and decided to go away as individuals and create five different potential scripts. We divided it as this:

Bonnie– main character with people coming after her from her past

Laura– Confrontation between 2-3 people

Alex– suspenseful monologue

Sarah– main character with mental disorder and you never see the person following her

Jackson-main character taking care of her grandmother and there is an evil after her

The following piece of writing is my potential theme/script: 

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“Haunt”

Idea: Bee (girl) is having a quiet moment in the ~woods~ before her first day at her new job. Along the way she is approached by various people from her past that she is forced to reconcile with.

Intro:

[Bee is walking through the woods on the way to her new job, this is her internal/external monologue];

Bee narration: “In order plan your future wisely, it is necessary that you understand and appreciate your past”

Bee: Yeah…right

Scene 2:

[Dramatic music and heightened sense of tension and pace increasing to emphasise that Bee has been caught off guard]

Bee’s ex: You realise how you hurt me don’t you? You walked away, pretending what you did to me, to us, was all okay. Bee you don’t know how you hurt me

(expand on this monologue in full script)

Scene 3:

[Dramatic music continues…a feeling of chaos ensues]

Bee’s older sister; Mum and Dad were always so proud of you. Their second born girl, said to prosper just like me. Bee they watched you grow, they let you achieve more than I ever could. I felt so unloved. It was never your fault, but my presence meant nothing to them because of you. I had no choice but to leave..

Scene 4:

They say don’t worry about people in your past, because there’s a reason they didn’t make it into your future. They didn’t say anything about those people haunting you though….

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We decided as a team that it would be best to combine the final selected scripts so we could get at least two major ideas out there coming from two different individuals thoughts.

This week I wanted to explore a director that has fostered my love of film for as long as I can remember. When people ask me what films I love, I find myself listing many films directed by Quentin Tarantino. On Wednesday morning this week I woke up to news on my Facebook feed with the release of the trailer for what may potentially be his final film – “The Hateful Eight”. “The Hateful Eight,” is set up to twelve years after the Civil War, in a snowy Wyoming landscape, and without spoiling the details – is set to be yet another example of his excellence from the original narrative, to the extravagant . For me, Tarantino’s camerawork is so purposefully used, moving between the scenes and landscape with such ease that it is in some ways, seamless. While he creates films that don’t reach out to everyone – he has created films that I worship. Tarantino’s 1997 Pulp Fiction blends a black comedy with crime and has one of the most quotable scripts of all Tarantino’s films. The film won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for the movie and is one of modern cinema’s most respected films. Tarantino is known for his big budget films, however his next notable film – Kill Bill Vol 1 and Vol 2– was done on a budget of just $30million, which is considerably small for a director of Tarantino’s calibre. Uma Thurman’s performance in the film reflects his style of a serious style merged with parody. For example, The Bride (Thurman) has just murdered a room full of people, and audience members are left laughing at what they’ve just seen – partially out of disbelief, and partially at what they’re looking at. I love the way that his films make audience members uncomfortable.

 

Tarantino is known for his “Eye of god” shots – whereby we are shown something looking at it from above, or from wide-angle shots, to put things into perspective. This reminded me of something we learnt in my Australian Cinema class this week that is a simple thought, but something I really never considered; a typically small budget film will use many close up shots with the intention of avoiding the construction of background landscape, sets, etc, whilst a big budget film has the funds to produce this.

 

A third film of Tarantino’s that is one of my favourite films is Django Unchained. In one of my previous blog posts, I referenced the sheer madness that was some of the script for Django Unchained. It is considered to be a “spaghetti western”. To briefly summarise, Django teams with Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), a German bounty hunter, who poses as a dentist, and then promises freedom in exchange for his help in collecting a large bounty. Django Unchained confirmed for me the Tarantino style where you are quite literally left with your mouth hanging open in disbelief at the sheer madness of what you are looking at. More often than not, this madness is teamed with violence and brutality. You can’t quite grasp how many people just got killed, you can’t quite understand why that person had to be killed etc.

 

It’s incredibly hard to justify the brilliance of Quentin Tarantino. You really need to watch his films for yourself, to understand whether you love them or not. However, for those who love him – some of this may make sense to you.

This week we got our first chance to work on some shoot to edit content. In the previous week, we were given the opportunity to shoot some content for our “Sexy Teachers” (pardon the name – nobody could think of anything slightly more serious – i’m not even sure that our characters WERE teachers). I’m overall really happy with the way our script translated onto page. Looking around the suites at the work from other groups, it is clear to me that we all had a pretty comical theme for our final videos. I loved the theme of our video – there was so much ridiculous drama and exaggeration (plus the acting of Vania…who knew she was such a talent?). We all took turns in our roles and it allowed different people to give their perspective on a good shot, or ways to improve a shot that didn’t work out too well. Shooting to edit is my preferred mode because it gives us a chance to challenge us in the editing process through sound and continuity which we found was a difficulty in ensuring the body language of people remained constant and true to the previous shot throughout the video. Furthering this, I can understand the difference between “shooting to edit” and “writing to edit” because writing to edit is a restricting concept. It forces the actors to stick to the script and directions, whereas shooting to edit allows some flexibility in the exact delivery of lines etc.

Tradition forms the basis of what people expect when seeing a film. This applies to both the structure of the film, and also the techniques used. However, as famous director James Cameron once said – “there is no such thing as an easy shot.” because even a tilt shot requires good direction and camera handling. Commonly used shots include; over-the-shoulder shots, tilt shots, panning shots, zoom shots, tracking shots – sideways, crane shots, track-in shots, over the shoulder track in and Dutch angle shots.

A personal favourite traditional technique of mine is the use of framing and a shallow depth of field to make one character appear dominant within a frame. It is a very dramatic camera technique that can totally alter the audience’s perception of who has power in the scene. Similarly, a low or high angle shot with an up or down pan can imply dominance. These kinds of shots are so relevant to many famous action/horror films. In an article by Virginia Kidd, she states that “The same camera angle that creates an image of strength can create quite an alternate effect.” For example, the camera with a low angle, looking up, can introduce strength, security, and stature. However depending on the “emotional qualities” of the subject, the same angle can serve to intensify horror, fear, or the feeling of being overpowered. Techniques like these operate outside most audience members’ awareness makes them particularly powerful. Production techniques influence us whether we know it or not.

Straying from the traditional, a recent technique I have noticed in both photography and film is the use of drones to capture image/moving image. Drones, otherwise known as UAVs, unmanned aerial vehicles — are not just employed for warfare. Hollywood is eager to draft them into filmmaking because they hold the promise of new creative options, real cost savings and possibly even safer sets. The cheaper cost involves subtracting the need for a $10,000 a day helicopter rental to film overhead shots. Currently, American federal law prohibits the commercial use of unmanned aircraft — in filming or for any other purpose. However, there is already work on a proposed set of rules specifically developed for users of small — less than 55 pounds — aircraft that it expects to complete later this year. These harsh rules have been put into place because there is a major cause for safety concern. Richard Crudo the president of the American Society of Cinematographers and an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences states that ” people don’t realise that these things are like flying lawn mowers — excessive care must be taken with their use.” In regards to the safety concern, Patrick Smith of Aerial Media Pros says that his company has used drones for low-flying shots. Smith always starts with a safety briefing that includes the actors. They start with informing them “We want to talk and let them know we can get within maybe 10 feet of them, if they want, based on their comfort level. We do a lot of preplanning. I’m constantly scouting so that if something goes wrong, where I can ditch it in a safe position to avoid everyone”. One would think that without the actors, there would be no film, thus it is in everyone’s best interest to make sure this innovative mode of filmmaking is safe.

From just the first two weeks of this course, I can gather that many of our final pieces of work will be developed from small snippets of information as a starting point, allowing us as young writers and filmmakers to use our creativity to make something of our own. Last week in class we were given a simple piece of paper describing a specific character:

Above is my character, Brody, and the emotion I was given was “waiting anxiously for a train”. From this little information we were asked to, in 15 minutes, write a short prose incorporating the character and the emotion. From there, we gathered into small groups. My group was Jamie, Laura and myself. We then constructed a script based on one of our three stories, which conveniently for me, we selected my little story.  Below is the start of the script:

We then compared scripts and decided we liked Jamie’s content most, so this was the one we would share with the Creative Writing students. On Thursday we met and broke up into groups, to construct a single shot take of the script, and a filmed to edit version of the script. We wanted to choose a very simple setting, that could pass off as a part of a train station (while still hiding somewhere quiet on the RMIT campus). We found a great old wall in the Gaol part of the campus and actually made somewhat of a grim discovery while on set, that none of us knew was even part of RMIT:

Opposite our set was the City Morgue….oh the things you find when in search for nothing more than a good wall. Anyway, we took it in turns to manage different parts of our filming. Our single shot take consisted of our group discussing ways in which we could move the camera around to make it visually more interesting for the audience than just a front-on view. We decided to use the oh-so-typical pan and zoom, and also frame it so that our actors weren’t centred in the frame. As it was such a large group, I was only in charge of camera & directions for the editing take, however, we all contributed to every aspect of the filming to ensure that we all agreed and were happy with the decisions being made.

Above is the single shot take that we filmed. Overall I really enjoyed the experience of filming with people I didn’t know, and discovering our hidden talents of RMIT Media & Creative Writing students. To evaluate our efforts, I think everyone evenly contributed to the filming because while this was never to be officially marked, we wanted to achieve something that showed we grasped the concepts of how to make a single shot take visually interesting, and how editing can dramatically change the way we look at a video.

 

 

In class 1, Week 1, everyone went around the room and discussed their knowledge of script writing, and also what they intended to learn/gain from this course. The vast majority, including myself, stated that we know very little about script writing. To elaborate, I have for so long loved seeing the scripts to some of my favourite films. Reading the script beyond just the dialogue is fascinating. It’s similar to the notion of reading a book then seeing the film adaptation. I first discovered this fascination seeing parts of the script to Django Unchained, a film written by the genius Quentin Tarantino. Seen below is an excerpt that makes me laugh every time.

 

For whatever reason it totally makes sense. Anyway, I digress.

From this class, I would love to gain an understanding of how to write scripts. You’d expect a typical answer to be something like “I can see myself doing this in the future” however I selected this course out of pure fascination and wanting to know how the masterminds like Tarantino do it. I LOVE to write. I know how to write, and i’d love to see some of my writing turned into short scripts and videos.

The studio prompt we have been given is “What is lost and found if we disassemble the conventional relationship between screenwriting and filmmaking?”  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.

There is so much about this course that I won’t understand when we first learn about it. I don’t mind that at all though. It’s exciting to start something from the very beginning and gain an understanding about a different perspective to film.