I am going to shoot several scenes of daily routine of a person’s life, a girl. I will focus on the specific, small, detailed and ordinary life events, for example (the events I have in mind) getting dressed, putting on or take off make ups, getting up in the morning… I want to create mysterious atmosphere, so I will find different framing and angles to show some parts of the girl but not her face (can be a blurry one). In my shooting, there must be direction, performance and staging. I want to show the power of the real moment- it may not look that bright and wonderful from outside, but the beauty of it is that it’s real and ordinary. There can be the authentic of documentary, there can be exquisite of drama, there can be both. For me, I am trying to create something real and beautiful, I want to show the power of real using good cinematography. CINEMATOGRAPHY is the thing I want to work on this semester.
Location
For the location, I will shoot in my best friend’s apartment. There would be kitchen, living room, bedroom, bathroom and balcony. I am trying to capture something causal and daily, however there is still staging in it. I will move some stuff around and make it look good in the framing. To get ideas of framing and camera movements, one thing I can do about location is to take picture of them, frame it up with my phone. When I look at the pictures later, I may get some sparks about framing, lighting, angle, mise-en-scene… When I get more familiar with the locations, I will be more flexible with all kinds of camera movements at this place.
Camera movement
I will use both tripod and hand-held. Tripod is more stable which is more suitable for still shoots. Hand-held is more flexible which is more suitable for different angles and compositions of shoots. I think I will use handheld more because I am trying to find interesting and tight framing and angles, hand-held can give me big room of moving camera around.
Lighting
As Paul suggested, I will use different lightings in different scenes to create different atmosphere. At the same time I can learn more about lighting. Once I read that all of the natural lighting you see in cinema is not natural. So for lighting research, I need to borrow some lights or reflectors from uni or use some lamps.
Editing
When editing, I want to try different filters on different scenes, the same as lighting, try to create the atmosphere. This is just a thought. Also I want to add a voice over, some music, also I will keep the original sounds appear in shooting. The voice over can be something creative, related or not related to my shooting. And the music plays when still shoots come.
Casting and directing
I am going to work with my best friend Phoebe who knows me very well. In the scene, she is acting me. I will communicate with her also I will be directing her when shooting. I think that it is easier for her to understand my direction and what I want to get out of the shooting based on the closeness and good communication between us.
I am going to shoot several scenes of daily routine of a person’s life, a girl. I will focus on the specific, small, detailed and ordinary life events, for example (the events I have in mind) getting dressed, putting on or take off make ups, getting up in the morning, eating, putting away stuff in bag… Those events are all very small and they happen to everyone every day. I am thinking to shoot some scenes that this girl is with other people, both when she is alone and has communication with others. There might be some narrations as well, but I haven’t thought of a good one, maybe something will come out when I start shooting. I want to show the power of the real moment- it may not look that bright and wonderful from outside, but the beauty of it is that it’s real and ordinary. Also I want to create mysterious atmosphere, so I will find different framing and angles to show some parts of the girl but not her face (can be a blurry one). When shooting there will be a mark on her that shows it’s her. In my shooting, there must be direction, performance and staging. My aim is to make it look beautiful, so in that case, I have to consider lighting and mise-en-scene as well. I will try different lighting in different events. I am going to work with my best friend, ask her to be may actress. We share experience and know each other very well. And the girl in the short film is actually an insinuate figure of myself. So when I work with her, I will direct her to act me. Because she knows me and we are close, I think that it will be easier for us to communicate. On the other hand, I’m thinking to look for someone from casting list. It would make me gain some experience of working with someone who’s actually in acting.
In week7, I had a talk with Paul. We talked about my idea about the short film, and wrote down some notes. The next thing is get started!! I’m kind of excited about all this, I think it’s really a good challenging. Now I am just thinking about it, when actually doing it, I might run into some problems, and it’s not like what I thought. Also, I might have some new directions and discovery and may change the plan- I am aware of all this.
plan for the shooting
-series of scenes (shoots I want to get in every scene)
1. getting up in the morning
alarm, phone, framing from back, curtains, windows, view outside window, the bedroom(mise-en-scene), framing her feet, barefoot walking…
2. getting dressed
closet, mirror, put on and take off, can’t decide what to wear, bed full of clothes…
3. removing make up in bathroom
shots of make-ups(mise-en-scene), shots of cabinet behind the mirror(mise-en-scene), squeeze face soap, toothbrush, water trickling along her arms, clean nails, brush her hair, spread face cream…
4. putting away bags
Bag, make ups, wallet, take things out one by one-put things in one by one, shot of things in bag…
5. making tea
open tea package, tea bag, tea bag into the glass, pouring water, tea bag in water, seize the tea bag up and down, shot of her drinking tea-framing up to her mouth only…
…
-location
My best friend, Phoebe’s apartment- bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, living room and balcony.
-lighting
Morning-sunrise-refresh-hopeful
Afternoon-relaxing-lazy-bright-quite
Evening-tired-unburden-to be true oneself
The lighting in cinema is never the natural lights no matter how natural it looks like. My plan is to get several laps and try to create a suitable lighting for different scenarios.
-camera
For the following weeks, I will keep shooting. Every time I have some sparks in my head, I might grab my DSLR to shoot. Every Friday I will borrow the film camera from Building 9 and shooting some well-planed shoots.
For camera movements, I will use hand held more because lots of my shoots have a tight framing. Also handheld make me more flexible with shooting angles and framing.
-casting
I am going to work with my best friend Phoebe who know me very well. In the scene, she is acting me. I will communicate with her in advance, also I will be directing her when shooting. I think that it is easier for her to understand my direction and what I want to get out of the shooting based on the closeness between us and good communication.
-mise-en-scene
-shooting exercise
I shoot a scene where the girl is making tea. In this scene I tried something out and tried to create the tone I want to achieve in my final short film. Here is it. Just a practice.
I got lots of epiphanies during work, discussion with classmates blog reading.
-tags of film
I used to think that a good film must has a good drama, something different, something new and something not tacky. However I realize recently that a film can be great even it doesn’t have a good drama in it. I first realize this is when I was doing narrative and authorship in cinema 1 year ago, then we learned French New Wave which is not much to do with great plot or drama. Then I did Documentary: True Lies, I had more knowledge about documentary. For the first time, I see the power of real. There is staging and direction in documentary, there is simply recording in it too. In film3, I realize that we are using both drama and documentary to create something new. There can be the authentic of documentary, there can be exquisite of drama, there can be both. For me, I am trying to create something real and beautiful, I want to show the power of real using good cinematography. CINEMATOGRAPHY is the thing I want to work on this semester.
-when editing
When I edit my shooting before, I was just putting the footages together, simply cut and paste, and then find some music that fits it. And I think that something is missing. When look at Lisa’s work the other day, I found that she changed the speed of people walking, and I think it looks really good and funny. There is real editing in it. Also she used split screen in one of her exercise. In the two split screen, we can only see half part of the two people. When watching it, we focus more on difference of their actions because of split screen. I think this is a great idea, and it is something worth trying in the future.
-about moments
In documentary, I think that moments are causal. By causal I mean it can be the beginning of something, in the middle of something, or at the end of something, it just happens, and it’s just recording. Although it’s just recording, you can still staging it.
-about sounds
There can be suitable background music, there can be voice-over, related or not related to the film, there can be just silence except characters in it make a noise…
What I am going to shoot for my short film just reminds me of this movie I watched before, Une femme est une femme. I remember that some one once said that this movie just doesn’t make any senses but I just like it. In the movie, there is not that much narration, but there is lots of performance. And the cinematography is awesome. It is just beautiful to look at.
Une femme est une femme is a French movie directed by Jean-Luc Godard, starring by Jean-Claude Brialy and Anna Karina. It is the typical representation of French New Wave. This kind of filmmaking style was active during the period between 1950s and 1960s. The New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of the literary period pieces being made in France and written by novelists, along with their spirit of youthful iconoclasm, the desire to shoot more current social issues on location, and their intention of experimenting with the film form. ‘New Wave’ is an example of European Art Cinema. In the film, the most noticeable is the applying of sounds. Differ from the classical narrative movie, the sound is very jumpy. It usually goes and stops. The movie has a strong focus on the principals’ psychologies struggling. It is presented in a very realistic, relaxing and funny way.
Generally, art cinema started to appear after World War II when the Hollywood cinema was beginning to wane. Overseas market and exhibition platforms are very essential for film production. After 1954, films started to be made for a wider audience, international audience. American film made their own screen time by sponsoring foreign production. The art cinema is an important factor of economy then, so it is developed well and continues.
The classical narrative cinema refers to ‘cause-effect logic and narrative parallelism generate a narrative which projects its action through psychologically defined, goal oriented characters’. However art cinema is different from the classical narrative cinema. It is specifically against the cause-effect linkage of events. Basically, the art cinema’s narrative is driven by two principles, realism and authorial expressivity. By realism, it meant that it shows the audience the real location and problem. Also sexual is a part of reality. What’s more, the most important one is the psychologically complex characters. In classical narrative cinema, characters usually have a defined desire and goal. Meanwhile in art cinema, characters lack defined desires or goals. So characters are usually act for consistent reasons and even ask themselves about their goals. So in art cinema, characters are usually expressing and explaining their psychological states. ‘Violations of classical conception of time and space are justified as the intrusion of an unpredictable and contingent daily reality or as the subjective reality of complex characters.’
Art cinema is not exactly isolated from other cinematic practices. It has neighbors on each side. They are classical narrative cinema and modernist cinema respectively. The former one is the historically dominant mode, the latter one is all about perceptual play, no thematic ambivalence at all. ‘If Hollywood is adopting traits of the art cinema, that process must been seen as not simply copying but complex transformation. In particular, American film genre intervene to wrap art-cinema conventions in new direction’.
Reference: ‘The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice’ in Catherine Fowler (ed) The European Cinema Reader. Routledge. London & New York. 2002. pp. 94-102
In this week, we start to talk about work individually. Like what we did last semester in the scene. For the rest of the semester, we will find our own focusing area of filmmaking and explore and research it.
I want to talk about my idea roughly first. I am going to shoot several scenes of daily routine of a person’s life, a girl. I will focus on the specific, small, detailed and ordinary life events, for example (the events I have in mind) getting dressed, putting on or take off make ups, getting up in the morning, eating, putting away stuff in bag… Those events are all very small and they happen to everyone every day. I am thinking to shoot some scenes that this girl is with other people, both when she is alone and has communication with others. There might be some narrations as well, but I haven’t thought of a good one, maybe something will come out when I start shooting. I want to show the power of the real moment- it may not look that bright and wonderful from outside, but the beauty of it is that it’s real and ordinary. Also I want to create mysterious atmosphere, so I will find different framing and angles to show some parts of the girl but not her face (can be a blurry one). When shooting there will be a mark on her that shows it’s her. In my shooting, there must be direction, performance and staging. My aim is to make it look beautiful, so in that case, I have to consider lighting and mise-en-scene as well. I will try different lighting in different events. I am going to work with my best friend, ask her to be may actress. We share experience and know each other very well. And the girl in the short film is actually an insinuate figure of myself. So when I work with her, I will direct her to act me. Because she knows me and we are close, I think that it will be easier for us to communicate. On the other hand, I’m thinking to look for someone from casting list. It would make me gain some experience of working with someone who’s actually in acting.
When I look at my idea, the thing I am trying to create reminds me of the scene of the man and the woman talking in the room we saw on Friday. There isn’t lots of script in this scene, they are just talking stuff in a room. What draws me more attention is the mise-en-scene, the lighting, the costume and their kind of wired and funny interaction. It makes audience feel like that it is not important about the plot, it is just fun to watch them. What sparks here is the great cinematography, and this is also what I want to achieve in my final short film. We also watched few other scenes which are all interesting to me. The scene with the drunk guy in looks really great, it is like a documentary style, but it is really interesting and stylish. In the scene, the guy is always holding some alcohol in his hand, or sitting in a bar, or drinking with other people. One framing which zoom in to his mouth, he is speaking or singing something, it just looks so interesting. And the music and the words or the song he keeps singing is also very suitable for the scene. In addition, the scene about blind people is pretty amazing. When first look at the it, I don’t know this is about blind people, and when I look at the eye is being striped off, I was shocked. Then when I look at it again, I noticed everything is about sound in this scene, the sound of a train, the sound of crowded people, the sound of bird, etc. And they are all brought to audience powerfully. For the train part, audience can only see the wheels operating repeatedly, the more it repeats, the more you want to focus on the sound it makes. For the crowds part, director makes it blurry when editing, this make audience feel scared just like the blind people, they can’t see clearly. For the bird part, the bird is kind of locked in a hermetic room, the room is so plain and make you feel asphyxial, the only thing you can hear is the screaming of the bird.
1. You can show both side of the characters talking and cut between them when they are changing lines. In this way audience can see and hear at the same time, it’s a easy way to understand what is going on
2. You can just show one person’s face for the entire time, and keep the other one off-screen. But we can hear the voice of the other one. In this way, audience will be interested in what the other character’s interests, motives, is he/she alone, what is she doing?…
3. You also just show one person’s face and voice broken by pauses. In this way, audience will keep lots of attention on the character’s expression and behaviors, and wondering what the other character said according to the character’s behavior.
sound shapes our understanding of images
Sound is the background of our visual world. ‘Chris Marker demonstrates the power of sound to alter our understanding what’s onscreen in his film, Letter from Siberia’. He shows the same image with different soundtrack, it turns out there is a big difference of what it brings to audience. ‘The audience will construct the same images differently, depending on the voice-over commentary.
sound direct our attention
When we hear something, we will think immediately about what happened there. In filmmaking, if the sound appears, then it cuts to next shot, we can see the answer, sometimes it is not what exactly we thought it is. Then we will think again. ‘Horror and mystery scenes often use a sound of an unseen source to engage audience’s interest, but all types of scenes can take advantage of that possibility. In addition, sound gives a new value to silence. A quiet passage in a film can create almost unbearable tension, forcing the viewer to concentrate on the screen.
reference: Bordwell,D & Thompson,K, FILM ART AN INTRODUCTION, Sound in cinema, pp.266-270.
She met someone and they went on a date. This guy takes her to his favorite restaurant. He is talking all the way about this restaurant and it took him long time to find it. He seems to not remember where is it very clearly. It is a small, crowded smoky vegetarian restaurant. Then they ordered. the guy is trying to do everything for the girl, pick up the menus, pull some water in to the glasses… Then he starts talking again, about this about that, and he is very sure about everything he said. He is aggressive. The girl is listening and nodding. She tries to talk some and gets interrupted by his excitement of what she says. After a while, she just stops trying because she doesn’t feel good about feeling. But she is trying to be nice and polite, that she doesn’t really liked the place, feel comfortable listen to this guy talking non-stop. When the waiter passing the food for them, he said,’ this must your first date!’ The guys smiles and ask’ why?’ The waiter ‘cos you are trying so hard!’ After they finish, they go to get payment. The guy says ‘you know why i like this place the most?’ The girl looks really confused ‘why?’ ‘Aha, it’s because of the payment, you can pay whatever you want. Okay I’ve put mine, now you put yours!’ After they say goodbye at the train station, the girl is like’ Phew! Omg!’ Then she walks alone home.
Character: A young girl (I haven’t come up with a right name for her), she goes to a foreign country to study and live there all by herself. She is a happy, positive and strong girl from deep inside. But at the same time, she is so young, she hasn’t seen much of the world, known how to deal with different people, she know she is going to get through all this on day, but just not yet. she is weak, terrified and excited at the same time of the unknown world. She is a completist, sometimes she is too hard on herself and sometimes on other people too, that’s why people found that she is not that easy to get along with sometimes. She is aware of that from some degree, and she is working on it and getting better than before. She has this passion for life but sometimes she gets shy. She is complicated.
In this week’s class, we did a whole practical exercise on audio.
Microphone Input Panel
There are two channels connected to camera, channel 1, the silver left one and channel 2, the black right one. When connecting them to the camera, hit status, and scroll to audio, adjust the audio level, channel 1 to -10 and channel 2 to -20, and choose audio select manual and audio in external. Choose line instead of mic on camera when connect audio.
Front Panel Controls
Adjust fine control button to PK, and you can adjust the course button to make the audio level between -10db to -6db and hit 0db but not over 0db. Switch it to center when recording. When you connect boom to the mixer, you need to twist the button to ST. Switch it to RTN when connecting it to camera. Switch it from mic to 1k can do the test tone, and you can adjust it on camera about audio level. There is a BATT button that can check the battery. We usually use it till it goes flash. When plug the head phone in, the side with line go with the left ear.
Then we had a go through about audio settings, when you have some camera movements, a good way to do it better is look for the spot and move camera around before the real shooting to get a good sense of it and to make yourself feel comfortable and confident about it. When hold a boom, to avoid recording the noise outside, you lean the boom a bit to avoid recording more noise.
In documentary films the person, place and events shown to audience are real. They exist or have existed. For example, in Forbidden Lies, Broinowski, the director insisted to go to find the hospital where Norma’s friend, Dalia, (As Norma claimed) who is killed by her family in an honor killing in Jordan. All documentaries do is to present factual information about the world. There are lots of ways of presenting in documentary, for instance, filmmakers can just simply record events that actually occur during the process, events that spontaneously occur, using visual aids like charts, maps, etc. For instance, in Forbidden Lies, when Norma sits on a chair, reading her book, based on a ‘real story’, Broinowski records the entire process-the process of filming Norma. Audience can see the filming sets, cameras, tracking dollies and hear Broinowski saying ‘action!’ Sometimes animation and comic can be used as well. Comic is used to show what happened in the court 11 years ago in The Thin Blue Line. What’s more, stage. Stage here is an important and common way of representation in documentary. Same location, the person doing the same thing, all the director will do is to ask the person wait for few seconds then he/she can frame it up. This does not mean there is something different here, the only difference is when the person does the thing regularly there is not a camera placed there and happens to shoot the entire process. However there is another kind of form of staging that involving actors. For example, in The True Blue Line directed by Errol Morris played back perfectly the murder scene in 1976 Dallas, Taxes. This documentary includes plenty strong evidences and logical conjectures like ‘mixes interviews and archival material with episodes performed by actors’. ‘The jittery reenactments of television true-crime shows are shot with smooth camera work, dramatic lighting, and vibrant color. The result is a film that not only seeks to identify the real killer but also raises questions about how fact and fiction may intermingle’ (Bordwell & Thompson 2013, p.353). From the examples above, it is proved that staging events will not make a film fictional or fake, it is just the fictional way to show the truth to audience, in fact staging sometimes intensify the documentary value of the film, and enhances the film’s reliability in some degree.
Documentary can be expressed in many different ways, there can be some fictional elements, there is no fixed rules of that is how a documentary is made. There are some conventions, but this does not conflict with the finding new ways and more progressive, dauntless way of finding the truth. Truth is there, it doesn’t come to people actively and it doesn’t say anything about itself. It all depends on what people discover, how people think about it and do people believe in it. Documentary is all about the truth, however sometimes the way of presenting the truth is hard to find. The truth is always hidden, so the way of presenting the truth has to be smart enough, at the same time objective enough because the truth never changes and it never is guaranteed by anything.
Reference: Bordwell, D & Thompson, K 2013, Film Art: An Introduction, 10th edn, University of Wisconsin-Madison, pp. 350-353 & pp.433-438.
Une femme est une femme is a French movie directed by Jean-Luc Godard, starring by Jean-Claude Brialy and Anna Karina. It is the typical representation of French New Wave. This kind of filmmaking style was active during the period between 1950s and 1960s. The New Wave filmmakers were linke
d by their self-conscious rejection of the literary period pieces being made in France and written by novelists, along with their spirit of youthful iconoclasm, the desire to shoot more current social issues on location, and their intention of experimenting with the film form. ‘New Wave’ is an example of European Art Cinema. In the film, the most noticeable is the applying of sounds. Differ from the classical narrative movie, the sound is very jumpy. It usually goes and stops. The movie has a strong focus on the principals’ psychologies struggling. It is presented in a very realistic, relaxing and funny way.