Category / Mechanics of Immersion

by harrietread

MOI Wk 11

So this week I was shooting for my short film for the final assessment. It is going to be short from what I am seeing so far, aligning everything in the timeline in Premiere Pro. Will it be too short? Don’t think so. I intend to go crazy on aesthetic detail, so this will involve Premiere and Adobe After Effects as well.

Biggest issue I had was wrangling the dog, Missy. Delightful dog, but not super obedient. Another issue that I had was that I did not feed my cast for a while when we were shooting, so we all got hungry and tired pretty quickly.

Now I am in the process of editing. I am fiddling with colour grading and split screening for one shot, and so far it is creating a fairly surreal effect. I want to do some more testing and see if I can improve this effect even further.

by harrietread

MOI Wk 10

This week I am doing more storyboarding but also some film/lighting testing. For one scene in my film, two characters are sitting in daylight in front of a fire having a conversation. First problem: can’t actually have a fire on the beach because there are laws.

I was going to use a heavy duty torch covered in cellophane and strobe it across my cast’s face to give the illusion of flickering firelight. I went and spoke to the AV techs in Building 9, however, and they suggested a battery powered lamp they had.

Tested it indoors and outdoors before the lamp got buggy and stopped working. I definitely love the way it looks in natural daylight. From the 30 second mark in my test video, it cuts to a different test shot with a narrower f stop and faster shutter speed. Definitely going to consider this in my final video, since I want there do be a balance of both natural daylight lighting the actors and also have the firelight showing up appropriately.

by harrietread

MOI Wk 9

This week has been an adventure in prepping my final piece. My script is written up, my cast sorted, and I’ve started storyboarding.

One thing that I am struggling with in terms of storyboarding is figuring out how I am going to present this story. I want it to be immersive, engaging and intriguing but that’s easier said than done. I don’t want some cliche hippy dippy hipster movie. My limitations are going to be camera movement if I want it to be smooth.

Another limitation will be my cast. They aren’t all professionals, only one has had really serious training. That being said, I have made dialogue as minimal as possible so I think I’ve lent myself a hand there.

From now, my priorities are:

  • Get all actors on the same page in terms of what is happening
  • Find a good, relatively quiet beach to shoot
  • Sort out storyboard
  • Sort out audio recording and such
by harrietread

MOI Wk 8

So this week I’ve been getting ready to pitch my final assessment piece for this studio. I have decided to do a single short film. At the moment I’m not sure how long it will be, or even specifically what is going to happen yet. I have compiled a moodboard though and an idea of what will generally happen.

In terms of what immersion means to me throughout this semester, I would say immersion comes down to how we can be emotionally affected by aesthetic and aural ideas coming together. I want my piece to reflect a whole lot of ideas from classical and modern artworks, like Boticelli and Yves Saint Laurent. I also want to play with how I write dialogue and create something as minimal as possible.

by harrietread

MOI Horror

Nope to this class. Nu-uh not havin it.
Today we discussed immersion in horror cinema, and I cannot watch horror. It terrifies me. Its easy to make a horror story in my opinion. But I cannot take the suspense. Alien (1979) just about destroyed me.

What I hate is prolonged scares, like what we watched from the Conjuring today. So much suspense, and definitely the sound design affects me the most. Sound definitely brings the audience into the universe of the film and utterly immerses you. So when there is utter silence, or the ambience is off key and building it makes me feel unwell and scrambly.

I admit I was hiding under the chair during the Conjuring viewing, so I cannot comment on the visuals. If I’d watched the visuals and blocked my ears it may have given me a different reaction.

Night of the Living Dead was not as immersive for me, despite being a classic, but considering it was probably the first of its kind, it is fairly brilliant from the scenes we watched. The technical immersiveness was not as engaging as contemporary horror films, the sound design felt clunky in comparison to Conjuring. The visuals weren’t far off from basically what is seen today, however.

by harrietread

MOI Project Brief 1

This semester, I am looking forward to practicing my technical skills in visual and audio media. I mostly want to improve my skills in Creative Cloud, especially Adobe Audition. I also want to broaden my understanding of the definition of immersion, and get a better sense of how I can apply this knowledge to my creative practices.

 

Recently I watched Baby Driver from director Edgar Wright, whose films I adore. It was so much more subdued in comparison to his other works like Hot Fuzz and Scott Pilgrim vs the World, but I felt that it was as immersive as his other pieces and probably more hypnotic. Especially in diner scenes with Baby (Ansel Elgort) and Debora (Lily James), I felt a sort of mellow lulled feeling that drew me into their world.

There is also a moment when Baby and Buddy (Jon Hamm) share headphones to listen to music, and the music literally surrounds the audience in the cinema. It was incredibly effective and really immersed me in the world of the film. What I want to get out of this semester is a stronger sense of how to use technical skills and understanding to create an immersive experience.

 

Firstly, I want to improve my skills in audio. I’m not very confident, to say the least, and my understanding of sound design is not as strong as my understanding of visuals which I have from film and photography. I want to get better at using Adobe Audition, and I also want to get a better understanding of how to use sound design, ambience, dialogue, foley and soundtrack to immerse an audience in my work.

 

Secondly, I want to be a stronger storyteller. What I want out of this semester is the confidence to use less cliches and veer away from being too expositional and too hand-holdy in the media works that I make. I love storytelling, and I want to get better at it through sounds and vision.

I declare that in submitting all work for this assessment I have read, understood and agree to the content and expectations of the assessment declaration.