https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5UHNyK5k4QhOW56WnQtMGgtczg

This here is a link to my first little draft that I made for my exploration of performance, particularly, performance within mundane activities of day to day life.

I approached my friend Joe to take part in it because he loves to show off his dope dance skills and knew that he would be perfect for this specific project.

I filmed it all on my iPhone and edited it with iMovie on the iPhone.

The song playing is “Too Good” – Drake feat. Rihanna.

Although the clip is merely a starting point/draft, I wish I crafted it a bit better. The lighting is really dull and off-putting and the editing is a bit clunky at stages. Joe’s legs are resting on the table in one shot and in the next shot are firmly planted on the ground. Inconsistencies like this will definitely not be showing up in future creations. All in all though, for the amount of time that I spent on it, i’m pretty happy on it. I like how the idea came into fruition in my mind and I was able to act on it and make an actual ‘thing’ from it. I’m going to start planning my next clip this weekend and hopefully have it filmed by next class.

“Performance within the mundane”

Today’s class was quite a profound experience for me. After presenting to the class and our special guests on my idea of ‘the long shot’, I must admit that I was feeling a little lost. I wished to explore the connotations behind ‘the long shot’ and how they contribute to the meaning within cinema, but really didn’t know how I was going to go about doing this piece of study. One of our special guests pointed out to me that my examples that I showed to the class, were both performances. Simple, but succinct performances.

Today I had a chat with Robin to help me figure out what direction I was heading in with my final assignment. We decided that I was obvious that I was interested in the idea of performance within the context of a long shot. Robin challenged me to study the notion of the mundance and how performance can alter a mundane activity. We spoke in detail about the characteristics from my chosen scene analysis that I enjoyed and how I could portray these to my audience.

I’m really excited to begin brainstorming how i’m going to portray the idea of performance. I have many talented friends that i’m keen to get in front of my camera and start experimenting on coverage and the different ways in which I can convey information through the use of the long shot.

“In a sense, our whole semester is dedicated to decoupage.”

Découpage is a widely debated cinematic term. Meaning “to cut up” in French, it refers to the editing process between shots of a film that create meaning. It may also refer to the “construction” of a scene, that is, the numbered order of sequences/shots that will ultimately create a coherent scene. As it has no English translation, it is quite an ambiguous term that is widely debated in the western cinematic world. Due to there being no translation, I get the feeling that there is a sense of “vagueness” to the term, especially in the western world, as it’s such a European term that is attributed to filmmakers from that part of the world, which is so different artistically and commercially.

To further understand découpage, I think that it’s important to understand a couple of other cinematic terms. These terms are “mise-en-scene” and “montage”, both elements of cinema that coherently create the form of film.

Mise-en-scene refers to the different modes of design that appear at any given moment in piece of cinema. This includes lighting, set design, costume and props. Mise-en-scene also refers to the many connotations that any of these modes of design carry. For example, low key lighting can be seen as to represent an emotive atmosphere in a film whilst high key lighting can be interpreted as representing a more uplifting and positive atmopshere.

Montage, in cinema, refers to any number of shots that are edited in a chronological order to create a sense of meaning. When we interpret a number of shots in this order, and are able to make sense of it, we refer to this sense as narrative. Shots that are not in chronological order can be seen as abstract and can still have a degree of meaning behind it that is able to be interpreted by the audience.

Both mise-en-scene and montage combined with decoupage combined create a very crucial relationship to the makings of a film. Montage and decoupage are closely related as they both refer to the sequential nature of shots that make up the traditional scene in any film, whether it be narrative based or abstract. Mise-en-scene can be seen as the “building blocks” as to what makes the decoupage of a film as powerful and important as it is.

I guess when all of these things come together, a shot comes together nicely. When mise-en-scene, montage and decoupage don’t mesh well together, the shot falls apart. Without a well planned decoupage, a montage of shots doesn’t really mesh well. In saying all of this, I think montage and decoupage are more of a seperate entity to mise-en-scene, as they refer to more of the editing process whilst mise-en-scene is definitely more apart of the stylistic and visual choice of a film. In terms of supremacy, I think all 3 of these cinematic features have their moments, all though to me, decoupage seems the most crucial to the crux of a film. Without the style and the flair that the decoupage seems to be responsible for, I think a film would be reminiscent of an empty shell; hollow and devoid of any presence.

Today in class, we watched some snippets of Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1964 classic, Red Desert. Whilst it didn’t take up a huge portion of the class, it was still incredibly inspiring and quite wonderful to look at. I really enjoyed how Antonioni uses space and location to evidently show how masterful he is at utilising decoupage to really illuminate his films. This exploration of space is what makes the form of his work so crucial, it’s what makes the film what it is. He is a master at directing his characters through a scene so concisely.

This is something that a director can only dream about. Obtaining a certain visual style of work that is unique to your film making is something that I find to be quite interesting and rare at times. I feel like most directors definitely have their own style that is individual to them, but not many directors are really innovative in their fields, like Antonioni was. I see inspiration from other directors in films, whilst the first pioneers of feature length films really pushed the boundaries in terms of decoupage. It’s these directors that really influence the modern day directors.

Today’s task was an interesting one. We were told to come to class prepared to direct our own little short, which was anything of our choosing and planning. We were to direct it, whilst the rest of the group were going to be filming it, acting in it and looking after the sound.

My group consisted of Matt, Luke, Sam and myself. I devised a short little scene where Luke would be playing a depressed individual roaming the halls of RMIT thinking of retreating to his bed for the day. I was able to cover the scene exactly how I wanted… I did this by filming Luke quite extensively as he prowled the halls of building 9, and directed him to look solemn and grim. I intended to turn the whole thing into a monologue basically, with his mind narrating his emotions throughout his day. The whole scene had a real melancholy feel to it, which was exacerbated by the dimly lit lighting that permeates the bottom floor of building 9.

The activity was really interesting. Directing has never been my fortè, but working with like-minded individuals really makes the job a lot easier and smooth. I really liked the pressure of working under a 30 minute time limit, I felt like it really pushed all us individuals to work really concisely and to not fool around.

Today’s class was spent filming a scene that we had planned in yesterday’s tute. It depicted some university students making their way to class and running into a troublesome dude named Charlie, who may have been drunk. It was pretty hilarious. The day was really wet and rainy, and we had to shoot the scene on the stairs behind building 9. This caused a number of OHS problems and slowed our shoot down considerably.

Throughout the shoot, our film crew ran into a number of issues that forced us to ponder our direction and how we were going to approach the next set of tasks. Sam, our director, did a really good job in keeping everyone in line and making sure we were all focused and attentive to the job at hand.

It’s funny because when you think of your favourite films, you think of them on a creative level. I mostly think about the creation of ideas that happens in the directors’ head on how they visualise a film to ‘look’. By partaking in shoots and this studio in general, i’m starting to look at films in a more technical way.

How were they created? Why did the director choose this shot?

These are all questions that are starting to become regular occurrences within my thought processes. As the semester goes on, I can only imagine that these questions will become stronger and easier to answer.

Today’s class was centered around a group exercise where the classroom became a film set. Every member of the class had a specific role in helping to assemble a scene, as a way to experience in real time how a film crew works together to overcome obstacles and tribulations to create a coherent and viable piece of cinema.

Meg and I were chosen as the actors of the scene. The greatest revelation that I experienced by doing this was how tedious the job is and also how “watched” you are. I felt super self-conscious being studied and judged by the whole class. It was a rewarding experience though and allowed our humour to shine through. I flubbed my lines a couple of times and we both laughed a lot which set the whole crew back quite a bit, which in turn added a sense of realism to the experience I thought. A real film takes months to complete, so one can only imagine how many of those hours are unused footage of mistakes and bloopers. I think we’re hilarious.

The rest of the class had roles such as camera operator, sound engineer, director etc… The thing that I find the most interesting about this was, even though we were all working as a team… It still took quite a lot of time, effort and energy to get a simple scene filmed. I strongly believe that the bigger the team, the longer it takes, as different individuals have different opinions on how things should be curated and presented. Smaller teams usually work more efficient for the reason that there are less voices to be heard. I guess the thing that I took most from this class was the importance of the Director in maintaining a sense of balance and order within a film crew. The director is there to make sure that the film gets made, in the most creatively concise way.

C-O-V-E-R-A-G-E

In the art of film production, coverage refers to the amount of footage recorded in camera which encompasses a different variety of camera angles, takes and cuts which will then later be used in the post-production stage of editing to create a scene. The more coverage shot through the filming process, the more footage that will then be later studied and potentially utilised to make the scene as coherent and structurally plausible as possible.

For example, a group of filmmakers will be working on a shoot to capture a scene of a young married couple conversing about their respective days just passed. They will attempt to plan and capture the scene in a number of different ways so they can later deliberate in the editing suites about which way, using their huge array of footage shot, is the best way to edit and formulate the scene so that they can maximise the depiction of a couple in love. This can be done by using the close up shot that they got of the couple, as opposed to the mid shot, as close up shots usually depict the notion of intimacy and attraction, whilst the mid shot can connote a sense of distance and withdrawal.

Camera coverage is usually planned by the director of the film, by creating something called a ‘shot list’, which is a detailed illustration that defines what each shot in a scene will look like. This helps the rest of the filmmaking team, including the editors, decide on what the most appropriate shots are to convey the scene in whichever way planned.