Screenshot from ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’

DEVELOPMENT OF IDEAS

When I approach film making, I think it is similar to the way many of us may do which is starting with a script or some dialogue and building everything else around that, including where it would best be shot or what kind of setting it should be in. However, sometimes I find when I do this it turns out a little incoherent and can seem a little bit out of place when I haven’t put enough thought into it, so I decided, along with my group members, to switch things up a bit.

For this project I am instead working from the ground up and focusing on the location first, then hoping some kind of story or narrative will fall into place from that. I’m not really concerned about working with a set script in mind, I more want to arrive at a location and let characters take form in some way that would best fit the place.

I mainly want to experiment with long tracking shots like the scene from La La Land where they are getting ready to go to the party, as well as stand out colour in clothing, and focusing on the fashion in a particularly barren location or one that has very neutral colours.

Screenshot from ‘La La Land’

For a long time now, I have loved the ending scene of Brian de Palma’s ‘Carrie’, where one of the only girls left alive is walking to Carrie’s ‘grave’ and there is a long tracking shot of the girl walking until she arrives. I knew there was something different about the scene, but until recently, I had no idea that Brian de Palma actually had the actress walk backwards and then he played it forwards in post-production, so the scene seems slightly “off” and nightmare like. I would love to recreate this with an actor in the graveyard next to where I live, and it would be exceptional if I could get a smoke machine to make the shot fall into a rather eerie, thriller genre trope.

Screenshot from ‘Carrie’.