When I learning film 3, I always feel struggle about what I need to create, will I do a documentary or a drama? Then I growly realized that I do not have to limited with the types of film. Actually, we may evoked some ideas from the exercises and just create our own ‘film’. We might apply the methodologies of drama production or documentary to the making of this short film. When I watching one film, I was attracted by the usage of split screen in it, I thought it is so different and interesting. So I was thinking that what if I make totally a split screen film. That might be so interesting and challenging. So I generally summarized some usages of spilt screen, I’ll use some clips to explain it. Firstly, showing the similarity between different things trough the comparison.
The Second usage is the artistic visual effect of scenery in film.
In addition, the director used spilt screen to show more information in different perspectives about one situation or place to viewers in the same time, especially used in horror film or detective film. The audiences have an omniscient point of view when they seeing the film.
In week 5 exercise, I already tried the first usage of spilt screen. It is too short but not bad. In the new project, I plan to combine more different usages of spilt screen. The theme of this short film is reflecting the overseas life of student. What they are seeing in Melbourne, how they conquer the trouble and adapt this new environment. In order to make this film more clear and logic, I divided this film to three parts. The first part is showing the cityscape of Melbourne. I’ll select some symbolic locations of Melbourne, such as the area of Flinder station, the crossroad in front of Building 80, and the graffito street.
The part two of this film is using comparison to show the normal people’s daily life in this city. So compare with the part one, this part is more emphasize the action of people. Such as the vehicle they chose, the walking step of them and so on.
The part three is the essential of this whole film. In this part I’ll temporarily designed some scenes to reflect how overseas student live in this strange city and how they adapt this new environment. Those scenes respectively are the first time they arrive in this city, the differences they realized in daily life such as the transport light, and the effort they made, such as improving English through different ways, and the embracing situation they get into. Those scenes come from the experiences of myself, I will contact my friends asking more good experiences of them and choose some suitable materials.
This film is really challenging for me. In order to successfully and naturally edit this split screen film, I have to shoot so many footages as soon as possible. Also, the design of sound is not easy. I’ll try to layer different soundtracks in the same time to create suitable soundscape. Moreover, I ‘ll design a monologue of one people in this whole film.
This whole film will shoot by Ex3, I responsible for director and photographer of this film. Also, I need at least two partners, one is the protagonist of part three, and another is the sound recorder. I’ll start shooting from this weekend, firstly, I will complete the part one. I will observe the shooting place in advance. In the rest of semester, I have to keep learning more skills through watching some examples, and get some inspirations to help my shooting and editing. I hope I can successfully complete this film.