As you have seen in the pitch, Pavina was interested in going to the advertising route for her final film project. As we have worked together before, I thought it was a great idea to help her out with her vision and further her experience with cinematography. As for me, I thought it would interesting to dabble with commercial shooting – it was a very easy shoot and was all done in a day. It was also a simple plot with the main focus on the shoes and so, very little acting was required for the actor and actress.

The only real challenge was maintaining our stamina as we had to shoot across different locations. By the third location, we were all starting to get tired – we started filming at one in the afternoon and finished filming by eight in the evening.

In this blog post, I am going to talk about the technicalities of the whole shoot and how we filmed. The camera that we used was the Nikon D3200 and the Canon 80D alongside with a gimbal/stabiliser, the GlideCam 2000. There were a lot of difficulties that came along with using the camera and a stabiliser, mainly because it was my first time using the gimbal, Canon D and the Nikon D3200 with a 24-70mm lens, f2.8 (which mind you, was a massive lens). Whilst filming, it was all a learning process for me and Pavina in terms of how to use these types of equipment. It took us a few tries to get the perfect shot but overall, it was a quick process for us to learn the tricks of the gimbal and the camera.

The gimbal did not produce the smoothest of shots, however, it was less shaky had it been just me operating the camera by itself. The shakiness can easily be fixed in post-production through ‘Warp Stabiliser’. As for the camera and the lens, it wasn’t as beautiful as the Sony a6000 which is why I opted to use a different lens to the kit lens (f.35 vs f2.8). Because it had a lower aperture, it produced a brighter exposure of the shot. However Nikon in general just has a different look from Sony – the colours in the shot are less accurate to real life, whilst Sony amplifies the colour and makes it more beautiful. Nikon makes the shot look quite dull and has a yellow tinge to it. This is not a major problem though, and can easily be fixed in post-production.

For the night time shooting, Pavina utilised external lighting on a low budget and brought her own lamp to the shoot and used a red, see-through film over it to produce a red tinge. It was a practical and effective way to get rid of the shadows but I’m not sure if it actually executed the shot that we wanted. Nonetheless, it was still a great attempt to add in effects and stylise the whole shot.

There are roots of inspiration from our previous short film, Missed Moments, which was originally inspired by In the Mood for Love, an impressionist type of film. Despite being a commercial shoot, Pavina and I aim to have a Hong Kong New Wave style with a commercial twist to it.

During week 8, we individually presented the ideas that we had for our final project film assignment. It was refreshing to see a change after tirelessly working for the group’s film project, Missed Moments.

In comparison to that previous film I worked on, I decided to take things to a darker turn narrative-wise and go for a more serious route. Inspired by Christopher Nolan and his style of storytelling and directing, I wanted to be able to pursue a genre relating to action and a slice of life with familial themes.

The film inspirations behind my idea were Nolan films such as The Dark Knight and Inception; 

FILM PITCH 2 PRESENTATION

I have this weird obsession with slow-motion scenes and something as epic as the opening of Inception is a vision that I hope to achieve. Maybe not production-wise but in terms of the narrative and the cinematography. That is something I hope to achieve. The level of production that I can make is potentially within the lighting and that is being able to replicate the cinematic techniques. The scene from above show a high-energy and an immensely intense scene, but for my production, it won’t be as loud and as stressful. Rather, I plan for my final film to be silent and communicate the mood through the cinematography.

James suggested that focusing on two aspects (narrative and cinematography) is a lot of workload to carry so rather than having my own independent film, I plan to help other projects for Screen and Sensation and hopefully, be able to use my own style of cinematography through various bodies of work. At the moment, I have offered to help out for two other projects and I am excited to collaborate with Pavina and Ben!

The entirety of Film Project One was enlightening and educational – I learned a lot from it and it most definitely broadened my experience when it came to filmmaking. I was always curious as to how films were made when watching them, but now, I’ve delved into it after getting to experience this film production with my group members and myself. The whole process of pre-production, production and post-production. This is the three main steps of how you make any type of film, whether it be indie, Hollywood or a student short film. There are also a variety of inspirations that came behind Missed Moments, which I will further discuss in the upcoming paragraphs.

Scriptwriting is one of the first few aspects that I want to dissect and discuss. I have never had the opportunity to write an “official” script from a production and have mostly been for myself during drama classes in high school and was all written informally or wasn’t up to industry standard. For this assignment, however, I actually went out and researched how to professionally write a script, with the correct format and structure. What I got out from the scriptwriting process is that it is the first and official part of making a film. When we had our session with Arthur, he said that a film is made three times. First through script writing, second during the acting and third, when editing. Through this script, I was able to visualise how each and every scene would look, especially because I was mostly describing it through the character’s actions and emotions. The script also enabled me to get to the editing process because in a script, you are able to add in transitions such as “fade” or “cut”, and that can be done in Premiere Pro through the effects.

Now, I have mentioned quite a few times that there will be little to no dialogue. In the final cut, the three lines in the whole short film ended up being:

• “Sorry” 
• “It’s okay” 
• “It’s nice to meet you” 

I made it this way so that it would be easier for us to work with less audio and because, in a way, it is a film technique. To me, I feel it is more impactful to have subtitles over a video without hearing the actual words being spoken. That way, there is an affirmation to the words being spoken and we know for a fact, that the subtitles are always true to the storyline. My inspirations behind using a yellow font subtitle was from the film, Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) and several other films that use the classic yellow, Arial font. Of course, the subtitles were only present because the language being spoken was in Mandarin but in our case, it is English. Why would one need subtitles for English? I think that watching something being spoken with subtitles over it gives it a more dramatic mood and tone.

I’m not exactly sure what the origins of the yellow subtitles are but I know for a fact that yellow is used because it is easier to read no matter what type of background the subtitle is in front of. I wanted to replicate that type of aspect from films to add a touch of authenticity and of course, for the whole aesthetic and meaning of Missed Moments as part of the Asian cinema context.

Now during production, a lot of the process was discussed over our group chat and through video calls. A lot of this was done in the week of shooting because we had to match our schedules with each other and the actor – a lot of changes were made in comparison to our original plan of the whole production. I initially wanted to finish the whole production process within a week over the mid-semester break, preferably over two to three days but ended finishing it over four days, in a non-sequential order. We had breaks in between because we had to work around our commitments. Despite all of this, the production process went quite smoothly and there was really no other major issue when it came to working with Joanna, Pavina or Aaron. Everyone cooperated well and exposed to the type of attitude and behavior you need to have when it comes to working with people in the film industry. Before the whole process, Joanna and Aaron also signed release forms because they were going to be on camera and might be possibly exposed to the public.

For the editing process, I was in charge of editing two scenes which were the Southern Cross and the Chinatown scene. Let’s talk about Chinatown. I want to deeply discuss this because I think it embodies my whole aim for this course: Asian Cinema. Like mentioned in our film pitch, we were heavily inspired with the cinematography of In the Mood for Love so therefore, we wanted to use the red lighting as a source of light and put in the same detail that that film had. The film represents the character’s moods and feelings without explicitly showing it. The way it is shown is through the visuals and the musical score. It is depicted so well through externally (the director) that their actor and actress only maximises the film as a whole. I envisioned our short film to have the same sentiment, which is why I chose to have as little dialogue as possible. Of course, there is only so much you can do with a low budget production so we tried to replicate it to the best of our abilities. The scene that we tried to emulate was all in the work of Christopher Doyle, who has mentioned that it is a “compendium film”, meaning that it is a collection of concise information about a certain subject. He has perfectly depicted it by getting every single piece of angle that we could have never thought of. From the text, “Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema”, there is a repetition in the form, themes and styles that contribute to the overall storytelling of In the Mood for Love. Had we had more time, money and resources, we could have replicated the whole storytelling of Wong Kar-Wai through cinematography, but at this moment, our attempt of his work and Asian Cinema as a whole is on a student and amateur level of his work. 

As a whole, my technical and creative development has definitely advanced in comparison to a month ago. I learned a lot of techniques and the overall process of how to make a film: pre-production, production, post-production and screening. Beyond screening, I believe the film is still growing with you and as time goes by, the way you see your own work in the future is a proof of growth. You may it view differently a month from now compared to how you see the film today. My technicality and creativity has definitely advanced in the sense that I know a lot more through experience. Now, it is a just a matter of getting more experience and exposure in the film industry.

References:

Eat Drink Man Woman (1994), produced by Hsu-Li Kong, Taiwan (distributed by The Samuel Goldwyn Company, 1979), 123 minutes

In the Mood for Love (2000), produced by Wong Kar-Wai, Hong Kong (distributed by Universal Pictures, 1912), 98 minutes

W. Buckland, Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema, 1st Ed., (Wiley, UK, 2009), p. 183 

On the day of our presentation, the time was very limited so we were only able to show half of our rough cut which equated to 10 minutes in total. We wanted to be able to show our presentation before the actual video but unfortunately, we didn’t have the time for it so James just suggested that we discuss it in the blog post:

Slide 1 

In our presentation, we wanted to discuss the genres and themes that were involved in this narrative. This slide mentions that this story is true to a certain extent, and is one of the many love stories that develop in fiction and in reality. There is nothing outstanding about the story but however, it can be seen from an Asian context, especially in a Western society like Melbourne. The main focal point of this project is the cinematography and the visuals, which maximises the simple plot and makes it seem “larger than life”, or at least that was our attempt of it!

Slide 2 

It is after all, romance, a genre that women usually gravitate more towards. It is also because a lot of the perspective comes from the girl, meaning that a lot more women would relate to this story. However, this short film is open to all audience because there are times where it is neutral in both perspectives, making it more open to a wider and general audience.

The roles and the equipment used 

In our supposed presentation, we wanted to discuss the type of equipment we used and the roles that were responsible of. The camera used was the Sony a6000, which I owe a lot to especially with the f1.8 35mm lens. A lot of shots turned out amazing because of the lens and would have otherwise looked simple had the kit lens been used. Of course, the kit lens were great for wider shots but the 35mm lens really stole the show in this production. Alongside the camera, a tripod and an LED panel were used.

In terms of the roles, I was mostly looking at which shots were the most flattering to look at for the actor, actress and the location. Pavina was great in directing what the character’s were supposed to do whilst Joanna did an amazing job with being an actress and also directing herself and the actor in some moments.

The verdict of the rough cut 

As mentioned, we only showed half of our 10 minutes rough cut so we had to skip certain shots. However, the whole class did get to see each and every scene (except the deleted scene) and were able to critique the whole short film:

• James suggested that we go for more ambient, background sounds rather than the cheesy music during the train scene
• He also observed that we all had really close shots (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing), which means that we gravitated towards more close ups and mid shots
• Tightening in terms of editing – as our rough cut was unusually long, more shots needed to be cut off
• A positive aspect of our short film was that it turned out really great in terms of the visuals which was good to hear because of how much thought was put into the composition of our shots, especially in areas where it was busy like the trains and the CBD in general

I’m happy we were able to receive these comments because it gives us more room for improvement!

Southern Cross Scene 

For the post-production process, I am in charge of editing the Southern Cross scene and the final scene, held in Chinatown. I may have gotten two of the most challenging shoots to edit for this production, mainly because I have limited shots to work with because of the production process that occurred. I still made it work and produced the rough cut of the project to look like this:

My process in terms of editing is sequential in the way that we shot it during production, meaning, that I set the videos according to the start of the production right until the end. After all, that is how we went during the production and followed the format of the script. The establishing shot of Southern Cross to the introduction of the characters, it was all in sequence. I did add in bits and pieces of footage that I thought would serve well, especially with the transitions between the shots and the slow-motion effects. In this edit, there is also a lot of fast cuts between the girl and the boy in the train, establishing their first point of contact. That is one of the first times I have ever edited fast cuts, rather than playing out the whole scene first from the guy’s perspective and then the girl’s perspective afterward.

In terms of the music score, I chose something quite slow, but also something that captured the moment in a sweet sense. I also wanted to have a curious tone, a tone that I would describe as a “first meeting”  as if you’re trying to know the person for the first time. There’s a sense of innocence and curiosity that comes with the music score. The music was taken from Youtube’s audio library:

Dinner for Two by SYBS 

I was lucky to enough discover free music that matched the whole tone of this train scene. On top of that, I also used ambient and background noise, as Pavina had suggested. I scouted around Youtube and found some sounds such as Rail Stations sounds, Escalator sound effects, Train tracks sound and finally a train announcement made by Metro. It was a good idea not to up completely drown out this whole scene in music (as James had suggested) so the mix of ambient noise and music was matched it really well.

Chinatown Scene 

Much like the Southern Cross scene, the editing process was very much in order and of course, followed the structure of the script. This was much easier to edit because it was straightforward and the actual process of this scene’s production was quite easy in comparison to Southern Cross.

This was probably my most favourite part to edit because of how visually pleasing this was to look at. The lights and the cinematography of this whole scene matched perfectly with my attempt of replicating a scene from In the Mood for Love. That was something that I emphasised during my film pitch, especially with the whole mood lighting (red). I also feel like that this was an essence of the kind of film I wanted to pursue – Asian films. Earlier this semester, I was talking to James about what my inspirations were in terms of my pursuit in the field of film and that in the style of Asian cinemas. This scene itself is one of the stepping stones to diving in that realm and eventually, achieving a more professional and polished look.

As for the music score, I found another perfect gem that matched this scene and the finality of it:

Touching Moment by Wayne Jones 

It is another piano score but this time, there was more build up in the song from all the drama that has built up during the entire short film. It is also a bit slower and has more gaps in between the song. As the song gets to the chorus, it matches the moment when the BOY and the GIRL finally see each other again and when he eventually gives the book to her. This song encapsulates the whole mood of the scene and was a good music score to end on. This scene purely relied on the music rather than the ambient sounds which was only heard in the beginning but other than that, it was all thanks to “Touching Moment” that wrapped up this whole scene together.

Day 3 shooting was actually from our deleted scene during the production and on the script:

Before we decided to delete this scene, we thought it would make sense to have it at the beginning, to establish that the girl is all alone on her way to a destination of some sort or is simply just carrying on with her life. However, as we stitched all the scenes together, we thought it wouldn’t make sense to add in the girl’s part without the perspective of the guy, which we didn’t get to shoot. However, we still had the full day of day #3 shooting and managed to fully edit the deleted scene. Check it out:

You can see that there is almost little to no relation when it comes to the meeting of the boy and the girl without the boy’s perspective so we decided to scrap it off. If we got the boy’s perspective, it would work, but unfortunately, we didn’t have time to shoot due to schedule clashes and time restraints.

Day 4 

The last day of the production was one of the most challenging shoots we had to do for our short film. There was a lot of movement involved in terms of the trains, escalators so it was difficult to get the perfect shot. We managed to capture the whole feel of the environment (I hope) through the variety of shots that were captured during the shoot.

Before the actual day of the shoot, however, we discussed the options that we had for the location changes because of the unpredictability of Melbourne’s weather. For the whole week, it was supposedly sunny until the actual day of the outdoor shooting we wanted to do. As seen in the script, it was supposed to be held in the tram stops and trams in Docklands because we thought that it was the least crowded. We never found out whether it would be busy because the weather did not allow for us to shoot outdoors. Instead, we used Southern Cross as our Plan B to combat the weather and it luckily worked in our favour – the lighting wasn’t too dark nor too light to film outdoors with the camera receiving the right amount of light.

The filming was all going great until we had to go into the actual train carriages – the real challenge of this shoot. Initially, we were planning to film inside the tram which I thought was easier whilst in pre-production but we had to scrap that plan and continue with filming inside the train. One of the positive aspects of filming inside the train station is the frequency of the trains meaning we can get in out of the City Loop as much as we want. In all the other aspects, we had to take rush hour into consideration alongside the other commuters who were in a rush to go home.

We in from Southern Cross to Melbourne Central, Melbourne Central to Richmond and finally, Richmond to Flinders Street Station. You can imagine how stressful it must have been, having to transfer three times to get the perfect shot.

However, it was worth it and we eventually got the desired footage!

Day 1

For our first day of shooting, we decided to make it a quick shoot because of other commitments that the whole crew and I have to attend to. This was also the official meeting between the whole production crew and Aaron, who was amazing enough to be part of our little film production. It was also the opportunity for Joanna and Aaron to get to know each other because they were going to be working together on screen and off screen – here are their profiles as I had posted on our Facebook page;

Our initial point of contact was the call sheet, something that I purposely wanted to use because that is part of the process in any professional setting. I also sent Aaron the link of the script, so he knew what to expect and how his character would be like.

We initially wanted to shoot in a bookshop inside State Library as James had suggested, but when we asked the store clerk, they suggested that we shoot on a weekend. Of course, we had already organised this short shooting for that day so that wasn’t a choice for us – we decided to scout around State Library and the librarians allowed us to shoot within the premises. At the end, we chose to go with the Redmond Barry Reading Room, a room with shelves of books which was perfect for the vision I imagined. It did have the yellow, artificial lighting which I try to avoid but at that point, we were running out of time and we had no choice but to go through with this location.

I’ll be honest, despite it being a short shoot, it was one of the most difficult shoots of this production because it was our first time collaborating in a practical setting. We had to do a lot of takes and cuts to take the shots from different angles, including other mishaps like the actress being unsatisfied or feeling awkward in front of the camera. However, these things are all understandable and can easily be fixed. One thing I learned from this shoot though, is that it probably isn’t the best idea to cast an actor/actress who was part of the pre-production process. It’s best to cast someone with a fresh idea of the story so that they produce the results that you want and will be easier to give them instructions because after all, they had no contribution to makings of the narrative.

Day 2 

Shooting for Day 2 was a jam-packed yet productive session. We knocked down two large segments of the story and that was the opening and the ending of Missed Moments. We also received help from Joanna’s friend, Terry, who was kind enough to help us carry the extremely heavy LED panel and also assist us in using the camera and lighting.

I was not expecting it to be this heavy so I’m really glad we got someone to help out. Day 2 of shooting consists of dusk (yay for the golden hour!) and night time shooting. For the golden hour scene, we were actually at a rush for time because the lighting literally changes by the minute when it comes to sunset. We started shooting at 5:30 with the estimated sunset at 5:56 PM – 26 minutes to film! We found a perfect location to film by the riverside and just started from there. Although we weren’t able to film the actual sunset, we still managed to get that residual lighting from the golden hour, so we were able to get those soft tones and tinges of cool colours:

Yet again, we went with the same procedure as Day 1 shoot, and filmed from different angles and perspective for both the BOY and GIRL character. This was easier to shoot because there was little movement for the actor and the actress. The only challenge in this shoot were people walking in between our shots, making it harder for the main characters to be recognised. It was also rush hour and we encountered a larger amount of crowd in the Southbank area.

By the time we had finished shooting this scene, the sun was already gone and it was dark enough for us to start shooting in Chinatown. This is where the LED panel comes in, aka, the fun part! Fortunately enough, the camera we were using is accustomed to filming in low light situations (actually its peak is AT the low light). However, we still needed the assistance of the LED panel especially in alleyways where artificial light was scarce. The thing with the Sony a6000 is that it is able to pick up as much light as it can and the LED panel played its part in that aspect, but there is only so much you can do in order to make the LED panel look natural as if it is part of the whole environment.

Here is a testing shot of the light, with our actor, Aaron:

32-234s616

To be completely honest, this was another one of the difficult scenes we filmed because by the time we reached the second shoot, we were all tired from walking around the city and we were all quite irritable from our low blood sugar levels. The most difficult shoot, in particular, were the characters walking towards the camera:

It was quite difficult to get the timing right because either the camera would move too slow, or the actor and actress would walk too fast. However, it was all in the matter of editing so our shots were still usable.

Now, onto Day 3 and 4 of shooting!

In the pitch, we mentioned going with the romantic/slice of life route and write about a love story between a boy and a girl. We decided to go with a simple plot line because in order to start on something that has never been ventured, it is ideal to approach it from the basics.

In the previous blog post, we wanted our characters to meet on several occasions at different locations – now, we just needed a solid script for the crew, actors, and actresses to follow. It was also in our decision to include as little dialogue as possible, that way, it would be less painful to edit and deal with the audio. Otherwise, the script would be filled with instructions of what the characters are supposed to do and how they’re supposed to act for each scene. I also have never written a script before so I decided to do a little research in terms of the formatting and the right terminologies for a script.

I thought this website was extremely helpful in that aspect, helping me format the script properly. I learned a lot of things, such as knowing how to open a scene with the terms, “EXT.” or “INT.” and using film/editing techniques in the script such as “fade in/out” each time a transition happens.

Our final script is straightforward, simple and encapsulates the whole romantic element of our short film. Like I have mentioned, there is little to no dialogue in our script, consisting of literally only “Sorry” and “Hello” – simple one-liners. How I intend for these lines to appear in the film is that it will come as a subtitle and of course, the actor and actress will still have to say the lines in reality. What I’ve learned over these past few weeks have been condensed into this script, especially the session with Arthur, where we had the discussion of scriptwriting and screenplay. I’m looking forward to seeing my script be played out in real life!

This process came to fruition after our presentation to the class – we further discussed what exactly it was we wanted to film and put out to show the general public, that is, for the whole Media cohort to see. Pavina and Joanna showed further examples of media that were predominantly from Asia because essentially, that was the route we were going for – Asian-inspired cinema. Some of these examples were:

Eversense Commericial featuring RiAeDo (2017) 

Unfortunately, this video does not include English subtitles but Pavina provided translations for me. The story is basically about them meeting on several occasions as if fate purposely wanted them to meet and be together. As we see the narrative from the guy’s perspective, it is him controlling his fate to meet her. By the end of the short film, we find out that the girl was several steps ahead of the guy and that she had been planning how to get him to pursue her. Being one of our inspirations, we wanted to use this video format where a boy and a girl would meet on several occasions as if their meeting was pre-destined to happen. Here are a few photos of our brainstorming session, showing the process of pre-production which involves storyboards, ideas, and scriptwriting:

The images from above show the process we went through in order to finalise the narrative and storyline.

1. We have a group conversation on Messenger to sort out our schedules for group meetings and plot ideas. Rather than the drive, it is easier to communicate through instant messaging and organise all Film Project 1 ideas.
2. The two photos with handwritten notes show our brainstorming process and how we plan to utilise the cinematography skills that my group and myself have. Along with cinematography is also the structure for our plot.
3. Finally, a storyboard to visualise how we would want to film our short.

All in all, the process of pre-production has been productive in our brainstorming but has been quite difficult to meet with my group members due to clashing schedules. However, I am looking forward to finalise the script once we have decided that it fits our vision and image from our Film 1 Project Pitch.

In Week 5, James brought in a guest to speak about his experience in the film industry. He has done several advertisements, films and has even directed a few shorts himself.

We all did an exercise together, analysing scripts from anonymous films (however, I was familiar with some of them) and dissecting the depth of certain scripts. My takeaway from this exercise is that each and every line of these scripts contains a multitude description and imagery that it makes it easier for a filmmaker to take each and every word and transform it into the form of a moving image. Here is an example of the script we were reading over:

Script One 

What I sensed from this script is a sense of melancholy and sadness. I did not know which movie this is from but I am assuming that the themes this movie is under are Coming of Age, Slice of Life and Adventure. If I am correct in this occasion, this script has done what it’s supposed to do and that is emanating the type of genre that this script falls under despite the readers not knowing where it is from.

Arthur has also given away some really good advice in preparation for our upcoming Film Project 1:

• Don’t over direct – how I interpreted this was you simply speak to your actor/actress about the concept and show them your script. Everyone digests information and to see how they would replicate your work is part of the process.
• Watching a lot of movies – You are able to see how film productions operate when you have been exposed to so many types of films.
• A movie is made three times – Writing, script-writing. Shooting, production and finally, post-production or editing.

Overall, this lesson has been helpful and inspiring for Film Project 1 and has assisted in me in seeing my vision for my first ever short film.