Gone In 180 Seconds: Three Minute Project Proposal TTF 🎥
The Three Minuter was an absolute pressure cooker, the creative heads from RMIT and external were amongst the familiar faces examining each and every students proposals for their final projects. The students performed remarkably well with some pretty creative, complex, complicated, crazy and constructive ideas being raised. After much anticipation it was my turn to deliver my idea.
In short I presented the proposed idea of filming long pastures of grass. Grass being something to focus on through the lens of the camera can be used symbolically to bring out many emotions and the wind blowing through the grass can convey an array of meanings and emotions. A pleasant breeze through grass can symbolise peace, tranquility and a sense of passing and resolution. A strong gusty wind can symbolise violence, an uncontrollable mayhem and uncertainty.
It is a beautiful thing to gaze at and it is also a beautiful thing to observe when the right lighting is associated with it. The most emotive time on my opinion is during the dusk when the orange sunlight is fading and what better way to encapsulate the setting sun than seeing the colours reflected through the many strands of long, golden, aged grass. It is certainly is a spectacular sight, it is a phenomena, something to admire and be inspired by.
I want to capture this moment of beauty through the lens and allow this beauty to transcend with my audience. To extend on this established exercise, I will then add a narrative. The narrative will be based around a young girl running through the long aged grass at dusk, her running is captured from behind in a long-medium long shot, through a tracking shot. She will either be attempting to flying a kite whilst gaining momentum running through the field or holding a balloon wanting to leave the ground and fly away. The narrative will be replayed and re-filmed in different ways to achieve different narrative outcomes. For example she may be flying her kite accompanied by an ominous soundtrack which could infer she is in danger compared to the same footage with a light, soothing soundtrack meaning she is gracefully flying her kite.
These experiments will form a greater understanding of the correct cinematic capturing light through a chosen object, whilst finding the right location to enhance my producing skills finding the right locations, talent and scheduling. The use of tracking shots and the proposed use of a potentially dolly shot would improve and increase my filmmaking repertoire and make me more polished operating the camera and more creative with my selection of shots.
I now embark on an exciting journey to learn new skills which will make me a better filmmaker, capturing moments like this correctly and emotively will not be easy, a lot needs to go right including blocking, weather, lighting, availability to soundtracks and locations but I am confident this project will conducted in the right manor and at the end of the process I will have evolved as a filmmaker and as a person.
Prior to pitching the long grass project I went to a location in Footscray with long grass and began filming it, observing it and experimenting with it, these were the outcomes. This short video contains some of the best moments I captured from filming long grass.
I believe despite the lighting and woeful weather conditions I managed to film some really beautiful shots and as a result I learnt heaps about my craft and how I will prepare myself in future before filming long grass shots.
An excerpt from the first long grass experiment, as you can there is a beautiful contrast between green and aged golden long grass, the texture and layers of different grass brings out incredible patterns and endless possibilities for narrative creation.
Michael Serpell