For our short film we have decided to do an experimental adaptation of Murakami’s novel, After Dark. This book essentially focuses on a character sleeping while her dreams blend in with reality. We are taking this concept and creating a film that will be focused on one character sleeping with experimental film techniques to create an disturbing sense of voyeurism while trying various forms of cinematography, mostly with the lighting. We broke down the roles into the following:

Tash: Producer

Izzy: Director

Ciara: Editor

Ally: Cinematographer

Pat: Sound

I’m not great with sound, but the sound in this piece will be added in during post so I’m not too concerned about trying to use the microphones to capture sounds during the shoot. Because of this, I’ll be helping out with the directing and cinematography during the shoot then helping Ciara during the editing process. We have decided not to really stick with our roles due to the fact that we will all be involved in all aspects of the process.

Setting:

Our setting will be in one room. We were going to use Ally’s house however it was discovered that her floors have been ripped up and is currently a construction zone so Ciara has found an alternative setting at her Grandmother’s house in Hawthorn.

Talent:

Izzy has a friend who will be our actress. Lisa doesn’t have any experience with acting but because she will mainly be asleep we will be able to direct her fairly easily. During the workshop with Arthur Angel, he mentioned to constantly be giving feedback to the actors and considering we don’t need to use sounds from the shoot itself, we can easily coach her through her movements.

Props:

An old clock and an old TV set. The way we are going to use this is still being discussed, but the clock will be the marking of time through the night and will serve to be markers for the film (beginning, middle, end). The TV will come into play at the end to (hopefully) make the audience question if Lisa is asleep or if her consciousness is trapped within the TV.

Shots:

Planning this shoot is proving to be difficult as there is no script so we have to plan shots rather than narrative. We will be using a “CCTV” shot to add to the voyeuristic nature of the film while the other shots will be hand held cameras that will be at different angles of Lisa.

Equipment:

2x cameras

2 sets of lights

1 x zoom mic

We had a bit of an issue trying to book two cameras from the tech guys (thanks James) but now  we are using a Sony PXW-X70 camera and a DSLR. We have been given the go ahead for 3 DIDO lights and a large LED screen for the lighting.

If all goes well, we should be able to do this shoot in 2-3 nights. As we have to shoot at night for the lighting and fidelity, we have to make sure that we are on top of the shots needed and schedule so that we don’t run too late into the night. We all have very conflicting schedules so this is going to have to work within the three days allocated otherwise we will have to split up and start doing this in pairs which could cause confusion and also means difficulty with the equipment. Overall I think that the shoot will go well as long as everyone is prepared and organized on the day.

PreProduction forms in my Google Drive.