Reading through Colour theory I came across this article by Sarah Boxer of the New York Times where she discusses the various beginnings and original philosophical thought around the use of colour and how various people throughout time have perceived it.

The quote that really dragged me in was ‘‘the feminine, the oriental, the primitive, the infantile, the vulgar,” so basically everything “bad” in the views of the common society.

This article gave a bunch of extra sources that I could have used for my research however honestly I just didn’t have time to track these books down and really read through all of them, so the article served as a secondary source for me. I think this is relating the use of colour to low society and black and white to high society which is a complete juxtapostion to Patti Bellantoni’s book. The subject of lines rather than use of colour is seen in cinema and art through out history yes, but only because they were working with what they had. The introduction to colour into cinema changed the whole landscape, and I think that everyone is aware of that. Even if Ozu kept filming in black and white after technicolour had come into play, is this “higher” culture than Kurosawa who filmed in colour?

I think this article gives a really interesting insight into the argument against using colour, and therefore colour theory in a way that brings history to the forefront. The word Colour is even considered a dirty word. Think about as Boxer mentions, in the Middle East its considered a slight or insult. She goes on to talk about how colour has always been slighted as it escapes words and descriptions. I understand this first hand as trying to explain shades and meanings behind colours for A4 is quite difficult as we all have different connotations for different shades of the same colour.

I think the article is worth a read, especially for “chromophobes” considering the fact that we deal with the art of cinema and cinema in black and white is used for stylistic purposes these days rather than the norm. If we are to film something in black and white, is this making a stronger statement than I am for making a colour theory film? Or are they the same statement? One is over used due to history, and one has become the norm so how can diffuse the war between line and colour?

https://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/28/movies/vivid-color-in-a-world-of-black-and-white.html

Though I’m not 100% sure how this film will turn out, I wanted to start looking at some film festivals that I could submit to. Besides the big names that I’ve already looked at in a previous blog post, I wanted to find some specific horror festivals that I could circulate through.

There is only two horror festivals that I could find in Australia one of which is the Night of Horror/Fantastic Planet which is a horror/sci fi festival in Sydney. Submission is through Withoutabox and they currently say that 2018 openings will be soon and the festival starts on the 29th of November. Depending on how the final cut comes out it may be worth looking at submitting just to see how the process works. Because it’s in Sydney I assume the competition would be quite heavy but it’s at least a start.

The second Australian festival is in Melbourne, which is great except that there is no information about the 2018 festival. The festival runs from 23-26th of November according to the 2017 program and no information about submissions. It’s at least one to keep an eye on if they run it again because it’s in conjunction with LIDO cinemas and based out of Hawthorn.

Looking internationally there is a horror festival in Toronto that I attended back in 2010 called Toronto After Dark which runs from October 11-18th. The Canadians take their Halloween and horror pretty seriously so the cut of our film would have to be professional to be able to make it in, but maybe they’ll take it just because we are Australian? maybe? The next submissions for the 2019 festival open early next year so I think it would be worth getting together with Joel and Willa again to see if we are interested in submitting anywhere and getting all of the documents together to submit everywhere we can just to see what happens.

Submitting seems like a daunting task, but it’s a good thing that Ben was there to take stills and that we are expected to create a poster for the exhibition because we already have the ingredients for submission, we just have to make sure our film is edited perfectly. It would be worth having another look at the edit once its been screened in the cinema and working out if we could find a way to make it look more slick and not like a student film. Unfortunately due to the lack of budget all we can do is work with what we have.

I chose this studio not because I was interested in experimental film, but because this seemed like the studio that would allow us to have some creative freedom in what we chose to create.  The films that all of us have produced over the semester have been diverse and interesting and with James’ guidance we have all been able to work within our interests and develop the skills that we want to develop. Going into film project 1 I had no idea how to really use lighting equipment, only knew how to use the standard Media 1 cameras and a very basic knowledge of premiere pro. Through FP1 I learnt how to use the DIDO lights and a DSLR. Then how to mask and colour grade in premiere.  I think one of the hardest parts about this studio was trying to recognise my own skills and faults as I wasn’t able to actually come up with any film ideas to pitch to the class, rather I wanted to focus on my skills as a producer/director. I am not a writer, and I’ve tried to work on that during this semester with other classes but I know my strengths and I’d rather hone in on those skills than throw my self in the deep end with attempting to write an experimental film.

One major aspect of these classes I found incredibly helpful was the pitching sessions. Listening to Stephanie Palmers pitching session really opened my eyes to a skill that I would have to develop if I want to enter the production field. I made sure that all my pitches were adhering to  her structure to get more practise in being able to share thoughts concisely. I have no problem with public speaking or even answering tough questions on the spot, but sometimes i get bodged down in the details and end up jumping from point A to C then back to B.

I think out of any studio I have done, Screen and Sensation has given me the most hands on experience in creating films from the initial stages to the final cut of editing. My confidence in Premiere Pro is way higher than when I started off the semester and now that I have produced a short film myself I am confident in my abilities to get all the producers paperwork sorted and what’s expected of me. Group work is still a difficult challenge, especially in Film Project One, but that is the nature of the business.

Film Project two is when it all came together for me. I spent HOURS in those editing suites trying to get this cut ready for the exhibition. I started to not notice the time slipping by as I was just going over and over the same four minutes attempting to get the tiniest aspect of editing to work. Film project one had ONE cast member who “slept”, film project two we had to deal with a cast of four people with dialogue, 5 different sets and intense continuity. I think having to organise all of the schedules and make sure everyone was on the same page was one of the most difficult tasks i’ve undertaken this year. Luckily, I’m a control freak and enjoy making sure everyone is ready and on schedule and the cast were great at call times and scheduling (theatre kids!)

I have uploaded all my production documents to the folder “Production Documents” in my Screen and Sensation folder.

Working with Joel and Willa on this project was great! Sometimes I felt a bit like a referee between them trying to control the train of thought and keeping them on track and away from each others throats but in the end they are really good at what they do. Joel is incredible with his camera and has such a great eye for cinematography and Willa is so motivated to be apart of the film industry that she is willing to go 500 extra miles to get the right effects. She made batches and batches of fake blood just to get the consistency right, then transported it all from Brunswick to Kew.

There are some major issues in Bloodlines that if we were able to reshoot I would change. The timeframe of the film was so rushed that I feel like if we had more of a build up to production we could have made something really intense, however without a budget it wouldn’t really matter how long it took us. I think between all three of us we ended up spending about $350-$400 on all the props and catering for the actors. Unfortunately I had the wedding on in Brisbane so we did have to do the shoot quite quickly but even so I’m glad that we did considering how long it took to edit that film. The scene in the dining room feels off to me, and I’m not sure if its the writing or the acting but I would try and figure out another way to covey that scene maybe without dialogue or at least a continuous conversation rather than a few lines being spoken at a time. There are many scenes that I would want to reshoot to get the right reactions out of James, he did great but some of the takes were good for his body movement but not his face and vice versa.

I think the colours worked out well in the end. I let Willa direct where the story went then in pre production took the liberty to design the colour scheme. I chose an icy blue for the room to show a comforting yet cold colour for the safest space in the house, a washed out grey for the more mundane family dinner setting, a darker tone of yellow to represent a sort of sickness for the bathroom, a dark green for the monopoly scene (supposed to indicate the fathers greed and entitlement) and the purple for the more crazy kitchen scenes. Reading through Patti Bellantoni’s If It’s Purple Someone’s Gunna Die this semester has been super interesting in not only learning about the different shades of the colours but also what visceral reaction it gets out of audiences. Paired with examples of famous movies and choices in costume and set design it makes  for a really good comprehensive study of both art and cinema.

Overall I have had a great time in the studio and I have learnt heaps. I think the main thing that I’m proud about is learning the skill of colour grading. Though I am still learning I have always wondered how it happens and what it takes to do something like that but always expected it to be way too complex to comprehend. I’m really proud that I was able to colour grade that whole film myself and really force myself to learn a skill that will be very beneficial for me later down the path.  The amount of time I spent in the editing suites and getting to know how to use premiere properly again was the most useful part of this year to be exact. I always felt a little behind with all of the other people in my degree as most of them have been using some form of editing software since high school and I only learnt how to use it last year. From learning how to blue and mask a shot and to colour grade I have gained much more confidence in the program which means I’m more confident in apply for jobs where the use of the software is required.

Yes there were issues with both film projects and neither of them turned out how I expected, but as you say we made the films three times. So therefore we made 6 films. That is 6 more films than I have done in my life so I feel like I’m getting a pretty well rounded education in all aspects of the filmmaking world. Thanks James! I’ve enjoyed the semester and I’m looking forward to working with you again next year!

Day Two began with an earlier start time for everyone considering how long it took to shoot the scenes yesterday. The main part for this day was to get the rest of the non blood scenes out of the way so we could drench the guys in Willa’s fake blood. The biggest task for today was the kitchen scene. For Joel to create the jump cut with the blood he needed everything to be set perfectly and for it to stay that way for a while. We set up Sian at the sink and recorded her washing the dishes for a while then had everything marked and set so that we could return to the exact same position when she was covered in blood.

It took AGES for her to get make-up ready. I underestimated the timeframe to fully get covered in fake blood and wounds so the kitchen wound up being off limits for about an hour while Willa worked on Sian. That was absolute chaos as I was put on “Jackson Duty”. Jackson is the guy who lives at the house and he had gone out for a while to pick up something and we were worried he would walk into the front of the house (we were all out the back getting blood everywhere) and walk into a kitchen that is completely purple and VERY hazardous. During this time the actors were clearly getting bored as Oscar (Father), James (Thomas) and Ginny (Daughter) had nothing to do for at least 2 hours. I felt real bad for them but I had way too much to do to entertain them and Willa was at least trying as she applied the makeup to them.

Once the kitchen scene was over, and everyone else was covered in blood it was a race to film all the other scenes before the blood dripped all over the house or before it hit 5pm and we had to be out of there. We ended up getting all the scenes done except the bathroom around 4 which was great because we could wrap the other actors except Thomas. With about an hour to go Joel and Willa started filming the bathroom scene while I got to work cleaning the house up. Willa had put fake blood all over the kitchen and some had stained on the kitchen bench which was really scary at one point. Luckily Jackson had turpentine and a good attitude and it came right off.

Once the bathroom scene was done Willa and I frantically cleaned the bathroom up. It was about 4:55 and I was a little worried until Willa turns to me and says:

“our cut of period is actually 6pm. I just told you guys 5 so we would get out of here with plenty of time to spare”

Thank God.

Joel and I creating the Purple over head lights!

A “short” day of filming – right?

No.

Today I had the crew to my place with James to film the bedroom scenes as we couldn’t use the bedrooms at the original location. I had to deconstruct my room then reset it with the set while the guys went to Royal Park and filmed James waking up/walking towards the “house”. Once they were back we set the blue room scenes and filmed, then changed everything and reset as the red room. Today we had to be more time conscious as James had to leave by 3 and there was a lot of time spent dealing with the smoke machine and changing sets. In the end I pushed the guys pretty hard and we ended up wrapping right when James  and Ben needed to leave so that was great.

I then cooked us three lunch and all we needed to do was the stop motion. Easy.

That was 3pm.

Joel set his camera up in the position then let Willa go wild. I was taking the photos for her as she was applying the blood to my bed (which I was very scared about staining my mattress or making my room stink like strawberry jam). Joel sat in my dining room organising the footage. It was clear after about 15 mins that this was going to take a very long time so I ended up helping Willa apply the blood as best I could. Joel had to leave to go to work so he left the camera with us with a final request of “don’t get any sticky shit on my camera”

So he’s gone, we are trucking along with the stop motion and then Willa accidentally knocks the tripod losing our frame. We waste about 20 mins trying to get it back to exactly where it was before, with no avail. The camera battery is running out, and Joel didn’t leave his camera. Then we have an idea to use a different angle and just deal with what it looks like, but as Willa was figuring out that angle she accidentally turns a screw and Joel’s camera falls into the blood. LIKE DIRECTLY into the blood.

Needless to say that was the end of the stop motion. We ended up trying to give it a clean, I own a film camera and have experience in things getting between the focus and the zoom but because this was digital and JOELS we just tried our best to get anything off that we could. Willa took the hit and said she would go get it checked out and we packed up and reset my room.

An unfortunate end to the 3 day shoot, but it was fun. Besides getting headaches from the sickly sweet smell of blood and watery eyes from staring into coloured lights for three days we pulled through and survived… Now I hope that Joel’s camera does.

Day One began with us turning up early to try and prepare the set for when the actors came in.  As the house was not ours, we had to make sure that everything was running on time and that we were not disrupting the day to day lives of the people who lived there.  Once the actors came in, Willa got them dressed in their costumes while I was putting the sets together. Joel and I had discussed which shots would be coming first so I had an idea of how to light and dress the set. we jumped right in with the dialogue scenes so that we could get the guys to rehearse their lines and they were so great at it. Being that they are a class of actors in an intensive theatre school, I expected them to pick it up quickly but they impressed us with their ability to ease right into the blocking and lines. Ginny (the daughter) was especially good.  We filmed most of the family’s non blood scenes in the day knowing that we would have to return to do the blood for continuity sake.

Dressing the sets was quite fun actually. We had heaps of props to use and the house was designed in a way that actually helped out non linear room idea so that was a huge bonus. The main issue was the lighting and figuring out how to use the smaller spaces so that the lights didn’t get in shot.  We also had to be very careful of all the people that were in the dining room since it was so small we could see reflections of the crew in the door window which we had to keep rechecking to make sure no shadows were in the shot or reflections. Definitely a learning curve in that regard. Ben our sound designer joined us on set to get a feel for the shoot and ended up helping out on audio. It was great to see these guys be so excited for a film project and to want to help out even though they weren’t getting paid, but at least we fed them! overall everyone was pretty keen to shoot the film and get some credits added to their name, and because Ben is also a keen photographer the actors would get some head shots/stills for their resumes as well.

I definitely think that the day could have been a bit more cohesive as I felt that the actors were being bombarded by too much pointless information for their role.  I tried to make it as easy as possible by getting Willa and Joel back on track with the shots which I think I’ll be trying to do more of in the next few days.

A4 pitch

Group Formed!

Pre Production

Colour Theory in A4

Production Duties

Rough Cut Edit

Colour Grading

A4: Day 1

A4: Day 2

A4: Day 3

A4: Reflection

A4: Possible Film Festivals

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/patrick-mckee/2018/10/19/kurosawa/

Colour grading was intense. I looked up a few tutorials online to learn the basics and to add the adjustment layers over the clips rather than adjusting the clips themselves. I was mainly using curves and utilising the highlights and shadows. The problem was trying to keep the skin tones of the actors the same and making sure that the grade didn’t add a grainy look to the shots. After speaking to James about figuring out the exposure and making it a little lighter for a cinema screening I mainly up’d the exposure about 1 or 2 stops for each shot which made it a lot easier to see. The actual colour grading became about figuring out the highlights  and shadows of each colour. Making sure that the rooms gave off a vibrance that matched each other and the story. I ended up keeping it quite “normal” for the beginning scenes then increasing the contrast for the second time he would enter the rooms so that it looks way more saturated and dream like.

The smoke was also an issue. Even though the smoke would change with the coloured lights, it became a little too fake so I had to make sure not to increase the colour too much around the smoky scenes or the figures were lost. I think the best example of me getting around that was the second dining room scene in which the smoke comes in and Thomas turns around then back to his family and they are covered in blood. I made the colour grade uniformed to the first scene until when he turns back then I increased the contrast on the shots of the family to make the blood more vivid.

The green scenes became difficult as the more I played around with it the darker it got. I started to see a grainy haze come over the shots and had to figure out a different approach to it which was to play with the highlight and shadows. The shadows I made darker, but not too dark considering the girls hair would blend into the background, and then just made sure the highlights were picking up the greens. I’m pretty proud of the way that I eliminated the sunlight that was coming through the windows and my attempt to tint them green went pretty well. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to do that with the dining room since the whole room was supposed to be grey but even then I didn’t mind the look of it considering theres more cuts and action going on in that room so it will probably go unnoticed.

There are a lot of things about this film that I’m not happy with, but I keep being reminded by the others that most people won’t be picking those issues up and it’s only because I’ve been staring at it colour grading for two days so I’m just going to be checking with everyone at the screening to see if they notice the things that I hate about it. Lets see what happens.

So four hours in the editing suites and the rough cut is done. We had a massive issue with the audio and foley we recorded for the project, some weird humming sound was coming through so we have had to put this through with just the audio from the camera. Joel did a fantastic job putting together his intended transitions that Willa and I replicated to the best of our ability. We realised that we have to reshoot a few things such as the blood in the sink and we still haven’t put in the stop motion footage but the rough cut at least gives a good overview of where we are going with our film. the continuity was a bit of an issue but not obvious which is ok. I’m getting a little annoyed at some of the shots where scripts and cords can be seen which could have been easily avoided if we had looked at the footage but during filming i think we were just a little rushed to get things done as quickly as possible. there are still a few issues surrounding the dining room and living room scenes as the dialogue can’t really be played with properly until we get the audio fixed up (which is not my strong suit, i’m very visual and struggle to concentrate on sound bites).  I’m still not entirely sure where we are going for the living room scenes in regards to the dialogue and the reversal patterns so we have left that for now.

Working on the bathroom scene was probably the longest part of the editing process for the rough cut. Masking and layering the Father appearing in the mirror proved to be difficult as the shots didn’t line up exactly so we had to try and mask around the mirror and crop the shot down to match up. We also struggled to line up Thomas’ actions for him to look down at the sink the back up, each take it was slightly varied so we had to quickly cut it up to make it look like its one shot but we have actually put two takes together to get the correct action. The ending is another part that  was difficult to figure out as I couldn’t find a fade that I liked that didn’t look too cheesy, but by the stage I got to the end, I had been editing for about 4 hours and the others had left so I just needed to get it together to be able to present. The overlay and fade out is so dodgy, but I don’t mind since thats something that I can get feedback for.

The colours are all over the place which will just be an exposure thing, but i’m not bothering to start colour grading until the audio and everything is placed on. I volunteered myself to do the colour grading even though I only really got a crash course during film project 1 from Tash and Izzy but I think I’ll be able to do it especially with how we have lit  the scenes. Overall I’m happy with the rough and how it’s coming together. Now its just about getting that audio and sound design on so we can see what it looks like with all the components before tightening it up. We still have a lot of work to do regarding the edit but its good to see how its progressing.

Setting up all these production documents has been quite good for learning experiences. So far in my degree I have only produced a live TV show in the studios so it’s been good to get all the docs together for a location shoot/full short film. i have organised the following into my folder “production files”

– Call sheet for days 1/2/3

– Shooting schedule days 1/2/3

– safety forms

– cast release forms

– location release forms

of course these are just for the shoot itself, throughout our planning Willa and I have been making multiple lists of equipment for the shoot and the intense list of props for the set design.

I’ve been struggling with the shooting schedule as I’m really just guessing how long each scene will take but I’m also waiting on Joel to send through his story board of how he wants the shots to look so we can work out and order of how to shoot it. So far I’ve just arranged it so that we shoot all the scenes with the family first to get the other actors in and out, then also arranging it by no blood and blood as once we get the makeup and fake blood on the actors we lose our continuity. I’ve sent out the shooting schedules to the cast just so they know what scenes we are looking at but have let the know that this may be subject to change depending on our time frame. I’m also aware that we are using someone else’s house and that they have lives as well so we need to be as efficient as possible to make sure we aren’t infringing on their space. I feel like all my docs are ready for the shoot to begin and i’ll be making sure that i’m keeping track of the time and what we have shot in case any amendments need to be made. 

I’m pretty confident in my abilities to be a producer in this sense, i have skills that are easily transferrable but I haven’t had a chance to really try it out. I’m mainly worried about the scale of this project as we have really gone big on our ideas and we will either have to work realllllly hard to make it happen or look at scaling it back to try and get it done without failing on our timelines. The feeling that we need to convey is a feeling of panic and anxiety so the “sensation” that the audience feels is the most important aspect of this film. We have to shoot the film with that in mind so that even if we aren’t able to do every aspect we want on this project we should be able to get the same feeling on a smaller scale.