Monthly Archives: August 2017

//TEXT ME BACK//CRAZY BITCH & CHILD//MADWOMAN

Working with my good judy Hanna O’Keeffe from Sit On My Face Productions, we’ve recently exhibited a short film titled TEXT ME BACK//CRAZYBITCH & CHILD//MADWOMAN. A reworking of Hamlet for the Melbourne University Shakespeare Company at Mudfest 2017. The piece is focused solely on Orphelia, giving a voice to the forgotten character who is often seen only as a plot point. Described in the programme as:

“Mad Woman” 
Directed by Hanna O’Keeffe.
Hamlet won’t text back, the girls are busy, and the relatable depression memes are only making you more suicidal. What’s a girl to do? God made the madwoman. Now it is her time to eat.
Featuring: Sara Bolch
Cinematography & Editing: Rosie Pavlovic

Here’s the trailer;

TEXT ME BACK//CRAZY BITCH & CHILD//MADWOMAN trailer from rosie pavlovic on Vimeo.

5A lighting exercise

Our script adaptation was made in three different shots. We wanted to choose an outdoor location full of dappled light and we found it on the balcony… well full of light, briefly.  The clouds came over quickly and all of a sudden we were working with harsh daylight. Luckily, there was a thick layer of cloud and that filtered the 2pm lighting down to something soft.

In our first shot, we only POFENGERED…. without the POW! The blue tones are indicative of no white balance. It’s blue, but theres a partial amount of the dappled light we were aiming for. My shot is the final one, of a CU of Margot’s face. Here I am trying to light the off-side.

I should have used a tripod, but I chose not to because I was intending on standing really far back, cranking the zoom to create a cool depth of field. I had just watched The Piano and there was a shot of Holly Hunter playing on the beach, with the golden background totally blurred. This shot has been haunting me (starts at 1:03).

In an epiphany I’m just having now, I realise that if I wanted to recreate this shot, I would need a tripod. The shot would need to be static and my hands would shake at a zoom length that far.
Anyway, I forgot to even attempt it because we were all freezing and the ear-touching scene was too funny.

BOX – Making, Reflection

Make The Bed

I really wanted to make the bed something really special, but upon rewatching it, I realise I’ve ‘shot the shit out of it’. The whole video is a bit disjointed and overthought. There are 9 shots in 39 seconds, and only one shot repeats itself. I went in to get every angle possible  As each stage of the bed progressed, I shot each one in that order – pillows off, top sheet on and tucked, doona, pillows, decorative pillows, resulting in chapters of the film for each action. I think reviewing my rough cut, which ran overtime, I can see this chapter structure clearly.

In the first cut of this exercise, I am aware of myself trying to create a scenario. The slow cuts between shots of the strewn pillows are intended to mimic “aftermath” shots, often seen the morning after parties, and these pillows could be hungover revellers. Rosie from stage left comes and inspects these pillows, accepts the challenge to clean this up and begins by tossing the pillows on the ground, slowly at first but more intensely, leading her to rip the bedsheets and shake off the mess. I was semi-conscious of this storyline while acting and shooting, but reviewing it two weeks later, it’s apparent that I had a clear story in my head when I shot this.

Finally, this extra piece of footage was entertaining to rewatch as I added the clips into the sequence. My girlfriend Siobhan has been interrupting the filming to pop into our room to grab her keys, change her clothes and at one point jump on the bed I’m making. In this shot I am about to shoot what I thought would be the pièce de résistance; the doona cover slowly falling in the air, compressing itself as it lands. Siobhan starts asking me where the spinach is in the fridge. This is the best piece of footage I shot that day:

Lenny in Three Acts

I found this first sequence I shot with Margot and Nikki really interesting. We storyboarded well, had a clear vision and had completed a correct camera set up. It was only until we got out into the alley did it look totally different from what we had envisioned. The edit wasn’t as seamless as I had wanted, but there was a really crazy shot we tried with a focal grab, just as an experiment. Nikki would walk up to us with a pained face, and the closer she got the more in focus the image would be. It ended up being my favourite shot. Unfortunately it was hard to edit into the sequence but I tried anyway.  If I could go back I would go back and reshoot this take to fit the shot in better.

The video is very blue. It was about 4.00pm on an overcast day and we had set up the camera facing the light, and the actress turned away from the light. I could write that the pain and nearness to death she was experiencing was pushing her into darkness, but it was more accurately a factor of filmmaking we did not consider. I want to be more wary of light, as all of the photography classes I’ve taken have said that it is the crux pf shooting anything. I find myself more engrossed in the performance whenever I’m looking through the viewfinder, or the direction the action moves in. Or even more, a colourful detail I want to include in the shot, such as the yellow pole or the RMIT sign on the wall.


 

BOX – Deconstruction

sound
I noticed Atmos for the first time while watching this clip. There is Atmos recorded for the scene in the house. If this was cut from the movie, it would be uncomfortably quiet. I’m trying to notice the Atmos everywhere I go now.
This film is renowned for the ABBA soundtrack, and the way it’s implemented into visual cues is fabulous. The key slide at the beginning of ‘‘Dancing Queen’ is illustrated as Muriel pushes Rhonda down the wheelchair ramp. It’s a beautiful descension visually and musically. There’s no diegetic sound while the characters are in the car other than dialogue. This puts an importance on the track, as it’s more encompassing, rather than if it was play on the car radio for example.

shot construction
Beginning in the lounge room, Rhonda asks Muriel why she should leave. This shot puts her centre screen, however there is still ‘talking space’ if we measure from the eyes. The characters aren’t facing each other, as Rhonda’s head is turned to face Muriel in the door. Muriel replies where it appears she is standing next to Rhonda’s mother, however the depth of field makes it apparent that the mother is between them. There’s a shot I found disconcerting, where the back of the mother’s head faces the camera as she turns to address Muriel in the same shot. I rewatched this realising that the sequence is viewed through Rhonda’s perspective, hence the shot does not cut to the mother’s face addressing Muriel, as that would be Muriel’s perspective. This is reiterated when we see Rhonda’s eyes move to the girls and the camera cuts to a shot of them, accordingly. Muriel is then shot alone and we have visualised Rhonda’s choice between staying or going. As Rhonda then wheels past her mother, we snap out of her subjective view, and begin to see the narrative through the eyes of the audience.

production design
My favourite aspect of this film is the production design. Suburban Australia is something that I feel we shy away from in representations of Australia on screen, unless it’s in a negative light. This film’s success is based on a resonance to this culture, and that’s represented through the production design. The floral chairs in the lounge room, the agave bush in the front garden, a grey concrete driveway with weeds growing from the cracks. There’s something magnetic about unapologetic suburban Australiana. I grew up in an isolated small town, and travelling into the suburbs as a child was magical – from paved footpaths to buses, cul-de-sacs, mailboxes, milk bars. We had none of these things in my home town. Though suburbia is loathed in Muriel’s Wedding, it’s still represented. Moving to inner-city Melbourne I feel as though the city is attracted to metropolitan art and culture, and to be suburban is looked down upon. The premise of Muriel’s Wedding is escaping the suburbs to live in the city, but never forgetting that the place you grew up in made you the person you are today.