As usual I have too many ideas and now clear way of forming them into a cohesive exercise. I need to find a happy medium between what’s practical, and what’s exciting to me. To do this I have listed some things that I’d like to explore further in the course. But one thing sure about is that I am DONE with long takes.

To decide on what I want to explore I have made a list of the top ideas that have inspired me this semester:

1. The observational method of filming movements of an actor by first watching them complete an action and then deciding on coverage AFTER.
2. The idea that cinema is more than the story, or that the story doesn’t even matter as much as we think. The way the camera moves, the way a scene is covered, expresses what words/the script could never fully articulate. That’s the what we go to the movies for.
3. How do we go about moving from one scene to the next? Its a lot harder to move between locations that it seems.

How can I take something aLONG with me from my LONG TAKE?

What I got a better feel for in A3 was how to work closely with my actor in a way that makes them comfortable and brings out the best in them. I also got a good feel for pacing, and utilizing a space.

This post has been edited of the course of my process. I have included parts in italics which are the updates on the thoughts I’d had previously explain why they didn’t work out and what happened instead. 

It boils down to how I want to try and show a strong and complex emotional connection between two people, without ever showing them together in one shot. I’m imagining a conversation with gestures and no words.

e.g Isaac looks up and she looks “away”

I have taken inspiration from Her (2013) which shows a lot of scenes JUST with the main characters face. Since Samantha doesn’t have a physical body, the way she connects with Theodore is just through voice. We see him react to her voice and its very intimate and endearing. It explores the subtle moments of longing, loneliness and love that I almost feel embarrassed to watch, because it’s so personal. 

I can’t imagine what my final product will look like but for now I’m gathering smaller ideas that I want to include. I’d like to capture subtle facial expressions and cut them together to create deeper meaning.

update 20th Oct: My inspiration from extended to listening to the soundtrack while I edited to keep the same vibes consistently through the scene with the rhythm of the cuts. Here is the song I listened to.

…

I JUST had an idea that I could connect their gestures too. I’m imagining that there is a break up letter being written by Cara. She hesitates as she writes and crumples it up when its done, but keeps changing her mind and smoothing it out again. I will cross cutting his action with Isaac packing his bags (hopefully the audience will make the connection that he is doing this because he has read the letter), Isaac will smooth out his clothes before he folds them in his bag. I’m also imagining an uncomfortable part where he leaves. What I have to be mindful of with this is making sure it doesn’t end up looking like a lame coffee commercial about “smooth tasting coffee” or something. UGh.

(update 20th Oct: this never happened because I found that the actions we had were more than enough to fill out the length of the scene and express what I wanted to. I have found that I tend to draw out actions a lot by have a lot of coverage of the one movement. On paper ‘Paul sits down’ could take 1 second or 30 seconds depending on how is does it. In my case I tend to lean towards the 30 seconds.) 

Moments I’ve imagined:

He tenderly touches the collar of one of her old shirts which Cara could be wearing in her shots.

Isaac goes to make two cups of tea but realises what he’s doing and doesn’t.

Thematically connecting Cara lifting her pen to Isaac opening the door to his apartment.

I also have an idea that there will be a “supercut”; just an intense series of fast cuts of action where the scene will crescendo. All the sounds from every location (including flashbacks) will come together in this section.

But has this now become a plot point instead of a subtle gesture that can create an overall feeling!? I guess I won’t know until I actually try it.

I have to be careful that I don’t make this an effects piece. I very much want it to be about the overall feeling. I want the decoupage to tell the story NOT  the voice over/ explicit actions of the actors.

But at what point does it become a cheesy plot point? e.g throwing a bunch of flowers for no reason!?

 

CHOOSING A LOCATION

We walked around a lot. The side streets around the apartment we were planning to shoot in had a very different aesthetic to the inside of the the apartment. There was a lot of graffiti and hard rubbish on the streets. This made it difficult for me to walk around with me camera and not trip over while monitoring what I was filming.

In my mind I’d like to have Isaac arrive at the apartment as a suspenseful thing by drawing out the time he takes to get there. This meant a lot of shots of him walking toward the building, which meant including the background, or so I thought at the time.

I decided to omit a lot of the shots we had of Isaac walking through the street because it added another location to think about. As you can see from the thumb nails there so many different colours and places, this makes things too complicated and I want something that looks more limited in colour palette. 

Instead I used some shots of him going up the stairs where the contrast was so high that you could barely tell where he was. The actual room where we shot at was on the lower lower level but I had lots of shots of him going upstairs to imply that the room was on a higher level. I thought this would make the scene more interesting because its even more isolated and high up, kind of like a light tower.

Disaster strikes

Two actors couldn’t make it. So we had to shoot everything in the same place because the only person available to be in it was me, with Isaac on camera. How did this affect me story? Well surprisingly not by much. Instead of playing with location and I decided to play with timelines. Now that we will have to shoot everything in one place due to travel time and the days we have left, I’d like to play with the idea that the characters are in the same place but at different times.

THE SCENE FROM HER

I like how in this scene we can’t see Samantha at all but we can still feel the way the intense relationship that she has with Theodore. In particular when she tells him to “lie down,” he slowly and carefully lowers himself onto the bed as if she has her invisible arms around him and his gently taking his head into her lap. see 1:07 minutes.