Group – Jialu, Sylvia, Yolanda, Rachel, Kris

We imagine our project to be the final scene of a movie as it was based on the last paragraph of Camus’ first novel ‘The Stranger’. The main protagonist Meursault has reached the very last point of his life because he has been sentenced to death for shooting a man dead on a beach. The reason he gives is that “it was because the sun was too hot.” We have unfolded this scene by combining what is already in the book with our understanding of the last part of the novel.

Meursault, the protagonist is anti-social, indifferent, insensitive, uncaring and unmotivated. But his absolute passion for the truth is revealed during the second part of the book. In the first project, we decided to shoot in two locations, first in an ambiguous, interior dark space and second is a beachside shot after sunset,  both two shots were intended to represent Meursault’s anti-social mental space.

In the second project,  we removed the beachside scene and refilmed the interior location by filling in more details which symbolizing Meursault’s repetitive everyday life in prison. We have also slowed down the pace of the whole scene to represent Meursault’s calm and fearless mental space towards death on the last day of his life.

In both two project, we have kept the flower which symbolically represented Meursault’s mum, he is never afraid because he admired his criminal and at the last point of his life, he remembered the death of his mother.

Shooting Day 1

– Before shooting – Having the target to slow down the pace by filling more details in, we booked the studio for 6 hours.

I thought we have prepared better than the last time so I wasn’t worried at all, and I have never imagined this shooting day was full of episodes again, things didn’t seem to went correctly, everyone including the director had a blank face for during the shooting, no one seemed to know what are they doing now or what is the next thing to prepare. Jialu and I discussed on the way back home, we didn’t really get the reason why this shooting ended up in this way.

The first difficulties that appeared were time management once again, we all knew that this is a class exercise which means there is supposed to have episodes and challenges occur but we still really want everything to flow fluently, I don’t have mental health issue but I feel like I have OCD when I meet any timing issues, say if I have 2000 word essay due on Friday, I will start doing research and planning two weeks before the due date, I get frustrated easily when the time wasn’t going as I planned. Although I know things always go completely different to your expectation so I always comfort myself to not be frustrated by time management but I don’t think this is something bad at all, in our group we actually need someone there to push everyone gets going even the shot wasn’t satisfying enough. Within the given 6 hours of shooting time, we spend the first 4 hours just to build up the setting, we really did speed up a little for things we had that was the same as practical project #1 such as the black curtains we hang up.

Secondly, compared to our knowledge and experience on film lighting, the lighting set we had was massive, the huge set was used to create a perfect silhouette, since the silhouette look sharper with the lamp switch to flush, ‘From the first project shooting, we found the shoots are too dark, so we want once again, test shooting or test lighting set should be done before so we can get feedback and help from Robin. We want the silhouette to be nice and sharp, we cannot make the environment even darker because we also want some filled lights to lit the background, but we cannot adjust the ISO for sure because we don’t want too much noise so, moreover, we also cannot adjust the aperture anymore because what we had was the lens’ biggest aperture – 4.

Moreover, through this practical project, I think working with a film crew can really see people’s personality. Our director and cinematographer didn’t have the same vision on camera coverage, usually, is the director who gives direction to the whole team, the cinematographer will be assisting and providing suggestions for the director but Jialu’s personality is just not letting her speak what she wants, and I am not saying this is bad but as a direction we just need to have a sense of leadership to lead the whole team to run and work efficiently. While they are trying to persuade each other that their vision works better, everyone else like me was just sitting there and wait for the next direction, that was another time wasting because we didn’t communicate well before shooting.

Comparing today’s shooting with one of the class exercises a few weeks ago in building 13, I was the director of the scene which I gave directions for everyone else in the crew, a quick call back from now, my group actually did a good job which I didn’t realise until this group practical project. I am not comparing the two experiences because I am saying which crew is better, its because I was surprised how the last assignment has reminded me one of the class exercises. Everyone in that group knew their roles well and they completed their job nice and fast once I gave directions. For example, Quinlan in our group was the camera, I told him the colour on the looked a bit too orange, Quinlan has fixed this immediately.

Overall, after meeting with Robin we have also discussed on our group project, I think not having a first AD person is kind of the main reason which caused these episodes, the role of an assistant director on a film includes tracking daily progress against the filming production schedule, arranging logistics, preparing daily call sheets, checking cast and crew, and maintaining order on the set. When this role is missing in a film crew like us, we didn’t have any meetings beforehand, we only communicated through group chatting, no one was there to make sure everyone got the messages and have read all the messages. I understand at this point of a semester, everyone has so much to do at the time, but communication in between the crew is extremely important for any production team. A variety show, an advertising, a drama, a music video or even just a simple photography shootings, the crew need to hold up meetings with people they are collaborating with to make sure everyone in the crew knows what their job is and what to do during shooting.

Things that need to be fixed for the next practical project:

Everyone in our group didn’t seem to satisfy with the rough cut, everyone looks very blank when we first looked at the rough cut. The indoor scene didn’t transfer smoothly to the beachside scene, and the camera coverage at the beachside scene just looks so awkward to me in some way. As I discussed in previous posts, we have tried to modify the coverage in different angles, it still didn’t work as what we expected.

As the result, Jialu wants to remove the whole scene from the beachside, firstly, the weather is just not helping at all in this season, since we are shooting outside in the nature already, we want it to look as realistic as possible but the weather in Melbourne will just not help us to present an extremely hot summer like its in North Africa. Although the beachside scene is still important because its a callback scene of the character remembering the day when she randomly kills somebody, in order to fill in the gap, we will add another big lamp and leave it until the end of the scene when it blazed on the character symbolizing the sun.

I was the one who holds up the board to create ‘prison’ silhouette, we closed the studio like but the other light resources still came around the

silhouette which made it look so unrealistic by showing the top and the bottom part of the ‘prison’. To fix this part we will use C-stands to hold up the ‘prison’, and we will also get more cutters around it to block out the unnecessary lights, make sure the key light source only comes through the ‘prison bars’, the rest of the

space will remain dark so the silhouette will be nice and sharp. The picture at the bottom, the area that is drawn with red stripes are the area we want to block with cutters so we won’t see the outline of the whole board.

• remove the beachside scene because we found it didn’t seem to smoothly link to the indoor scene
• need one more lamp (two big ones in total) to represent the sun
• slow down the pace of the whole thing by fill in more details, every line Meursault speaks will have a certain change in the shot, for example, when she speaks about her mother, the character will symbolically hold a flower.
• the main character is not going to speak the lines, voice over will add to it during post-production
• remake the ‘prison’
• refine the silhouette by adding cutters besides it to block the unnecessary lights coming around the ‘prison’
• need to get storyboard drawn

Props:

Coffee – The main character Meursault loves to drink coffee with milk so we will add a shot of the character drinking coffee

Leaves – sort of symbolizing the very last point of ones’ life

cigarette ends – leaves and cigarette ends will be used while her bed is being messed up gradually

Shotting Day 2

As what we have planned in the beginning, the beachside scene exists as the character’s imagination at the very last point of his life. Representation of the character thinking back to the day he murdered someone with the same weather when the sun was dazzling, at the very last point of this scene, character’s thoughts will be pull back to the reality by a loud sound.

Thinking back to the day we shot, I still felt a strain with all those unexpected elements. Firstly, the weather or the season I should say wasn’t proper for our script, originally the novel was based in Algeria, a very hot country in North Africa. Even though we thought a sunny hot day doesn’t have to be shoot in summer but at least the weather need to match the character’s lines which the sun was dazzling. We looked at the weather throughout the week, every day seemed to be cloudy and rainy, the sun only came out for few times on the shooting day.

However, we needed winds to blow away the tiny flower that used as a representation of the character’s mother, we have retaken the scene for so many times only because of the flower didn’t blow up at the end, when we shooting outside, everything is so unpredictable either in a good way or in a bad way. For example, the sun came out for a few times which was good that we have never expected to come out on that cloudy day.

The second shooting we faced the same challenge once again which is to get the ‘right’ camera coverage for our one-take shot, we spent almost 1/3 of our shooting time trying to get the camera coverage to the satisfactory angle, we didn’t know why but that shooting day must be one of the days that everything seemed to  stir up altogether. Jialu is the director but also the actress for our first practical project, while she is acting she cannot see how she looked in the frame which also took some time to switch between director and actress. Once again, this shooting experience reminded me how important is to prepare everything beforehand including a plan for camera coverage and going to the shooting location for a test shooting.

Everyone was exhausted either the sound, the camera, our actress, everyone was so tired of the unpredictable, the freezing beachside and the unsatisfactory camera coverage. Before our actual shooting, we have looked at a lot of different one-take shot in films, dramas even music videos, there are a lot of them I have wondered how many staff are running behind each one-take shot. After the shooting today, I was also wondering how exhausting is the crew when everyone needs to run whilst the camera rolling. Although it was still a very good experience again letting us experience how much work there is to do before, during and after shooting, especially this is a creative production of your own, we want them to be perfect.

Shooting Day 1

I really enjoyed today’s shooting, I think I learned a lot from today. Remembering the cinematographer I studied for the research essay, Jung Jung Hoon said he would like to and he is also curious to meet and work with different crews that is one of the reasons he moved to Los Angles. The way we have planned to shoot this scene was something I rarely considered in my own creative productions, I know directors always have a little screen in their mind imagining how would each scene look like, so does our director Jialu and I am very curious about that.

We set up a phone on the side to record the shooting process, everyone found so interested in watching the process back because everyone was so busy running around for the one takes shot (video embedded below). For example, I was holding the cardboard in front of the light at the beginning, and then when the camera moves away I need to put down the cardboard and run to get the reflector for the character’s last position. This practice has reminded me of the other one take shots I have seen in different media productions, it’s already difficult when we are just working for a 1-minute scene, I can hardly imagine how to do that long one takes shot worked. I have seen lots of one takes in a lot of music videos especially they attract my eyes in just a few seconds because they are so smooth.

Time management, I believed its a huge problem for every group, for our group, we have used half of our time only for setting up and planning how to do the one takes shot. We ran through how to arrange the one takes shot for thousands of time until our cinematographer and director were satisfied with the result. When I think back to our process, I was wondering what if we are actually shooting something commercially we have very limited time which we haven’t got the shots that everyone feels happy with, what should we do? Should we just keep going until everyone satisfies or shall we just keep the ok one and move on? I am so curious what will a professional crew choose to do when they meet this situation.

I felt like I was the one who was pressing everyone to hurry up, our director was too ‘nice’ to impose everyone to follow her directions. Although I really think even the crew you work with is a friend of yours, once we start shooting everyone should only focus on our own roles, if I am the director I will make sure I am doing my job, or if I am the sound I will listen to whatever the director wants me to do. Based on our experiences and knowledge on film lights, we might have over-planned the shooting for a bit, there was five of us in the group but we were doing 8 people’s job like Robin said if you have 4 people then you just plan for 4 people’s job. In the end, even everyone took two jobs we still figured out how to run the whole thing at the end, and we enjoyed the progress.