We have officially made groups now for our final assessment task, and I have the pleasure of working on Alex Ferguson’s film idea. In a group of five we are to create a short narrative film, which from what I can tell at the moment, will come across as a simplified and more quirky version of My Dinner With Andre.

As we were discussing the script and what will be happening in the actual film, I wondered how this film will reflect the observation it was based upon. There was a certain element of acknowledgment and ‘coming-of-age’ which called to me. I wanted to focus in on that moment where we see the guest to this dinner start off as uncomfortable and foreign, but eventually he adapts and enjoys himself in this ‘new’ environment. I wondered if the script would include an element of that, or have a moment that draws upon that. Or it could be a matter of Alex writing down his experience, word for word, specific to his memory, and him replicating the exact procedure he went through.

This brings up the question of whether we are creating new content, or simply adapting a story that has already existed. I mean we are re-staging the dinner that Alex has already experienced, and he put that experience into writing through his observation, and now we are filming that moment and editing it together to become a film. Is this whole process just an elaborate way from inspiration to film, or is it a straight adaptation of already established content. Is this an adaptation of life then, or a film just based on the true events in someone’s life, and are we allowed to change anything.

Are we allowed to insert lines, and change locations. Am I allowed to say that these people are actually cousins, instead of long friends. Would this still be considered an adaptation of what has happened, or am I changing it too much to let it be considered a re-staging.

 

 

I know these are roundabout questions that wont really get answered, but I think our film is going to be an adaptation, with us focusing on a key component or theme from the original observation. So we aren’t just physically re-creating the scene, we are going to also replicate the feelings Alex had in the original event.

 

So during our third project brief we had to complete a few practical exercises, one of which was to essentially replicate a shot dramatic scene. It didn’t need to be perfect, we were allowed to change up dialogue and setting a bit, but the shots, framing and editing needed to at least resemble the original cut.

The main thing I took away from our shoot was our lack of pre-production planning. Our group didn’t really put a lot of emphasis on where we would shoot the scene, and in the end had to find a location on the fly that would suit our hallway needs, but have enough space to actually fit a camera, three actors and a whole crew to hide. We found a suitable location that visually matched our needs, but it was a busy location, located near classrooms and automated doors. There was constant foot traffic, and since I was on audio I constantly picked up footsteps, doors slamming and the constant echo of things sliding closed. It was frustrating in general to have to stop every 3 minutes to let people through the hallway, and each time we had to re-set our actors again and again.

Being on audio, I found the experience super stressful, because I wasn’t particularly happy with the quality of sound I was getting. The hallway was too spacious and we ended up with a few takes having too much echo.

By the 1 hour point though we had committed to the space and stuck through with it. The only solution we could think of on the spot was to shoot each shot and line specifically and as quickly as possible. While people were walking through we made sure we knew which specific line the actors needed to say, and ended up shooting in a very unconventional way. We didn’t do any leading lines, but since we were already basing it off a scene where we knew where to edit, it was easy to just replicate only the lines we needed for one specific shot.

The editing process ended up going very smoothly, but with the way we filmed the shots, the conversation didn’t end up natural at all. It was choppy and continuity was all over the place. My edit is passable, but it’s nothing compared to the original Mad Men scene, where the dialogue came across so naturally and effortlessly. I guess we all were on edge that day, being constantly interrupted, but it has taught me a valuable lesson now to always go location scouting, and to make sure the place we end up in has less traffic, whether it be vehicle or human.

 

 

 

 

I successfully did my film pitch this week on Wednesday. It was based on OBSERVATION 11 – THE ONE WITH THE BIKE, my experience of listening to this woman who was sitting behind me and my thoughts surrounding her, and how I would never really understand the situation that unfolded in front of me. The subjectivity of it was completely baffling, but this reflection in particular isn’t going to be about the content of my pitch, but the form and structure.

One of the panelists Jeremy commented on how I presented a good treatment for my film idea, and I took that comment to heart. I have done a lot of public speaking before, general school announcements and debating, but to present an idea and have it be scrutinized for consumption was a relatively new thing I learnt in my last studio, Finding The Ear. As a group we went through multiple pitch stages, first finding an idea/concept we could possibly develop into a film, then the actual treatment and pre-production of the film. I did all this though, with a team and as a group we presented the pitch together, each person using the other for strength and giving each other confidence in our ideas.

This time around I was alone, although I did recieve a lot of good feedback from Robin, it was mainly a solo pitch. Short, Sweet & Simple. But completely individually developed, from conception of the idea, to how it would play out on the screen, and I had no confidence. I wasn’t sure what to expect from my pitch, because in the end not all of our ideas will be made into films. I had to decide if I was to approach the pitch with a very grand idea, consisting of all the complex ideas and approaches to observing I had picked up on the way to here, or to create something smaller, and more manageable. Something that was achievable in the short amount of time we had to create a film.

My initial idea was to work off from OBSERVATION 10 – THE ONE WHERE THEY SPEAK, with the film idea being very purposely re-staged of the event, and of the surrounding environment. It required a lot of controlled variables, capable actors, and time. A lot of time. I had told Robin of this idea and he told me that realistically it would require a 3 day shoot, and an empty train carriage, which as a full time media student I didn’t have the resources and time to acquire all these things. It would have been a great reflexive film, delving into the psychology and different perspectives of these people I had envisioned, but it was too ambitious. It didn’t have an end or a beginning. It was just a great idea that would have taken too long to make in the 5 weeks we have left.

So I changed things up, and I focused on a recent event that took place, and how that affected me. I wanted to make people understand how I got to the new idea, and how it’s my actual perspective of observing, or in this case listening, to this woman with the bike that I new it was a better story to tell, but also that I had a more concrete and interesting way to tell it. I focused on that ‘ear’ and began to develop more things on the structure, and the non linear way it would jump between perspectives of the same event instead of a mismatch of interactions. And then I revisited the video my previous tutor showed me on pitching, and how one should present something in a room of execs.

I didn’t just dump information on my peers, and I knew that my observation wasn’t completely relevant to what I was asking to do. It was the ideas after the observation that got me to where I am, and so I took my audience through my reasoning and my journey to that point. I wrote down the key elements of what I had to tell my audience, but in the end nothing was set in stone. The setting, and the characters, and the events could change, but it was the central idea of viewing these all from multiple perspectives and exploring their subjective viewpoints that compelled me to want to make this film.

 

What makes a film different from a random edit of clips. It’s the way in which we invoke meaning in both creating it and viewing it. Or at least that’s what I think it is. We watched a lot of examples of the different ways we could make a film throughout this class, but today was a bit different. These were actually films that almost went outside the norm, the same way I think Robin would like us all to do as well.

For example if we were to make a short film about a local football club, why don’t you just show the club members only and their relationship to the team, but throughout the entire film never show the actual team. In “We are the Faithful” we witness the club supporters of FC Basel cheering and crying for their team. We witness all their pain and their joy for the game that unfolds in front of them, but we never actually see the ‘main subject’. We only see their faces, their reactions and their passion. I also noted how at the beginning we weren’t properly introduced to anything aside from these rabid fans. These people came across as very obnoxious at first, but as the film continues we see these people become vulnerable and by the end your opinion of these mindless masses changes to focus on the individual that stands there alone. I thought this shift in the way we think of the fans in this crowd is very interesting, because its easy to assume one thing, but for it to turn completely around. I think this film was a great example of what we can show in a film without having to actually show everything.

 

During week 6 we were shooting  small script in class. The tale of Rachel and Barney. It was a brief look at how the set of a film should probably look like, although in a very informal way. I’ve actually had the opportunity to work in many different environments and set procedures. As one of the latecomers to class I had no chance of actually getting a role. The script only required two actors, so no extras were needed, and the main production roles were already given out before I got there. I wasn’t disappointed though. I got to sit back and observe how my peers would act within a ‘professional’ capacity. They got through multiple angles of the classic shot-reverse-shot coverage, and a few mid and wide shots. In the end it was an example of how we should conduct ourselves on a set, and what roles we need to keep in mind. So having a full crew on site would be in the best interest of all the different projects we will eventually create, and in the end we will be all grateful that someone was there to record which takes were bad and which were even worth our time considering in the final piece.