REFLECTION (1 BLOG POST) – evidence of your work, thinking and making (60%)
- Write an individual written reflection of up to 1800 words (this should be in sentences/paragraphs and include the questions in dot points)
- This 1800 word reflection is to be compiled AS a narrative, in the one post:
- A) Firstly, write 500 words (approx) describing what you gained from the studio and answer these two questions:
- In what ways do you hope your final work (whether individual or group produced) engages its audience and communicated a key concern of the studio? 300
- Imagine you are going to keep working on that media piece (e.g. to screen it somewhere else like a festival, or develop it into a different kind of work, and so on) – what would be the core things you want to improve and extend and why? 200
I worked with my group to create The Alchemist for multiple weeks in order to bring the film to fruition. I’m very proud of all of our efforts and found the experience greatly helpful in developing my relationship with my peers, as well as general collaborative skills.
Now that our project is finished, I hope our film details a twist in the narrative, subverts audience expectations, and ultimately portrays complex themes of feminism and identity.
When we initially began our planning amd pre-production process, we found that we all connected over a shared interest in the genres of psychological horror and thriller films, and were similarly inspired by similar media that encompassed these themes such as Midsommar (Aster, A., 2019) and the painting Ophelia (Everett, M., J., 1852), as well as the inspiration found in real life events.
We found that the use of mise-en-scene and visual composition really drove our inspirational process, and was the predominating factor we explored in regards to prestigious filmmaking.
It was in this facet of our production and thematic intentions that I found collaboration to be so intrinsic to our success as a group. In the past, including numerous times throughout this semester, I’ve struggled to articulate my larger ideas in a satisfying way; I always found it immensely difficult to achieve what I wanted to in terms of purposeful and detailed framing, optimal camera work and even most aspects of pre-production quickly became overwhelming.
I found that collaboration was a very welcome addition to this final assessment, and made it all go far smoother than previous projects I did alone. It was immensely helpful, as my group and I were happy to communicate with each other frequently, and all of us were more than willing to take on numerous tasks so nobody got overwhelmed or thought that the workload was unequal. This was a huge relief, and I feel that because everyone was working together, we were all able to contribute a lot more thought and time to how we wanted our film to look, feel and be interpreted.
As one example, while three of us planned the logistics of our filming day, I drew up numerous pages of storyboards (an example/page as shown below), while another member did the shotlist. Not having to worry about doing all of these tasks alone took a load off my shoulders, and allowed me to spend far more time on my tasks to ensure they were done to the best of my ability.
The Alchemist storyboard, Matylda O’Sullivan, 2025
Though I’m proud of what we produced and believe we worked together very well, if I were to continue working on the film, I think I would spend more time planning out every detail of the production, particularly giving more time to perfect our visual composition and narrative storytelling.
I’m generally quite pleased with the mise-en-scene of our film, I believe certain shot compositions we created are prestigious by definition (e.g. symmetrical, utilising effective lighting, using the rule of thirds and golden ratio etc.) however, I still believe there is room for improvement. For example, some shots in the kitchen/dining scene are well composed, but others, such as when the girl opens the door I feel are lacking in adequate and effective lighting. If I were to work on this film further, I’d take more time to develop a strategy in lighting and research effective set ups such as the three point lighting set up (MasterClass, 2021) and rent out lighting specific equipment rather than just a camera and tripod.
I would also take more time to flesh out the narrative if I were to work on this film longer. Some components of a vague narrative are impactful and work well, particularly within the horror genre, however I feel our narrative needed to be clearer in order for the full emotional impact of our work to be realised.
- B) Then, write 800 words (minimum) of the following:
- You will present all that you’ve worked on since Week 8 – your pre-production, experiments, images, clips, scenes, tests
- This could include the draft edits, sound mixes and colour grades – and of course, the reflection associated with it
- More scene deconstructions and analysis most welcome.
The pre-production process for our film was a long one. Though I discussed the tangible logistics of our production above, the planning and pre-production phase was relatively thought out. From the beginning we had a clear idea on what we wanted to do; we wanted to create a short film that detailed a subversive narrative, and focused on the aesthetic value component of prestigious filmmaking within the concept of golden cinema.
We planned out our story quite well, and developed numerous preproduction experiments and references including a mood board, a script, storyboards, shotlists and prop lists. These all made the process of organising filming a lot smoother. While in some areas of the film there were a few moments of guerilla filming (Applegate, M., 2016), ultimately, the storyboards and shot list were followed quite closely, leading to a more cohesive and consistent mise-en-scene and visual composition throughout our film.
We also paid quite close attention to the continuity and details of our film. For example, in the shot where the candle blows out as the man is poisoned, it took around six separate takes to shoot correctly, yet we persisted until it was a success in order to increase the tension and sense of dread in accordance with our thematic intentions of the film. We also focused on our prop design as a means of immersing our audience into the narrative we presented. For example, the shot of the girl picking off the flower petals is a reference to the classic adolescent rhyme/ritual of determining someone’s feelings for you; “he loves me he loves me not”(The Simple Things, 2018). We included this reference within our prop usage to signify the girl’s naivety and represent how she is out of touch with reality. The girl is clearly an adult, and referencing a childish nursery rhyme before concocting a dangerous potion (that later turns out to be poison) emphasises these pivotal traits of her character.
Another detail we included in our film was the candelabra prop. The usage of the candles situated on the table in front of the girl once she lets the other person inside of the house, subtly implies to the audience that she is on a date with them, or otherwise romantically involved due to the cultural connotations associated with a “candlelight dinner” (Alison, 2019). This prop is further utilised thematically later in the shot when one of the two flames blows out. The two flames are representative of the girl and the love interest’s livelihood; once she mistakenly kills this other character, their romantic flame metaphorically and literally goes out due to his passing.
Sound design was another component of prestigious filmmaking we heavily took into consideration when producing The Alchemist. In accordance with warnings and feedback from our professor, we made sure to include minimal dialogue in our initial planning of the film; we realised that an expectation of prestigious filmmaking is very high sound quality, and because we weren’t confident we’d be able to achieve this, we kept our sound design plans to predominantly sound effects and music that we could ensure were recorded in a high quality over our own handmade diegetic dialogue that may not be as strong and difficult to re-record.
In our original draft, we did have one line of dialogue, that being the rhyme “He loves me, loves me not”, however in the final edit, we decided to cut it as we felt a singular line of dialogue near the start of the film, and then complete silence for the rest of the duration was both awkward in terms of timing and not impactful enough to keep. We also were aware of the expectation of consistency within prestigious filmmaking; we worried that a singular line of dialogue, especially one that simple, would set up audience expectations of further dialogue, and hence our film would fail to remain as impactful in its narrative and design once audiences realised there was no more speaking to occur.
We focused on the sound design more heavily instead. By the end of our editing, we had over fifteen sound effects credited within our film, not including music. In our second editing session, we observed each shot closely to fit each individual sound effect in at the perfect timing, taking several hours of laborious watching of the footage over and over again. We knew the expectations of a golden age film included high quality sound, so we found each sound effect manually and recorded in high quality across various sound effect sites. In our original draft, we were also going to use a microphone to manually dub over the shot of the girl picking flowers saying the rhyme, as a further emphasis on how important we knew clean and crisp sound was for prestigious filmmaking and audience expectations of such.
Finally, we had a large effort placed on consistency and continuity within our film. Throughout the film it may be noticeable that props are placed in the same position across the numerous shots. This was actually difficult to do. When we were all editing together as a group, we realised a lot of our footage had inconsistent prop placement due to the nature of filming scenes out of order, redoing shots etc. It took quite a few hours of editing and all of us pouring over each detail in each shot to order a consistent prop placement as best we could with the footage we had.
Film link: The Alchemist
Pre-Production folder: Pre-Production Documents – The Alchemist
A mediafactory Vimeo link (see here) of your edit of the film is to be embedded in that post that we will put on the website. This writing must be done regularly, not in the days before it’s due.
LASTLY:
- C) Write one reflection on, or response to, the content of the Presentation in Week 9 by student work other than your own (minimum 500 words). The link to student presentations to review is here: (LINK IS HERE: Assignment 3 Powerpoint Pitch Presentation Group Folder – Week 9)
All the things I never said intrigued me immensely when I first saw the presentation by Patrick, Cheuk and Lachie.
The idea of a story about motherhood and the feminine connection between maternal ties and child sounded very touching and beautiful.
I was also interested in their presentation due to slide 4 (Prestige Cinema Research) of their PowerPoint and how they detailed a key emphasis on emotional and character driven storytelling. I appreciated how their story was deceptively simple, being about the relationship between a mother and daughter during a hardship, however equally had the potential for immense emotional qualities. Seeing this presentation made me wonder about my own film, for example, thinking about how emotions dictated my own film’s narrative, or whether we relied too heavily on the physical action of potionmaking.
I also appreciated the method and means through which the group planned to tell their story. The idea of a letter being used as a means of narration over the shots shown, is one not commonly done in media. While of course there are outliers, most of the time the audience’s expectations of a prestigious film correlate with a three act narrative (Horton, A., 1992), conversations happening directly between characters, and the film detailing a relatively linear timeframe. I respected and was interested in how the group went against the expectations, but not enough to completely go outside of the requirements of making a prestigious film; I thought it was unique and inspiring.
I also thought it was clever from a logistical standpoint. By creating the film within the explicit premise of memories, there was a lot of room to play and experiment.
The shots could be filmed in a far easier, straight on view if they wished, to mimic a stagnant POV shot, rather than mimicking the often complicated tracking and panning shots used in prestigious cinema to showcase multiple characters at once. Dialogue would also have been much easier to input, as none of it would necessarily need to have been recorded live. It would’ve been entirely possible for the entire letter to be dubbed from one of the group member’s homes if they needed to and had access to a microphone. This would also add the benefit of re-recording if needed. Presuming the actors live further away, in a worst case scenario in which all group members and the actors couldn’t meet up again to film or record lines in an editing suite at RMIT, a last case scenario could allow the voice lines to be recorded online. Ultimately, the premise is extremely flexible if anything went wrong, which I appreciated and admired.
I also appreciated the twist on many student films of the drama genre. From my own experiences at least, I often see student drama films that focus on failing romantic relationships or friendships, very rarely do I see any about family. I thought it was a unique and welcome touch, to create a story about the bonds of family within external strife and how this manifests into conflict.
References
- Aster, A. (Director). (2019). Midsommar [Film]. A24, B-Reel Films, Nordisk Film, and Square Peg.
- Everett, M. J. (1852). Ophelia [painting]. Tate. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/millais-ophelia-n01506
- Applegate, M. (2016). Urban Guerrillas on Film: Mediatization, Guerrilla Filmmaking, and Guerrilla Seeing in Emile de Antonio’s Underground. Cultural Critique, 93(1), 59-85. https://doi.org/10.5749/culturalcritique.93.2016.0059
- The Simple Things. (2018, June 18). Stories behind superstitions | He loves me, he loves me not. The Simple Things. https://www.thesimplethings.com/blog/stories-behind-superstitions-he-loves-me
- Alison. (2019, January 28). What makes candle light so romantic?. Dexter Mason. https://dexterandmason.com/2019/01/28/what-makes-candle-light-so-romantic/
- Horton, A. (1992). The “How to Write the Best Ever Screenplay” Book Biz. Cinéaste, Volume 19(2), 12-14. https://doi.org/xxxxx
- Tarr, P., Mak, Y. C., Paterson, L. (2025). All the things I never said: Assignment 3 [PowerPoint slides]. Google PowerPoint .https://rmiteduau.sharepoint.com/:b:/r/sites/GoldenAgeCinema/Shared%20Documents/Shared%20Class%20Folder/Assignment%203%20Powerpoint%20Pitch%20Presentation%20Group%20Folder%20-%20Week%209/2_Jeff_Lachie_Patrick/Pitch.pdf?csf=1&web=1&e=kuvoMu
- MasterClass (2021, August 21). What Is Three-Point Lighting? Learn About the Lighting Technique and Tips For the Best Three-Point Lighting Setups. MasterClass. https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-three-point-lighting-learn-about-the-lighting-technique-and-tips-for-the-best-three-point-lighting-setups