This week is the first official week starting our last assessment item for the studio of Translating Observation. In class on Monday after all the film ideas had been pitched, we all latched onto the projects we were most interested in doing. After reading Tim Palstras idea I was extremely intrigued. Tims idea was summarised as “A kind of documentary investigation into the relationship between aspiration and reality; between the subjective and “objective” understanding of one’s activities and plans.  A film that considers and contrasts these things from the perspectives of both childhood and late middle age.” which interested me for many reasons. I like the idea of documentary making for starters; documenting human life as it is is something I have recently been more interested in. Another reason I was interested was the idea of “aspiration vs reality” which is vague in the description but Tim clarified later on. He detailed to Lydia and I that he was at a gig a few days ago and he met a person who was talking to him extremely fastly and about many different things, and he was taken aback, yet he seemed like someone who was living in the moment. That was what Tim wanted the main focus of his film to be… ‘Living in the moment”. Lydia and I loved the idea so we attached ourselves to it pretty quickly. That Monday was extremely interesting because so many ideas came and flowed out of all of us and interconnected themselves in ways we were pleased with. Here were some of them:

  • Beginning of the film starts with an adult living in present tense which then transitions into their younger self, living in the present tense
  • They could be doing similar actions to display them living in the present tense
  • Interview people who are passionate about a specific thing. Their ‘thing’ makes them truly live in the present moment
  • Have the film be one long shot, interspersed with small takes of jarring moments of people living their life out of the present moment (example: people in a traffic jam)
  • Have a synth soundtrack
  • Voice over having an old sound, crackling quality
  • Two long shots, one of the older self, one of the younger self. Spliced of people living out of the present.  Voice over of different people talking about living in the present moment.
  • ‘Fly on the wall’ type of feeling
  • All facing one direction on screen
  • Have no soundtrack over the second half with the kid
  • Have the moments of people not living in the present moment more grainy

Questions to ask subjects for voice over:

  1. When was one time you felt you were living in the present and how did you feel?
  2. When’s a time in your life when external factors are impacting you in the moment (e.g. at a festival, exercising, playing an instrument, listening to music, reading, watching a movie, creating art, being scholastic/studying, working)
  3. What in your life gives you the most meaning, what are you passionate about, and why does it give you a sense of achievement/contentment and has that translated into any other parts of your life.

Film situations for non-moments (moving in a forward direction)

  1. cars/ driving/ traffic jam etc.

As you can see we really kicked off the ground that Monday, we all seemed to be on the same wavelength in terms of what we envisioned the film to be, probably because we liked Tim’s idea so much.

That Wednesday in class I began preparing the pre-production for the film, as was everyone else. I was alone for the first hour of class (Tim was late) so I was trying to make some headway on the project. I wrote out this plan:

DUE FRIDAY OF WEEK 12
OFFICIALLY MONDAY WEEK 13
(17th OCTOBER)
Current date: 14th September

Things to consider:

  • Locations
  • Permission
  • Communication
  • Actors and participants
  • Schedule management
  • Equipment bookings
  • Costume/props

COSTUME: Both actors may possibly be wearing the same outfit (this is in order for the audience to make the correlation that they are the same person if the two actors we get do not look similar)

PROPS: Children’s toys/musical instruments and synth keyboard (Tim’s friend will provide the keyboard)
Have both props and costumes sorted by the 26th September.

ACTORS: Where to find: STAR NOW. Must find: 18-28 yr old older actor (preferably male) and also a younger child (age ranging from 6-13). Have these confirmed by 23rd September

LOCATIONS: Besides the locations that the two actors will be filmed at, there will be a variety of spontaneous locations where we will shoot.

SCRIPT: Script (questions) needs to be finished by 19th September.

EQUIPMENT: Will be using Tim’s DSLR camera to shoot mainly, but will need to rent out a mic and lighting equipment. Have this sorted before the 26th September?
Voice recording will be done on iPhones (intentional)

FILMING: 26th-30th September. Film child first then older person.

EDITING: All agreed this is the most important part of the entire process. Will need 2 weeks to properly edit film together (3rd-16th October)

I thought I was being quite efficient and I was a little proud of myself. Tim finally came to class and we sat down to discuss the idea further, adding more questions that we thought we could ask people. Then Robin came over to discuss our film with us. After detailing what our idea was and how we wanted to go about it Robin suggested that we should take a different route. With a film such as ours, which is more of an art-house documentary, we shouldn’t be planning it like a drama. He told us we had to start straight away, to get as much footage as possible to see what we can make the film. If we stuck to our idea, went out and shot it there was a high chance that we wouldn’t be satisfied with it or it wouldn’t have turned out the way we wanted it to. At the beginning, this startled Tim and I (understatement – our minds were blown) but then we realised that he was right. Our film tackles spiritual and personal ideas that are different for each living person, it is not a story with a script. With this in mind, we decided to change the way we went about the project, flipped it on its head and just decided to shoot as much as we could.
Robin Plunkett is a mastermind – I’m pretty sure of it.