After watching idem.paris. in class, I set out to film at a nature reserve that part of the Yarra river runs through while night was setting. I did this as it would be a time that the native wildlife was returning to go to sleep, and that there would (hopefully) be few people running and walking their dogs.
Before I went, I took some notes about how idem.paris was shot – it was shot in black and white, which would have been intentional by Lynch, but I knew that this could be done in the edit and wasn’t about to restrict myself before that.
The other thing I noticed was that all the shots were framed so they looked good as an individual shot, and not so there would be smooth/easy transitions. Lynch must have walked in with a camera and looked to what would look good, not worrying about the transitions. That being said, there was a chronological order to all the shots taken.
Lighing was really good as well, with high contrast between the dark/light things and guiding the audience’s eye to the focus.
Finally, there was no soundtrack, so audio quality was important.
With this in mind, I went down to the parklands and started filming.
I wanted to start it off in the carpark, and then move into nature. My plan of exploring light quickly became a challenge, because I only had the light of the (setting) sun, which was very dispersed across everything and made it difficult to find any strong contrast. Additionally, as the sun continued to set it became darker – which was a goal, but did limit which shot I could use where. I justified this to myself by thinking that Lynch could well have filmed in order as well, and that his shots may also have been somewhat limited as the painters continued their jobs.
While filming, I regrettably changed the ISO, before realizing that I just complicated naturally capturing the setting of the sun (and those shots that I took at 1600 were significantly lighter than even the first ones I took), and then changed it back to 400. This had already compromised some shots, so I knew that I’d have to play with the exposure in editing (oops).
While editing, I only really looked for the best parts of each shot, and used those. I was also only able to use two tracks of audio and carried them across the whole clip, as around the river, lots of sounds were reverberating off the flat surface and making it difficult to use.
I did have to play with the exposure and saturation, because as I mentioned earlier, I’d made a mistake there.
This is the finished product in colour.. I do think it’s quite uncanny, but I also feel as though some shots would be cut were I to edit again.
Then, just because Idem.Paris is in black and white, I also changed it to see how effective it was. While doing this, I played with the exposure, prioritizing the shot looking good rather than having it get darker and darker as the sun set. I think it was worth it – while some shots will just never look good (and probably didn’t look that good in colour either) some looked stunning, and sure enough, these were the ones with higher dynamic ranges.
