(Don't be frightened by the blog title, this is not as bad as the Super Bowl)
I've been considering my options to fix the wardrobe problem. Dresses look really pretty and elegant when the actress is running, but they are also risky because I'm about to have any scandalous shots in my opening. It might seem like the obvious solution to this is to juts get a longer dress so that it still flows beautifully and doesn't reveal anything. The reason I'm apprehensive about a longer dress is because running would be more difficult.
Shying away from the dress idea, it wasn't even what I had planned on in the first place, I might try a red/maroon pullover sweater. I originally thought that I wanted my actress to wear yellow, but now that I actually film a bit, the yellow will be overpowered by the cool hues from the environment. Though if I had the actress wear red it would completely contrast the environment, making her pop and keeping all of the focus on her.
My lovely actress, Natalie, on our first day of filming
I have to talk to my actress, Natalie, and see if she has any of these options and if not, I'll have to go out and get it. She also told me she might be going away this weekend, which would be super and annoying and inconvenient (but I'm mad at her, she's an angel for agreeing to act in this). Worse case scenario, I have another friend who has always wanted to act in one of my pieces, so she's ready and rearing to go! That's also an advantage because her closet it WAY too big and I know for a fact she'll already have a red sweater, or anything else I might want for that matter.
I'm very, very excited to say that I received permission to use the music I wanted!! As a mentioned a couple posts back, I was worried because I couldn't find an official website or owner for the song so I didn't know who to contact. I scoured the internet all weekend looking for a way to communicate with the artist, Windmills, so I could ask for permission to use the his song "Measures". I looked for a while but Windmills only has a Facebook and SoundCloud, so I sadly accepted defeat. I came back to school and asked my teacher, Mrs. Stoklosa, how I should go about the situation; she recommended that I message the artist on Facebook. I found the page really easily and I was relieved to see that he uses it frequently to communicate with his fans. I wrote up a quickly message, telling him about the project and my intentions for the song. I sent it and crossed my fingers.
I checked back later that night and I was thrilled to see that he responded so quickly. Cory from Windmills was really nice about letting me use the song! When I'm done I'll send him the link so he can see what his music has inspired! (Hopefully he likes it because if not that would be super awkward)
I'm really glad that I can now officially have my song, which makes me feel a little more secure in my production process.
After reviewing the footage, there are a couple problems that I have to fix for my next day of filming. I had my actress, Natalie, wear a dark dress which wasn't what I originally thought. I didn't find any shirt that I liked enough and Natalie came over wearing the dress and I could envision her wearing it in the opening. But it was kind of annoying because she had to shorts under the dress because running in a dress is kind of difficult. I didn't realize but her shorts are really visible in the long shots of her running. I'm not sure what I want to do; accept that it'll look fine or go back and film those shots again.
Another problem that I was aware of even while I was filming is when in the car, there were little bumps that ruined the whole shot. For the first shot, I wanted the zoom from a close up to a long shot but I didn't realize how hard it would be to achieve the shot, even using the car. I was awkwardly positioned in my trunk on the car, because falling out of the moving car was not on my schedule, which made this shot more difficult because I was lacking some mobility. The hardest part of this shot was the beginning, the initial zoom out from the close up. The car had acceleration quickly so it was bit bumpy, ruining my stable shot. Also, the camera was in auto-focus so that also made the shots a little funky looking. Once the car was at a constant acceleration and the camera was focused, the shot actually turned out really nice. I'll have to look at it a bit more to see if I can still use them or I might have to go back and film again.
I started to introduce the concept a bit in my storyboard: I want to parallel the inserts of memories with reality. I had the idea to get a medium shot from behind Natalie, focusing on her hair. Then juxtaposing her hair before the incident, freshly washed and done nicely, and after, dirty and messy. Last night, I tried to get one of the hair shots. For this, I got out of the car so the shot would be a little more bumpy and break up the stable shots. Though, when I tried to film this shot it was extremely bumpy, so it was hard to make it obvious that the focus was on her hair. I tried to fix this by having Natalie do a weird, fake run so she was kind of just bouncing and moving slow enough I could get the shot but it still looked like she was running.
I'm filming the running part again one night this week, so it's good I got to look at my mistakes and problems so I can try and avoid them next time!
I decided to vlog after I had finished filming last night so I could easily and quickly talk about the situation.
I uploaded the footage and looked at it for a while. I feel like I got more than I actually did but it's okay because I already knew I would have to film additional running shots another time. The main reason I couldn't get as much footage as I would have liked it because it got very dark out quickly. Though, now I know for the next time I have to film and I can plan ahead and be more efficient.
After storyboarding, I now have a more vivid vision of my film opening. If things go according to plan, I'm going to start filming tonight. I want to do the running shots first, they are the biggest hurdle and most time consuming. When I'm done with that, then I just need to get the little inserts, which don't consider excessive equipment and a certain location. I'm going to film outside around 6:00PM; it'll still dark outside, but not so dark that I need an abundance of artificial lighting. I would have preferred to have my main character running in a more secluded location but in order to get a stable shot I have to film in a car, which limits my filming locations. I've decided to keep things simple and just film on my street.
I've also started to write a rough draft of the voiceover script. I took inspiration from my project last year, but I had to change to majority because the main character is facing a different problem. A way that I found that helped me in writing the script was to listen to the song that I want to use. By doing this, I tried to fully emerge myself in the emotion from the song and then use that to write. The song I want to use is "Measures" by Windmills. The only problem that I'm having is that I can't find who owns it, so I can't ask for permission to use it. I'll have to keep looking and hopefully I figure it out, because the song has already influenced a lot of the opening.
It still needs some tweaking but here's what a have written for the script so far,
It keeps happening. They keep popping into my mind. Little memories. It’s hard to remember what they mean or what’s happening in them. But I don’t think that I want to remember. They scare me. Sometimes so many of them come rushing in all at once, there’s so many things happening, it hurts. It’s so overwhelming, I feel like I’m going to explode. It hurts me to think about it.
Thankfully I did have some time on the plane to get down to business and develop my narrative a bit more. I was set on the overall story but I wasn't sure what I wanted to include in the flashbacks, and what the main character would be struggling with. I did say that I wasn't going to include a love story, which I intend to stand by, but I am going to include a relationship the main character has with a guy. They are by no means in a romantic relationship, but they go out for a nice night out, which will be implied by shots of the main girl getting dressed up and putting on makeup. Through the flashbacks it will be implied that guy abuses her. This will be done through shots of him shushing her or aggressively grabbing her. As she is running, she is trying to work through the emotional toll this event has on her: should she confront the pain of it all, or should she suppress it and keep running away?
For the flashbacks, I'm considering making them all first person point of view, to obviously distinguish which shots are flashbacks. Though that might get repetitive so I might not end up doing that.
I also had time on the plane to storyboard a couple of slides. I wrote down little notes next to the picture so I'll know exactly what I want when I'm filming. I also had to distinguish which images were flashbacks so I wouldn't get confused.
Now that I'm definite in my choice of narrative, I can really start planning out how I want to execute it. I do still think that I want to film outside at night. I think that the darker atmosphere will make the whole thing more dramatic. Though, if it's going to be too dark to feasibly film outside at night, then I think that filming in the evening, around dusk, will still give off a similar effect and make filming, especially lighting, easier.
In my short film from last year, when I was filming all of the running shots I, too, was running. This made all of the shots looks really shaky and sloppy. To fix this, filming on a stable mechanism, like a dolly or a car, will create a more fluid and professional look to those shots. I've never attempted to film like this so I wanted to look into ways other low or no budget films achieve this. I found an article about DIY dolly hacks, and I think that since I'm filming outside a car will be the best option.
For the opening shot I'm thinking of starting with an extreme close-up of the girl's eyes, which will be filled with emotion, and then gradually zoom out into a long shot while the girl and camera are both still moving. To achieve this, I'm thinking I'll have to sit in the trunk of a car to get a stable shot. I'm going to get a friend drive slowly so I can get the shot, and hopefully I won't fall out of the moving car.
I'm leaving today, Friday, for the weekend which means I'll have spare time on the plane, where I can start storyboarding and considering my script. I get back on Monday and I plan to start filming on Tuesday or Wednesday night. I lured my friend Natalie into acting for me, she's been in my past project and I trust her abilities. Though, I might do the voice overs myself because it's easier and Natalie's a better actor with her body, not her voice. (That sounds kind of weird but all I mean is that when she acts for me, she usually doesn't talk so she probably won't talk this time either. Nothing against her voice, she has a nice voice!)
I'm crossing my fingers that on the plane I can be productive and creative and get the majority of the storyboard and script done!
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Citations:
"Get Pro Quality Camera Moves with
These Household DIY Dolly Hacks." No Film School. N.p., n.d. Web.
18 Mar. 2016.
Coming back from the weekend, I still wasn't completely sold on my narrative. I consulted my teacher and friends and have decided to take revamp an old narrative of mine. As I mentioned before, I made a short film at the end of last school year for a class. I faced some issues so I was never satisfied with it. By using the narrative for this project, it will give me the chance to go back and fix the mistakes I made, using all of knowledge and skills that I've learned in the past year. So rather than attempting the thriller genre, I'm going back to my favorite genre to watch and make, drama. Writing for dramas is difficult but also really fun because you get to convey and evoke emotions in your audience.
In my narrative from last year, it centered around a girl that was going through a very emotional time in her life and the only way she knew to distract herself from it was to run, hence why I called the film "RUN" (very creative I know). Unable to sleep on night, she gets out a of bed and starts running to the different places where she has memories with her boyfriend. When she arrives at these different places, she has flashbacks to the memories. She finally reaches the last place, where her boyfriend was hit by and car and died on his way to see her. She then has a moment of clarity where she realizes that she can't keep running away from her issues, that she has to face them head on so she can have closure.
Looking back at it, the narrative and the way I executed it where both a bit cringe-worthy. Instead of having the main character start off in her bed (like every other amateur film), I want to immediately start with her running. I also want to cut out the love story component of the narrative. It takes away from the main character's inner struggle, and also that means I need one less actor. Though, I want to keep the same idea of someone using running as a catharsis to deal with their emotions. To make reference to her past struggles, I'm going to incorporate inserts that act as little bursts of memories. I will have to use fast paced editing to create a sense of chaos within the character.
I want to start off with a black screen, with some beginning credits, and all that is heard is the diegetic sounds of the main character running, like footsteps and heavy breathing. I'm imagining the first shot as an extreme close up of the girls eyes which then zooms out into a long shot of her running. To break up this shot, because it's going to be on the longer side, this is where the first little inserts happen, but then it will cut back to main shot, as the camera gets farther away from her.
As for mise-en-scene, I still want to play with juxtaposing color schemes. The running scenes will have cooler hues, to convey her dark and sad emotional state. The inserted memories will have warmer hues, to imply a simpler time and innocence. My favorite example of a film that utilizes warm and cool colors is Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth.
The main character from Gia Coppola's Palo Alto, April,
was often dressed in yellow.
As for the main character, I want the main character to look like a mess. Her hair would be down and really messy, her makeup would be smeared. I could also use makeup to give her under eye circles, implying she hasn't been sleeping well. For costuming, I always like how it looks when a character is dressed in yellow, which is a bit unusual in films. Yellow usually conveys happiness and innocence, so in this case it will be reminiscent of the characters old self, which she is trying to get back to.
There were certain techniques that I used in my short film that I really liked, and want to use again in my film opening. I had put together the parts from the short film in one video so I can reference back to it when filming. From the beginning, I liked the voiceover and some of the shots that I got of the main character running. In the ending I used inserts, and as I mentioned, I want to use that technique in this project.
I have also attached a piece from my screenplay for the short film. I will probably use a voiceover again so this will give me some inspiration!
Scene 1
ELLA is laying in bed, tossing and turning. She sits up in bed to look at her clock-radio and check the time, which is 2:00 AM. She sighs and throws herself back into bed and tries to go to sleep.
ELLA (V.O.)
I’ve been having trouble sleeping. I don’t think I’ve slept consecutively for more than three hours in months. But I’m not tired. You’d think I’d be exhausted, but I’m not. I go to bed because I like the warmth. It makes me feel safe when I just lay there. I like that feeling, so I stay awake and enjoy those hours. But sometimes, no matter how hard I try not to think about him, about Drew, he pops into my mind. And then I can’t relax. I can’t feel safe because all I can think about is him.
ELLA jolts up, grabs her pillow and throws it across the room. Her head falls into her hands. She sits up and pushes her hair back. She starts to breathe heavily.
ELLA (V.O.)
Then I’ll get this overwhelming feeling inside of me that just makes me want to run away. And I do that sometimes. I run away.
ELLA hops out of her bed and without putting shoes on, she runs out of her room. She runs out the front door of her house and slams the door behind her.
The more I think about my idea about a father and daughter, the less sure I am of it. It was my first idea and I've been thinking about it more and I don't think that my two minute opening will be the best if I go with that storyline. I'm leaning more towards the murder mystery genre. This still allows me to be able to market towards young adults, but the film can still be appealing to older audiences as well. It also will make the opening easier because within the two minutes I can establish a sense of mystery and tease at the overall problem that is coming.
The opening will include two characters, a brother and sister. They are living alone because their parents died a couple years back so now they have to take care of each other. The brother is going to have a troubled past, with an involvement with drugs. The scene will begin with the brother trying to pay bills and looking very stressed. His sister will ask him how he is, to make sure he isn't going to off the deep end again. The sister goes to sleep and the brother goes outside to take out the trash and a mysterious figure come of nowhere and grabs the brother's throat and says something that will be mysterious because the audience won't know what it means yet. I'm thinking something along the lines of, "We both know this is what's best for her." And then the unknown figure shoots the brother and walks away. I want to get a shot of the killer walking straight towards the camera, out from the darkness and his face becomes illuminated and looks straight into the camera and makes an evil little "haha I just killed someone but I don't even care because I'm the badass villain of this movie" smirk. And this it will immediately cut to the title slide and then end.
Now that I'm more solid in my choice for my narrative I can finally start to write the script and storyboarding! I really like writing scripts, dialogue is sometimes challenging but I find that if I say it out loud it helps me to make it sound more natural. I'm going to start writing the script after this post and maybe in my next post I'll attach a little sneak peak so keep your fingers crossed!
Also, I was imaging that the opening would take place at night, which might result in some issues with lighting so I made a little vlog outside, where I'm thinking about filming, to see if the street lights will be enough or if I need additional lighting, and if so how much. I'm probably going to need more lighting but I don't know if the flashlight from phones will work, so I'll to get my hands on some lights from a friend. Let's hope that the lighting will work, and also look good, because if not my vision of the scene will have to change slightly.
Last night, I looked up openings to films and TV shows that I have always thought were intriguing. I did this to see what techniques were used, and also to get inspiration for my opening. Two openings that I found were the opening to The CW's The Secret Circle and Alex Proyas' Dark City.
Having watched The Secret Circle myself, I always remembered the opening as being very interesting. They did this by introducing the main character, Cassie Blake, and includes a dramatic incident, her mother being killed. Using this as the first scene gives background to the main character and her relationship with her mother and grabs the audience with her mother being murdered. The killer is shown but is unknown, again creating a sense of mystery as to why he killed the mother. I thought that I could incorporate some of the techniques into the narrative that I have in mind, the one about the relationship between a father and daughter. If I did go down the drama or thriller route, I could incorporate asynchronous sound to build suspense, and utilize different sound techniques I've learned. Also, another technique that I noticed that was used a lot in both clips was close ups on a characters face to fully immerse the audience in their emotion.
This close up from The Secret Circle draws all of the attention to this unknown man, who is in the process of killing Cassie's mom. The red hues from the fire make him look devilish and evil.
Extreme close up from the beginning of Dark City that illustrates the characters emotion, on a very close and personal level.
The one thing that concerns me about that story line is that it may seem boring to younger audiences, which is the target audience that I wanted to focus on. So to make it more interesting, maybe I could include a dramatic incident that will make it clear that the film isn't just a sappy movie, and it will also hopefully grab the attention of audiences. Hopefully with more research and brainstorming I'll soon be able to pick a narrative then focus in on the creation of the opening!
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Citations:
"The Secret Circle 1x01 - Pilot - #1 Cassie's
Mom Dies." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 14 Mar. 2016.
"Dark City Opening Scene." YouTube. YouTube, n.d.
Web. 15 Mar. 2016.
It is with great excitement, and a little bit of fear, that I begin the task of creating this project. I'm working by myself on this project, which is a little intimidating but I've worked individually on other large projects in the past. Last year, I took a film class and had the amazing opportunity to create my own short film. I did face many problems during the course of that project but it was a good thing because those challenges forced me to be creative with my production and work around the issues. Hopefully, I won't encounter too many problems on this new project but I'm up for the challenge.
As of now, my biggest conflict is picking a narrative. I have a couple ideas in mind but I need to pick one that will have the most interesting opening, and can be done within the two minute time limit. Another factor that I have to consider before picking my narrative is actors: if I create a story that requires adults or children, I have to able to find actors of that age.
Of the narratives that I'm considering, they are all within the drama or mystery genre. Before picking a genre I definitely need to do some research so I can properly execute it, which I intend to do throughout the week.
I want my narrative to include a relationship between a father and daughter because I can use my own experiences as inspiration, which will hopefully make the narrative and dialogue more realistic. Though, I still need to find a way to make the opening interesting so I want to have something big or shocking happening in the first two minutes; maybe an accident or a death. Within the film opening I also think it would be fun juxtapose happy times with sad ones. This will give me the opportunity to play with elements of mise-en-scene such as lighting, colors, and costuming. To further the juxtaposition I'm looking for a song, or songs, that will pair well with each other to convey the different moods. I'm leaning more towards copyrighted music, which means I have to get permission to use it. I've created a playlist with possible songs, including "Fall Harder" by Skylar Spence and "The Less I Know The Better" by Tame Impala.
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Citations:
"Skylar Spence." RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Mar. 2016. <http://www.skylarspence.com/>.
Skylar Spence - "Fall Harder"" YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 14 Mar. 2016.
"Tame Impala." Tame Impala. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Mar. 2016. <http://www.tameimpala.com/>.
"Tame Impala- The Less I Know The Better." Youtube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 14 Mar. 2016
Shying away from the dress idea, it wasn't even what I had planned on in the first place, I might try a red/maroon pullover sweater. I originally thought that I wanted my actress to wear yellow, but now that I actually film a bit, the yellow will be overpowered by the cool hues from the environment. Though if I had the actress wear red it would completely contrast the environment, making her pop and keeping all of the focus on her.
