Timeline (pre-production and production)
23rd Feb Tutorial with Anne
29th Feb Tutorial with Anne
2nd March - Emailed Sky Garden
3rd March - Got back from Sky Garden, told to email a different email address
- Jay's sister's friend says yes to do our film
- Asked around in the Master class of crafting for a
middle age performer, got one contact,
email him
4th March - Emailed Farnham Council, Guildford Council and Glyndebourne for location permissions
- Posted on CastingCall Pro for actors/actress
5th March - Location scouting: Chimney(Wanborough), and Guildford Canal
We tried to figure out how to walk to the chimney from train station
 |
| There's a gate stopping us |
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| We walked around the area and see if we can find another way |
But
since we can't walk to the chimney place without going through the
gate, we called and messaged the number shown on the gate.
6th March - Emailed Rushmoor Council for permission for the reservoir area
- Emailed English Heritage for permission to Waverley Abbey
- Contacted Farnham United : http://www.farnhamunitedfc.co.uk/club/Contact
- Schedule agreed: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ywOQ0iWl3GLJDzz1GwIJbeyvn03GsuAg0I-e4N-J6kI/edit?usp=sharing
7th March - Moor Park filming day
8th March - Reservoir area filming day
9th March - Wanborough filming day (raining non stop)
10th March - Farnham Park day
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| Was thinking to film the river with GoPro but it was too muddy |
14th March - Maze and London
15th March - Waverley Abby and Guildford
16th March - London
Motivation for initial idea
The idea stemmed from the wanting to use landscapes to tell a story or in this case show a message to the audience (metaphorical landscapes)
A lot of inspiration came from the film turner which uses massive landscapes to create moods
This made me look more into turners work and his use of metaphors in his landscapes
we initially wanted to use turners painting style simulated in film for but later decided that the naturalistic look worked better
the initial idea would of contained an actor interacting with the landscape
Synopsis
A Pov film taking the audience on a journey through the world. the journey shows the audience the interchanging relationship between rural and urban environments and invites the spectator to make judgments about or impact of nature and its impact of us. This message is shown via slowly increasing influence of nature in an urban environments and then the inverse. The end poses a question about where humanity is finally headed, to an edenistic or urbanistic eutopia.
Treatment
The treatment changed a lot as the film developed, the initial treatment was;
• Wide landscape shots with a metaphorical landscape
• A spirt interacting with the foreign object in the landscape
• Turner style painting effect
• Two focus points
• Sun going from morning to evening over piece
This changed as we firstly didn’t like the idea of just one actor and wanted lots to represent the whole of humanity, this obviously was very difficult, when then thought the idea of pov camera could represent humanity as a whole as the spectator.
The turner style painting effect again didn’t fit this new concept and muddied the meaning.
The two point focus changed by having more styles of shots to represent the location itself.
The sun was something we used stylistically not with initial creative meaning
The treatment now was;
• Pov film
• A mixture of wide location shots and intimate go pro shots
• Eye focus shot. Jumping into zoom
• Locations with metaphorical meaning
• Framing shots
• Hand held shots for natural look
• Sound design 3 part structure: experimental walking, cross fade from urban to rural, descriptive sound for each situation (metaphorical)
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| Original Storyboard (by Ethan) |
Storyboard (scene meaning)
• Boat to Thames =the use of water by humanity
• Gerkin= the rising of industrialisation
• Construction site tree= building around nature
• Root wall = nature recapturing
• Weed hair= human connection to nature
• Canal = controlling nature
• Green house = hope from home
• Maze= surrounded by nature
• Feet to river transition= connection
• Nature reserve= fake nature
• Avenue = organising patterns in nature
• Reservoir= controlling nature for human consumption
• Boardwalk= experiencing nature
• Tank stoppers = human history mark on nature
• Cave= living with nature
• Chimney= humanities need for nature
• Abbey = faith and nature
• Pillions= across the world
• Bunker = capturing glimpses of nature
• Hill city = looking over relationship
Roles and Achievements
Director: Jay Hayes
Producer: Man Yin Mok
Cinematography: Ethan Salley, Man Yin Mok
Sound: Adeleke Adewale, Jay Hayes
Editor: Ethan Salley
We are mostly working together at all times in pre-production period and production period. Then in post-production period we split into two teams for cinematography and sound.
In pre-production period, we agreed our roles but we will still contribute to ideas on everything when needed. Also, we all contributed to paperwork on risk assessments because of the quantity of locations and the limited time. In production period, the Director would tell the cinematography team what he wants for the shot then let the team capture it as many time as possible until we are all satisfied with it. At the same time, Ade would capture the sound. In post-production, the two teams work separately but would communicate at the end of the day to check if everything's alright.
Jay Hayes: I achieved creating a coherent stylistic film using both cinematography and sound to display a more symptomatic meaning.
Man Yin Mok: I achieved making sure things that need to be done are done and be done on time. I also achieved the desired cinematography look of the film.
Ethan Salley: I achieved operating the camera well and the desired cinematography look of the film. Also, I was able to achieve a naturally flowing edit using After Effects and Premier Pro.
Adeleke Adewale:
Inspirations/ Research
The ideas evolved along the production processes but we still hold on to our original research for inspirations. See the blog for Pitch: http://manyinmok-dfsa.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/experimental-video-pitch.html.
Challenges
Weather:
A issue that we had to overcome whilst filming was that in result of all the filming being outside, we had to tackle filming in different weather conditions. One day during our filming week was a wet day which made it hard for us to film. [Plastic bag]
Finding locations:
When it came to finding locations for our film, we wanted to make sure that each location had a strong meaning behind it so that we could send our message to the audience clearly. This required us to find various locations in both rural and urban areas. It took us a while to finalise and decide on enough locations for the film.
Getting permission:
Adding on from the last point, for every location that we used we had to ask various different councils and companies to give us permission to film in public or private land. This required us to fill out a lot of paper work for each location which took a long time.
Keep flow in shots:
Although we also mentioned this in the strengths section, it was quite challenging to be bale to actually have a nicely flowing product. In order to keep the flow in the film it took a lot of time and fine tuning of each clip in the film.
Making environments interesting:
Being able to create meaning behind every shot was quite a hard task for us to overcome. We wanted to grab the audience throughout the whole film which requires us to make the environments we film to be interesting. We've been out filming for at least 5 hours on each filming day to make sure we get enough shots for each location.
Strengths
Perspective:
Originally we wanted our character to be shown through an actor. This is so that we could film the character interacting with the different locations. Although, we were not able to find suitable actors for our part due to time and some unfortunate circumstances. So we decided to use the idea of the camera becoming the character. We did a lot of planning on how we could accomplish this and made the decision that we preferred this over using an actor. We think that the audience becoming the character in this experimental film was an important way to get our message across and become a part of this journey through the locations. Us filming this made us go through the journey as well so we thought that we could bring the audience through this film to make each person experience it differently.
Blinks:
We all decided that instead of using hard cuts we wanted to use blinks as our transitions between locations. This is because we believe that the blinks made it easier to create a natural flow throughout the film. Since we used a first person perceptive we wanted to create blinks to make to add towards this perspective of the camera becoming the character.
Title:
The title was something that was debated to either not show or be shown. Showing the title would be able to help round up our points and show it to the audience. Although, as an experimental film we also want to show our message to the audience through the actual content of our film rather than clarifying it at the end. Finally we believed that in the end we should show a title because it would be a good way to round up our film. We believe that the title animation worked out very well and we are pleased with how it came out visually.
"ment" is a suffix that can form nouns for actions or results. Action and results, just like the relationship of humanity and environment. The fact that we are showing this suffix act as a little comment from the team and a space for audience to think.
Sound scape:
From day 1 of our project we wanted to have the soundtrack to this film to be quite dominant. Just having the images alone without a good soundtrack to go along with it would make it quite boring and not fully explained. We want the soundtrack to send the message even further beyond the image and become a very important feature of the film.
Shot arrangement:
In post production we wanted to keep a natural flow between each clip to make it pleasing for the viewer to watch. This is why the way we arranged the clips is a very important task for us. The questions What shot should be next? How long should this be? and Does it flow into the next clip? came up very often in the editing process. Overall we were happy with how our film flowed.
Pacing:
We believe that pacing our film was important in order to keep the attention of the audience. If we made the film too long then the message that we want to send would eventually get lost and not impact the audience as much. So even though that we shot a lot of clips we needed to cut it in such a way where it is not too long for the audience but also efficiently send across our message.
Post Production
First edit: Rural first
Second edit: Urban first
After effects timeline
The title
Blink
Colour correction
Static
Building The SoundtrackAs the sound producer it was my job to capture the life of the overall project of our film are angle was to take the audience and use what they saw and heard as a character so building the soundtrack with jay was a challenge because we had to capture all the live sounds and manipulate them so the audience could feel every scene we achieved this in post production using the equalizer and correcting the sound and using pitch shifter i myself created the backing track and contributed to the platform of life of the film by providing a soundscape that put your mind in each scene jay handled the decoration sound and enhanced the type of sounds you would be surrounded by depending on the scene for instance if you was in the city you would hear traffic lights cars people talking and even airplanes depending on where you was and if you was in a rural environment you would hear natural sounds like trees blowing birds singing ducks qwacking and so on we made the choice to combine both elements to add depth to our film and the sound acts as another layer in our film that puts you in position to experience what we experienced while filming our film "ment" combines the visual aspects and sounds of the city with the broad and clear landscapes and sounds of nature in a rural setting our film asks the question of weather one environment overshadows the other and do us as humans benefit with both or one or the other the sound gives you another element of the film by making both the city and rural environment strand out and highlights the fact that both environments futures each other.
All together we are happy about the outcome and all the things we learnt in the process.
Man Yin Mok: I learnt so much in the pre-production period about paper works and communications. In production period I learnt a better use of the camera XF305 and the importance of lighting. In post-production period I gain a better knowledge of After Effects and Premier Pro even just by watching.
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