More thoughts

No doubt I will run into problems with decision making. “Should I put the camera here or there” if I am having serious difficulty with making production decisions, I can ask for advice. In this situation it may be useful to utilise the online community. I could join up to a student film maker’s forum and request some advice. I could obviously consult with the various other student film makers around the collage, whom may have encountered similar obstacles or produced similar films.

I am considering introducing a knife to the narrative. The knife would be a conveniently available tool for introducing implied violence. When my audience see the knife they will recognize it as a potentially violent and dangerous tool. I would not actually feature any material where the knife was portrayed as being used graphically, this would be both inappropriate for the project and very artificial considering the recourses available. Recently seeing the high quality thriller at the Bond university lecture has altered the preproduction stages of my film.

Thoughts

An important step in the project is to examine other film products of this genre, observing and taking into consideration what was effective and what wasn’t. Over the next few weeks I will be watching various thrillers, from respectable directors, to gain insight into how other directors use tools to create suspense mystery and fear. Despite not having any where near the recourses of a big budget film I can still work to replicate many of the techniques of higher budget films. For example I may be able to replicate an effective camera angle or try to include similar character, story and screen play elements.

An equally important part of the project will be connecting with other student film makers who may be working on similar products. There are various places where student film makers like my self, communicate ideas, offer advice and discuss student films. I will also be making an effort to view other student films (both in my community and in the online community). Many student directors, like me, have very limited resources, this makes watching other student films particularly useful for me because I gain more of an understanding of student film makers can create.

Consideration into thriller

The project I am wishing to undertake can be categorized as a thriller. I thought it would be important to do some research into the characteristics of a successful thriller and consider techniques for my project. Firstly, many quality thriller films are to a certain extent credible, the audience may believe that a certain amount of the screen play could realistically occur. This has the effect of making the film seem frightening. If I wanted to feature something highly unrealistic I could engineer it within a dream sequence.

A good thriller film is usually fairly subtle in the way it creates suspense and tension. I will be making a considerable effort to ensure the techniques in my project will be reasonably subtle, I will do this by developing the tension slowly and slightly, instead of introducing a disturbed character with a knife in the first shot (this would be a ridiculous attempt at building suspense) Thrillers should have reasonable character development. This is important because it would be difficult to make the audience feel fear for the main character if the audience is not interested in the poorly developed character.

The thriller I will be directing will be reasonably short. I feel much more comfortable creating short films, I can focus on creating the screen play that really will be effective rather than concerning over how to fill time gaps. It is a challenging task to say the least, creating a thriller which fits the limitations of a student film.

Consideration into implied violence

I may also introduce a certain amount of violence to increase the intensity. The problem with this is that I lack the necessary resources to create simulated violence in my film. It would be difficult for me to create scenes with physical violence, without the scenes looking excessively artificial. Fortunately, I can get around this problem by relying on more subtle techniques or ‘implied violence’. I can communicate to the audience that an event is happening without literally showing it by using symbolism, representation, and conventions. For example, if I wished to communicate a man being murdered (In all probability my film will not feature this) I could substitute the physical murder scene with a different scene which represents and symbolises the murder.

So the literal murder scene could be substituted with a different scene, the man could have his back turned as the murderer stalks up behind him with a weapon, giving the impression that the man is doomed, while the murder is occurring the camera would switch to a close up of a candle being extinguished. By doing this I would be communicating to my audience that the man is being murdered without actually having to stage it.

Creative Commons

I thought I would write a quick entry about the Creative Commons presentation by Roger. Creative Commons is an excellent tool for creators of material who may wish to modify the copyright for their material. Although I will not be using Creative Commons anytime soon I found this presentation very relevant to our interactive media class. Many of the students may wish to publish their work on the site, from there they can modify the copyright laws for the individual materials. For example, a student may wish to post their work on the site specifying that the material can be copied into other documents and used for personal gain but not copied and distributed for money.

Glass Biscuit presentation

I am finaly recording my thoughts on the presentation of a group students forming together as ‘The Glass Biscuit Development Team’. They are working together to create a game. I was most impressed with their organizational skills, they have set specific deadlines and assigned jobs to each of member of the group. Naturally, the large group has the capacity to create far more complicated projects than an individual could accomplish, however the question remains as to whether they can continue to work productively as a team. Our teacher, Roger Stack said that the assessors at the TQA would look very favourably upon the presentation. With legal permission the students are creating their game using some of the programming from the professionally made game ‘Half Life 3’. The team has now purchased their own individual web site where they can post updates, trailers, comments etc.

consideration into dream sequences

For my first project I would like to create a film which features the use of dream sequence(s). This will be a challenging task to an inexperienced film maker like myself. I will take the time to contemplate techniques I could use to make the scene as effective as possible. I will also be examining other video productions to see how more experienced directors approach the unique challenge of crafting dreams into film.

There are various ways we can handle the transitions between dreams and ‘reality’ A simple technique is to implement the conventional fade to white transition. One way to end a dream sequence is to have something in the environment occur, that wakes the character. For example, the protagonist’s alarm clock may ring at a crucial moment in the dream. Dream sequences will often end during a very intense moment when something significant or deeply personal is just about to occur.

Dream sequences can be placed at varying stages throughout a film, in Risky Busyness (Paul Brickman, 1984) the beginning of the film is simply a long dream sequence. The sequence allows us to enter the mind of the protagonist and get to know his personality. Once a dream has been established the director can use the scene to give the audience almost any kind of information about the narrative, characters, etc.

Dream sequences do not necessarily have to be abstract scenes which warp reality in some spectacular way, they are often realistic in some aspects and can be difficult to distinguish from reality. They can be exceptionally involving for an audience when it is difficult to distinguish whether what they are seeing is a dream or not.

thoughts on multi layering

Today I viewed a friend’s production which featured the proficient use of multi layering. For his project the technique made a supreme contribution. Multi layering is the technique in which we have multiple layers of material which can be played simultaneously. We can alter the properties of these layers to create certain effects. This complementary effect can help film makers supplement their work with a stylized effect, bringing diversity to their productions.

For example if I wanted to create a product in which a character sees a reflection of past events when he stares into a pond, I would use multiple layers of film. I would first record a close shot of the pond, I would then film the event that is intended to be reflected in the water. These events can be recorded in any order. I would then import the footage into a video editing program. The pond footage would be the top layer and the reflection footage would be the bottom layer. I would have both layers playing simultaneously except the top layer would be partially transparent. In effect this means that the audience will see a combination of the surface of the pond and the reflections of the characters past. I plan on introducing this technique into my project, however consideration has to made as to how much of this multi layering is necessary. Too much multi layering could become confusing for an audience and detract from the narrative flow.

Bond university presentation

It is worth mentioning an extremely useful presentation I attended, held by a teacher from Bond University in Queensland. The presentation was primarily centred around advising the many young film makers in the room. The presenter showed us a few high quality projects from students attending Bond university. One of them was particularly relevant to my project in that it was a short thriller. It was unanimously agreed that the production was of a magnificent quality, the tension it was able to create with the lighting, acting and narrative was impressive to say the least. The film was exactly what I needed to increase my motivation. I would like to replicate some of the lighting the film used, the character was certainly cast by shadows but was still distinguishable in the small dark room.The narrative was excellent, It was handled professionally and had just the right amount of complexity for a film of a short duration. The teacher discussed the difference between soft and hard lighting and gave us many helpful hints as to how to improve the quality of our work.

Examining other internet journals

I recently viewed my first blog (journal) on the internet. A requirement for the course is that we connect with the learning community by viewing other journals and writing comments. I wasn’t particularly impressed with the way it was written. If it were simply a recreational journal about life it would have been acceptable however the journal will eventually be assessed. The best way I can describe the blog is that it was very ‘off the point’ the writer consistently brought in topics which were largely irrelevant to interactive multi media. Such as his work life, sleep patterns etc. For this course I will be trying to create a more disciplined, focused journal in which I do not discuss irrelevant content.

Assisted with a production

Assisted with a production

Today I was involved in the production of a student advertisement, my intentions being to assist with operating the video camera or helping with capturing the audio. The concept for the project was excellent, however the director was very disorganized, thus when the time came to record the material, we lacked a complete cast, proper equipment or sufficient time. Simply put, the production commenced and operated at a third of its potential proficiency. Three or four actors were absent on the day of production, a replacement actor was implemented to ill effect. The director didn’t realize that half of the cast had other commitments to attend to, consequently filming was rushed.

The problems were largely avoidable, had the director had better organizational skills. Proper equipment has to be organized in advance, for my project I will try to gain access to the higher quality camera in the video production lab. The issues the director had with the actors further confirm my desire to operate with a small cast. We had a break from production, once the actors with other commitments had rushed through their scene. We resumed the lengthy production with the remaining actors, not realizing that the outdoor lighting had undergone a significant change. This means when the material is on screen weather conditions in the background will suddenly change half way through the advertisement for no apparent reason. I am appreciative that I leant of this outdoor filming problem because I can now take steps to avoid it in my production.