At the start of this project, I wanted to make a film which I would enjoy making. As my collaborative project was very large and required a lot of work in pre production, I needed this project to be something that I could do in my spare time. With this in mind, I decided to do an experimental non-fiction piece.
I struggled to come up with an idea in which I liked at the beginning of this semester. I had watched a lot of short films of the experimental genre and had generated lots of idea, but unfortunately, I did not wish to pursue any of these ideas and put my full commitment towards them. Eventually, I decided to pick the idea which I felt I would learn the most from and would challenge me the most.
The initial idea was based around the idea of viewing humans from a different perspective. I generally like to film outside, in nature and tend to stay away from cities and people in my films. This was a completely new area of filming for me. My cinematography style is usually based around colours and conventional city scape cinematography tends to be very dark, de-saturated and gritty. I knew from the beginning of this project, I would have to make the film my own and approach city cinematography from a different angle.
During my research for my film ‘Nocturne’, I had come across “miniature” time lapses. These were created using a tilt/shift lens shooting high angles in a city to give the illusion of the city looking miniature. I wanted to use this technique to show humans as “the masses”. This section of my film would be very impersonal and would exhibit humans almost as if they were ants. With this meaning in mind, I was able to develop my film further to become more than just a film with a quirky gimmick.
The miniature effect turned out to be a lot harder to achieve than I thought. I did not have a tilt/shift lens so decided to do the effect in post. After my first few tests, I knew that for the effect to work, I would have to restrict my cinematography a lot. For the effect to work, I could not have anything large in the foreground, I had to shoot at around a 45 degree angle, the objects in the image had to be roughly the same height, I had to shoot everything sharp with no depth of field, I had to be very high up and finally, as this was a time lapse, I had to be able to mount the camera in a steady position and shield it from the wind.
Shooting the miniature effect was, without a doubt, the hardest thing I have ever had to film. I shot the film as if I was a tourist. I made use of public land marks such as The Monument in London and tall car parks. This was due to the fact that to shoot high up in major cities, you have to pay a lot of money.
As my cinematography was very limited, I had to create a new style. I based all of my shots around the theme of lines. I would look at the lines, shapes and patterns buildings made and try and create a pattern if I was able to. A lot of the time I was unable to achieve this due to the limited areas I could place my camera. I also would look for colours (which proved very difficult to find in London on rainy days!).
To contrast the miniature section of my film, I decided to film peoples faces. I had wanted to do this for a while and now was the perfect opportunity. The videos I had watched which filmed people’s faces really opened my eyes. I really discovered that there is beauty in everyone if you just take the time to look and that this translates really well through this filming technique. This would prove to be the perfect contrast to my impersonal miniature section of the film.
Once I had established that I wanted this contrast, I knew transitioning would become a problem. I had shot a lot of footage at this point and had enough time to look through it all. Going back to my style of cinematography of using colours, I decided to match colours in my edit to make the transition between the contrasting styles.
Music was something which I felt let my last experimental film down. I wished to improve upon this for Rush so went in search for musicians on the internet. I knew I wanted music of the post-rock genre and I knew it had to have lots of good breaks in the song to match the contrasts in my visuals. I spent three full days listening to music and writing down the bands I liked. At the very end of the third day I finally found the perfect song for what I had imagined; miaou - scene of the sunrise. I emailed them at that moment and got their permission within a week.
I decided half way through the project to shoot at a 2.35:1 aspect ratio. This was to make my shots look more cinematic and really make Rush look more filmic. I want the audience to experience the film like they would in films such as Baracka and Koyannisqatsi so I felt this aspect ratio would aid that natural cinematic look. I was also able to re-frame some of my shots up or down slightly and do small pans during the time lapses, which also helped for the cinematic feel.
As I didn’t want the film look conventionally “gritty” and city-like, I graded the film which the saturation and contrast up. This created a more colourful version of the city and the people and suited my cinematography style a lot more.
During the shooting, I was very close to changing my idea and quitting the project. I had done four full days of shooting and was very disheartened by my results. I really pushed myself not to give up and keep working at the project to make it work. Now, I feel very happy with the result and am glad I stuck with the project. I have learnt that I have the determination to make a film work even when I feel the film is never gonna work. This was a big lesson for me to learn and I learnt it from probably the most challenging shoot I have ever done.
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