Evaluation - Rush

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.

Evaluation - At First Sight

The project began with just Anderson and I. We had come up with a few ideas but had not finalised anything by this point. Tim then joined our group and we continued in the ideas generation stage with me being the director, Tim being the producer and Anderson being the director of photography. We spent a lot of time going through a lot of ideas and it was at this point I knew that the group I was now working in was made up of very different film makers. I had to learn quickly to adjust to both person’s ideas and individual style. This was a difficult thing to achieve and it was something that took a lot of time.

As the director, I took it upon myself to be involved in as much of the project as possible. I made sure I wrote the scripts and did the storyboards so that I would have the best possible understanding of the film.

I had wanted to improve my script writing and story development for this project. I knew Tim was very good at this and I knew that I needed to get as much feedback as possible. I ended up writing 7 drafts of the script all of which had significant changes. I also gained a lot of feedback and I feel that the final draft of the script was very complete and a massive improvement on my previous dramas. During this stage of production, I learnt a lot about story structure and story development techniques.

Progress went very well during pre-production. We were ready for our first and most challenging shoot in which we had to create the illusion of an endlessly white room. Here I learnt the importance of vigorous testing. We were able to achieve this very difficult look due to the massive amount of testing and research we had done leading to this point.

After we had done this shoot, the group began to split and start working on our own projects and the design futures module. This began to snowball and sure enough we began to run out of time. Managing all 3 projects was becoming very difficult for myself and the group as we all had differing priorities. This caused a slump in our work rate for the film for a few weeks and our final shoot days were pushed back.

With our final shoot days pushed back, it turned out that our male actor would be unable to make any shoot dates before the deadline week. This meant we had to find a way to shoot around him. This really pushed my skills as a director as we had made a very complex story and it was up to me to work out a way to shoot the rest of the film without our actor with it still wrapping off all of the elements of the film. As stressful as this became for me, I was able to work out a way to shoot around the actor using techniques inspired by russian art house films and using the mise en scene we had already established earlier in the film.

During the shoots, I felt a lot more relaxed than I usually did. As a group we worked fantastic during the shoots. Tim focused on the organisation and took all of those pressures off of me and Anderson focused on making the shots look the best they could be. I was able to focus completely on the actress and the story telling aspects of the film. This was a new experience for me as usually I am worrying about the organisation and the cinematography as well as the direction. I learnt a lot about true direction during the shoots. At the beginning of each shoot, I had time to sit down with the actress and brief her on what general mood I want her to portray for each scene. When it came to doing the shots, I was able to refer back to our briefing session a lot of the time and this turned out to be a very successful technique. We all had a great trust in one another and this made for a smooth, fun and efficient production.

I learnt that being a director, you get asked a lot of questions. I had watched an interview with Spielburg where he had said that “The hardest thing about being a director is knowing what you want”. This proved to be a correct statement. I had to make sure that I always knew the story perfectly so that when I would get asked questions, I could answer without hesitation. I would force myself into a state where every decision that I made would be one with absolute certainty. However, I believe that I still need to develop my skill in knowing exactly what I want but I recognise that this is a technique that comes with a lot of experience.

The editing of this film was left very late and I feel that is where it’s downfall lies. There was not enough time to develop the sound to the level where I felt it needed to be. Tim, Anderson and I sacrificed sleep in the last week before deadline to make sure that we could get the film to a point where it met our high standards. This was a challenging time and it was important for all of us to keep motivated. Even under the stress, we were all able to keep spirits high and work at our hardest. This made me realise how far we had come as a group. By this point we learnt each others behaviors and were able to recognise when someone was feeling stressed. We had developed a fantastic working relationship and were able to keep ourselves motivated and get the work done.

Video Links

Here are the videos which relate to the written research in my file:

Chosen Song

Miaou - Scene of the Sunrise

Really great song by Miaou. It has great layers and really good breaks.

Scene of the Sunrise has several sections to it which I feel will match my films several sections. The more layered sections match time lapse footage really well, and the slower sections to the film will match the slow motion parts to my film.

I have emailed Miaou and gained their permission to use the song for my film which was really kind of them! I hope they will like the final film!

Possible Songs

Here are the all of the songs that I had shortlisted as possible songs for my film.

More Inspiration

I have been looking into using time lapse in order to tell some kind of story. In these videos, they have used time lapse photography techniques to tell a drama.

Winter Timelaps from Zbigniew Debicki on Vimeo.

The Ambience Affair - Devil in the Detail from Souljacker on Vimeo.

There is a very Tim Burton stop motion style to the movement of the characters in the 2 music videos. It creates a very surreal image and is very interesting and engaging to watch a human move like that. I would like to test this movement out at some point soon to see if I can achieve something similar.

In the winter time lapse video, I like the sequences where the character is "still" and the rest of the world is moving, I could possibly experiment with this technique if I chose to go down this road in my solo project.

Initial Ideas

I have struggled to come up with any ideas I wish to pursue in this final semester. I came up with drama ideas, documentary ideas and experimental ideas. I was even considering making a music video. All of the ideas I had come up with I liked but didn't like enough to pursue them.

I want to create something which I will enjoy making and be happy with the result. I spent last evening looking through vimeo videos for inspiration and came across this video called Isenseven - TIMES.

This video is basically a montage of clips which a group of guys have filmed during their travels. The film doesn't say anything or aim for a deeper meaning but is very entertaining to watch.

Isenseven - TIMES from Vincent Urban on Vimeo.

I really love the combination of split screen and great cinematography along with really catchy music. The film is enjoyable because it's fun and expresses someones personal journey in an engaging way.

I showed this to my collab partner Tim and he said he most enjoyed the parts where the shots matched, otherwise it felt very jarring. I agree with this point and would look to experiment with matching different angles of a location/person in the same shot.

I also love the colours in some of the sequences as it makes the image as a whole very beautiful to watch.

Some of the transitions are really well done in this piece. Its nice when images seem to blend into other sequences and it is also good when one contrapuntal image appears and leads into another sequence.