Scene Analysis #2
In this blog post I’ll be analyzing a scene from The Lobster (2015), directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, starring Collin Farrel, Ben Wishaw, Rachel, Weisz and Léa Seydoux.
In a dystopian future, or strange alternative present, adults who are single, either through failure to find a partner or bereavement, must check into a hotel with other singles and find a genuinely compatible partner (the union’s authenticity has to be approved by the management) within 45 days, or they are transformed into an animal of their choice and released into the forest. But they can gain extra time for this “search” period with hunting trips into the forest with rifles and bringing down rebellious “singles” who have escaped into the wild there, living as singleton outlaws.
They all have to participate in the activities: dancing and social interaction and conform to the strict no-masturbation rule. But Farrell is to glimpse the possibility of escape, and of living among the rebels in the forest in a society whose rules are hardly less dysfunctional and mad than those of the hotel. Here he is to fall in love with a beautiful, lonely woman played by Rachel Weisz and submit to rules imposed by charismatic, ruthless revolutionary played by Léa Seydoux.
The scene is a dancing scene in which the protagonist David struggles to socialize but eventually stands up and walks towards a girl and asks her to dance.
The lighting in the scene is very high key, with a warm, yellow-ish tone, looking a lot like the lighting in Amélie (2001). The warm tone makes a strong contrast with the anxious mood of David, the surrounding coversations in the background, the cheerful, harmonious atmosphere makes him look like an alien.
Location Scouting for Our Film
On the Sunday of week 7, we decided to meet outside class and scout for locations in the CBD area. I mainly walked around the Southern Cross, Southbank and Docklands area where there were a lot of skyscrapers and modern architecture.
The video contains two parts, with each of them representing a type of look that I want to explore more later. The first part is quite unsteady, handheld, but a sense of liveliness subtly lies within the movements. The colors are mainly warm toned, and even the sound is soft and tender (like the bird singing in the first shot). In the second shot, we asked Maddy to pose. I had no idea what I was filming at the time, I just thought it was a beautiful shot to capture. But now to me it looks like a moment of the A.I. girl having a moment by herself, simply living and being, not thinking that there are people who are against her existence, and do not support her having the same rights as humans do. It would be a beautiful shot to have in our film.
The second part is very steady (still handheld but I did a better job at stabilizing the camera and used the stabilizer effect in Premiere Pro) and mainly cold-toned with architecture looking modern, all straight lines and graphic patterns. Through these shots, a sense of cold-bloodedness, indifference is conveyed (at least that’s what I thought). Without any color-grading, the second part already has an atmosphere of the futuristic world where civilization is more developed but people are more emotionless, that’s what I thought our character, the A.I. girl would feel.
Maybe the difference between the two parts is not too obvious now, but with color-grading, sound, proper editing, they will definitely be more like what they are. I thought using the two styles, we could portray the mood of the protagonist better without her saying anything. Because we do not want the film to be all voice over and texts embedded to explain what’s going on. Too much talking and information would somehow downgrade the quality of the story, because it leaves no space for imagination or silent moments for people to feel with their heart.
Development of Ideas
A screen shot from Her, I thought it’s beautiful and has a feeling of isolation.
A screen shot from Cloud Atlas, I cannot remember what the plot is about during this bit, but it’s a very sad part where all the A.I. girls find out that the nutrition fluids they drink to maintain their life is actually made of broken or abandoned A.I. girls (who were found having concious and subjective thoughts).
This is just a random image that I found when I googled sci-fi. It looks really intense, but this kind of sci-fi is not my favourite type. I’m more into sci-fi storys in which you can find the current situation of the society, reflections of certain issues without stating them directly. I’m not necessarily attracted to the idea sci-fi and spaceships and outer space but stories that show there are possibilities of what the future will be like.
A screen shot from Alien: Covenant. The whole film is boring as hell but the cinematography and the set design is quite a highlight. The mininal clothing David and Walter wear really uplifts the whole futuristic narrative.
A screen shot from Ex Machina, one of my favorite sci-fi. The journey of the A.I. protagonist is everything I’d like to see in a sci-fi story. The process of her realizing who she is and who she wants to be is truly amazing.
A screen shot from Black Mirror Season 3’s ‘Nosedive’. It’s a story that takes place in the near future where people’s popularity on social networks is their social status and class in reality. The story articulates how people are obssessed about getting ‘likes’ on social networks such at facebook and instagram etc. Apart from the story, the cinematography is beautiful, and post-production is also a highlight as it’s got a pink-lilac tone though the whole episode, making everything looks so nice and dreamy, contrasting the dark rules of the society.
I’d keep looking for more images but really all I’m into are sci-fi stuff. Sci-fi is a true blessing to the human race.
I don’t really know what to do for the final video but for now I can only think of sci-fi stories. I’d love to tell a story that is beyond this world we live in and especially has nothing to do with the reality. I think people are very drawn to the genre of sci-fi because it really is a escape from the reality, even though I don’t think the reality is that bad, I’d still love to spend 2 hours imagining that I’m living in a different world.
I’m thinking that maybe I could do something like Black Mirror because I like how it’s always set in the near future where most of the things are the same as reality but the technology is slightly more advanced, which often brings more troubles than convenience as it’s portrayed in the show.
I keep thinking about Cloud Atlas, a film that I watched probably 3 years ago. It had me shook when I first read the book, each of the story was so beautiful and was skillfully tied to each other. The six protagonists are all so brave and bold while encounter hardships and they made me feel so encouraged. The narrative style in the film was truly incredible, cutting all 6 stories together, through the time of 300 years. And the most amazing thing is that the cast all play several characters in it, implying the cycle of life and that maybe one lives many lives but the universe always brings the same people to each other. It’s such a good story, and the Wachowskis did a great job directing it.
Okay, for the pitching, I really have to figure out a more detailed story to begin with, but for now I honestly cannot select one in my head because I don’t think any of them is completed enough.
Well, if I have to, then here are some of the things that I came up with:
- A story that is set in near future around 2040-2050 where civilization is more developed.
- Everything still looks the same. It’s more developed on the brains than the looks. It’s people’s mentality that’s become more civilized.
- The general background is set in a world where there are no boarder lines or the concept of countries but social issues such as racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia, xenophobia and etc, still exist in the world. I intent to make this a sharp reflection of the reality and the world we live in.
- Inspiration from Cloud Atlas, Black Mirror and Her:
Cloud Atlas is a science fiction directed by the Whichowskis and Tom Tykwer. It consists 6 stories with a different protagonist in each, coming thorough from 1849 to post-apocalyptic future 2321. I like how it has got 6 main characters from diverse backgrounds. It’s quite inclusive because people of different cultures, ethnicities and religions can all relate to it to a certain extent.
Black Mirror is a sci-fi TV series created by Charlie Brooker. It is made of standalone episodes. I like how every episode is set in an alternative present or the near future, being a combination of reality and fantasy. But I guess I’ll try to avoid the techno thing that they have in my work, because it either relies on a big budget or very skillful post-production.
Her is a romantic sci-fi directed by Spike Jonze, the modern and futuristic architectures and locations in the film are very similar to what I would like to see in my work. It’s mostly shot in the CBD area in Shanghai and Los Angeles where there are a lot of skyscrapers.
- About locations, I’m thinking about places in the city that look kind of futuristic. Like the Gallery of Victoria, the state library, New Academic Street and places around Southbank. Places that look modern and minimalistic would be on the top of my list. I think good composition and skillful cinematography would also make places look slightly more futuristic than they actually are.
- For the script, I’d love to co-write it with someone
- Casting, I’ll probably just ask around to see if anyone is willing to act, because I believe any one can be a good actor given the time and some good lines. But if necessary, I’ll put up some posters.
- Will have the shot list and story boards to help emphasize the shots
- I usually would start editing once I got footages to see what it looks like when they’re put together and will figure out if catch up shooting is needed.
After the pitch, Margot, Maddy, Niki and I decided to form a group. I think it’s very nice that we’re all willing to compromise so our ideas can be blended into one. All of them are easy to communicate with and are very understanding. I can really see us working together in harmony.
Margot’s idea is from the French film Cleo from 5 to 7, with lots of mirror and glass reflections. She really likes the aesthetics of it.
Maddy’s idea is using one colors to portray different moods in different genres. I think it’s very interesting because usually people do not compare colors’ meaning in different genres.
Niki got her idea from a youtube series, in which an episode tells the story of how the boy finds the perfect girls for her, making sure that she knows even though he’s had ex-girlfriends that he loved, she is everything he wants now. The conversation is so cheeky but I love it. Another idea of her is that there is a dark secret or certain dark elements in the love story.
And my idea is for the film to be a sci-fi, with futuristic looking and also reflects upon certain issues in the society.
I can really see how our ideas can be combined without eliminating anyone’s idea.
For the social issue, we talked about maybe we could focus on the LGBT community and their story and I think it’d be a really powerful film if we can do that.
Unfortunately, Maddy and Margot were not here today, but Niki and I sort of figured out a bit more on the story. It focuses on a girl that was abused by her ex-boyfriend and it trying to get out of the situation that she was put into. The story is set in the near future where racism, sexism, violence are very rare to see. The background makes her even more isolated because her situation is not understood by people as many of them are not educated about them at all.
During the short holiday, I went out for location scouting and took some photographs that can support my idea. I walked around the city for the whole afternoon and tries to find futuristic looking buildings and places.
It looks so depressing to look at. But I love it.
It looks vintage and modern at the same time. Melbourne is incredible.
Left: I really like the pink car and the green restaurant. They’re a good match in color.
Right: I thought of Margot’s idea – reflection when I took it. This could be a good location for filming.
I love how lines and patterns come together in the image above. It’ll look even more futuristic after editing.
More buildings. I did not realize that they looked this depressing when I took them. They looked fine on the camera. But i guess it’s because it’s very cloudy on that day.
I like how weird this building looks. A very bold design.
I like it because it’s so unnecessarily orange. It was taken in ACMI.
Hopefully these images will help me and my group envision better.
We found an amazing place that looks really ideal for the film. It’s a stairwell located in NAS and it’s painted all white, with complex structures and looks super futuristic. Check out this post: http://www.mediafactory.org.au/yuhan-liang/2017/09/15/week-7-exercise/
After the studio finished I went back there to take more photographs and explored a little bit in NAS.
Before our turn to talk to Paul about the group pitching on Tuesday, I quickly color graded a couple of images
Scene Analysis #2
In this blog post I’ll be analyzing a scene from The Lobster (2015), directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, starring Collin Farrel, Ben Wishaw, Rachel, Weisz and Léa Seydoux.
In a dystopian future, or strange alternative present, adults who are single, either through failure to find a partner or bereavement, must check into a hotel with other singles and find a genuinely compatible partner (the union’s authenticity has to be approved by the management) within 45 days, or they are transformed into an animal of their choice and released into the forest. But they can gain extra time for this “search” period with hunting trips into the forest with rifles and bringing down rebellious “singles” who have escaped into the wild there, living as singleton outlaws.
They all have to participate in the activities: dancing and social interaction and conform to the strict no-masturbation rule. But Farrell is to glimpse the possibility of escape, and of living among the rebels in the forest in a society whose rules are hardly less dysfunctional and mad than those of the hotel. Here he is to fall in love with a beautiful, lonely woman played by Rachel Weisz and submit to rules imposed by charismatic, ruthless revolutionary played by Léa Seydoux.
The scene is a dancing scene in which the protagonist David struggles to socialize but eventually stands up and walks towards a girl and asks her to dance.
The lighting in the scene is very high key, with a warm, yellow-ish tone, looking a lot like the lighting in Amélie (2001). The warm tone makes a strong contrast with the anxious mood of David, the surrounding coversations in the background, the cheerful, harmonious atmosphere makes him look like an alien.
Color Grading Exercise
I took a random shot and color graded it using Premiere Pro. The first one has a cold tone, which goes with our idea of sci-fi as it is the common tone that’s used in the genre. I color graded the second one into a pink-lilac tone as I attempted to make it look dreamy. I was thinking of the color grading in Black Mirror’s ‘Nosedive’, the whole episode has the main color of pink and almost all the shots with a pink hue. It works very well to portray a good, relaxing mood but can also contradicts the depressing mood of the character. The last one was color graded into black and white, I’ve always had a thing for black and white films so I simply wanted to see what it’d look like if I ever did a black and white film (it’d be bomb).
In general, the cold toned style is more suitable for our film as it helps achieve the sense of isolation/loneliness of the A.I.’s journey. But we will definitely play around with our footages and explore more when we get into post-production.
2067 – Pre-production
After agreeing on doing a sci-fi film with the main character being an AI, we went into script writing and asked everyone to write some plots/scenes or even lines that they wanted to see in the film. I couldn’t think of what I should do until the afternoon before the meet up, where we sat down and talked to Paul about our ideas. I didn’t know why but for weeks I had been super low on creativity and to me, the best way to get some creative juice flow was to not think about it at all. On my way to the group meeting, I thought of something that vaguely resembles a dream in which A recalled all the best and worst memory that she’d had. Like a child’s voice saying “can I see your chip?”, a girls’ voice saying “I wish I could handle all that numbers like you do”, a young man’s voice saying “do you even dream?” and an middle aged man’s voice saying “some might disagree, but I know you’re just like us” etc. With these voices fading in and out, visuals such as trees and clouds and nature views could be accompanied to represent the most innocent and carefree side of A, it’s a place where she goes every time when she dreams. It’s debatable whether the place she goes when she dreams is encoded in the chip or not. Anyways, that’s just a vague image that I was having when I thought about how my part should start.
In week 8 we sort of all agreed on starting it off with writing a monologue of our own for Margot to narrate in the film later. I had no idea what to write man, my the god of creativity hadn’t been on my side. But eventually I thought of something as I was lying in my bed that morning and thought of something that’s vaguely relevant to Wonder Woman. To me, A. is a warrior. She represents the ultimate opposing force to all injustice in the society. Her attitude is a fearless fightback to those who prejudge and discriminate. And the fact that she resembles femininity reflects the rising power of the female gender. But after all, her kind is marginalized and oppressed, being the punchbag of the dark side of the society and humanity. So I wrote this while I was processing all these pieces of info and putting them into their places.
Do you think she knows what she’s doing?
She heard them murmuring
Aloof but loud
I bet it’s the chip that’s telling her what to do
She can’t process a real thought, right?
The warrior stood
Letting the blood that’s pouring from the wound blur her vision
None of this mattered
She offered herself to the demon’s mouth at her last thought
None of this mattered
I had some really strong visions when I was writing the last couple of lines. You’ll find them in the images and storyboards below.
We had Margot to do the narration and her voice was perfect for the monologues. She had a good grasp on when and how much emotions should be involved. We’re all very pleased with her narration. However, I was kind of worried that my monologue was too short and it couldn’t last long enough for my visuals. But I remember Paul and other tutors have suggested to show not tell so I thought maybe this would work properly with some manipulation. I liked how It had two parts, with the first one serving as a objective perspective as it includes other people’s thoughts on her and the second part serves as a subjective perspective as it reveals A’s innermost thoughts. I started to sketch some visuals that would go with the monologue.
These two are the beginning of my part in which A. has woken up from a dream.
This one is something I came up with to be put at the end as a closure. Where the warm lighting coming in from the gap of the door slowly goes out as the door’s shut. Maddy proposed she wanted orange and blur to be the base colors of the film, so I thought it’d be great for the lighting to be in warm orange, representing the outside world – too vibrant, too warm, too much. At the end of the day, she is excluded, isolated and unaccepted.
I started to think of some plots that could work with the theme of isolation and discrimination against AI. I wanted to show the dark side of the society, the mistreatment towards AI, rather than just her own subjective feelings.
Here are the storyboards that I did.
I wanted the story to begin with how she started with her mornings. After a bad dream she just had, she’d think about why she had a dream like that and probably contemplate about her past a little bit. Margot mentioned she wanted to have a lot of reflections, so I imagined she’d look into the mirror for a long time and think about her existence and you can see she’s insecure about many things from her expressions.
The last couple of images are of the second scene where A walks out of a grocery store and gets texts from a man she met some days ago at a bar. And as she talks to him she finds out Jake is an asshole and only wants her for sex. It reflects the abusive side of the society that targets AIs and sees them only as servers not beings.
The last couple of storyboards are the hallucination that she has after she’s blocked Jake on her phone. The conversation with Jake triggers her fear of not being accepted. She fears that people see her only as a piece of metal who can speak and is designed to serve humans. I imagined the POV shot could be a bit shaky so it’s obvious that she’s panicked. With the 3 random pedestrians that stare at her judgmentally when passing by, the tension is building up, and when the girl suddenly appears in front of her face and says “you’re not one of us”, the scene is pushed to a climax.
The last scene is at night and in her apartment where she slowly walks towards the bathroom with the only light source coming from the door and the rest is dark. The camera tracks her form behind. The second part of the monologue comes in at the start of this. And the last storyboard is the third image in the post. I’m still not sure how I’m putting these together with the monologue Margot recorded. But I guess I’ll find out once we get the footage. I’m not sure what to do with the sound yet, for now, I just want atmospheric sound to be in the background. Maybe I’ll compose something, not because I’m good at composing but I hate spending too much time looking for copyright free music.
2067 – Production
We filmed Maddy’s part on Saturday and everything went well. It’s our first time ever officially shooting and working together and I’m glad that we all tried our best to be professional and had fun along the way. I know I’ve said probably a million times that the four of us got along very well and Lauren, our actress, also was super nice and cooperative, I could barely tell it’s only her first time acting. I love my group!!!#blessed
Maddy’s the director so the rest of our had to take turns being her AD, I was mainly on the tripod. We also gave our suggestions on what could be filmed better and kept reminding her to film as much as possible because it’s important to have enough footage to work with. When we’re filming the bit at the harbor, of A. standing and gazing into the distance, Maddy struggled to think of some body languages that Lauren can do to express the complex thoughts A. is having in her mind. It’s really to see some of the gestures that we thought of looked really intentional and weird through the camera until we settled on scratching the back of her head (where A.’s chip is installed) and tightening fists around the hem of her coat. The footages she got were really beautiful, a lot of the scenes in which the sunshine’s illuminating A.’s profile were breathtaking. It was a good shoot!
On Sunday was Niki’s and my bit. It’s the marriage equality/LGBTQIA pride parade. We talked about getting some footage there as Maddy wanted to show maybe A. could live to see a time where AI rights are protected and celebrated. The rainbows signs could be the sign for AI rights in the film with manipulation. Maddy couldn’t make it there that early so I filmed a lot of footage for her. Margot, Lauren and I walked with the crowd for a long time and ended up dancing at a park. We had a great time and I filmed a lot if we wanted to use the parade for A.’s story. And on the way we got back to my apartment, we walked on Collins Street and there were lots of exhibition windows and glass and mirror so Margot filmed for her part as she originally proposed reflections as her idea. I helped Margot carrying all the stuff while she was filming. Maddy and Niki waited for a bit longer than they should so I thought we could have worked out a better schedule or even a call sheet so it’d be easier and no one’s time’s wasted. Anyways, Margot’s got some beautiful footage and it was really worth it carrying all the stuff for her. I feel like a proud mom.
We got back to my apartment to film Niki’s and my parts. Niki’s part comes up first in our film and takes place in a bedroom so we shot it in my bedroom. Originally, the last shot is A. shifts her body to the center of the bed and then falls asleep. But in the start of my part, A. wakes up and unplugs the cable that’s attached to the back of her neck so I suggested that maybe include A. plugging the cable in before she goes to bed and Niki agreed and filmed it. So our parts could connect seamlessly. It finished up pretty soon as it was mainly static shots. Then it was the filming of my bit. The beginning of it starts with where Niki’s ends so it’s still in the bedroom. It was my first time working with an actress so I was really nervous haha. Giving instructions was something I definitely sucked at, so I chose to show how I wanted A. to look or what I wanted her to do by posing and acting. It was much easier that way. It was already too late when I finished the bathroom scene so we decided to find another day to film the rest.
We decided to film the rest of my part on Tuesday after class. The first scene was when A. walks out of a grocery store and gets texts from a guy she met a couple nights ago. I asked Margot to be Jake to text her and Nicki to read out the text that I wrote to Margot. I filmed the whole texting scene in one long take while controlling the timing of when each text comes in. It was a hard task to make things fall in order while being on the camera. (Man. Why do I always make life hard for myself?????) After the texting bit, it’s a POV shot of A.’s and she’s walking along the street and starts hallucinating and sees people looking at her judgmentally. The random pedestrians were played by Margot, Maddy and Niki. I arranged their positions and we practiced a couple times of the looks and the walking before filming. It was extremely hard because there were crowds and crowds of people walking pass us all the time so we had to wait when there were less people. After a couple of tries I got the ideal footage. It was harrrd man!! And Niki and Margot had to take off because they got plans. So only Maddy was there helped me filmed a bit where A. walks long the street and suddenly sees a girl’s face up close and she tells her “You’re not one of us” and A. panics and a second later she realizes it’s just another hallucination. Because the girl is just a random person who’s on her phone. And the girl was me. So what I had in mind was filming her from the front and her eyes would flicker around and look down and eventually shift to the front and see the girl and is scared at the sudden appearance of the person’s face right in front of her eyes. I told Lauren to looked scared but she said she couldn’t do it without being scared for real. We tried a couple of times and she found it too hard to act so I changed my mind and told it’d be good to just look lost with unfocused eyes and stops walking after 10 steps. But to continued from the tracking shot from the front that I filmed when she’s passing through 3 random pedestrians, I had to film from another angle to connect the shot that were filmed from the front. So I filmed from the side. It was hard as well. Nothing happened so far had been easy. NOTHING. Who would have thought walking sideways while holding a camera was this hard?? Why did no one ever tell me that?? The shots I got were sort of wobbly because the road was not plain enough and I sucked at walking sideways. But it can be fixed later so I was not worried. Finally we got to the second last the film A. walking like a lost kitten and comes to a stop. It was not easy either. It’s hard to predict when she stops. I mean I could’ve just told her because I wouldn’t be using the sound anyways but I did not think of this when I was filming. My brain was already died of walking too much sideways. But we managed to get through that, sort of. Everyone was tired. And I asked Maddy to film my bit, which was the girl saying “You’re not one of us” and the girl talking on her phone. It’s done pretty quickly. And I thought we’re done for today. But when we’re about to cross the street to walk back to my apartment I suddenly remembered that I forgot to film A.’s reaction to the last hallucination. I struggled 2 seconds (it’s late and everyone’s tired.)before I told them we had one more shot to film. The shot was A. looking at the girl on her phone and realized she didn’t see what she had just seen and get confused and look to the front while hyperventilating. We filmed the last one quickly.
After the scene on the street I only had one last scene to shoot in my apartment during night time so Lauren stayed with me and Maddy left for home. The last bit went through smoothly and I was very pleased with what I’d gotten. I felt relieved when my part came to a wrap. FINNALY. It was a wild ride man. Never thought I’d had gone through this much stuff. But I thoroughly enjoyed it because this was what I loved to do and I’d rather it be something that’s so hard and torturing but helps with my understanding of filmmaking than something that’s easy and can be accomplished without giving much thought to it. Nothing worth having comes easy.
We went to see Paul and showed him our footage. And guess what. I FUCKED UP THE ENTIRE POV SHOT AND DID NOT EVEN GET IT BECAUSE I WAS A DUM FUCK AND MESSED UP THE BUTTON THINKING IT WAS RECORDING WHEN IT’S STOPPED. MAN I WANTED TO KILL MYSELF. I COULD NOT LIVE WITH SUCH AN EMBARRASEMENT. The POV shot is really important because it’s the only one that presents the hallucination subjectively. I messed up the most important one. FML.
BUT my teammates were soooo nice and said they could help me do it again. Reason #62371873 why I have the best teammates in the world!!!! I realized that it’s always important to check the footage after shooting and find out if there’s anything wrong or if more footage needs to be shot.
So we redid the POV after a week and it’s finished within 10 mins and I got exactly how I wanted it to look. I was super satisfied. I asked Margot if she needed to borrow my camera because she didn’t’ have one and I felt like she hadn’t filmed enough footage for her part. But she said she could film some B roll with her phone and told me not to worry.
Anyways it’s basically the end of all filming and all of us had already gone into editing. From the whole production process, there were certain things that I learned in a hard way, like always check if the camera’s rolling after pressing the button, always check the footage after a shoot. And I also realized that I could have totally avoided walking sideways because I could’ve just done it with my upper torso turned to the side to film the tracking shot of A.’s profile. Again, I’d like to thank my dumbness as it has taught me so many lessons not just in filmmaking but in life as well. #staygrateful #blessed
2067 – Post-production
I was busy with essays so I didn’t start editing until the day before the screening where we’re asked to screen our rough edits. So I quickly put something together the night before that. I was not worried about the visuals because I knew they’d connect seamlessly and make sense once I put them together. The only thing I was truly concerned about was the sound. I knew that I’d be unsatisfied if I just looked for a piece of music and put it on the track. I’d absolutely, undeniably detest it. And I’d hate myself for not trying hard enough on that with this film, which I care about so much. So when I was at the presentation at TV Culture, I started to think about what style of a song that I’d go for. It’d only been a split second since I started thinking that I had got a piece of rhythm with words emerge in my mind. “I’m just a part time human…”, it was fashionably slow and low on tempo. I was in class and a group was doing their presentation so I couldn’t just pull out my phone and hum it out and record it. So I sang it in my head again and again, trying to imprint it in my brain to a point where I couldn’t forget. After the class I went to get a bubble tea and as I was waiting, I pulled out my phone to come up with some lyrics. I thought of A’s feelings as an AI who’s living in a society where her race is seen as either a threat or slaves. She was designed to be just like humans, she feels all the love and pain just like we do. She sees herself as a human being but is torn by the fact that she is undeniably an AI. She tried to seek out for support but most of the times she was either hurt or disappointed. All she wants is acceptance. All she wants is to be treated equally. With all this analysis that I could think of, I wrote this:
I’m just a part time human
Not your toy, not your enemy
And I’m a full time lover,
Can you feel it can you feel it
My heartbeat underneath my skin
Oh won’t you touch me, come on let me in
I’m just a part time human
I struggled to figure out the third line because I couldn’t think of something that rhymes with ‘human’ but also fits the story. So I settled with ‘lover’, as A is a lover of all. She loves all humans and all creatures. She’d never think about hurting others. It’s her nature. I also made a double rhyme (I don’t even know the actual term for that thing) with ‘heartbeat’ & ‘touch me’ and ‘skin’ & ‘in’. It was unintentional but perfect and I’m very proud of myself for coming up with that. So by the time my bubble tea was done, I’d already gotten what I could sing in the song. I was thinking for the song to go with the last scene where she walked towards the bathroom. So even though the song was not long, it was long enough for the scene.
I got back home to set up my microphone and opened Garageband to start working on it. It didn’t take me long to find out the base tunes with a keyboard sound and I added some strings in chords to enrich the texture and eventually the beats. I thought it’d be hard to find a beat that fit but I actually got the ideal one in 2 attempts. And then it’s the singing. I imagined that I was Lana Del Rey while doing it so it turned out to be really emo but that’s fine because I loved Lana Del Rey too much to not imitate her. I wouldn’t say that I was really satisfied with the result but it was good enough to show people. And I processed it to Audition and did some modulation so it’d sound distant and airy and echoy. Here’s what it looks like on Garageband.
AND it’s time to put the music and the clips together. I was really excited and very pleased with what I had made until they’re put together. And I wanted to kill myself for even going this far with sound because they did not fit. It felt like a Walmart version of “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever” (a song by Taylor Swift and Zayn Malik, also the theme song of Fifty Shades Darker) playing to the Walmart version of Ex Machina. After 20 minutes of trying to get over the embarrassment of creating such things my senses and logic came back to me and started to analyze why I did not like it. And here are some possible reasons:
a) The song was 10 times better when it’s in my head. My composing skills and Garageband skills were not good enough to copy and past what I had in mind.
b) I didn’t think about how long it should be and the timing when I was creating the music. The audio and video should be more in sync like certain beats and rhythms should go with certain actions.
c) I get embarrassed by the stuff I make all the time.
Anyways, it’s already super late and I did some color grading before I left it there for good as I might go crazy if I kept working on it. Eventually I still decided to keep the song in the part but I also did other edits using the same clips but with the monologue.
I was really, really, really surprised by the reaction of the class when they saw my edits. I was nervous as hell when the song was about the come up but felt relieved when I saw they seemed to like it. And it was at that moment that I realized that you never knew if the audience’s going to like it until you put it out there. What you’re concerned about might be something that they found very interesting. My own subjective opinions suddenly did not affect me so much and I think I’ve grown to enjoy what I made. Now I even find it funny that I suffered that big of a trauma and thought it was an epic fail when I first made it. I’m not saying that I think it’s perfect now but I’m definitely less panicked and embarrassed when I show it to people. With all the kind comments that I’ve received, I’m definitely more confident about it now.
I guess the music is a good start for me. And I started to edit the texting part. It was extremely hard because I had to locate each sent messages and received messages to cut them out and had to find the proper expressions after she’s seen a text and them chuck them in between the texts. I spent the longest time editing the texting scene and then the hallucination part. Man I wish I had a whole wall of screens so I could see all the clips simultaneously.
The bit where I struggled the most was where A hallucinated. Supposedly, she starts to hallucinate, then it’s the POV shot, and the tracing shot from the front, she looks down and looks up, and then sees the girl who says “you’re not one of us”, she’s scared and panicked to a climax, then she blinks, sees it’s only a random person on her phone, she feels relived and also confused about what she just saw. But when I was editing the “you’re not one of us” part, I found that A’s eye lines were messed up, the continuity was broken and there’s not enough footage to fix it or do it in a different way. It’d only confuse the audience if I’d insisted to leave the bit there. Even though the part was meant to be a climax of the whole scene, I had to kill my darling for the film to make sense.
I was kind of shocked by how the sideway tracking shot of A’s profile turned out. I thought it was too wobbly and shaky because I walked sideways to shoot that, so I used wrap stablizer effect on that and It became shaky but the shakiness was in slo-mo. It looked perfect for a hallucination. Again, you never know what’s going to turn out to be good or bad.
For the color grading in general, I used orange and blue as the main colors because a) that’s what Maddy proposed and b) they actually fit the moods. Maddy and I talked about the transition of color from blue to orange or vise versa as the plot developed so I tried to use different color grading in the same scene. It happened when A started hallucinating after she’d put her phone in her pocket. The color scheme changed to blue in contrast to the previous warm orange that had been there since the start of the scene. I thought it conveyed the switch of mood very thoroughly as the color scheme changed, it was very interesting to look at as well.
For the sound, it’s mostly atmospheric soundtrack and the song that I composed with a couple of royalty free sound effects that I downloaded online. The most fun part was the POV shot where I put a ‘Poltergeist’ sound effect to it, it sounds like a haunting ghost laughing and mumbling around. Without the visuals, it’d sound like a horror film. Originally I wanted to put something like a whispering sound, so it’d sound like A was hearing all those inner voices of people and realizing they’re judging and saying mean things about her. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any suitable whispering sound effect so I had to settled with ‘Poltergeist’. It didn’t sound too bad.
Here’s what the final edit of my part looks like:
It was a magic moment when the four of us put our individual films together and made it a whole. The first time we watched the complete film all together in the editing suite, we cheered like we’re four moms watching our kid score for his team in a football game, like we’d never been so proud of something in our lives. I’m so proud of us.
Overall, the editing was not easy and even a bit torturous on the brain but I somehow managed to figure a way out and I’m glad that I’ve gained some new skills on editing, color grading and sound design. Anyways, I love the result and how it looks and sounds in the end, somethings could have been done better if I had had more knowledge to it but I guess it’s all part of the learning process.
2067 – Reflection
Making 2067 was one of the best experiences I’ve had so far. It was intense and fun, relaxing and torturing all at once. I feel like I’ve become more comfortable with expressing my ideas as the semester progressed and I’ve learned that putting myself out there fearlessly was the only way to find like-minded people and I’m proud of myself for having the courage to get outside of my comfort zone. The whole communication part was a real challenge to me, but I think I’ve handled it well enough to save me from having those moments of embarrassment where I think about stupid things that I’ve said or done and experience that embarrassment again.
Even though this was not my first time collaborating with people to make films, it’s my first time contributing to a film on a creative level. It’s very different from the experience that I had in Nepal making a documentary this July. I was the producer in the group so my job was mainly coordinating and making sure everyone’s doing their job. I barely saw it a work of mine as there was little traces of my ideas. Compared to that experience, 2067 is much more intimate to me as I’ve spent so much time thinking about it and working on it. It’s something that I’m emotionally attached to and see as a child of mine and also the four of us.
The best part of making this film was having the opportunity to work with 3 amazing teammates. They’re all so understanding, smart and humorous. We got along so well and I couldn’t have asked for better teammates. At the beginning stage, we worked around our ideas and managed to combine them into a whole. That’s something I’m very proud of, because everyone was open-minded and willing to make changes to adapt to one another’s ideas better.
The BOX studio was unexpectedly fun and chill. I’d also like to thank Paul, not only for the snacks he brought us but also for his guidance, kindness and humor. I’d also like to thank him for his special way of telling us not to worry about ‘creativity’. I remember once Paul told us that ‘creativity’ was just a mystery and that we shouldn’t worry about whether the stuff we make was going to be good or not but just do it. And I remember one of the constraints in those exercise sheets said ‘It must be uninteresting’. Sometimes I set my expectations way too high that none of my ideas meet them so I simply CANNOT start doing things. I know it’s a bad habit but I couldn’t find a way to change it. And I used to be really harsh on myself whenever I couldn’t get the ideas flowing but I’ve learned to let go of that unnecessary burden and focus on what’s really important.