Project Brief 4

Week 8: “How did you feel about the pitch?”, a fellow peer asks me as we walk down the stairs of building 9. Interesting question I thought, one that I silently summed up in my head with just a few words; pressure, nervous, excited and questionable. As we said out goodbyes on the corner of La Trobe and Swanston street, I reflected on these particular words that were floating around in my misty head. Why was I feeling pressure? Was it from the public speaking that daunted me the whole three hours until it was finally my turn? No, that had surpassed, so what was it? I decided to leave that for another moment and chose to reflect on the nerves I was feeling. What was this stomach churning sensation I felt every time I thought about ideas for film noir, which excited me, a counter emotion that was arising, only to be shut down by knowing how hard it would be to achieve a film noir style. Ah, there it is, I’m nervous because oh my Lord how am I going to do this, I don’t have the skill set yet for such a complex genre. Film noir requires a level of understanding and skill when it comes to; camera and achieving effects via techniques, film noir conventions, sound, editing and how to apply and link these aspects in order to produce a multilayered performance to create a film noir scene. Thus, with this insightful epiphany, that I need a bit more experience and understanding of film and camera to complete this task, I found myself questioning everything I had worked on for my last project brief, and as I rode the crowded train home, I began to brainstorm. As the wheels of the train circled, so did the wheels in my mind, going somewhere, but not particularly sure of the destination. First of all, I tried to figure out scenes or scenarios to which I could use my skill set to achieve film noir, but I scratched that. I came up with concepts such as capturing light, capturing people, capturing sound, all things I would be interested in doing. Then it hit me. Being a bit behind the other students in my class, I need to enhance my skills in order to catch up. How would I do this the most effective way? By making my whole project about self-improvement! I laughed out loud as I stepped onto the gravel platform of Hawthorn station, smiling at the simplicity of the idea, compared to my initial complicated concept. This is so me I thought, shaking my head and paying myself out as I touched off my Myki, the beeping agreeing with me. I always dive right into the deep end without learning how to swim first, let alone get a feel for the water. The thing is, I know this about myself, I know that I always put myself in situations I’m not equipped for because I get too excited and carried away by the concept or idea. I’m not saying that this is a bad thing entirely, it’s good that I’m curious, but I need to bring my head back down to earth sometimes, because the clouds seem to fog up my perception of reality. Therefore, I have a new prompt for my project: ‘Self-improvement through exploration of film, camera, sound and editing’.

Week 9: After my epiphany in week 8 that I no longer wanted to follow the genre of film noir, and instead focusing on filming and editing that improves my skills, I decided to start small. I began my journey of this project with the production and filming of my ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ scene in my bedroom that I had planned in pre-production in PB2. I constructed my set with two mirrors, a blanket and curtains for a backdrop and an incense box and smoke for a subject. I wanted to film the way that the smoke moved and rose whilst being able to capture this movement in different reflections, moving in and out of focus as each reflection and surface is given the stage. The inception effect was incredible, I could go from one reflection, focus, and then be in another. Through using the malleable and mystifying presence of smoke, I was truly able to explore what felt like different dimensions in these shots. Moreover, and more excitingly, I was able to understand the camera I was using in a safe, secluded environment where I was able to take the time to build a relationship the camera, and understand its complexities. This was the perfect beginning to my project as I got to create my setting, tailored to my taste whilst understanding camera.

When I got into the editing suites I was comfortable with the footage I had filmed being of average quality, as I was happy I even got an average quality. I found that it was harder than I anticipated to edit these shots as I thought I would be able to make the random footage go nicely together, however, this was not the case. The randomness of the shots which I filmed was difficult to piece together to create a fluid sequence. However, I couldn’t story board it as my subject, smoke, can’t be pre-decided in its movement. So the dilemma of how to arrange the shots became an issue. Yet I found that music makes all the difference, and once I incorporated music to edit with, the whole project ended up flowing.

For this project in regards to my prompt, I wanted to enhance my knowledge of camera such as its settings, and build a relationship with such. Moreover, I wanted to understand focus and zoom as ways to explore subject. I also used this project as a way of building on what I already knew about Premier from other projects, and build on these skills.

Link to the final product:

Week 10: The end of week 10 is upon us, teachers seem tired, students even more tired, exemplified by the decrease of students in classes, whom are not being missed by professors. Today, the sun was out, birds chirping blissfully, and I obscured the bags under my eyes with heavy concealer, picked up my actor for the day, my good pal Cooper, and headed on an adventure for the production of my experiments. An adventure just down the road at Righetti Oval in Kooyong. He answered the door, his dog getting to me first, and we got into my little Holden Astra, excitement for the day peaking as we drove speedily down the suburban streets of Kooyong. Arriving at the park, gear in arms, to climbing down a steep hill to get to the underpass, my heart was soaring, overwhelmingly excited and nervous to do my first shoot, my incessant chatter reflecting such. I started off shooting him walking down a tunnel, rallying him up to show anger and frustration, something he wasn’t really into until I reminded him I was the director, in the friendliest possible way. That’s when I started getting results. I got shots from the side, front on, close up even a reflection shot. However, half of which I’m not particularly sure the quality of. I struggled the whole time with exposure and focus as I had to crash zoom in every time I wanted to do another shot. It was a very amateur shoot, but I had to start somewhere. The aim of this shoot in regards to my prompt ‘Self-improvement through exploration of film, camera, sound and editing’, was the investigation on camera, such as basic camera settings, camera techniques such as panning and handheld, lighting and sound. However, it wasn’t until the end of the shoot that I forgot I hadn’t done sound, so I quickly got the camera back out, attached the boomstick, and as my actor was packing the rest up (we were in a rush, he had footy training…) I walked down the tunnel, mimicking what he would have sounded like. The result of which is a girly version of my actor huffing and puffing with over exaggerated footsteps accompanying these odd sounds. Next time, I’ll get a sound person.

The next part of the day was shooting a different exercise, its title, “Murmur”. By this part of the shoot I was more confident in my filming through having done a rooking job with my first experiment. For this experiment, I placed my actor in front of a colourful wall covered in graffiti in the tunnel. I had him act freaked out and angry, like he was reflecting on something he had just done. At first, he wasn’t getting angry enough and being the person I am, I softly reminded him to “loose his shit”. I used handheld camera the whole time in order to reflect the mindset of the character I was trying to portray. This I found easier than using a tripod because I find I have a good sense of space and it made it easier for me to move and capture the scene gracefully. Thus, I deem this exercise a success! More so than the first one for the day. For this exercise, the aim in regards to my prompt is to investigate camera such as handheld and camera settings, not including the editing skills I will learn once I piece it together in a sequence.

Week 11: Week 11 has hit me like a brick and I’m on the floor laughing at the birds swirling around my head. Dazed and confused I book an edit suit to get my life together and be productive. However, that productivity was short lived as I shot daggers at my project, and premier for being uncooperative, how rude. The editing of my experiment ‘Murmur’ was not going well. I tried editing fast, I tried editing slow, none of which would flow. Mid edit, Paul came in for a consultation and gave me the inspiration I needed at that given moment. He took one look at my work, slowed it down by 50% and replayed it. It was different from what I was going for, but it worked. Therefore, my whole concept for the project changed from one little fix-up. At first I was going for a sped up, jumpy looking edit, to reflect on the characters’ mindset, something I grabbed from my initial film noir style ideas. However, by slowing it down and adding music to it, it became sort of like a music video. While still getting the message across that the character is distressed, I was (with the aid of Paul) able to recreate this medium into something more aesthetically pleasing.

Reflecting on the ultimate edit I found that I got goosebumps watching my final work that I made and exported, a process within itself. Even though the quality of the clips are fuzzy and not professional, I’m still very happy with how it turned out. There is one shot (my second shot in the sequence) that I really love. (see below)

When you watch the movement of the actor with the camera, it all interchanges fluidly, him moving to the left on the screen, the camera to the right whilst getting closer. Everything about this shot I love from the positioning of the hands on the actor with the ring, the black jacket bringing out the black writing on the wall, whilst being contrasted with the bright coloured graffiti in the background. I was lucky enough that I chose my actor wisely as what really makes this shot was the performance of my actor. None of my shots were in consecutive order, I picked and choose in order to create a jumbled effect to create a sense of time and chaos. Instead of it being hard to figure out which shots were the best, I had a hard time choosing which ones were the worst because my actor was just slaying it the whole time.

Overall I’m happy with my final edit for this experiment. It was hard doing it alone with no back up for sound, but I pulled through on my own. For this experiment in regards to my aim and prompt, ‘Self-improvement through exploration of film, camera, sound and editing’, I developed my skills of camera, handheld camera movement and how dimensions of space work, exposure and other camera settings, sound being adding music and editing to move with the sound, and editing. I learnt the most about editing with this experiment, as I was taught and taught myself how to troubleshoot through editing, such as slowing the clips down. This inspired me to go back and re-work my first experiment ‘Smoke and Mirrors’, and slow the footage down by 5% to enhance the subject of smoke. Thus, the prompt I had chosen for myself has become extremely inspiring as I am constantly aiming to enhance my skills set with production and post-production procedures.

Link to final product:

Collaboration

I did not end up collaborating with anyone for my experiments. I had plans to but they all ended up not happening, so I worked alone. This was challenging in both a positive and negative way. The experience of working within my own company was positive as it made me pull the weight for all aspects of pre, post and general production of my experiments. For example, I was looking to collaborate with Gaby, and do each other’s sound, however, disorganisation followed and we ended up forgetting about it until it was too late and I was posting on the True to Form Facebook page asking for a sound person the night before. This reminded me about the importance of organisation, and next time I hope to be more prepared. As a result, I did my own sound, something I forgot until the end of the shoot where I had to go back with a boomstick and imitate my actor with my girly grunts of famished anger, to which was a negative for me in terms of quality of my sound work. I have yet to edit this sequence, so I’m not quite sure how this will sound. In summary, I learnt a lot from collaborating with myself, however, for the future I will make more of an effort to pull crew members into my production stages. Thankfully, I did not feel the need for a light guy (probably should have now that I think about it).

Week 12: The time has come to edit my final experiment titled ‘The Tunnel’. It was originally titled this, then went to just ‘Tunnel’, dropping the ‘the’ for a cleaner effect, until I realised the ‘the’ adds a dramatic feel to the whole thing. Bet you’re tired of the word ‘the’ now… so am I. Why I put so much thought into this you ask? Because I was procrastinating that’s why. I talked about in my week 10 post how I thought that the results I obtained for my first experiment ‘Murmur’ were better than this experiments. However, now that I have finished editing I can see that this wasn’t particularly the case. Both experiments in their raw footage have completely different colour moods to each other. ‘Murmur’ has a vibrant, lively colour mood to it, however, the actor is contrasting this by freaking out. On the other hand, ‘The Tunnel’ has a very dark, blue-toned vibe to it that I actually didn’t need to do much colour editing on, apart from enhancing the blacks for dramatic effect. Therefore, I was actually pleasantly surprised that the quality wasn’t as horrible as I first thought, crisis avoided.

When I began editing, I found that I was becoming quicker and quicker at using Premier. This project only took me a maximum of 2 hours, not including when it gave me the wheel of death and I had to force quit and loose some important work. But I bounced back quickly despite throwing a mini tantrum, scaring my roommate, and after some soft words of encouragement, and dragging me out of the dark lounge room to which I hid from my Macintosh, its lit apple staring straight through my soul, I sat back down, said a little prayer and got back on track again. I was editing smoothly; my skills had enhanced just as I had hoped for this project. I added music, sound effects, recorded on my IPhone extra breathing audio and added it, no problem. I found I had a better understanding of how clips work together, when to cut and when to speed up or slow down. I even had no trouble making new sequences, the previous vein of my existence. After I had created my seemingly final sequence, I realised, there was no background knowledge on the character motivation for why he was walking angrily down a dark tunnel. So I added the sound effect ‘Psycho Scream’ from Sound Bible, a free sound-grab site, and it changed everything. There was now a murderous backstory, and I liked it. I then contrasted this and the footage with a powerful rock instrumental song which I got off Freeplay music. This contrast gave the sequence power, yet is also unsettling to the dark footage, complementing each other in an odd way that works.

Overall I found that this last experiment allowed me to build upon my foundation of knowledge in film, and catch up to my peers. Acknowledging my aim for this project, ‘Self-improvement through exploration of film, camera, sound and editing’, I have significantly improved my editing skills through the post-production process, and am excited to continue to develop these skills. The work this week has been the least tedious out of all the experiments, and I commend this to the enhancing of my skills.

Link to final product:

Week 13 & Summary: Over the past few weeks whilst working on Project Brief 4, I have found that I have learnt a great deal, and can see a shift in the quality of my work. Looking back now, I feel as though I have completed and satisfied my own set aim, ‘Self-improvement through exploration of film, camera, sound and editing’. From my first experiment “Smoke and Mirrors”, to my final experiment “The Tunnel” I can see a very big difference in both my filming and editing skills. The first experiment, the camera work was shaking, editing wasn’t very fluid, and a bit uninteresting I find now. However, looking at my most recent work, and the time it took me to make it, I find that I have increased my knowledge in editing and camera work, whilst exploring sound even more deeply in this experiment. Overall, I’m very happy with what I have accomplished, and even reading back on my blog posts I can see a shift in confidence as the weeks roll by. I’m feeling a bit nostalgic now as I write my final blog post, knowing that I have gone through ups and downs in this studio. I think this is the most effort I have ever put into a project, maybe I feel this way because it went on for about 6 weeks, or maybe I just really put some heart into it. I’m extremely grateful for the way I have been taught to think, by teaching me that it’s good to think in an individual way, not that I had trouble with it before, but it concreted the idea in my mind that media is about exploring and portraying individual thought. I still have much to learn about media and film, but this studio has given me the right start to what will hopefully be many years in the industry.

In regards to the aims of the studio, I think that I have improved and met the criteria of what I was supposed to get out of this class. I find that I am able to better critically analyze my own work without being too self-doubtful or critical as my reflection on my own production methods has been able to be more in depth after gaining experience. Moreover, through the initial idea and pitch of film noir style, I was able to grab techniques and explore such in my new aim of self-improvement. I feel as though my work is of more depth through researching film noir. Therefore, I have been able to explore further possibilities for my work, dragging in my own creative vision with touches of film noir. Moreover, I have found that through this studio I have been able to explore my creativeness, which I find liberating. I liked how this studio rethinks the production and vision of short films, giving us the freedom to do our own thing. This has given me a stepping stool to experiment within my own skill set, and teach us that it’s good to take different unconventional approaches to our work. For me at least, this is the best way that I work. In this studio, I found that the best way I work is alone, or in a small group as I like to explore my own vision. However, I know that I need to work on my group skills because I’m either a leader or a follower, I’m nowhere in between. If I want to work in the industry I need to understand that crew members work within each other’s flow, like waves crashing on a beach, everyone gets to the sand at some point. Additionally, the aim of developing competency in production techniques best suited my own aim for my project as I definitely both developed and expanded my film skills, giving me confidence in my own work, something that I did not have at the start of the semester. Therefor I am so delighted that I chose this studio, and even though I was skeptical at first, I now know that this was the right choice for me in order to enhance my own skills.

This studio is about being true to form, but not only this, but being true to yourself and the way you work. I was not being truthful to myself at the start of the semester. I had a funny combination of anxiety about my ability in media, whilst also wanting to jump straight in. However, a change of heart occurred, allowing the thin venire that clouded my eyes to be pierced and show me what I needed to do. I needed to enhance my own skills, and although this was different from what everyone else was doing, it was perfect for me. I was finally being truthful to myself, my skills and the way I work through exploration of all this.

link to 22.5 screener

True to Form

Studio 2017

Stephanie Grant

Project Brief 4

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