This has been a really big week for me in exploding genre, but as always I’ve learnt a heap. On Tuesday Dom and I put our final media piece into production, which was a huge challenge. We filmed our script from 5:30-11 that night with three actors (me included), Dom on the camera (a Sony Ex3) with his brother doing sound.

What I found

• Looking over the footage today the things that Dom and I felt went well on the night did, but the things we thought fell flat unfortunately did as well. At the start of the night we covered the action quite meticulously and the actors couldn’t really get a good flow going-the film felt in general a bit choppy and a bit rushed. Though we were covering everything we were also rushing and as a consequence the actors made mistakes and so did we. However as the shoot went on, we realised that we wouldn’t have time to film everything unless we did long takes. This was a blessing in disguise because it allowed the actors to get into there characters and gave the film a more theatrical feel-which is a common characteristic of ‘Bottle’. Watching in the edit today it seemed as though the longer the take, the more interesting the performance. My friend who does a fair bit of theatre was a character in the film and I felt as though the longer takes not only suited his acting style, but really brought out the best performances from him.
• The Lights gave it a melancholy, theatrical feel. The stylised lighting gave the film a very old, retro look-which (when mixed with the quintessential Australian dining room) gave the film a idiosyncratic feel. Though Dom and I were unsure whether to use lighting, I think the the risk we took certainly paid off.
• I found what Dan said about directing quite interesting-that you should never hand feed the actor how to say a sentence. The best directors make the actors feel as though all their good characterisation was due there acting abilities not due to the directors direction.
• In regards to the exegesis I’m giving myself Monday and Tuesday next week to write it. However after filming and having a bit of a think about what Dom and I did on Tuesday I have decided what I want to write about. In other words, I think I’ve found something. My exegesis will centre around Bottle-which I will contend is not a genre. In my exegesis I will define what I believe genre to be and state that Bottle doesn’t fit in with critical aspects of what genre is. I will then argue that Bottle, though it isn’t a genre, still has a set of conventions that are innate too it and that these conventions, I believe lend  themselves too interesting filmmaking. Some of these conventions I’ll talk about are: The use of space, the long take (and how it is subversive in todays age of fast paced film making) and Bottles link to theatre (though I haven’t looked into it yet, I may talk about how the location plays a larger part in Bottle films than it would in standard films, I may draw links between the suffocating feel of Bottle films and the isolating, alienating feel that Westerns have. Due to there in there sparse settings.
• Lastly, I should add that I will write my page for the exploding genre website once I’ve done my exegesis 🙂