MY METHOD OF WORKING pt 6:THE AIM
Late last year, In the midst of the strenuous and lengthy pre-production stages for my first budgeted independent short film, I had a dream one night where the images were so clear and strikingly vivid, that although I was never able to completely understand what this dream was actually about, I was still eager to bring these series of surreal and somewhat disjointed moving pictures from my subconscious mind to life for a short film.
However I didn’t want to develop this film utilizing the traditional processes of filmmaking that is so restrictive due to the controlled nature of a film production where the majority of everything is strictly scripted and organized before the camera is rolling, which can potentially eliminate spontaneity and a natural progression.
Through this assessment task, I aim to experiment with the processes of filmmaking and to challenge the traditional notions of filmmaking by not necessarily eliminating most of the production processes that contribute towards a film’s construction, rather directing my focus to build a film based on visual imagery as the foundation, rather than the images and content being controlled or influenced by a structured storyline. Through this experimentation I hope to be able to develop a new style of producing my films.
In order for me to successfully accomplish this goal, I will work extensively around the constraints I have set to steer me in the right direction. As my main priority is the image and how images can naturally develop cohesion and somewhat of a structured narrative, pre-production will consist of me completely disregarding the screenwriting process, as I want the narrative of my film to be conceived naturally on production when I’m on location ready to shoot. Therefore instead of writing a structured screenplay, the actors who’ll appear in my film, will be given a set of actions to guide their improvised performances, which will motivate their potential to produce natural performances.
Much like art in the form of a painting, my film will have a strong emphasis on the visuals to stimulate certain feelings from viewers. Which is why majority of my time working on pre-production will be spent towards the deliberation of not only what I want to show on screen but how I’m going to depict it. Factors such as the type of camera coverage and stylized mood lighting to illuminate and enhance the surrealism of the images will be heavily considered.
In order for me to gain the best possible visual aesthetic, my camera will be used as a research tool, as I aim to shoot a series of camera and lighting tests over each weekend leading up to the actual film shoot. During these camera tests I’ll be armed with the visual storyboards I’ve collated over the past couple weeks, that consist of a series of still frame visual references from various films that have inspired the aesthetics I wish to take and regurgitate with my own interpretation of them on screen. Frames from films such as Gaspar Noe’s, Irreversible, Enter the void and Krzysztof Kieslowski’s, A short film about killing, have been used as references, as the amazing cinematography throughout these films are supported by expressionist lighting and colour schemes to digitally paint the scene, reflecting characters moods in addition to establishing the tone for the visual atmosphere in the world for their films.
In conclusion, to summarize my proposal, I’d like to read a quote from Independent American filmmaker Harmony korine, who’s words best encapsulate the essence of the filmmaking style I want to investigate and follow to create my film for this course. In regards to the production of his film, Gummo, Korine says “I wanted to make a movie with images coming from all directions, I wanted to make a different kind of film… I wasn’t concerned about how it was photographed or where it came from… I saw it almost like a book of photos… but there’s a narrative that develops through this, there’s a cohesion. That was the idea of the movie, I just wanted to set things up and I wanted to just document it and make sense of it later”.