My approach to the director’s cut film, was to tell a story but experiment with structure.  The story and script tell a linear story of a character’s life, however I intentionally structured the film in a non-linear way.  Using a combination of footage to tell the story; a character in the first person, urban environments and flashbacks to the characters childhood.  I hoped that this made the story feel more personal and realistic, especially being told in first person, but also to engage the viewer and keep them guessing right up until the end.

I took my inspiration from the themes of isolation and gender diversity, which gave me many ideas and directions.  I was also inspired by urban landscapes and architecture and wanted to incorporate that into my film.  I had plenty of ideas and inspiration for the pitch, however the feedback was to concentrate my ideas further.  For a two-minute film, my initial ideas where too broad and abstract, so to narrow down my concepts I began to storyboard and script before filming.  The Celtx software class was helpful for considering all elements of scripting, such as location, dialogues, timings, shots and sound.

As some of my locations were outdoor urban environments, I needed to consider the weather, light and time of day for filming.  The sound of these locations was also important, such as typical city noises like traffic and even the use of foley with some footsteps.  All of this was part of my pre-production plan.  Along with the outdoor shots, I also filmed content with an actor who would be portraying the story in the first person and providing the narration.  It was important to select an actor that could understand the themes and convey realistic emotion, to connect the footage and dialogue in a meaningful way.

I wanted the score to reflect the journey of the characters story, beginning with something nostalgic and troubled, speeding up and becoming more eclectic as the character discovers diverse genders.  Throughout the film are moments of confusion for the character, I wanted to match that with some music and sound that does not completely make sense.  To achieve this, the score will need to be planned and written to follow the structure and script of the film, rather than trying to source music to overlay with the footage.

With the footage, dialogue and music selected the next step was to edit the content and decide what elements would make the cut.  From the original idea, I knew I would be playing with colour grading, using sepia, black and white and colour referring to the emotions that the character was feeling at different stages of his life.  In a particular scene that featured nudity, I wanted to adjust the colour to ensure it felt tasteful and relevant to the story, so I learnt a new editing technique where I developed my own sepia colouration.

I feel a special connection with this project, being able to control all elements of a short film as a director’s cut, in particular experimenting with the structure of the film and timeline of the narrative to tell the story in an unexpected way.