The problems we faced during filming included trying to keep a low profile while filming the public. We couldn't use the tripod while filming because that would then draw attention to us and the public might act differently. This was a problem because we wanted our film to focus on the fact that people of the public didn't know our main character (Mel) could hear their thoughts.
Because we couldn't use the tripod due to the fact we did not want to be seen, i felt my camerawork at times suffered from shaky shots. But because i knew this would happen, i put a lot more concentration into filming without the tripod.
The advantages we had was being able to film at my house, so we could use the tripod and therefore my camerawork was a lot steadier.
My personal favorite shot i took was when i turned the camera upside down when Sarah was on the bed. This is because i did this shot with my own hands and didn't use thr tripod and the shot was quite steady.
Costume ideas The costume ideas for the character's are very simple as we ant it took like it is any other day for all the character's nothing special. For the main character Mel simple jeans, jacket top, and uggs work with natural not bright colors. we chose this to create the idea that this gift could happen to any normal person. Sarah her best friend, we agreed to wear black and dark colours as we find out that she isn't a very nice person in the scene. So using light and shade that white is angelic and that black is evil. The other passing by character's are just strangers on the street, we tried to range the age of people from little kids, elders, middle aged and teens. Again going for the fact that it is an ordinary day with very ordinary people in it.
Location Ideas
These are very basic shots in cambridge centre, we admit it is a very obvious place to film and a well known location, but we wanted to get that feel as if we were filming in busy london. so the audience would get idea that this could happen to you in a well known urban city, also stories like this with a main charcter having a sixth sense or power tend to be set in an urban location. E.g. Spiderman or other comic book heros - New York city. Once again going with the idea that this is a very normal day and place, where the passers by are unaware that a girl is sitting on a bench and finally being able to hear people's thoughts. Also we wanted to get the effect of lots of people in the shot to show that she is being overwelmend by thoughts. And where better to shoot a busy public location that Cambridge city centre at 11.30-12.30 bang in the middle of lunch hour?
In our film extract, the main character Mel calls her best firend to tell her that she is hearing voices, in this scene we see two sides of her friend Sarah. Earlyer in the blog on ' ideas for sound and footage merging' we showed some clips that we could used to show the two sides of sarah, what she is saying on the phone and what she is thinking in her mind. We are still working on how we will show this in editng. In this scene we do see the bitch side of sarah that mel soon learns about:
Sarah : Hello? Mel : Hi Sarah, it's Mel Sarah: oh my god mel! where have you been latley, i havn't seen you around for ages! Mel : Sarah i think there's something wrong with me... Sarah : what are you sick? Mel : i don't think so (relcuctant that she might be mentally ill) (A voice over portraying Sarah's thoughts): OK then bugger off, stupid cow Sarah: well what's up? Mel : I'm hearing (pause) voices.... Sarah's thoughts : attention seeker Sarah: What? (confused) Mel: I'm hearimg voices, well no i think i'm hearing people's thoughts, is there something wrong with me? (emphisis on "people's thoughts" hinting to sarah that she can hear her thoughts) Sarah: No of course not babe! Sarah's thoughts: yes, you attention seeking freak Sarah: wait? what like people's thoughts? Mel: Yeah EVERYONE'S thoughts (emphisis on "everyone" again trying to hint to sarah that she can hear what she's thinking) Sarah's Thoughts: Shit! Sarah: I have to go...sorryy....errr my dinners ready... i'll er talk to you tomorrow.. (stumbling) Sarah's thoughts: crazy freak Mel: yeah sure, i was only calling to see if my best frind was acually there for me, but hey you think i'm a crazy freak, but watevs! Sarah's Thoughts: Shit! Shit! (Hangs up)
This is a clip from WANTED (Timur Bekmambetov 2008), in the film the character Wesly finds out that he is the son of one of the best assasins in the world. As his whole life he has been a push over and always fighting aginst panick attacks, he chooses not to belive that he has the same abilities then his father. This film and clip was very interesting to us as our film extract is based on the same sort of idea of the main character after so long of ignoring his abilities finally finding or using them. Unlike the other superhero based stories out there this one is very unique and not to the point of stereotypical idea of special or magical powers, as weslie's is a talent not a superpower. It links back well to our extract as our main charcter has a very unique and special talent that has been brought up through not genetics or super spiders but physcilogical powers. The idea that wesly can not 'curve the bullet' until;l his love intrest in target, his phycilogical mind tells him not to dshoot her but shoot round her.
This clip from Jumper (Doug Liman 2008) is prehaps the aftermath of him discovering his gift and then learning how to use it. In our extract we only see her dicovering her gift not testing it out and more importantly not deciding weather or not to use it for good. In this clip we see the jumper using his jumping skills to rob a bank for self gain, even later in the film he turns on the TV and on it is the news repoting a mass flood in a 3rd world country. the line reads " it would take a miricle to reach the stranded starving people" and the jumper ignores this and changes the channel. The main thing that jumped out to us in this clip was the fact that our charcter is undecided on how to use her gift. We plan to add a clip of a child alone in cambridge and her thoughts to be "mummy where are you?" and possiblu the main character Mel could use her gift to find the motehr and bring them together, but she passes through and ignores it. this will be our prelouge suggesting how she might use her powers.
Another clip from WANTED, this one shows the first time wesly tests his talents. Another thing we liked was the idea of him finding out that there our others like him, with his talents and gift. this gave us the idea for extract ending were the main character get's an email from an UNKNOWN source saying "YOU CAN HEAR THE VOICES CAN'T YOU? " this would opening up a box of possibilities for the main character's story to go.
The main extract has been used in other films were the main character discovers his or her powers and attempts to use them. In this clip from Spiderman we find Peter Parker finding he has a special power, many camera angles, transitions and shots are used in this to emphasis his point of view and how the audience feels if they were in his position. the clip from 1.04minuets shows this well through the use of slow motion and CGI.
One shot that inspired us to use in our extract was the extreme close up on the protaganists eyes showing us 1) how he is feeling at that present time, and 2) that an POV shot would commence in the next clip. this is at 1.02 minuets.
As i have taken the role of director i have viwed some films to get an idea of the purpose of director and what other directors have done in different films . Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly 2001), Romeoa nd Juliet ( Baz Luhrmann 1996) and Fight Club (David Fincher 1999) are the 3 clips i have chosen to analyse.
Romeo and Juliet
This clip is when the the montigue's gatecrash there rivals the Capulets party, in this scene Romeo and his friends have taken drugs and enter the party spaced out and dilusional. the way Luhrmann has directed this is in your typical hand held dazed drug sdcene where the room spins and the figures are distorted. The dancing section where Mercutio is singing young hearts, as a whole it has been choreographed from every inch of the shot, from mercutio himself, to the back up dancers and the crowd al jumping and moving in sync. The crowd part is very intresting as at partoies you never have the whole crowd in sync dancing together. Luhrmann's direction on this shows that he paid real dtail to the fact that the drugs romeo has taken has made everything in the scene out of wack.
Another interesting point he has taken into account, is that in the original play alot of mercutio's lines suggest that he was inlove with romeo. By putting dressing mercutio up as a girl in this scene again suggets this accusation, even the song chosen repeats the line " my man and me". At the edn of the clip we see Romeo with his head in a basin, this goes back to the earlyer part in the movie where Juliet isin the bath with her head in the movie. Then finally they both meet by looking in a fish tank. This works well as it suggests what's going to happen before the character themselves know. This small clip has worked very well as it Luhrman as he has in the film has paid great detail to the small parts of the play and successfully adapted it into a modern style without loosing its originality.
Donnie Darko
Donnie darko is based on a story that leaves the viewer questioning weather the conclution of the film was based on phycological and mental actions of the main character or weather what we saw on screen actually happens. In this clip we see the famous bunny that made this film so popular and remeberable. Again earlyer we see donnie taking mental illness pills, and we wonder if this is a dilusion or reality. but we find our that the butterfly effect of his action could lead into the idea that it isnt a dilusion it could actually be real. The opening to this clip we see donnie's father go downstairs int he middle of the night to watch some TV, on the screen is a canditate running for presidentcy. Kelly's chioce to show this is interesting as the canditate talks about " sorting out drug dealing" and repeats " there was no evidence" alot. This is significant as it begins the preface of what is going to happen.
The whole film is very backwards and hard to undertand but with the small inputs that you don't notice the first timne round it makes it easyer to understand. There is a shot where they pan up missing out donnie wlakingf out of the house. again relating back to the idea that we did not see him leave the house so thewre is no evidnece weather ofr not he actually did or if he was dreaming. The qick shot of donnie grabbing the pen off the fridge in his dilutional state again suggests something is going to happen that us as the viewer do not know. The film like ours is a physcological genre, and in this clip after the bunny has told him when the world is going to end Donnie smiles a sick smile and asks why, this shows he takes pleaure out of either the world ending or the insane bunny standing infront of him. either one suggests that the guy is ill.
Fight Club
Again another physcological genre, where the main character may or may not be crazy. Unlike donnie darko at the end of the film we find out that the narrator is actually crazy. Donnie darko leaves you questioning it untill the last end credit, this is really directed well by Richard kelly. This clip of Fightclub is the climax where the truth is spilled to the audience. FOR ANYONE WHO DOES NOT WANT TO HEAR THE ENDING OF FIGHT CLUB STOP READING NOW! this is the part of the film where youa nd the character finds out that the narrators friend is actualluy his alter ego. This is done well as it shows you clips of the film we have already seen but swaps Tyler ( the alter ego) to The narrator. it shows these clips in a fuzzy style as if the type is skipping, to represent what it is like to be in The narrator/tylers mental mind.
Fincher takes bits that havnt been altered and plays them again so you can see the crakcs in the story were Tyler and The narrator join. He even shows the narrator talking to himself to completly justify the factt hat Tyler isnt real and that the main character is crazy. When tyler says " you still wrestle with it" meaningt hat the narrator is wrestling with his mind and life, sontrasts to the fatc that the whole film is based on the idea of Fight club. The use of humour is used extremely well in tjhis clib by Fincher, its sarcasim over rules its natural idea that the film is based of a physcilogicaly mental person.
For our film extract we had to look at a variety of different soundtracks to inspire what type of sounds and music we would be using in our project. The genre of our extract would be based on a psychological thriller, I began to research other thrillers to get ideas for our extract.
I looked at the opening to Halloween, as this uses a range of different sound effects to build up a soundtrack. we will be using non diegetic sounds to build sounds in the protagonists head rather than using a soundtrack, this will create the effect of her tuning her mind into reading voices.
One of things we are discussing for our film extract is how we are going to portray the protagonist as a mind reader. We could use the general voice over trick, a monologue from the main character or typing on the screen. This is a clip that inspired us;
Here is another clip that we could create ideas from
what helped us come up with our idea was some of the clips from action films, which was strange as our genre for our film extract is based on a physcilogical thriller. We had to choose a certain part of a film wether it was the opeing or the conclusion, we decided to choose the complication in Todorov's narrative structure, for our small film extract, it is the part of the film where the protagonist begins to discover and learn about her gift. This has been used in films such as Jumper, Spider man and Wanted.
We liked the idea of do this part of this film as it can go both ways it can be humerous, emotional or intense. We decided to go with the intense version as we belive we can make it more visually effective by adding different shot types and editing effects.
our basic plot for our film, is based on a 17 year old girl who begins to read the thoughts of everyone around her. An unknown man contacts the girl by every means of communication possible but never in person, he seems to know everything about her and her gift. She begins to think she is insane and attempts to find the unknown man to find out more about her gift and why he knows so much about it. While trying to track him down she overhears the thoughts of stranger who's thoughts disturb her leading to her attempts to help and save them. This leads to a disastrous conclusion.
