STUDIO SHOOT: PRE LIGHT

After all the building it was time for our pre light! I was a little nervous for today as I knew it was going to be super busy with dressing the set and sorting out my lights. I spoke with Anne about my lighting sketches, we then referred back to the picture and talked about the placement of my lights etc. Luckily Junaid is able to help me for pre light and the shooting days so we got to work creating the lighting we wanted. I firstly set up the lighting that would happen throughout most of the film. This took me an hour or so, as I was working with Junaid and Chris at this point so we were seeing what looked best and what I wanted.

We decided to have a light from behind the blinds to create a street light effect to show time of day was early evening. We used an orange gel on this too. We then set up the big light to create our fill for the set, this also had a very slight orange gel to it so it was more tungsten and had an orange glow. We included a light on top of the set with ND on the front to soften the light as this was acting as the light from the lamp on set.

 I was very happy with this set up so we moved on to the second set up which was a dramatic spotlight. This was quite straight forward as the director wanted it very theatrical, so we decided to turn all the other lights off and just have one rigged light on. We pulled the light down and adjusted the barn doors so there wasn't any spill over the back of the sofa or the coffee table which took a little once to get it perfect. But we got it and it looked really good, I was very pleased and it looked really theatrical and intense through the screen on the camera.

The next lighting set up was the red scene. The director wanted me to highlight the left corner in red where the character would get backed in to. I was unsure how to light the rest of the scene as it was meant to be surreal but I didn't want normal lighting to ruin the feeling. So Junaid, Chris and myself discussed different ways we could do this. We set the spotlight up first using a primary red gel and adjusted the barn doors so not much spill was on the rest of the walls. We were super happy with the spotlight and so was the director, so we moved on to the fill light for the set. We decided to use the fill that we had for our normal lighting set up and just put a scarlet red gel over the top of it, and had all the bars of light on to create enough light in the room for the camera to pick up. We felt it looked perfect, the director and I were happy so we settle for that lighting. Unfortunately I didn't manage to take many pictures of the red set up but I have a few.  

I hope you enjoy. Thank you

EXPERIMENTAL FILM - FILM DEVELOPMENT

In the process of filming on day 1, we wanted to try and film the reflection of different websites through someones eyes, using the reflection of the light from the screen to detect what site they were on. We set the room up in darkness, so the only light source was from the TV, to try and capture the reflection at its best. However, this wasn't working as well as we had hoped, and it was hard to recognise the different websites from the reflection in people's eyes. We wanted to still execute this idea but weren't sure how so we started discussing and thinking of other ways. Thankfully Danielle has a projector that we can plug in to a computer so we can project social media, messages, google searches etc onto the persons face so we can get the look we want. We also thought that because we were projecting the websites onto the persons face, that it could be a metaphor for the internal monologue we have, and projecting on the head could symbolise whats going on in our minds, a visual into our thought process. We wanted to hit home that the internet is now literally embedded in our heads and feel this would be a good way to display this. We came up with a list of things we wanted to project over our faces, and here are some of the results:

1. Project social media platforms
2. Search bar on forehead
3. Play glitching videos over persons face
4. Overlay emojis onto persons face
5. Overlay Eviebot onto persons face
6. Screen chat room conversations over persons face
7. Show scrolling down pages online over the persons face
8. Show the search bar for ways to get help
9. Display the dark net
10. Display archive footage

Happy Emoji

Crying Emoji

Crying Emoji 

I need help

Error

With the projector we experimented with using emojis, search engines and error messages to see what the best results would be. Displayed above are some of our best results. After doing this trial of what works with the projector we feel confident that for tomorrows filming day we can get all the filming we want. Some things we tried didn't quite work, but we found a way around them. Like with the search engine we decided to try out google, but it didn't work with lining up on the persons face; So, we decided to use Ask Jeeves, and got the results we wanted.  I look forward to developing this idea even more into one cool film.

I hope you enjoy. Thank you.

EXPERIMENTAL FILM - DAY 1

This week is filming week for the experimental films, Danielle and I had a very clear and concise structure and schedule which has come in our favour. We have scheduled this film to only take two days to film as most of the it is effects in the post production, and all the production footage is archive, and film shot ourselves with a DSLR.

So, this morning we scheduled to meet at ten am this morning to collect a sufficient bank of archive footage we felt was relevant. We wanted to source clips that showed old technology such as old computers and televisions to show how much technology has changed. The first video we came across was Steve Jobs presenting the first Mac computer. We agreed we both liked this as everyone has an association with Apple products, most people own a piece of Apple technology, people will be able to connect with it. 

From this clip, we went on to find an old mobile phone commercial we felt was fitting, and a Gameboy advert that we could use for our archive footage. We then decided to look for Glitch videos for inspiration to get ready for filming. We found so many videos for inspiration, as we liked the abstract shapes, and also the saturation of the colours, so this is something we are drawing inspiration from. Listed below are some links to the videos we got inspired from:

fluid glitch video

windows glitch

glitched lake

ink and water

focus glitch

subliminal glitch

From our initial Digital Materialisation short film, we used an online robot called Eviebot to record what she said. As we liked the robot likeness to her voice and lack of depth and a monotone sound to give a cold sinister feel to the words. However with Eviebot we couldn't get her to say exactly what we wanted, you just had to type things and use chance that she would say something we felt was good to record. Nevertheless, we did some searching and found a website that we could type exactly what we wanted and use some effects on the website to change the pitch, tone, length and gender of the person and their voice. Here is the website listed down below:

robot voice over

Using this website we found a voice, pitch, length and gender we felt was best suited to create the same sinister, cold tone like Eviebot. Using this website was far more effective as we could get the exact results we wanted and didn't have to leave the results to chance, like with Eviebot. We recorded a preview of what the website gave us and the sound we wanted to achieve:

After realising we could get this robot to say exactly what we wanted, we came up with a script of things we think would be best suited for our voice over. listed below is the script we devised:

1.You are being watched

2.Slide to unlock

3.Digital overload is now central to the human condition

4.Our brains are wired

5.You have forgotten where the off button is

6.Are you feeling overwhelmed?

7.Just check the internet for five minutes

8.Control alt delete

9. Escape

10.You cannot escape

11.You have no identity without the internet

12.Who are you without the internet?

13.You’re hiding behind a screen

14.Don’t be afraid we’re all watching you

15.You let the world comment on your existence

16.Hashtag no escape

17.You have a notification…

18.Share your location with me

19.Don’t you trust me?

20.Lol

21.Lmao 

22.Omfg 

23.Fml

We then went on to spend the rest of the day recording the voice over exactly how we wanted ready to cut down and edit in the post production. 

I hope you enjoy. Thank you. 

EXPERIMENTAL FILM WORKSHOP

So today was the first day back after the Christmas holidays, so that means new projects. Anne delivered a presentation on experimental film, surrealism, dadaism and gave examples including students own work. I thoroughly enjoyed today as it has already given me inspiration. Our topic for our experimental films is Transgression. With it being abstract it allows for a lot of room to be creative, push boundaries and explore.

One film we watched today that was really interesting and also really inspired me was Un Chein Andalou a 1929 film by Dali and Bunel. The whole film was about dreams they had had, out together into moving image. Without knowing the context that the film was about dreams then I would have been very confused and maybe not have enjoyed it as much. But I am thankful I was given context. I enjoyed this a lot because of its freedom and lucidity. I like films that you feel the fun, freedom and experimentation in and I felt it in this one. For the time it was made it was well executed, with lots of interesting and bizarre visuals. But dreams and the unconscious are endlessly fascinating to me so it was nice to see some work done previously that supported this fascination of mine.

Un Chein Andalou

We were asked then to research about Bill Viola's films, why he makes them and the themes he likes to use in his films.

After doing a bit of research I discovered that the key themes he likes to focus on are birth,love, spirituality, death and aspects of the consciousness. Focusing on the fundamental human experiences. After reading an article and interview in the guardian, I came to the conclusion that Viola made films to display raw human experiences, he took home videos of his parents after they died and cut them together to make films. I feel it is almost like therapy to him, creating something and setting it free and learning how to grieve for the loss of his parents by creating art for them. Also in the article Viola talks a lot about spirituality and he explores Christianity and Buddhism in his work, as he is inspired by the different spiritual societies and religions. Although I am unsure of the true meaning as to why he creates the work he does, I am only assuming, I will continue to research into his work.

I hope you enjoy. Thank you.