“Someone much wiser than me once said that hindsight was a glorious thing. A chance to line our choices in front of us and show how every decision affected the outcome of our life”.
‘Solitude’ is a thought provoking short five-minute drama following the moments between life and death, looking back at your life and regrets before finally accepting that death is nothing to be afraid of.Following a dying man in hospital, we witness his death and are taken into a bleak empty space where he sees his younger self. The child takes him back to re-live his first experience of death, a dead rabbit. As the child stares at the dead rabbit, the elder narrates over what is happening, explaining how he became fascinated by the grandest mystery of all, death. As the memory fades away, we are taken forward to a memory of a near death experience that his brother had. The child asks him questions, such as “What is it like to die?” further continuing his strive to understand the concept of death. As we are taken back to the empty space, the man talks to his younger self about death, and finally accepts the fact that he has lived life to the full and that death is natural. At the end, the man decides that it is time and passes away. These scenes are set in three locations, a hospital, an empty, endless space representing limbo and a wood where the man recalls his first experience of death. The hospital and woods represent an idea of fear, isolation and the concept of life and death (life circle). Although the overall theme for this film is upsetting, it is something that everyone can relate to, therefore making the characters involved in the film on the whole more powerful and relevant to the audience as they could easily associate themselves, or people they know with the concept of death.
The dark nature of the film really contrasts with the uplifting ending, as the elder dies we can see that he is happy, in turn creating more of an emotional impression on the audience, hopefully giving them something to think about after they’ve seen ‘Solitude’. In short, members of the audience will definitely care about characters in my film, as they symbolise the futile battle that every human has against death. Furthermore, the characters represent the audience directly and people they know, such as elderly relatives or children.In terms of style, my film takes inspiration from films such as Steve McQueen’s ‘Hunger’ for the hospital scenes and Shane Meadow’s ‘Dead Man’s Shoes’ for the drama and hard hitting tension built by narratives, I feel that this film would fit in well with the independent British film scene. The use of fluid steadicam shots, interesting cinematography, powerful acting and hard-hitting narratives really reinforce this point, helping to make my film follow the conventions of real existing products that, like my film, are targeted to a niche market.
The particular focus of my film is to give a production which impacts my audience, in order to do this I will use the Uses and Gratifications theory in the way it gives my target audience a chance to gain social approval from seeing my film, I need to challenge the question ‘what people do with media?’ (Katz 1959) By doing this I can include features which will gratify my audience in their every day life. My initial thought into achieving this is offering my film as a product of a more higher class social trend, as the upper class B and above are more likely to attend film festivals and watch more independent films as part of their hobby or with friends on a social occasion.
My film is only going to be five minutes long, and therefore the fact that I have a limited budget doesn’t seem to really impact my production as such. I feel that with high quality digital footage, I can create a professional grade, thought provoking drama with only paying for essentials such as petrol money.
Tuesday, 13 December 2011
Monday, 12 December 2011
Synopsis
“Someone much wiser than me once said that hindsight was a glorious thing. A chance to line our choices in front of us and show how every decision affected the outcome of our life”.
‘Solitude’ is a thought provoking short five-minute drama following the moments between life and death, looking back at your life and regrets before finally accepting that death is nothing to be afraid of.
Following a dying man in hospital, we witness his death and are taken into a bleak empty space where he sees his younger self. The child takes him back to re-live his first experience of death, a dead rabbit. As the child stares at the dead rabbit, the elder narrates over what is happening, explaining how he became fascinated by the grandest mystery of all, death. As the memory fades away, we are taken forward to a memory of a near death experience that his brother had. The child asks him questions, such as “What is it like to die?” further continuing his strive to understand the concept of death. As we are taken back to the empty space, the man talks to his younger self about death, and finally accepts the fact that he has lived life to the full and that death is natural. At the end, the man decides that it is time and passes away. These scenes are set in three locations, a hospital, an empty, endless space representing limbo and a wood where the man recalls his first experience of death. The hospital and woods represent an idea of fear, isolation and the concept of life and death (life circle).
Although the overall theme for this film is upsetting, it is something that everyone can relate to, therefore making the characters involved in the film on the whole more powerful and relevant to the audience as they could easily associate themselves, or people they know with the concept of death. The dark nature of the film really contrasts with the uplifting ending, as the elder dies we can see that he is happy, in turn creating more of an emotional impression on the audience, hopefully giving them something to think about after they’ve seen ‘Solitude’. In short, members of the audience will definitely care about characters in my film, as they symbolise the futile battle that every human has against death. Furthermore, the characters represent the audience directly and people they know, such as elderly relatives or children.
In terms of style, my film takes inspiration from films such as Steve McQueen’s ‘Hunger’ for the hospital scenes and Shane Meadow’s ‘Dead Man’s Shoes’ for the drama and hard hitting tension built by narratives, I feel that this film would fit in well with the independent British film scene. The use of fluid steadicam shots, interesting cinematography, powerful acting and hard-hitting narratives really reinforce this point, helping to make my film follow the conventions of real existing products that, like my film, are targeted to a niche market.
Hal Smith directs ‘Solitude’.
‘Solitude’ is a thought provoking short five-minute drama following the moments between life and death, looking back at your life and regrets before finally accepting that death is nothing to be afraid of.
Following a dying man in hospital, we witness his death and are taken into a bleak empty space where he sees his younger self. The child takes him back to re-live his first experience of death, a dead rabbit. As the child stares at the dead rabbit, the elder narrates over what is happening, explaining how he became fascinated by the grandest mystery of all, death. As the memory fades away, we are taken forward to a memory of a near death experience that his brother had. The child asks him questions, such as “What is it like to die?” further continuing his strive to understand the concept of death. As we are taken back to the empty space, the man talks to his younger self about death, and finally accepts the fact that he has lived life to the full and that death is natural. At the end, the man decides that it is time and passes away. These scenes are set in three locations, a hospital, an empty, endless space representing limbo and a wood where the man recalls his first experience of death. The hospital and woods represent an idea of fear, isolation and the concept of life and death (life circle).
Although the overall theme for this film is upsetting, it is something that everyone can relate to, therefore making the characters involved in the film on the whole more powerful and relevant to the audience as they could easily associate themselves, or people they know with the concept of death. The dark nature of the film really contrasts with the uplifting ending, as the elder dies we can see that he is happy, in turn creating more of an emotional impression on the audience, hopefully giving them something to think about after they’ve seen ‘Solitude’. In short, members of the audience will definitely care about characters in my film, as they symbolise the futile battle that every human has against death. Furthermore, the characters represent the audience directly and people they know, such as elderly relatives or children.
In terms of style, my film takes inspiration from films such as Steve McQueen’s ‘Hunger’ for the hospital scenes and Shane Meadow’s ‘Dead Man’s Shoes’ for the drama and hard hitting tension built by narratives, I feel that this film would fit in well with the independent British film scene. The use of fluid steadicam shots, interesting cinematography, powerful acting and hard-hitting narratives really reinforce this point, helping to make my film follow the conventions of real existing products that, like my film, are targeted to a niche market.
Hal Smith directs ‘Solitude’.
Friday, 9 December 2011
Magazine Institutions
Little White Lies
LWLies is a bi-monthly, independent movie magazine that features cutting edge writing, illustration and photography to get under the skin of cinema.
As they say on their website:
“Because movies don’t exist in a vacuum, we venture beyond the boundaries of the big screen, exploring the worlds of music, art, politics and pop culture to inform and illuminate the medium we love. Bold, beautiful and unique, LWLies is a magazine on a mission – to reshape the debate across the movie landscape”
I am subscribed to Little White Lies, and I love it because it gives me reviews of independent films, which I prefer to read about, whereas a magazine like Empire will tend to feature a Hollywood blockbuster, which just doesn’t interest me as much. LWL tends to review British films too, which is the industry that I hope to go into in the future too, so this magazine is ideal for me, especially because I’m interested in art, photography graphic design too. The people who read this magazine would more likely be an audience from Social Grade C or above and more likely to attend a film festival to watch short films.
Empire
Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. From the first issue in July 1989, the magazine was edited by Barry McIlheney and published by Emap. Bauer purchased Emap Consumer Media in early 2008. It is the biggest selling film magazine in Britain, consistently outselling its nearest market rival Total Film by over two-to-one and is also published in Australia, Turkey, Russia and Portugal. Unlike Little White Lies, it is released once a month and doesn’t tend to feature and entirely independent film on its cover or in it’s feature story.
In my opinion, my film would be more suited to featuring in Little White Lies, mainly because it has a review section for short films, whereas Empire doesn’t. My film is also targeted towards the same kind of audience as LWL and therefore it only makes sense to model my own magazine review page on this so as to make sure my product reaches my target audience.
In my opinion, my film would be more suited to featuring in Little White Lies, mainly because it has a review section for short films, whereas Empire doesn’t. My film is also targeted towards the same kind of audience as LWL and therefore it only makes sense to model my own magazine review page on this so as to make sure my product reaches my target audience.
Thursday, 8 December 2011
Examples of shot types
Before I start storyboarding, I felt that I had to explore different shot types so that I know what to try and use in each scene when planning the cinematography. The first of my storyboards will be uploaded soon.
The use of various shots can really help to create continuity, whilst also creating representation with certain characters. Most importantly, the job of choosing shot types is just one of the many aspects of telling a story a story that I love doing as a filmmaker. The cinematography, framing and movement of the camera is the key to showing the action of the scene and can really make or break a film, no matter how long or short it is.
Tuesday, 6 December 2011
The Vimeo video school
Vimeo have many videos of professional Philip Bloom to run through the ins and outs of using a DSLR camera, which could be very handy for me because I will be shooting on a Canon 60D stills camera and also a 5D mark II stills camera too. Vimeo Featured Lessons give you in-depth information and tutorial videos that you can follow, or you can just browse thousands of tutorial videos on their website, which are organized into different categories and skill levels. This is good for me, because I already know a fair bit about filming through DSLRs, so if necessary I could look at the more advanced section of the film school.
Lessons are created by the Staff at Vimeo and structured to give you more details and in depth examples about the topics you want to learn about. Vimeo are continuing to expand on its film school to the point where anyone member of the public could upload their own lesson to the online community to display techniques so that eventually Vimeo will have an online resource to clearly explain and teach film-making to anyone with access to the internet.
This online collection of films could be a very good resource for me if I’m ever stuck or need ways to enhance my filming techniques. There are a number of video tutorials that could help me to fully use my own DSLR in an effective way. Looking at the examples online, you can see how effective DSLRs are at producing fantastic full frame HD video, and how good these cameras look in a fully edited and produced film. An interesting technique that I have recently seen on Vimeo is a way of using a neutral density filter to darken down the image which means you can in tern turn down the aperture on the camera to help create a vey shallow depth of field which is what DSLR camera are becoming renowned for. It’s techniques like this that I hope will really turn my film into something more than just a storyline, something that is visually pleasing and beautiful to look at.
Sunday, 4 December 2011
Master Shots by Chris Kenworthy
For Christmas I recently received an interesting book on Cinematography, called 'Master Shots' by Christopher Kenworthy. Inside the book there are some amazing examples of shots and how to achieve them, including layouts and framing.
My film is very heavily dialogue based, which I feel might be quite hard to make visually interesting. In this book however, there is a whole section dedicated to shooting dialogue. I have included an interesting section below:
There's also a very interesting section on representation of characters through camera shots and movement and this is something that I could use with various representation theories such as:
“Old people in our culture are also segregated and treated as though they are waiting to die. There are close associations between dependency, illness, dying and death. It seems that increasingly in our culture there are pressures that encourage a reversion to infantile feelings which have to be madly defended against.” (Evans 1998) This theory is made incredibly relevant through the age of my elderly character and the use of carefully constructed camera angles could really help to build on this representation theory.
I feel that this book might become very useful to me when I'm doing the storyboarding process, helping me to create interesting and professional shots.
Friday, 2 December 2011
Snowtown Poster Analysis
For my secondary task, I need to create a film poster for my short film 'Solitude'. I thought that I should analyse some current film posters in my specific genre at the moment. The first of my film posters is of 'Snowtown' a gritty independent low budget film about cocaine.
With such a really thought provoking and gritty film, I feel that this poster really does it justice with it obviously attracting the right audience to see the film. For example, the use of a not very well looking main character with a predominant use of red that really connotes rage, anger and death, let's the viewer guess what the film is about as it really connotes murder and anguish. The actor featured on the poster looks particularly vulnerable, weak and ill which again connotes themes of young people and solitude as there isn't anyone else within the frame. The vague outlines of a landscape in the background and the stony wall that is behind the actor really gives an impression into where the film is set, in a poor suburban area of Australia.
"Adolescence is inherently a time of storm & stress when ‘all’ young people go through some degree of emotional and behavioural upheaval, before establishing a more stable equilibrium at adulthood." Stanley Hall (1904). This particular quote fits this poster and film rather well, because it features an adolescent as it's main character. The dirty and ragged outfit that the teenager is wearing really gives the impression that he is poor and stereotyping would lead you to presume that he's homeless or antisocial. The red that features on the poster and the grittiness in the background doesn't give a good impression on the main character as it represents him as a thief or murderer due to red connoting to rage, blood and anger. However, when you watch the film you know that this really isn't true, as this main character is sensitive, ill and innocent but unfortunately gets caught up in trouble. Hall's point is also relative to my poster as I intend to use an image of the child in my film on it, put instead I will be using lots of white to connote purity and heaven, to avoid producing a negative portrayal of teenagers.Snowtown Analysis
With such a really thought provoking and gritty film, I feel that this poster really does it justice with it obviously attracting the right audience to see the film. For example, the use of a not very well looking main character with a predominant use of red that really connotes rage, anger and death, let's the viewer guess what the film is about as it really connotes murder and anguish. The actor featured on the poster looks particularly vulnerable, weak and ill which again connotes themes of young people and solitude as there isn't anyone else within the frame. The vague outlines of a landscape in the background and the stony wall that is behind the actor really gives an impression into where the film is set, in a poor suburban area of Australia.
"Adolescence is inherently a time of storm & stress when ‘all’ young people go through some degree of emotional and behavioural upheaval, before establishing a more stable equilibrium at adulthood." Stanley Hall (1904). This particular quote fits this poster and film rather well, because it features an adolescent as it's main character. The dirty and ragged outfit that the teenager is wearing really gives the impression that he is poor and stereotyping would lead you to presume that he's homeless or antisocial. The red that features on the poster and the grittiness in the background doesn't give a good impression on the main character as it represents him as a thief or murderer due to red connoting to rage, blood and anger. However, when you watch the film you know that this really isn't true, as this main character is sensitive, ill and innocent but unfortunately gets caught up in trouble. Hall's point is also relative to my poster as I intend to use an image of the child in my film on it, put instead I will be using lots of white to connote purity and heaven, to avoid producing a negative portrayal of teenagers.Snowtown Analysis
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