The cinematography Biography

 

Shot list

Scene one Derek’s Bedroom:

• Full shot, showing Derek waking up
• There will be one or two shots while the phone is not being used so it will be really just a shot of the ceiling, mostly for the use of delivering lines.
• Medium (maybe close up might be better) shot of the phone on the table
• There will be a close up of Derek’s face as he sits up.
• Another close up of the phone but different from the other because it’s in Derek’s hand after he’s sat up
• Medium shot of Derek getting up from bed and grabbing clothes and leaving the room.
• Shot of Derek’s face as he holds the phone, hand level around mid chest height, (this will carry on to be a shot as Derek puts the phone down to go get his charger and changed)

Scene two Derek’s kitchen

• Over the shoulder shots looking at Derek’s phone
• Insert shot of a piece of toast being picked up
• Another insert shot of said toast being put partially into Derek’s mouth.
• There will be a couple Shots from the phone in Derek’s hand
• Insert shot of the toast falling onto the plate
• Insert shot of Derek grabbing and tying shoes
• Medium long shot of Derek looking around for headphones
• another Shot of Derek searching but on the phone as well
• Shot of headphone jack going into phone
• Close up of phone as Derek tries to play music (every time, including the one where he’s leaving and the music stops.)

Montage shot. (Rapid series of consecutive shots)

• Closing / locking door
• Maybe hands exchanging money for a ticket
• Waiting at bus stop
• Entering class
• Typing on keyboard / writing in a book
• Eating something for lunch
• Walking into café
• Ordering drink
• Sitting down

*not all of these have to be used, they’re just ideas, use some ignore others even add some if I need to*

Scene three Café with Derek + co

• Wide shot of table with people
• The usual shot of it just lying down face up, again just for dialogue really, try to initially have at least Derek in shot from underneath though
• Medium shot of Derek leaning backwards on his chair
• Another medium shot of the phone as the screen goes dark showing siri come up. Same shot will show time pass.
• Medium shot of Derek when he stands up to go to and leave the bathroom.
• Long shot of Derek when he’s near the exit and try have the phone in shot.

 

Scenes in café with just Derek and phone

• Long shot of Derek walking down hallway when he gets home (I think it’s called a long shot, I mean a shot of the entirety of the hallway as he walks towards the camera)
• This will be followed immediately with a shot of Derek sitting down in a chair
• Cut back to a close up of Derek shouting thanks to someone somewhere else in the house as he brings up their phone and signs into the find iphone app
• Maybe another montage of Derek getting back bur probably just show passage of time through the clock again.

 

Plot synopsis:

For my film i want to show the relationship with people and their technology. I think i am showing this with my film (or at least attempting to). The film is about a day in the life of a phone whose owner is very forgetful, he forgets to charge he phone up the previous night, he forgets his bag that has the charger in it, and he forgets the phone in a cafe. All while this is happening the phone is talking to Derek the main character, making comments about him as he goes throughout the day. Eventually the phone is left in a cafe by Derek and we see the phone as he slowly dies from lack of battery, cursing Derek and his bad memory to what the phone thinks will be his last percentage ever. The phone thinks when he dies he actually dies and because of this he is genuinely angry at Derek and scared of what he thinks is waiting for him when the battery bar depletes.

this trailer didn’t really take that long to do, really only around ten minutes max. looking back at my entire film i can definitely see that theres room for improvement so it wasn’t hard to pick what was important from what i filmed and put it into a quick small video to show what the film is about. Essentially what a trailer is, i think this trailer serves its purpose of quickly explaining what my film is about.

one of the two things ill be looking at in this post is fight club. ive already done some research into how i can take from it and make it my own. because my film is a parody of the film its fairly easy to put into words. basically because fight club is such a serious and intense film i can say simply mine wont be because its a parody. The lighting in the film was very expressive of the narrators moods, whenever he was in fight club the lights were bright and harsh whereas any other time the lighting were dull and lifeless. for my film im going to try and make the scene and lighting as non-threatening as possible in  an effort to parody it. Also in terms of camera work, i’m not sure how much you can copy from the film with the intent to make it into a parody. All that i know for certain that i can do is copy the final shot and reference the line but change it to fit my film, what i mean is in fight club you see marla and the narrator in front of the window as he says you met me in a very strange time in my life. in my film i’m doing the same thing but mike and Brian are stood at the exit and instead of life, Brian says week.

the second product im looking at is a sketch called awkward conversation by Key and Peele. it is a sketch featuring four guys who are having a conversation about some pop culture creation. Then one of the characters (key) says that he is aware he is in the minority for his opinion that the nolan batman films are overrated. After this the rest of the sketch is one of the  other characters (Peele) turning to the others and saying in a disregarding and condescending manner, different things like: “Awkward…” or  “anyway” its not really all that similar to my idea of fandom fight club but they’re conversation is centred around a piece of pop culture in the sketch so i think there is still a link there no matter how small it is. there are a few ways they ise camera shots and editing in the sketch to show what the dialogue is saying in it. for example when key is defending his opinion the camera includes him and all of the other three people but when Peele makes one of his comments about key it shows just him turning to the other two and key is not in shot at all, i think this is meant to show Peele attempting to single key out. but there is also another shot that shows key in frame over the shoulder of Peele when he is questioning why Peele is making the comments, i believe this is meant to show that either the other two people are unimportant to the sketch or on the other hand it shows that key doesn’t care about their opinion of him he just wants to know why Peele is making the comments he continuously deems unnecessary throughout the sketch. Looking at the cuts as well, i think that they also show the intensity of the dialogue, this is shown through one shot being slightly but noticeably  longer than the rest of the shots and after this the dramatic music slowly begins and starts to begin  rising in volume as the cuts get shorter and shorter towards the end building up to a climax that involves Peele running away in disgust.

Fight club is (quite obviously) the film from which i am taking inspiration from for my short film. its a story about an unnamed man who is very unhappy with his life for a multitude of reasons. he then meets a man who encourages him to change things in his life and then it escalates from there. im assuming if anyone reading this is wanting to watch my film then they have seen the original fight club before mine. if not then thats why ill leave the synopsis as brief as that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_Club_(novel)

Fight club is directed by David Fincher and the book is written by a man called Chuck Palahniuk. fincher is known for films that belong to the thriller genre, some of his other films are seven and zodiac. These, like others that he has directed are often very serious and solemn. There are no light-hearted Fincher films, not that i am saying that that is a bad thing though. The reason i bring up that point is because i’m wanting my film to be a very obvious parody of fight club, so it is hopefully going to be silly, and not nearly as serious as any Fincher film

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Fincher

after looking at some peoples opinions about Chuck Palanhiuk’s style of writing it seems obvious that it was Fincher who was the man to adapt the novel for the big screen. looking at films like zodiac and seven, fincher is clearly not shy about showing scenes, or images that can cause discomfort or feelings of disgust or repulsion in his works. as in he isnt afraid to show what others would be, seven being a perfect example. This matches Palahniuk’s style perfectly as it seems to be a generally accepted opinion that Chucks writings are quite distinctive, often for it’s  “use of Short sentences and crude language” as with fincher, palahniuk is clearly more than happy to do the same when it comes to rough or unpleasant imagery, if you need further convincing just look at three different main characters of his. for fight club the main character is a bipolar masochist, for choke the main character is a sex addict. if anything Palahniuk goes out of his way to create unpleasant circumstances.

https://zarostegui.wordpress.com/style/

From what i can see, lighting seems to be the most used aspect of mise-en-scene in this film. Throughout the film the narrator is constantly talking about society with a pessimistic and nihilistic outlook. due to this, A very large amount of the film has low lighting and dull or dark colour schemes. however the narrator also begins to talk about fight club once it has been formed with a newfound optimism and appreciation of the freedom that seemed to come with the activities of fight club, Because of this, the lighting in the actual fight club becomes much brighter and more important. Another aspect of the Mise-en-Scene in this film worthy of note is the costumes. for the narrator its most obvious, he goes from well dressed, in name brand clothing before he meets tyler, when he was unhappy, to very plain looking and unremarkable after he gets involved with fight club, showing the change hes gone through

https://prezi.com/ciulvvruqcpl/copy-of-fight-club-mise-en-scene/

 

Critical evaluation

Research

starting with looking at my research. The early stages of my research involved looking at and analysing different sketches by many different people and groups famous for it, some examples being monty python, saturday night live, key and peele and some others. Most of my time i was focusing on how they are presented and set out, This and how their characters were shown. Now that i have finished my project i realise that i got caught up in trying to make the characters and their arguments more realistic instead of trying to give them the comedic moments and personalities that goes with sketch comedy. If i do something like this again i think something i need to remember is to spend more time on my script and keep going back over characters dialogue to make sure that i’m making them both realistic AND funny. Besides sketches i also had to look at fight club since i was so heavily parodying it a lot of my research involved looking at certain aspects about the film and novel such as what was the message the author was trying to send with his characters and delivery or how the director showed these messages visually. Although i did do some research on the book and author, most of my research was on the film because i was needing to take from the visuals more than the message. This was because since my project is a parody i did not need to look so deeply into the message or meaning of the story as i did how the film shown from a mise-en-scene stand point. The fact that i kept saying the lighting would be very simple unlike the film because i wanted it to be non-threatening unlike the film was very helpful because in the film it was used to sow things like the narrators mood or his admiration of tyler, however in my film it had only one purpose, showing that my characters were clearly not the characters from fight club and didn’t need such harsh gritty lighting. The final section of my research was that of looking into Fandoms and their individual names and characteristics are, for the fandoms i was looking at, there was really not all that much to say star wars and game of thrones fans are very devoted to their films and show but besides that there was loads to talk about They don’t even have names for themselves like star trek and lord of the rings. Stat trek and Lord of the rings have only marginally more information however, they call themselves trekkies and ringers respectively and star trek frequently clashes with star wars. because of this i had to look more at what are frequent topics of conversation for these groups in order for me to form arguments for my characters to have.

Planning / time management 

I think like last time my planning leaves something to be desired, i really need to put a lot more effort into my timekeeping and pre planning ability. Nathan suggested that i do a table read for my script but i didn’t end up doing it because i thought that i was to strained for time and went straight to filming. I believe that this would have helped immensely  with filming because most of the time the thing stopping filming would be that i wanted them to say a line a different way or they just straight up forgot it. which is still my fault because i didn’t give enough prep time. All in all i think that my main problem time wise was that i spent Far Far Far too long on my script and that ate up massively into my other time i would have spent doing things like looking for actors or doing pre production. I also see the appeal and helpfulness of the gantt chart that mark suggested to us earlier this year as well.

Application of technique Writing and Directing

For my film, i think it was quite a big step up from my last project despite still having a few flaws, however one thing that i am most proud of is my script. Granted i am aware that the time i spent on it was too much by a lot. but i still feel a little bit proud of it, i think that i did a good job of making the dialogue real in my opinion, i don’t think it was too long or short as well. something that i did realise when it came to filming was that some characters got too much dialogue as opposed to some others, and i made them have a few too many rants which led to about half page long paragraphs which were all one characters dialogue, this led to be a problem a few times when filming. In terms of Directing i think i still have a air bit to go and more to learn about it. Im not typically the person that tells people they did something wrong so when i wanted to change something about the way a line was delivered in my film i struggled getting across the point that i didn’t like how they were doing it and even more so that there was a different way for them to do it. It wasn’t a matter of fear since i am good friends with my actors that i used, it was just more one of discomfort with putting myself above them to give them commands for what i was picturing for my film. Finally for things that i think went well for writing and directing, For writing i think the dynamic between my characters was something i was most happy with. For directing Although i said i struggled telling people things they were doing wrong and how to correct them, there were a few instances where i told them what i wanted straight away and clearly and it ended up exactly how i wanted. As for things NOT as effective. For writing, again the time it took to finish the script was not worth missing out on things i could have  been doing instead. And as for directing, Like i said i found it hard to verbally criticise my actors sometimes

Achieving Goals

There isn’t a lot i have to say about this section really, one goal that i particularly wanted to reach was that of finishing the shooting of the film because it was a struggle for a few reasons, because of that when i eventually did i was quite happy that i finally had. That is a positive thing that happened goal wise. Similarly however i had a very similar experience with the script, when  was finished i was glad it was done with but i was aware i had spent too long on it and would end up rushing the rest of the project because of it.

so for two of my fandoms, it wasn’t hard for me to pick some argument points. Those being game of thrones and star wars since i am already a fairly big fan of both. That leaves Lord of The Rings and Star Trek. I do have a few friends who are die hard fans of lord of the rings and were more than happy to offer me some backstory, flaws and point out possible arguments to bring up in relation to LoTR.

That leaves only star trek and unfortunately i had no friends who could tell me much about it and especially not enough for me to create an argument about. so for that universe specifically i had to look into myself, luckily however star trek is very big. not just in terms of lore, detail and backstory but also in following. the common acceptance is that star trek is of equal level and therefore the rival of star wars. because of this belief it was very easy for me, not just to research star trek but find arguments that already exist between the two that i could use and build off of. I found one WatchMojo video that gave me precisely what i was looking for, an in depth comparison of star wars vs star trek, shown through different arguments, comparing the strengths and weaknesses of each universe. The video is shown below

For what my film is supposed to be, that being a film about different worlds clashing together with a “end of the universe” plot holding them together i think that my teaser trailer did a pretty good job of building up a good amount of starting hype for the film.

The reveal of the some of the other characters that are along side of the main protagonist, shows that the film will be comedy and include a light hearted cast. This shows immediately that there will be diversity and variety with the encounters that are available because of this wide array of characters.

 

I used Summative evaluation.

with my short film actually finished i need to do my critical evaluation. i don’t think it will be particularly hard for me to be critical of it. Ill be looking at what i did wrong / can do better mostly in terms of camera work, lighting and sound.

first off my camera work. I found myself with my actor before we were about to film and had a small panic because i temporarily forgot everything i knew that we had been taught. after a little bit of focusing on remembering things, i began. looking back on it i definitely played it safe with the camera. i don’t think there’s a single shot in the entire film that didn’t use a tripod and i was scared of doing something to the settings of the camera i couldn’t change back so i really just left them alone as well. next time i’m hoping ill be at least a little bit more adventurous with it, that meaning having some handheld shots, and manipulating the settings as well. i will look back at some videos we’ve been shown, notes we’ve taken and talk to teachers if i feel like i’m still getting nowhere.

moving onto sound, i’m not really sure what i can say about this. i don’t think that i did as bad a job with my sound in this (not to say that, that means i think i did well with it) but also don’t think there was anything outstanding either. what im really trying to say is that i think my camera work was the worst aspect of my film easily so my sound was by default better, but my sound was still not very good. there are a few things i could have done differently. one thing that would have been extremely helpful was asking for assistance with handling equipment on my film. For a lot of my film i would be using the tripod and used pans which meant i had to be moving it myself, because of that i gave the boom pole to my friend who didn’t properly understand the functionality and versatility of the shotgun mic. Something else that i regret not doing is getting any foley sounds for my film, some  time after i made this film we went out of the class to practice recording foley, I had known to do that for my film i believe that it could have made quite an impact on my film.

Fandom sheet

Different fandoms come together to have a “street fight”

They argue about their fandoms while slating others and trying to prove that their’s is better.

There is a stranger who is the ride home for someone, he is bearing witness to the whole scenario, he is now what was originally going to be the news person

Fandoms include: TWD, GOT, SW, LOTR, Pixar, Disney, HP, HG, the office & parks and rec

Disney and pixar are fighting when disney pixar comes in and says “cant we all get along” and they tell him to pick a side – joke opp

A guy (possible previous winner) comes in who says that he likes all of these fandoms and gives a big patriotic speech listing all these fandoms, at the end he mentions a much hated one and they all get him

friends guy has badass intro but is immediately shot down.

BASICS FOR WHAT THE STRANGER WILL / MIGHT / MAY / COULD SAY

talk / ask about the contestants participating

might be funny if the person is being over dramatic but is actually fed up with being there so just being a little sarcastic

have a joke where people stop and start taking orders for food