Experimental Film Pitch

Our theme for our experimental films is 'Memory' and 'Reflection'

'Anonymous'

Synopsis

For my film I am going to use all the different documents people gather through their life, such as birth certificates, letters from school, drivers license, passport, deed to house, university application, CV etc. I am going to photocopy them, so that I can edit them and cut parts out as well as editing out any vital personal information such as full name, address and phone numbers. They will be montaged together on screen, and there may be specific words taken from the documents that seem interesting that flash across the whole screen.

I am intending to use different people as subjects, so that I get a broad variety of documents to use, and also planning on filming each person’s silhouette to overlay over the top of the segment their documents are in to promote the idea of anonymity, and how we are often seen as just paperwork by the government and they don’t see the people behind the documents.

Treatment

The film is going to tell the story's of a couple of different people, as I felt that just one person may not necessarily have a big range of documents personally, and this way I could have a broader choice to show.

I want the film to have a slightly psychedelic undertone to it, with interesting lights and patterns across the documents when they're filmed, to give a hint of the messy undertones of a persons life and how these papers that are supposed to represent our lives are a poor indicator to the reality of those peoples lives.

I also want to show a link to the people to whom the documents belong, so I'm going to film each of the participants with dramatic lighting behind then to create a silhouette, which I will then layer over the top of the section of the film with their documents in it. I will do this using 'redheads' from the lighting workshop I took part in, and positioning one behind the subject and that will be the only light on in the room, which will create a silhouette.

I intend to show my audience that people are more than the documents that represent them in files, and that every piece of identification and documentation has a past, and as systems get more updated and outdated we still remain just numbers and statistics and pieces of paper to the people who deal with organising everything.

The effect that I'm going to be attempt is that of some sort of montage, with the documents flashing up on the screen relatively quickly, and at the same time as some of the other documents if I get enough. If I don't I can always repeat some which would add some bulk to the piece.

The participants would ideally be relatively diverse in age and background etc. to make for a more interesting piece, so I will talk to family members and family friends about taking part, and also people at university. 

It would most likely be all filmed in a studio where I can control the lighting and and environment, but I will consider going outside for it if the weather is working in my favour and the light is suitable.

Migration Experimental Film

Migration

Short Experimental Film

Old Boots

This experimental film's theme was 'Time'. I decided to portray this by using a pair of old, worn-out boots and showing what they weather each day.
All the different stages the boots go through, the mud and pavements and grass represent different periods of time, and how while somethings remain the same, other things change. I used both man-made and natural environments to display this.
In my video I also wanted to experiment with different techniques used to show time in films, so I used several short timelapses and tried moving them around objects slowly as I did it to create almost a stop-motion effect. I also used freeze frames and slow motion, even speeding it up at one point. This was to help create the effect of the passage of time, and also to help develop my skills of portraying time in films.

What Is Experimental Film

Experimental cinema, also known as Avant Garde or Underground film is a type of filmmaking that contrasts with mainstream and commercial ways of filmmaking. Experimental films are characterised by often being quite abstract in how they're filmed and also lacking a linear narrative, which would normally be the norm.
Experimental film is often started by novice filmmakers, and is generally done through low budgets, sometimes being self financed.

Bill Viola is an experimental filmmaker. Through his work, he tries to illuminate some of the fundamental human experiences such as birth, death, anger, love, fear. He draws on his experiences as a child, often using elements such as water and fire to express things.

'One of the most important artists in the world today'

Adelaide Festival Director David Sefton on Bill Viola

A piece I found of his that I found very compelling was 'Martyrs'. 'Martyrs' was an installation in St. Paul's Cathedral, London. In some senses, for a piece of experimental film this is actually quite a traditional piece in comparison to some experimental films, in that it's done in a film studio and is set up like a multi-panel painting that you'd find in a church.

Ghent Alterpiece by Jan Van Eyke, 1432

'Martyrs' is made up of three men and one woman, each in their own frame and each represent one of the four elements - earth, air, fire and water. It's one of the most captivating things I've seen, with Viola aligning them alongside each other, and with parallels to the others 'stories'. 

It is simultaneously disturbing and fascinating to observe, and is very different to other works around. The two characters who end up hanging from the ceiling are the ones I find hardest to watch, simply because I think about just how uncomfortable the positions they're in are, especially under duress from the elements. Viola began his film with a certain stillness, and after a moment each individual is interrupted by one of the four elements - their torment begins. 

"As the work opens, four individuals are shown in stasis, a pause from their suffering. Gradually there is movement in each scene as an element of nature begins to disturb their stillness. Flames rain down, winds begin to lash, water cascades, and earth flies up. As the elements rage, each martyr’s resolve remains unchanged. In their most violent assault, the elements represent the darkest hour of the martyr’s passage through death into the light."

-Bill Viola

I was instantly drawn to Viola's work, as I feel he has captured something in his videos in his use of lighting and sound - or lack there of. He is called a 'pioneer of experimental film' and when you look into his work it is clear why. He uses his own life experiences to create a film people are inexplicably drawn to. The way he uses the light to silhouette a single figure in the centre frame, results in the focus being purely on them, and allowing the viewer to engage fully with the individual on the screen. I also think it's clever in the 'earth' frame, how he used a technique as simple as reversing earth being poured onto a man to create such an off putting scene, as though they are rising from the dead.

Not using sound in most of his films is an unusual thing, and creates an atmosphere of almost being underwater, or immersed in the world.
I would say that sound is one of the most important aspects in a film, and that remains true in Viola's work. I would say that in these films, 'silence' itself is a form of sound, and in this piece it definitely works very well.


Sources

Moura, G. (n/a). Experimental Film. Available: http://www.elementsofcinema.com/film_form/experimental-film.html. Last accessed 6th January 2016.

n/a. (2015). 'Rembrandt of the Video Age:' Bill Viola Explores the Elemental Wonder of his Childhood. Available: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/booksandarts/bill-viola/6261696. Last accessed 6th January 2016.

Fire Woman Teaser. (2014). Bill Viola au Grand Palais, Fire Woman. [Online Video]. 20 February. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0SlwUozc9o. [Accessed: 06 January 2016].

Cumming, L. (2014). Bill Viola, Martyrs Review - Let the Unbelievers Come. Available: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/may/25/bill-viola-martyrs-review-let-the-unbelievers-come. Last accessed 7th January.

n/a. (2015). Bill Viola - Martyrs. Available: https://www.stpauls.co.uk/history-collections/history/bill-viola. Last accessed 7th January 2016.

Contributions

Group A
Chloe Debonnaire
Sugini Nageswaren
Logan Gourlay
Ethan Salley

We were very lucky in our group in that we all had very different skill sets that complimented each others and although we hadn't really known each other very well previous to this project, we got on with each other and worked well as a team. Ethan had extensive knowledge of editing, and so working with him on the final edit of our film meant I was able learn a lot about transitions and how best to cut things together which I really enjoyed. Logan has an interest in photography and directing, so when we were out on our shoots, he always had good ideas about shot composition and lighting which I found fascinating as being quite new to film myself, they both thought of doing things in ways I hadn't necessarily considered - although that didn't stop me from voicing ideas for shots that we tried out and some of which were used in the final cut. Sugini was interesting in cinematography and producing, and so she and I did a lot of the permissions together and Sugini's ability to organise what we were supposed to be doing and when was invaluable through the project.
In relations to the rest of the paperwork, I wrote out the transcript to the interview and filled out all the risk assessments before the shoots.
I have a background in animation and this year I have been through a massive learning curve about filming and photography which I have really enjoyed, but with this project for the first time I was able to bring my animation skills to our film which brought out a much more playful nature to the piece and added to the Christmas vibes we were trying to get across.

Animations

We had the idea for our piece to add some animations into our documentary to make it more visually interesting. As I have some background in animation, I was able to use Adobe Flash to create some simple graphics into our film. 

The first thing we were thinking was for when the questions come up on screen. We initially had the shot blur out, and the question appear, but we decided to try and make it more interesting. As our documentary is Christmas themed I came up with the idea of using  a gentle animation of snow in the background of the questions, so in Flash I spent some time animating snowflakes drifting down across the screen.

We really liked the effect of this in our piece, and thought it would really add to the enjoyment of the viewer if there was a bit more animation in there, so we decided to add in some more graphics through the duration of the film.

I thought it would be a to relate the animations to the questions our interviewees were being asked. The first question asked was about their favourite Christmas present as a child, and so I designed a small Christmas present that could hover in the corners of the frame. 

Also for this design I needed to make sure my canvas was the same size as the film, (1920x1080) as I needed to make sure the lights would be in the right place for when they were added to the film.

In another question, one of the interviewees starts to talk about big, old fashioned, coloured Christmas lights, which I thought had really nice imagery and so I animated a string of those kind of lights coming along the top of the screen.

At one point, Church was mentioned and so I thought that as the stars are a theme that frequently crops up in Churches at Christmas and so I created a graphic of stars in the night sky to flicker around the interviewees heads.

The above GIF was my initial design for the stars, but we found when it was applied to our film it covered some of the people in the frame so I had to re-design it slightly so that it hovered above them.

For the family question towards the end of the piece, I thought a Christmas tree would be a nice representation of families at Christmas as it's traditional part of Christmas celebrations. 

To make it a bit more interesting, I added tinsel coming in from the side and wrapping itself around the Christmas tree. This animation took a much longer period of time to complete, as while I could loop some of the frames of the base layers, I had to draw each frame of the tinsel individually otherwise it would be static as the animation continued which would look unnatural. Drawing each frame meant that it added movement and a bit more realism to it.

I then wanted to come up with a commercialisation animation, and after discussing it with my group we decided the most simple and obvious choice would be do use money. We decided this would work really nicely with the question and so I drew out a little pile of money and made one of the notes fall down from the top of the frame and land on the pile. After I had done this all I needed to do was loop it on the edit.

Editing

We knew in the edit we would have to keep things organised so we could keep track of everything, and it would make things a lot easier in the long run, so Ethan made bins to keep all of the different clips in. 

Ethan and I layered my animation over his 'blur' when the questions appeared on the screen. We had decided that as our documentary was Christmas themed, it would add a really nice atmosphere to the documentary if we added snow to the background. Ethan suggested doing it on After Effects but after some consideration we came to the conclusion of using Flash, where I could draw out the animation and we could key out the background later.

We knew that we needed something to set the scene at the start, and Logan had the idea of a time lapse of the sky getting dark and we considered different places around Farnham where we could get this footage. We wanted it to be somewhere high, preferably looking over the town and then we thought of Farnham Castle. The castle would perfectly meet our needs, and so we went to the highest point of the castle and set up our camera. We time-lapsed for almost an hour, and at this time of year it gets dark really quickly so we were able to get almost a full coverage of the sky from daylight to night which we were really happy with. We then placed this at the start of the film to bring the viewers into the atmosphere of our piece, cold and wintery and set at night.

We ended up having a very busy timeline on Premiere, as we had so many different parts added in from different places, such as the animations, the typography, and of course the clips.

When colour grading, Ethan thought it would be a good idea to try and make the tones in the image warmer as this would emphasise the snugness of the couple's home and make it seem more Christmassy and warm, which we all thought would be a really good idea.

The above image is the footage without colour grading, and underneath is the footage with.