Final Shoot

After our first shoot was completed there were multiple things that needed fixing and improving upon in our next one.

To begin with, it had been a long time since we had used DSLR's when we took them out for the first shoot, and we wasted valuable time trying to remember where all the controls were and what all the right settings were for shooting in a studio. This time around we were able to set up the cameras a lot more quickly. We also changed the positioning of the table where the objects lay and incorporated the use of the step ladder which made it a lot easier when trying to film our birds eye view as we could place the camera further back and still keep it high up. 

We also spent a lot more time making sure we had as few shadows as possible in the shots this time, and to do this we were able to move the birds eye view camera further back to prevent this. This meant that instead of being positioned in front of the lights like last time we were able to pull it back a bit more, so it was less in the way of the lights and so the only shadows that were cast were from the actors themselves.

This did then raise another issue of the shadows of the actors on the white background, so we used softbox lighting which really helped.

This time around we decided to incorporate more actions into our film. 

When the actors arrived we talked them through our prepared list of actions we wanted to take place, and where we wanted them to place the items. Item placement was quite an important aspect of our work, and we worked hard to ensure that our shot was relatively balanced and we fit everything into the frame as much as possible. We made a conscious decision to leave the old fashioned phone in the frame through the whole piece as a nice little bit of consistency and a reminder that we still use some old fashioned technologies today. 

We had several practice run throughs of the piece before we began rolling to help the actors become familiar with the order of things. Once they began to get the hang of it, we started to film.

We did several takes, the first one or two we still had to edit where we were placing the items as the actors of course cannot see what is in the frame. We had place masking tape around the edge but it was only helpful in regards to what wouldn't be seen on camera, not how an item would look when it was in the frame.

 Once they got the hang of that we played around with timings, and how long each segment should last. We did multiple takes of different lengths, seeing what would work best.

Practice Shoot

The practicality of our shoot required a lot of thought. We were going to have three screens, and so we would need to shoot three pieces but with all of the timings of placing pieces in the middles to be synced up. We were initially thinking of filming each section individually and mapping out the timings separately and adding them together in post but we felt that this would massively over complicated everything and would be extremely time consuming.

As a solution to this we thought of filming everything at once, with three different cameras. We spoke to our tutor and to some technicians about the feasibility of matching up our footage if it was filmed on three different cameras and discovered that as long as the cameras were all the same and the settings on each one matched up, the footage should fit together seamlessly.

This would mean that we would be able to set up three cameras side by side and film everything real time so as long as we matched the beginnings of each piece, they should sync up perfectly.  

We booked out a studio and three cameras and tripods for an afternoon and evening, and spent the afternoon setting up before the actors arrived. The actors we used were two close friends of mine who have had experience working in student projects before and were eager to help out.

Myself and Nicole each bought in our props and set up the studio, using the white background and studios lights to create our shots. We asked the actors to come in black clothing, and kept the backgrounds to all the shots white to keep a nice monochrome balance to the work and making the colours of the props stand out more.

We had some trouble initially as one of the shots was required to be a birds eye view. This meant that one of the cameras had to be tilted  downwards as far as it would go and much closer to the props than the other cameras had to be to the actors. The camera, in fact, had to be positioned in front of the lights. This presented a whole lot of new problems with regards to shadows on the background, as all the individual frames were very closely aligned. We had to test out a lot of different lighting positions before we managed to find one that worked.

Before we even began filming, we ran through what would be happening in the piece several times to help the actors become familiar with what they needed to be doing.

We began by just going through the piece in sections, and repeating those and then fitting them together, allowing the actors to get used to what was happening, before eventually beginning to film.

We did several takes through the evening, so we would have a lot of material to work with. Due to already have rehearsed with the actors earlier, we managed to get through the filming relatively quickly as the whole piece is a couple of minutes long without any cuts, so all we had to do was run through it a couple of times and edit minor issues as they arose such as where the props were place in the frame and the like.

We also noticed afterwards that we had had some issues with framing. While before we began to film we set up each shot carefully, because it was all done in one take we sometimes forgot about checking the framing before we began to shoot again. 

When we looked back on the footage is it very obvious to us that we needed to raise the male actors camera up, as at times we cut of the top of his head, and also push the camera forward so the frame was closer to the top half of his torso so it matched the female actors shot.

We also didn't take into consideration the creases on the white sheet we used as the background which ruined the aesthetic of the piece.

Synopsis

Synopsis

Our installation piece will portray connections and networks through communication between people and focus on the idea that in the modern age, although society has many platforms of communication, people still find it difficult to connect and communicate with each other.

We will be portraying this theme through moving image, our installation will consist of three screens in a row, side by side. The right hand screen will show a male subject in his own space trying to reach out and communicate to the female subject in the far left hand screen, also in her own space. Both the right and left hand screens will alternate between low key and high key lighting to switch the viewers focus on which screen they are looking at and to show who's trying to contact who in that moment. The middle screen will be portraying the sense of separation and distance between them.

The piece will begin with the attempts of communication being made. This will be seen in the middle screen by showing an open white space with a table where each of the subjects, on either side, will leave objects for each other; the screen will also be displaying text. The objects will portray older forms of communication and will include notes and letters, telephones, a laptop, TV,  Radio and other forms of music, books and other random objects. The text will portray newer forms of communications and also appear within the middle screen and will overlay the moving image. Each of the subjects will be seen sending text messages which when sent will show up on the middle screen, showing that they have been undelivered. Along with text messages- webpages, tweets, hashtags, status’, failed phone calls and stand alone text will also show up in the centre screen. Throughout the piece, subjects will then continue reaching into the middle, leaving objects to try and talk to each other, however, neither receives each others messages or objects of communication that have been left for one another. The middle screen eventually fill up with text and objects as it goes on. The piece will end with the male subject finally picking up a phone call from the girl, only for the sound to be distorted, her screen will start to glitch to enforce the breakdown and lack of their connection and her screen will then go black. 

Treatment

Treatment

Our piece is a three screen, short, installation film that will be about 1-2 minutes long and run on a loop. The aim of the piece is to deliver a statement about communication to a diverse audience. The piece will easily catch your eye as you walk past, and it shouldn’t be necessary to view the entire piece in order to understand the message that it’s trying to deliver. As our work is going to be displayed in a university, while our work will be for a large audience our primary viewership will be from students and university staff. With this in mind we knew that our piece would work best if it got a message across to people who just saw it in passing, on their way to a lesson or lecture.

To begin with our three screens will fade in from black to the white studio setting. The left hand screen will show a woman, the right hand screen will show a man, and the middle screen will show a birds eye view of a white table. The colour of our piece will be important, it needs to be kept simple so that it doesn’t distract too much from the theme, with a white background and black clothing it will keep the balance through the film.

Initially the woman will pick up a letter and put it in an envelope, and place it on the table in the middle. Then the man will send a text, which will appear on screen in the middle and say ‘not delivered’. The woman picks up a book and flicks through it, and places that on the table. The man flicks through some music on his phone and plugs in a speaker, then placing the iPod and speaker on the table. The woman then picks up a radio, places it in the middle and tries to tune it. The man then uses his phone again and tries to make call to the woman, which doesn’t go through. As he continues to try to call the woman, the call fails and her screen starts to flicker and disappears. Our soundscape fades to silence and his screen also fades to black. The main theme of our piece is about communication, but also looks at the idea of how older technologies are being used less and less, and newer things are coming into our lives that replace them. The piece aims to show that no matter how much we try to hold on to the past, eventually we have to move on.

Our soundscape will consist of subtle sound of the objects we have throughout the piece, each linking to the next. It will be a mix of downloaded and recorded sounds so that we have a wide range or different sources available to use.

Our lighting will be high key, and we will be using a variety of props. Items we will use will be things we already own so there will be no need to go out and purchase anything new. We will be using a letter, a phone (actors can use their own), a book, an iPod and speaker and a radio.

Our actors are two of my close friends who are really looking forward to helping our in a student film. They are both students themselves and have had some experience being in student work before. They are fairly flexible and are willing to do what is required of them for the shoot, and are going to provide their own clothes and mobile phones to use in the piece.

To film our piece we will need to take out three DSLR cameras and three tripods. Our plan on how to film is to set up the three cameras side by side and film the whole thing in one shot from three different angles – the left screen, the middle and the right. We consulted with a technician on whether this would work in post, if the footage would match up etc. We found out that as long as all of the settings - such as white balance - are the same, it should all look the same when we go to edit it later. Our middle screen is going to be looking down at the table as all of the items get placed on it, this way you would get a clear view of everything as it happens. We first of all planned on filming it all in one take but that might be a bit ambitious as it will be over a minute long and there are bound to be mistakes made, but we’ll see how it goes, if it looks like we can manage it on the day, we will attempt to film it all in one.

Paperwork for Maps and Networks

Maps and Networks Developed Idea

After a lot of consideration, Nicole and myself decided our idea of using the butterfly effect as a short film was a much too linear and narrative idea for our installation piece. We hadn't properly thought outside the box about what we could do with an installation and we were just looking at making another film with a regular plot.
We also began to realise that logistically with just the two of us we would probably have a lot more work to do than we had anticipated.
With this in mind we decided to change what we were doing. We didn't want to change it completely though, so we decided to just adapt what our initial idea was, which was about the connections between people.
Nicole came up with the idea initially for our butterfly effect piece, which was to use more than one screen within a screen to show different things that were going on.

Johann Pascual was someone we stumbled across whilst looking for research for our 'butterfly effect' idea. We really liked the idea of using multiple frames in our piece, and this inspired us to move away from our rigid idea of a short film and make us decide to branch out a bit. 

This was the kind of thing we wanted to go for with our piece. Not with as many different boxes as this but something similar. We then deviated from our initial idea into maybe using three side by side boxes to show different objects being used to try to communicate between people. 

We also found this video installation art on Vimeo that had the 3 screens side by side in a way that was similar to what we wanted. There is really nice imagery in this piece, and all the colours and tones match throughout the work. It's clearly of the same or similar place and has an eerie melody being sung throughout the piece. 

What I took from this piece is that the woman is always in the middle. We want our work to be similar to this in that all the important parts happen in the middle screen. Our characters would be either side and the passing of objects would be in the middle.

Something else I like about this piece is that most of the movement also happens in the middle emphasising it's importance, the outer two screens have very little motion compared, and the woman doesn't often appear outside of the middle screen. This I thought was interesting, as a way of keeping peoples attention mostly focused on the one area. This is an issue Nicole and myself discussed, as when we make our piece we don't want there to be too much going on so that people don't know where to look.

When people do appear outside the middle screen, there is a peak in interest as it's a break in what's been happening for the rest of the film. It was a useful tool to think about using, just having motion in the outer screens occasionally to further involve the viewer.

At a couple of points in the film the characters from the outer screens cross over into the middle screen which I think is really effective as it happens so rarely. It reminds us that they're in the same world but just doing different jobs, and sometimes these overlap. 

"Stormwater" 3 screen video art installation by Tom Skipp from estrellasonora - Tom Skipp on Vimeo.

So instead of thinking of the butterfly effect and literally the procession of events, we moved on with the idea of connections between individuals, and and how people struggle to communicate what they want to say.

The basic set up would be this;

three screens, the left one with a woman, the right one with a man, and the middle one as some sort of no mans land , which they keep crossing in to but missing each other.

The idea was that they are both trying to communicate but can't. We experimented with the idea of technology and how different generations struggle to get across what they mean when they're talking to each other, and also looking at how teenagers these days have been raised with technology and it's very natural for them to be using it, and how that contrasts with people of older generations to whom it is a very alien concept. 

With this in mind, we thought of one of our characters using just old fashioned technologies, and the other using modern ones.

We arranged it so the woman on the left would be the one using the old fashioned items such as books, letters, radios, and the man on the right would be using items such as an iPod and an iPhone.
I also wanted to link this to Tom Skipps 3 screen video art piece by having the most important parts of the film occurring the the centre screen. I really loved the ending of the film where the man crosses over into the middle screen and picks something up, I think it was a really effective use of the crossover and Nicole and I wanted to show that in our work.

Editing

To begin with I created several mono tracks for the sounds I recorded in the sound studio, and began to play around with inserts to see if I could make them sound more fairytale like. I soon decided that I thought the effects made the clips sound tacky and I didn't like the effect of them at all.

I then imported the rest of my sounds from the Roland into my pro tools session and named all the clips appropriately so I could keep track of them throughout the edit. 

I began to layer up the sounds with my voiceover in mind, and with them building up slowing and peaking at intensity in the middle. 

With my sound piece I was aiming to keep a fairytale, sort of creepy, haunting effect going throughout, as in Grimms' fairytales especially,  fairytales were rarely all light and fluffy and usually had much darker undertones when you read the original. This is why in my piece, although the part that is read out is the beginning of the fairytale, the soundscape is actually quite creepy (well that's what I was aiming for). I wanted this to be the case as one the surface, a fairytale is a sweet story with happy endings but when you look deeper into them they are actually pretty messed up at times.

I used a recording of the opening of a book at the beginning of the piece to emphasise that it was the start of a story, and used a lot of fade in/outs through the work so that everything flowed together well.

As I suspected I did run into a few issues with wind noise in the background of some of the clips I recorded outside. I then discovered a way to use the inserts that was actually really useful to me, I used the frequency shifter to remove certain frequencies from the clips such as the wind. This made them sound so much clearer and I was really glad I changed my mind about using the effects.

I also raised the pitch of some of the clinking sounds to make them sound higher and slightly more etherial which I wanted so they matched the theme more.

I had to spend a long time correcting the sound on my piece as for some reason through my editing I had repeatedly adjusted the sound on individual clips and turned them down, so overall my piece was very quiet but there were a few sounds that seemed were relatively quiet but actually caused the sound to peak, such as clicks or snaps. I had to either take down the volume for those particular tracks or cut the sounds out. I also tried compressing the piece but I found that doing that made the whole piece sound different to what it was and so I decided that the areas that were effecting the sound I could either remove without taking anything from the overall piece or just make quieter with fade ins etc.