Exercise: Shooting a Short Sequence - the alcoholic

This exercise was to shoot a short film as though I am an alcoholic:

First off - visualise the following sequence

• you look around your empty room
• nothing interests you
• you notice a bottle
• you hold the bottle and unscrew the lid
• something attracts your attention, you look round
• nothing happens
• you look back at the bottle and pour yourself a drink.

It sounded easy until I started!

I decided not to look at other students work before I started in case it influenced my way of thinking too much. That might have been a mistake. As I have looked at their sequences since and seen what I should have done! Oh well - it's all part of the learning!

We had to sketch out some basic storyboards

 1. my knees and hand on my knees, in an empty room. Note bare floorboards.

 2. There are curtains pinned up over the windows. So the room is dark, but there is a stream of light coming through into the empty room.

 3. Pan slowly across the room. Close up of floorboards as though counting time. Boredom.

 4. Follow the light to the other side of the room. Note v. empty room.

5. I'm not sure here what happens to the light. Camera moves up to the mantelpiece where there is a bottle of wine.
Reach over to get it.

6. Close up. You unscrew the lid.

 7. Something attracts your attention.

What? a bee buzzing agains the window?
the phone ringing?
it stops.










8. You pour a drink.
















This was much harder to shoot than I had expected. Very difficult to get the footage looking good. A combination of my lack of ability and technical issues!

1) I think I got a little bit hung up on the 'empty' room. I cleared out the railway carriage to shoot it, as this is the only relatively empty room in the place. Luckily it was  a bright sunny day, so I could get the lovely stripe of light coming in - though of course it makes a stripe through the door not the window! But to get the stripe being effective, I had to blacken all the windows which meant that the filming was problematic in places.

2) Getting the first image as a subjective view of me in the room meant pointing the camera over my shoulder on a very wobbly tripod in a very small space. This took a few takes, and I'm still not sure that it gives a subjective view.

3) The shot where I pan across the floorboards wasn't as effective as I had envisaged it would be! Perhaps i should have added a sound effect of a clock ticking or something to show time passing slowly.

4) When I filmed the light coming up the other side, the light did something quite beautiful though unintentional, in that the wall lit up as the shot approached the alcohol.

5) Timing. I had no idea how long to make the shots and ended up cutting whole shots in half or more, and speeding others up, as I had over estimated how long it should be!

6) the bottle of wine took several takes. I zoomed in too close at first. Even now I don't think the zoom works.

7) 'something catches your attention'. I wasn't sure what it was going to be that caught my attention and had decided to leave it up to the moment to decide. Sadly there was no bee as I had crazily hoped, and the ringing of the phone didn't feel quite right. My character as becoming a lonely person in an extremely empty house. The place felt as though someone had left, or died even, so I picked something up that I did actually find on the floor and chose that to be the thing that attracted attention  - a small heart wedged in the mantelpiece. This is undoubtedly NOT what a filmmaker is meant to do! Learning point - planning is v. important! I also added a final shot with the character holding the heart while drinking. (also not sure that was a good idea).

Technical problems:
1) the LIGHT!
2) tripod. too unstable, and fiddly to use.
3) blurring of the camera. Is this the camera or is this me?

Here is the video: 

http://vimeo.com/39067562

Other people's work:
I've managed to look at Paul's, Margaret's, Vagg311's and Richards sequences.
I especially like the way Paul & Vagg311 bring in the character of the alcholic - the shaking hands and quick, unstable moves. I like Paul's rushed panning around of the room before he focuses on the drink. I found Richard's phone ringing - and not being answered - very effective, and quite unnerving. I was impressed with the way everyone stuck so well to their storyboards.

Powerful emotive frames

Exercise: find 3 or 4 powerful, emotive frames. Write notes on what feeling you get from each picture and how the framing has contributed to it.

1. Happiness

I get a strong feeling of happiness at looking at this image. This is a subjective view of a happy girl amidst her paintings. As a viewer, we are head-height with her though it is a wide-shot. We can see the light in her eyes. She is looking up. We also see the paints in the foreground and her paintings in the background. She is engulfed in painting, in bright colours. There is also a sense of movement in the picture - of her laughter, so it feels like a very active image.



2. Sadness
This image is very different. It is a close-up of the girl's face and hand. The colours are just shades of black and grey. It is a very still image, - no movement. The girl is looking down, though we are at head height to her, as we were in the previous one. It gives me a feeling of sadness, though it would depend on the context. It could be fear. There is a strong sense of empathy evoked by this image. There is nothing in the background that we can see, only blackness, which adds to the sense of fear/loss/sadness. ie, we know nothing of what exists in this girl's life. Perhaps there is nothing.









3. Loneliness

 This is a wide-shot of a child in the corner of the room. We see his whole body, scrunched up in the corner, making him appear tiny. The artist has also, like the image above, used just shades of black and grey.  As a viewer we look down on him slightly, so that he appears even smaller. It is also a still shot, suggesting no movement in the boy. I found that my emotion was pity. I felt less involved in the picture, and wonder if that was because we are looking down on him, even though it's only slightly. This had the effect of exaggerating the sense of loneliness, in that even as a viewer, I wasn't there with him.




4. Psychotic

The feeling I get from this picture is fear. I found the picture on someone's blog and it was titled 'Mommie Dearest' which adds to the fear experienced by the picture. It is a mid-shot, of the mother's upper body. She is looking down at the camera . There are a few things in the background but they are unrecognisable, which adds to the chaos and psychotic feel of the image. The colours are dark and subtle. There is a lot of movement suggested in the piece by her open mouth and by the blurred thing in the foreground.

Exercise 3 - Visualisation. Reflections.

After doing this exercise, and looking at other students' work for this exercise, there are various things that I've noticed about using the subjective frame.

• close up subjective frames feel more intense, and help to put the viewer in the frame. They appear to give more of a sense of the character's emotions, and, by creating a connection between the viewer and the character,  maybe they allow for greater empathy in the viewer?
• In terms of atmosphere and tension, I find that the subjective frames, with a fairly close up shot of the character but with something happening in the background are especially effective. For example in my visualisation 1 with the man talking close up and with the shopper in the background, this seems to add tension, likewise in Visualisation 3 with the woman entering the room in the background. I'm not exactly sure why these add a sense of tension - is it because the main character in the shot is unaware of what is going on behind them? ie we have the intensity of the subjective viewpoint but with an incident happening behind them.
• I found the door opening sequence the hardest, possibly because in my visualisation I hadn't explored much more than the door before the man opened it! Looking at other students work, I like the way they look around at the garden or at the glass in the window etc. 

Exercise 3 - Visualisation. Having an illicit affair

Again, the subjective view. This time, it is an illicit affair!
1) you are alone having a passionate conversation with your loved one
2) A sudden sound in the background causes you to glance round.

Exercise 3 - visualisation. Knocking on a door

Subjective view again. This time knocking on a door.
1) You knock on the door
2) you wait
3) the door is opened

Exercise 3: Visualisation - man gesticulating

Using the SUBJECTIVE view.

This exercise is about framing. Identifying what to leave in and what to leave out of a frame.

We were asked to visualise a man talking to ut in a very animated way in a shop using their hands. I pictured him in a supermarket (Co-op) in one of the aisles. Here he is framed in different ways. 

Exercise 2. Building a story from 'The Response' by William Goscombe Joyn

In this exercise we were asked to choose a picture, then identify a series of smaller frames within the picture, to create a new story.

I was in Newcastle a few weeks ago and found this monument  - The Response - by William Goscombe John. It's a huge monument, and has lots of soldiers going off to war, saying goodbye to their families etc. I decided to use this as the basis of my exercise and took pictures framing individual parts of the 'story'.

I played around with the order of the pictures. At first I focused on the various individuals' stories of that day as the men were going to war.
Then I realised that it was just the beginning of a story rather than a narrative that follows through to an end.

So I linked the people to each other, and allowed the scenes to move on in time. The first three pictures, therefore, are from the day they leave for war, and pictures 4 and 5 are after the first battle.

The main character is probably Frank who doesn't go to war, but is called up at the end. It is Frank who I would want the viewers to identify with. I'm not sure, therefore, whether Frank, ought to be at the start in picture 1.

Exercise 1 - part two. 'Daughter' animation

Following my Cinderella story in 5 frames, I've been mulling over the process of producing these sequences of 5 pictures to tell a story. I've looked at other students work, some of which are very inspiring, beautifully drawn and very clear in their story. Clarity seems to be the key point in this - making sure that the viewers eyes are drawn to the main action and/or character in the scene. The ones that worked the best for me were a) those whose stories I was familiar with, b) the ones that were visually clear and c) those stories that had a consistency to them - eg following a character through to the end.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about a story of my own. My personal interest in creating digital films is primarily in creating poetry films/animations, as a backdrop to my poetry, so I began thinking along the lines of how to identify 5 frames of a poetry film. The problem I was up against was that there isn't such a strong narrative in the poetry. I chose a poem 'Daughter' that I wrote some time ago in Pembrokeshire. It is a poem describing a moment of realisation in my life. The text for the poem is at the bottom of the blog entry.

These are some of the sketches I did to explore what should go into each frame. And also to explore the themes, atmosphere, metaphors in the poem, and some idea of how I might go about do this in film.

I decided on a simple animation that focused on the mood of light-dark. I found some pictures on the web that showed a window with light shining into a dark room - these were a great help. I also had the idea of paint splashes when I went for a curry with my partner on Valentines Day. There was a painting on the wall that was just paint splashes, and was very effective. 

My final 5 images that tell the story are below. These are individual frames from the animation.

The animation is on vimeo. The link is here: Daughter

My main problem with this exercise was the fact that it had a very simple narrative. I'm not sure that the 'story' comes across very clearly. I also wished that I had made the pint a bit more pronounced, perhaps drawing it in ink. But I was pleased that - as a result of looking at other people's stories - I simplified the scene completely, and enlargened the beer glass, so that the beer glass became an embodiment of me, the only other thing in the picture apart from the window and eira looking in.

The actual realisation of the piece in animation was a lot more time consuming and frustrating than I planned (!). Issues like the paint drying very quickly, and the reflections of the light from the ink etc.. But great fun to do.

Any comments would be greatly appreciated!

The text of the poem is here:

Daughter

For Eira

Old Point House, Angle

Until now, I didn’t know how dark it was inside.

It seemed a cosy place to have a pint. 

The seats are worn and wonky. Torn-up

beer mats wedged under table legs.

On the walls are curiosities, nets, an old clock

whose hands are slow. All the regulars

are talking shop.

You peer in now, nose to the glass,

your hands shield the sun’s glare, your 

smile as wide as the bay behind,

your eyes are a lighthouse beam 

scanning the shadows for me, 

rummaging amongst memorabilia 

for my shape.

And though I smile and wave

I’ve ghosted into dust.

You turn from the window, 

out of the frame

leaving me low-ceilinged 

and cluttered, staring 

at the square of light where you had been.