Gestalt

Shot List

1: Mid Shot – Perry looking up tree x7 frames >> with each, Perry moves further up the tree

2: Establishing shot – Woodland Avenue

3: Long Shot – Woodland Avenue > Perry Appears from behind tree

4: Long Shot – Woodland Avenue X46 frames >> Perry takes a series of paths, winding around the trees

5: Long Shot – Woodland Avenue X23 frames >> Perry starts jumping down the middle of the Avenue, towards the camera

6: POV - Facing down a timber avenue, lined with white flowers. Gradually gets moves forward X12 frames until...

7: POV - Reaches the archway, POV then starts to double back on itself X6 frames

8: POV - Facing back down the avenue just advanced. We see brightly coloured flowers on the floor X5

9: POV > Close up - Takes a closer look at the flowers

10: POV > Extreme Close up – Takes an ever closer look at the flowers

11: POV > Mid Shot – POV starts to turn back around to face the wall besides the archway X4

12: POV > Close up – Starts to walk closely towards the wall

13: POV > Extreme Close Up – Wall X2

14: POV > Extreme Close up – Wall > Hand in View X2

15: POV > Extreme X2 Close up – View starts to crash through wall

16: Cut To Black

17: POV > Mid Shot – View of relic and hedges beyond archway X10

18: POV > Close Mid Shot – POV starts walking towards hedge X2

19: POV > Close up Shot – Frame of Hedge starts to have the mosaic effect

20: POV > Extreme Close up - Frame of Hedge has the mosaic effect X2

21:  POV > Mid Shot – Look back at the bright flowers coming through the hedge towards the camera X3

22: POV > Establishing shot – Flower bed maze

23: POV > Long Shot – Flower Bed Maze X28

24: POV > Close up Shot – Turns around to look back at the flowers X$

25: POV – Turns back around and starts heading back down the maze X21

26: POV > Close up Shot - Of hand reaching down to the floor to break POV’s fall X6

27: POV > Low Shot – Looking up towards sky from a low angle X9

28: POV > Long Shot – Continues to head down maze X24

29: POV > Mid Shot – POV turns to the right to look at the flowers approaching X2

30: POV – Turns back around and approaches bench X3

31: POV > Mid Shot - Perry steps onto the bench seat

32: POV > Close up – He then steps onto the top of the bench

33: POV > Close up – off hedge approaching

34: POV > Extreme Close up – POV breaks through hedge

35: POV > Establishing Shot – Heading towards Flower Avenue

36: POV > Long Shot - Heading towards Flower Avenue X8

37: POV – Walks through Flower Avenue X8

38: POV – Turns to the left to see flowers approaching again X 11 > X2 Close up Shots

39: POV - Turns back to original direction and continues to walk that way X13

40: POV – Hand appearing into view and extending down to reach the floor

41: Long Shot – Perry falling to the floor and the flowers attacking him X12

42: Long Shot > Clockwise Pan – Perry dying X11

43: Mid Shot - Getting Closer >Slow in zoom X4

44: Close up Shot – X3

45: Extreme Close up - Flower X3

46: Cut To Black

Treatment

We open on a young man stood to the right of a knurled tree, looking up at a strange, coloured spot between its boughs.

He now appears on the left side of the tree trying to find a way to climb up to where the coloured spot is. The spot has changed colour.

The young man in dark clothing now climbs up the twisted tree towards the strange anomaly, which continues to change colour. He begins to disappear through it and reveals the thing to be some kind of a portal when the screen fades and shows him standing in a strange area lined by trees on each side. The green of the trees leaves and the grass are a vibrant emerald colour and the dirt that is visible is a maroon colour.

He starts to slide along the ground, on his feet, between the trees in odd patterns before gliding down the centre of the tree path, making small jumps the closer he gets.

There is a dip to black and we are now looking at an archway made from pale wooden beams, an urn like structure at the end through a point of view shot. The sky is a dull grey colour.

We move forward, down the pale wooden archway, and upon reaching an arch made of reddish stone, pan around to the right and look down to see vibrantly coloured flowers on the grey ground. From the start until this point an odd song named Francium is playing but is now replaced with the Benny Hill theme.

He turns back around, still in POV, and proceeds to crash through the wall and after crashes through a dark green hedge into an area with low hedges lining flower beds in an almost maze like pattern. Upon coming through the hedge we see that the flowers are following him through before turning and starting to run through the low maze. We see more flowers on a hedge directly in front before turning left and continuing to run. After a moment he looks back and sees the flowers right behind him. He continues to run before falling to the ground and quickly getting back up. Seeing the followers coming at him from the right, he jumps up onto the bench in front of him and leaps through the bush behind it.

We are now at an area with another archway draped with vines.

In a pathway that comes into the archway from the left we once again see the demonic, homicidal flowers. He continues to run before falling again and here we switch to a long shot view of the flowers now swarming him as he falls onto his back, the music switches back to the song Francium once we switch from the POV shot. There is a clockwise pan of the young man, having now been killed by the flowers, lying on his back with the purple (lead) flower sprouting from his mouth. A slow zoom in onto the purple flower follows this and we cut to black.

Everything was shot using stop motion.

The Coffee Cup

Shot List >> Intro

1: Mid Shot > Side View– Church doorway
2: Mid Shot > Side View– Perry walking towards church door
3: Mid Shot > Front view – Perry Walking up church steppes
4: Mid Shot > Front View > Inside Shot – Perry walking through doors, towards camera

Treatment

The frame is filled with a side view shot of an arched church doorway. The frame is split into three panels, one large complete image of the actions in the middle, with two narrower close up shots of the motions in images on either side. These panels are separated with a thick black line.

From the left hand side a man with long black hair strides confidently into view and proceeds towards the doorway.  

We then cut to a straight front view of Perry walking up the church steps and taking hold of the door handle

From inside the church we see Perry open the door and stride through them towards the camera. All around Perry in this last shot, a flickering ghostly motion is happening on the walls, creating an eerie and surrealist effect.

A strong backing beat begins when Perry first walks into view and then continues through until the end. This sound track is the song ‘Hello’ by Martin Solveig.

Shot List >> Outro

1: Mid Shot > Side View – Church doorway and surround walls

2: Mid Shot > Side View – Church doorway and surround walls > Perry walking out of doorway

3: Tracking Shot – Following Perry as he walks towards and past camera

4: Long Shot – Front view of Perry Walking towards Camera

5: Mid Shot > Tracking – Perry walking past camera

Treatment

The Film opens with a side view of another church archway, only this time the door is completely out of shot. Again the frame is split into three and the same proportions apply.

We see Perry turn out of the doorway and walk towards the camera. A smooth tracking shot is implied as he walks past us.

The frame then switches view so that we can see Perry Striding towards us again down the rugged pathway.  Seconds before he reaches the camera he swerves off to the right and disappears out of shot.

Perry comes back into view as the camera is repositioned around the corner and another tracking shot is used until he walks out of sight and the screen is left on the view an empty bank.  

Again a strong backing beat begins when Perry first walks into view and then continues through until the end. Only this time the song has been slowed down slightly so that it has a deeper sound to it and a sharper melody. Again, this sound track is the song ‘Hello’ by Martin Solveig.

Evaluation

The ‘Coffee Cup’ project was divided into two separate briefs – A live action brief and an animation brief. As I wish to learn more and experiment properly with the ways of animation, I chose to follow the animation brief, along with Michelle and Perry.

 After a deliberation with the rest of the ‘animation team’ me, Perry and Michelle were set the task of creating the beginning and the ending of the group film.  Perry came up with the idea that we could have a character walking into a church to start it, and then back out of one to end it again. He had very good reasoning behind this idea (which tbh I can’t remember – hence the explanation not being included) so me and Michelle both agreed to base the animation on this sequence. We then decided that we would be base our animation on the ‘A Scanner Darkly’ film directed by Richard Linklater in 2006, which is a 100 min long film that has been rotoscoped from beginning to end. In order for us to rotoscope our project, we first had to plan and then film some footage for it.

We chose to film the intro at St Andrews church because of its impressive architectural design and it being within easy reach of the college. The filming at this location went well and we quickly finished the filming for the Intro animation.  However, cars started turning up and parking just outside the front door of the church, when we were just about to start filming the Outro there, which as you can imagine was really quite annoying! Because of this we had to find a different location for the ending. This was when we decided on filming at the church opposite the park up behind the college.

 It wasn’t an ideal location, the outside was littered and dirty, and all the doors were locked up so we couldn’t film Perry actually walking out of a doorway. Instead, we devised an angle to film from in which the arched doorway was visible, but the doorway itself was out of sight, this way Perry could walk out of the arch and it would seem as though he had walked through the actual door. We then filmed his walk several times, from three different angles until we obtained all our desired footage.

The rotoscoping was surprisingly easy – Rachel showed us an easy way to batch edit the images, which meant that we didn’t have to apple the ‘Poster Edges’ effect to each one individually, which managed to save us a lot of time and effort.

However, there were a few images from the Intro video – From when Perry entered the church -that the sides of were really dark, and had to be photoshoped separately. I took this task upon myself due the fact I have Ps on my laptop so I would be able to work on them at home.

I used the clone tool to fill up the dark areas with sections of wall and then used the blur tool to give the walls a kind of impression that they were melting. We wanted these effects because we thought we would look nice if the film would flicker after he went inside the church, and using these tools, every image would be slightly different, giving the required flickers!

Birdie

After we finished our CC Animation, me and Michelle decided to a make a mini animation playing with stop-motion animation. We created it by printing a black and white stained glass window design from the internet. Then using a rostrum set up we coloured in small sections advancing around the picture taking an image between each movement using Monkyjam. It took us around two hours to make it efficiently.

Butterface

 Butterface

Butterface is a very short and pleasant film about a boys train journey. It follows David’s distraught as he tries to conjure up the courage to talk or make some kind of connection with a girl who has taken a seat next to him.

His thoughts are expressed to the audience through a very comical narration. He expresses to us that he was embarrassed about how he was rocking back forth when she first took up the seat, and then his embarrassment grew as he looked to find she was an ‘attractive’ girl. The film ends with the girl leaving a lipstick kiss on the window while David is in the bathroom, and then waiting outside the window on her platform stop so she can wave and signal a goodbye.

I thought the film was really sweet. Because of the way it followed a common experience for people on public services, it would be easy to relate to for an audience and made it quite personal to watch and relate to. Also, because of the likeliness to life, the audience could feel the embarrassment for the character of David, and the frustration of his lack of courage.  

Apparently, this film only took two days to make, one for the filming and another for the editing. It was clear that the film was very low budget, probably only cost the ammount  of the train ticket and any equipment costs that may have extisted. I think that the low budget feel actually added to the whole 'realistic' feel of the film,, and i think it really worked well.

The film is a small simple clip into the special comical moments that occur during everyday experiences. It is said that David, the star and creator of this film was inspired by his multiple train journeys back and forth from Manchester to make this film based on the everyday life and ‘little moments’ that we share with one another.

Coffee And Cigaretts

Coffee and Cigarettes is a film written and directed by Jim Jarmusch in 2003. It consists of “a series of vignettes that all have coffee and cigarettes in common”.

We watch Iggy Pop and Tom Waits sit down together to share coffee and cigarettes in a small café, in a scene from the film called ‘Somewhere in California’. In this scene we start by witnessing Iggy waiting anxiously in a café for the arrival of Tom. He walks around the table area and looks at the song selection on the juke box before ordering coffee and taking a seat to drink a cup. Next we see Tom enter and they uncomfortably exchange a few words. The film progresses with Tom repeatedly misunderstanding Iggy’s comments (taking them all as insults) and the ending again uncomfortably as they both part slightly annoyed with one another.

 The theme that Lim was trying to create was one discovery into ‘just how absorbing the obsessions, joys and addictions of life can be, if truly observed’.

What I liked about this scene was how awkward it seemed between Iggy and Tom. It made the scene very ordinary like. Because everyday people will have this awkward kind or meeting, it just shows you the comic side of these scenarios.

It was also funny how throughout the scene Tom seemed as if he was being quite mean to Iggy and it connected the audience to the characters, most of them feeling sympathy for Iggy. As Neil said – quote “You just want to go feed him a sugar cube don’t you, like cheer him up a bit”. This is a perfect example of the connection drawn to Iggy through Jim’s clever film making.

In connection to this, it is also said that Tom himself was in a very bad mood of the day of the shoot and was being snarly and uncooperative with the production team. However, instead of Jim trying to better his mood or postponing the shoot, he instead incorporated Tom’s behaviour into the shoot and very cleverly gave the scene this quality.  It also worked really well in the script, how Iggy and Tom disagreed on all subjects of their conservation, other than when they started excusing themselves for wanting a cigarette. I thought that was really comical how they made up this stuff about being allowed the occasional one after you’ve quit.

I enjoyed watching this scene. I found it dry, witty, entertaining, comical and very realistic. It left me wanting to watch the rest of the film, and intrigued into what other films etc.: Jim has made.

I've Included a short clip of the scene "Somewhere In California".

Single Camera Technique

What Is Single Camera Drama?

A single camera drama is often a feature film, for which the acting is recorded on one individual camera. Gerald Millerson defines the Single-camera technique as “A production treatment in which a single camera provides all or most of the pictures during a production.” The technique is applied by the team setting up one camera in a desired position – let’s say an establishing shot – they then act out the entirety of the scene being recorded by that single camera. They then move the camera to another desired position – let’s say an overhead crane shot – they then repeat the scene from this angle, and so on, until they have all the desired shots. As stated on Wikipedia “The single-camera setup, or single-camera mode of production, is a method of shooting films and television programs. A single camera—either film or video—is employed on the set and each shot to make up a scene is taken individually.”

A Multi-camera technique, is when a soap or ‘Hollywood Movie’ is filmed using several connected cameras. Three or four cameras would be positioned around the actors or scene subjects in a way that the line of shot would not be able to incorporate any of the other cameras. The scene would only have to be played through once - without any mishaps - rather than having to be repeated several times like in a single camera drama. Wikipedia suggests that “An alternative production method is the multiple-camera setup, which uses two or more cameras running simultaneously, and the film scene is run through from start to finish, usually with minimal interruption.”

 

Filming with the single camera technique allows the director to print his own flare onto the production, instead of being forced to edit between simple shots. However, the team would most likely have to play out the scene up to 10times, making it a very long, time consuming yet rewarding process. “Of course, the big drawback to using a single camera is it won't work for scenes with significant movement. However, many subjects, such as landscapes and architectural scenes work well.”  

Using Multiple Cameras allows the production team to produce programs at a much quicker rate. There is very little editing involved, as it is mostly edited ‘live’ by the team switching between cameras. They use this technique in the production of soaps, such as Eastenders, Neighbours and Home and Away.  A single camera drama is most likely to have a better lighting set up and looks more natural on the screen. It is also more likely to contain smoother editing, which contains a wider variety of shots and therefore be more subconsciously captivating to the audience.

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Author Surname	Author Initial	Year of Publication	Title of Book	Place of Publication	Publisher
Millerson	G.M	1983	Video Camera Techniques	Oxford Great Britain	Focal Press

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Author Surname	Author Initial	Year of Publication	Title of Website	Available From: URL	Date Accessed
-	-	28 May 2011	Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-camera_setup	17/05/2011
-	-	17 Nov 2007	WikiDot - Life & Depth: An Introduction to Stereo Photography	http://life-depth.wikidot.com/single-camera	15/05/2011

Raging Bull - You Never Got Me Down Ray

‘Raging Bull’ is a sport drama following the biography of Jake LaMotta, the top boxer of his time. The film follows how his anger violent nature make his life outside of the ring impossible, but inside, gives him an unbeatable edge.

Raging Bull was directed by Martin Scorsese in 1980, following the success of Jake La Motta’s book about himself.  Joseph Carter and Peter Savage helped to re-write it for the film, alongside Paul Schrader and Mardik Martin who were in charge of writing the Screenplay.

In the scene that we watched, we saw how in ‘Round 13’ (of what I presume was some sort of championship) the main character, Jake in a fight against Ray. We witnessed how in this round, Jake appeared to just give up fighting back and instead leant against 6the rails beckoning Ray to hit him harder. The scene was really quite graphic, it showed a lot of blood and other fluids flying out of Jake’s mouth, eyes and even ears and I really disliked this graphicness and had to fight away the urge to look away throughout the scene.

The reason behind watching this scene in particular was because of its fantastic example of a director playing with the audience’s sense of time. Scorsese very cleverly gave the impression that a 2/3 minuet long round, lasted instead 5 or more minutes. However the scene did only last in fact 3m 44s.

The way that Scorsese gave this impression was by using a wide collection of techniques. These consisted off, to start; with the way that the surroundings seemed to slowly distant themselves from around Ray, making him appear to be the only person in and around the ring. He also seemed a lot stronger and menacing than in previous shots.

Another is how Scorsese seemed to have slowed down and blurred the sounds, they all seemed echoed and unreal, and this added the effect to give the scene a very eerie feel.

Lastly, the most noticeable and effective technique that Scorsese uses, is the way that he slows down the actions and reactions of Ray and Jake. It seems as if he creates the scene to be viewed from the perspective of Jake, so that we see the effects that he’s feeling. What I mean by this is this, is that for Jake, it would feel as if Ray’s fist would take an age to make contact with his face, and Scorsese is simply allowing the audience to experience the same pain. All of the effects created add up to give a trance like feeling and allow the audience to get sucked into the scene and lose track of time completely.

The film was a really good achievement in forms of receiving 2 Oscars, alongside 19 wins and a further 16 nominations, and proved to be very popular with sport (boxing in particular) fans. It was also an achievement though forms of clever film making and containing a good array of film methods. However, I didn’t like the film clip that we watched, or the idea of the rest of the film and I would strongly refrain from watching the entirety of the movie.

The Waiting Room

"The Waiting Room"
Our task was to create a single camera production which explored the issues of time, atmosphere and character development. To help create our films, we were given a short peice of text, describing a scene, which were allowed to either adapt into our own story, or follow word for word.



INT: UNSPECIFIED ROOM - DAY/NIGHT
In a room, an individual stares into nothingness. The room contains a variety of objects that somehow relate to that person. In one minute from now, the life of that individual will change forever. But that minute feels like an eternity. The room becomes a prison, the clock a ticking time bomb. sounds are amplified. Further unsettling noises build up. The tension increases as that moment draws ever nearer untill...
CUT TO BLACK.

Shot List

1: Extreme Close up – Timer
2: Close up Pan – Amy
3: Extreme Close up – Timer
4: Mid Shot Pan – Amy
5: Extreme Close up – Timer
6: POV Mid shot – closing in on rails
7: Extreme Close up – Timer
8: Mid Shot Slow Pan – Amy
9: Extreme Close up – Timer
10: Mid Shot > Slow Tracking – Amy
11: POV Mid shot – closing in on rails

12: Extreme Close up – Timer
13: Mid Shot > Slow Tracking – Amy
14: Extreme Close up – Timer
15: POV Mid Shot – closing in on rails
16: Extreme Close up – Timer
17: Long Shot > Tracking – Amy
18: Extreme Close up – Timer
19: Long Shot > Tracking – Amy
20: Extreme Close up – Timer
21: Long Shot > Tracking –Amy
22: Extreme Close up – Timer
23: Close up Shot – Placing phone on wall
24: Extreme Close up – Timer
25: Extreme Close up – Hand tightening on railing
26: Extreme Close up – Timer
27: Mid Shot – Beginning to climb onto railings
28: Extreme Close up – Timer
29: Close up Shot – Kneeling on the wall
30: Extreme Close up – Timer
31: POV Shot – Looking down over railings
32: Extreme Close up – Timer
33: POV Shot – Looking down over railings
34: Extreme Close up – Timer
35: POV Shot – Looking down over railings
36: Extreme Close up – Timer
37: POV Shot – Looking down over railings
38: Extreme Close up – Timer > 00:00:00
39: Cut To Black

Treatment.

We open with the view of a stopwatch, one minute on its face. It moves down one second with a ticking sound.

This fades into half of a circular pan of a girl stood at the top of an empty car park, her hair blowing out behind her. This then cuts to the view of the stopwatch. We cut back to the girl. She starts to walk forward whilst reaching for her jacket as though to take it off.

Once more, we cut to the stopwatch.

Now we switch to a point of view shot in which we see the railing and wall and the buildings beyond the car park.

Once again we cut to the stopwatch.

Whilst walking forward the girl begins to remove her jacket before we again cut to the stopwatch which continues to count down.

The camera pans to a diagonal angle behind the girl who has now removed her jacket and allows it to fall to the ground. All the while she continues to walk towards the edge. We cut to the stopwatch again.

Here we have a second point of view shot of the railing and buildings beyond it steadily coming closer. Once more we cut to the stopwatch.

After the next shot of the girl walking forward, with another cut to the stopwatch following it, there is another POV shot which is the same as the ones before it. Another cut to the stopwatch. Following this shot is another of the girl walking towards the edge and another cut to the stopwatch after.

Next the girl reaches into her pocket and moves to place what she took out of it onto the wall. We then cut to the stopwatch.

Now we see a close up of a mobile phone in the girls hand being placed on the wall. Then we cut to the stopwatch.
This is followed by another close up but this time of the girls left hand tightly gripping the railing, then we once again cut to the stopwatch.

Next is a mid long shot of the girl getting ready, it seems, to climb up onto the wall. The cut to the stopwatch follows this.

Now we have another close up this time of the girls knee coming up to rest on the wall and act as leverage to help pull her onto the wall, followed by the shot of the stopwatch.

Here there are three shots, interspaced by the shot of the stopwatch, of the same thing; a point of view slowly looking down towards the ground below.

Finally the stopwatch reaches zero and the scene cuts to black.

All throughout this short film a piano piece from Amelie is playing and also a heart beat can be heard in the background, gradually picking up in speed. Both these pieces come to an abrupt end when the film cuts to black. The heart beat doesn't play when the stopwatch is visible. All of the visual pieces are slowed down to give the feeling of time passing slowly whereas in real time, as shown by the stopwatch, only one minute has passed.

Evaluation

Our task was to create a short video that dealt with the issues of creating a feeling of time passing slowly, along with creating a tense atmosphere and developing a characters story. Working together with Michelle, we came up with the idea that we could adapt the text into a film about a girl attempting to commit suicide.

We wanted to use this idea because to start with – it felt quite unique and a different take on the description and secondly because it gave us a really good opportunity to create a tense video. It also presented a good situation in which to show time slowly passing and allow a lot of tension to be built up for the audience.

For the side of Character Development, we wanted to portray that this teenager had had a difficult upbringing and was undergoing some form of extreme hardship or sadness which had forced her into this situation of attempting to commit suicide. The reason that we started with a slow, close up anti-clockwise pan, was so that we could stylishly open the film, whilst giving an insight into the girl’s background, from the empty sadness that we tried to show on her face. We wanted to tell the audience of the girl’s sadness before we showed them the location of which she stood, and of the contents that was to follow.

I thought that the entirety of the production process went really well. We reached our final idea quickly and were excited to start planning and filming. To film with, we used a Three Chip Camera with a DV tape, attached to a Fig Rig tripod. We used this so that we could manoeuvre the starting Pan shot smoothly, and then be able to move on to the piont of view shot with a ‘handheld’ camera feel to the scene. We wouldn’t have been able to perfect any of these specific shots with a films tripod.

We were both really pleased with the finished film, and there were only a few minor errors that were pointed out and we would like to have improved on. To start with, we were unable to find a suitable location to film at, we had to use car park behind college which would no way have been high enough to conflict any life damaging injuries from the jump. However, we didn’t know of any higher buildings that we would actually be allowed onto the roof of. This was a simple yet embarrassing complication that was noticed by several of the audience members at the project screening.

Neil mentioned that the film may have been more moving if the clock had counted down quicker though the majority of the film, and then lingered on the last few seconds at the end of the film. This would have made the seconds seem a lot more significant. It would have been a nice touch to include, and both me and Michelle were annoyed we hadn’t thought of it. If we were to make another similar film to this one in the future then we would definitely include this way of using the clock for creating more tension.

Over all, I am very pleased with the way that the film turned out! I thought that it met the requirements but with our own story and stamp on it, rather than staying to close to the text.