Week 4 'Persona' R.M

This week we were tasked with reshooting a scene from Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 film “persona”. This was a difficult task as the scene uses complex lighting, and camera work. Also it is hard to recapture the raw emotion and passion that the actors in the original piece bring to the film. This week I was in charge of sound, I found this to be a more relaxed job than the others I had taken and I feel that It was to a high enough standard and fortunately there was no missing or tainted audio. I feel that the film that we produced was not to the same standard as Ingmar Bergman’s original or close to it, in pre production we failed to plan ahead, having to phone around different companies to get access to one of the seminar rooms in p5, also the group differed on my opinion that we should have used period costumes from the props and costume department. With the majority of the group disagreeing, saying it will be fine without, this issue was raised in the showing of our film with one actor having a logo visible on her t-shirt which was highlighted to have lowered the overall tone and feel of the film. I think we could have made this film so much better if we had planned further ahead and experimented with the lighting more on set.

Week 4- Persona- Andy

I was doing the lighting on this week's film which was to re-create a scene from 'Persona' (Bergman,1966). I had never done Lighting before, so it was a real challenge. The end product wasn’t the best. I would like to work with lighting again to get more practice and experiment with different techniques and light positions. I think we found that the group wasn’t communicating enough, this is why we ended up with lower quality sound and light. We weren’t asking the director what the sound levels and light looked like on the monitor. I do feel however that we did well in recreating the shots when it came to composition. We had a lot of trouble copying the location which let us down as the audience would be able to see white boards and power outlets in the frame. 

Week 5- All is fair- Andy

In my understanding the briefing for this week is to use sound to create a world which is hyperbolic to the image. We had the idea of shooting a dramatic game of chess and use sound to create the idea of the evolution of war, I found sound effects of medieval war fare but I couldn’t find any for the next era for example muskets, It just jumped to World War one and two this was frustrating. Although when seeing the finished product I found it was easier to see the message we were trying to portray as the sudden change makes the audience the audience think about how war is still similar to a game of chess in modern times. Shooting the game was hard because of continuity. I had the idea of watching a real game of chess and imitate the moves but with time restrictions, it wasn’t feasible. I am happy with the idea but the cinematography let us down. Many of the shots were out of focus and we lacked in variations of shots and cut-aways and most of the film is just a wide shot of the board.

Persona

Week fours’ filming was to recreate a part of a scene from the film 1966 film persona. For this filming we need two female actors to recreate the piece, so Sophie and I took the role of acting however we spoke the dialogue in English as neither I nor Sophie speaks Swedish. We were sent the clip of footage a few days before we were due to film so we were able to look closely at the acting, camera angle, lighting and sound. I tried to focus on the acting and how the character behaves within the scene. However in practice it was a lot harder to film, as the original film is in black and white. Although we filmed it in colour first and then in editing changed the colour it was hard to get rid of unwanted shadow in the room due to the light in the room. Within the film I also helped with some of the directing between actor and camera as the director Dan worked closely with the cinematographer. I felt I contributed well and worked hard for the three hours of filming and I felt I needed to prove myself to the group as I was away in week three so I was glad I could take on two roles and perform them to a high enough standard for the group to be pleased with. I thought overall this was a well done project which we all worked well in as a group, even though it was a long day of filming and we had to overcome some difficulties with light positions and camera angles. I was very pleased with this project and felt more confident as a group after this piece.

Persona (WEEK 4)

On week 4, our task was mimicking and replicating a film shot for shot as identically as possible. Bergman's Persona was much harder to replicate than originally first thought, in my role as cinematographer I felt our aim should be not only to try to replicate the shots Bergman uses, but also try and capture the heated emotional tension of the scene. As Gideon would explain to us after the task was over, it's one thing to copy a shot exactly, but another to actually recognize, and retain the same context, and meaning it had in the first place, instead of just being a straight replication with essentially no point.

Our location we used was a seminar room in Penbryn, because it was near, small, and could be easily manipulated in terms of lighting and sound.  My favourite shot of ours, would have to be the overlapping shot from the side, which turned out beautifully, even though our lighting was questionable at times with Andy not really having used them before. The lighting was incredibly dark at times, with only some reflection making it to what the camera saw, but in feedback we were told it made the shots seem quite intimate, emotionally charged, and effective, it just wasn't technically accurate to what Bergman did. In many ways though I think the exercise was not to simply copy, but adapt and evolve, in order to actually learn something an expand our knowledge of staging, lighting, and shot composition.

Our opening mid-shot of Sophie was particularly effective, really capturing the dull, grey, isolated mood of the establishing shot. Our only real worry was the radiator was in shot, but this was impossible to avoid as they were present all over the room, but in retrospect, a simple obstruction would have sufficed. As the piece progressed I found our lighting was far too heavy, and far too direct, giving an incredibly strong contrast when it wasn't necessarily needed. As it progressed the shots were fairly accurate, the one of Jemima slamming her hands against the table really worked, it was a conscious decision to let her keep her bangles on, giving quite a clashy, metallic, sound that was quite forceful, and just interesting to listen to. 

The staging was quite awkward at the very last shot, that includes Sophie in the foreground, while Jemima's behind her out of focus, and Sophie needed to appear in shot, thus wheeling herself in order to not see anyone else on camera, but also not wanting it to be noticeable. This meant this shot took many takes, and even then it was shaky at best. However, overall we were quite happy with our film, perhaps not as a strict mimicry of Bergman's film, but at least as an adaptation, or a concept spawned from the old one. We found we captured the same emotionally charged scene, with different lighting, and massively different pacing constructed in editing to really create tension, suspense. I was particularly happy with Ryan's editing, the girl's acting, and my cinematography. 

Sophie: Week 4

Persona: Week 4:


We were set a difficult challenge this week, we had to copy a piece of footage from the 1966 Ingmar Bergman film 'Persona'. We found this very challenging and made the decision to focus on the emotion and meaning of the piece as a main priority, however we did try to be as accurate as possible with the cinematography, sound and lighting. We chose to do the film in English, mainly because neither myself or Jemima can speak Swedish. 


I took the role of acting and editing this week. When I was piecing the shots together I found our shots to be accurate on most occasion but I did have to trim the beginning of some of the shots as they weren't quite correct and took away from the piece, (mainly the last shot). I created the black and white by removing all saturation from the footage within the colour correction mode. I also increased the brightness to +6 and the contrast to +12 (give or take as I edited them to be as closely matched to each other as possible) to try and give it that sharp and striking look. 


I was pleased with our piece this week, I think that we captured the emotion of the piece and I feel that my editing was to a good standard adding visually to the piece. 

Working on Persona

Week 3- One Last Reminder- Andy

I enjoyed writing this film as it gave me chance to go into tougher subject matters. When it came to the shoot I think we did really well although I think we could have done better with sound, as it peaked a lot of the time. In post we should have re-recorded the voice-over as it was blatant that our voice actor was reading from the script. With more planning we could have got the actor to learn the lines. The camera work on this briefing definitely raised our groups standard. As One thing I hope we get into a habit of doing making sure the set is clear. We often have problems with camera bags and tripods being visible in the shots. Another habit I think we need to get out of is editing in camera. Only shooting what we need once with no safety shots. We also don’t use enough master shots. This makes it hard to edit the shots together as there is nowhere to cut away to.

Week 3 (Sam)

Week 3 went generally quite well for us a group, producing our best piece of work at this point by far. We were very organized, and felt we needed to redeem ourselves from Week 2's film, which was admittedly sub-par. We had a drama student be our actor for the task, Jamie Gordon, who is very talented, and we are all grateful he had the time to help us. The initial concept written by Andy, describes a man who is always married to his work, and his career over the bigger things in life, and his letting his life pass him by completely, however an old friend is terminally ill, and leaves him a voice-mail message, that is intended to change his life completely. The audience hears the entire voice mail over the visuals of Jamie working, looking distressed, procrastinating, which is really, really, effective. The piece finishes with Jamie listening to the voice-mail, and looking in horror in the sudden realisation with all that he's missed out on, and a friend he'll never get to say goodbye to. In particular I really liked the close-up near the printer, that really showed his distress, and really established the mood for this film. Overall the entire piece just seemed very professional, and artistic.

Editing went very smoothly this week, besides a few audio mishaps as we filmed in the library, as we occasionally picked up some unwanted sound. This wasn't much of an issue as we didn't want that much ambient sound with the voicemail playing over the soundtrack, and we used a soundtrack aswell to really enhance the somber, melancholy mood of the piece. Watching it back, reminded me of how textured, and emotional the piece felt, and feedback was excellent. While I only had a minor role on sound this week, I'm still very joyful with the increasing quality of our work thus far.

One Last Reminder

Week 3 One Last Reminder R.M

This week we really wanted to make up for our bellow-par film from last week, bounce back and make a film that properly portrays our skills and passion. This week we organised everything well before hand and planned out where we were shooting and we had a Theatre student Jamie Gordon as our main actor and a musician/poet Owain Banfield as our voiceover actor to witch we are thankful for the time that they gave up for our film.

The idea for the film came about when Andy and i were talking about how males relate to each other and why they cannot just express they true feelings, to which andy said ill be right back, and five minuets later he had come back with an outline for the film, he bounced the idea around and the rest of the group loved it, so he went ahead and wrote the script for the film with the help of Owain.

In production my role was cinematographer and camera operator, coming off the back of the last film i asked for this role so i could show them and myself that i can excel in this role and use a camera well, i think that i performed my role well using all of the standards shots and filming them well and also using some unconventional shots that were hard to get right but i feel that they were worth the hassle, i wanted to film the entire film on the wide angle lens so that the camera feels like it is actually their and omnipresent in this world looking into it and invading the privacy and personal space of Jamies character. although i am proud of this film and its is probably the best we have done so far, there is room for improvement in two of the shots the white balance is out, when on location this was not apparent on the camera as the glare on the screen made the shot look the same as all of the rest, but this is something i have lernt to avoid now by covering the screen to avoid gare now.

Working on One Last reminder

One Last Reminder

Week threes filming was to concentrate on the inner image and building relations between people and that people do not always act in a certain way. Also to think about what people are thinking internally. With a subject in mind and our group chose to concentrate on ‘muster courage to do or say something’ and also incorporated a phone call as well. Unfortunately I was ill that week that our film department knew about so I wasn’t present for the filming which I was not happy about as I would have liked to be there for this filming. I was very pleased with my groups efforts when I saw the film and thought it to be a very well made piece the camera angle were well executed and consistent it told a story which I could follow and the directing was well thought out. However we chose to re edit this particular film and within this process I help edit. The re edit was due to the fact that some scene hadn’t been white balanced so there were two scenes that were very bright compared to the rest so we colour corrected the film. To do this we had to raise the contrast on each scene and also we felt that due to the fact it was a sad film it would look better if then scene was dark. We changed Gain to 1.140 and Gamma to 1.60.7 also on the colour wheels we had to change these so each scene looked the same as the one before. To do this we changed every scene to the same numbers on each setting and then worked from there so we had a base to work from. At the end the overall look of the film was changed and created a different mood. Also in the second edit we had to lower the audio track that runs through the whole piece as it was slightly too loud on the original and effected the dialogue in the piece.

Sophie: Week 3

One Last Reminder: Week 3

This weeks film was written by Andy and based around the idea of a missed phone call from one friend to another and the effect that the phone call has on his life. I directed this weeks piece and, on a whole, am very happy with the overall outcome. We were much more organised this week and were very lucky to have Jamie Gordon to come and act for us, giving it a more professional edge whilst freeing more of us up to focus on the actual filming of the product. I worked closely with Andy to try and create a piece that really emphasized the ideas that he expressed within his script. 

The main themes that we aimed to highlight in this weeks piece were; regret, ennui and the passing of time. I feel that we achieved this themes effectively but subtly within the piece through choice of shots and during the editing process. We chose to start the piece with just audio and a blank screen to give the film an edge of mystery and ambiguity. When showing the film to a variety of different audiences they all mentioned that they liked the way that it isn't obvious who is speaking and the confusion when trying to asses whether the person they are seeing is saying these things in an internal monologue or whether he is being spoken to. I also believe that this made the ending much more effective and gave it more of a climax.

Some of my favorite shots are the shots of the coffee cups slowly draining itself. I think it moves the piece along very effectively and is also symbolic of the Jake's emotions and slow deterioration of motivation. I also really liked the end shot when he drops his coffee and we have a medium close up of the cup rolling and then a close up on Jamie's face. I think the shot holds great symbolism and really shows meaning behind the piece.

I am extremely happy with the final product of the film and of the way that our group worked this week. 

Week 2 (Sam)

For Week 2's project, I served as the scriptwriter. The theme was product placement, so we went for a light-hearted, off-ball comedic advertisement as we figured that would suit the overall theme best. Having written scripts for the past 3 years or so, this week I discovered how hard it is to write something that seems amusing or funny in your head, and for it to just not on footage. Our actor Dan, also a member of our group, did add some humour to the piece, as he is quite naturally amusing, but it wasn't exactly intended, it was more awkward performance humour, than intended humour. Also, Andy had trouble visualising the script as the director, and we did somewhat clash on our choice of shots, our choice of location, which overall did really degrade the quality of our work this week.


In editing we had an absurd amount of background noise in the audio due to the vending machine we used, as a key part of our Dr.Pepper based advert. If that wasn't enough, our cinematographer forgot to focus on a few key shots making the whole thing not really gel together that was kind of a basic concept at first. The narrative revolved around Dan, trying to entice a passer-by into buying Coke Zero from the vending machine, and failing to great comic effect, and then it cutting to Andy on the roof, advertising Dr.Pepper in an effective, much modern manner.


In reflection, I was not happy with this weeks work, you could say I was the root of the problem, as a bad script causes many other problems. In hindsight it was a hard theme to write around, and I should have considered bouncing ideas and developing other concepts with someone in my group, to help channel and develop my ideas before I began writing.

Week 2- Andy

I feel this is going to be our weakest film. I think what went wrong is that the film was rushed and I believe we didn’t fully understood the briefing. If we studied the briefing more we could have hatched a better script. It was a case of running with the first idea we had rather than coming up with multiple ideas and picking the best one. Another factor is that we as a group are still finding our feet; we had also gotten two new group members since the first week. I feel we should try and shy away from comedy as it is a very hard genre to pull off well. We thought it would be interesting to make a film about product placement although it ended up as an advert due to planning issues around the group. This was my first try at directing the group, I feel like I tried my best but I found we never knew what we were going to do next, constantly improvising what the next scene is going to be. We had lots of issues with location. Our main location was a corridor with a group of vending machines. The issue was that there was a lot of foot traffic around the vending machines, not only walking past the machines but needing to use them themselves, this meant we were constantly losing time to having to stop filming. There were also a lot of issues with sound as the machines were also very loud. At our secondary location we had issues because the light was very blue and we also had a lot of traffic noises.  

week 2 Dr Zero R.M

For this week we choose to film a spoof product placement advertisement for dr pepper, the advert was supposed to be a tongue in cheek post-modern reflection on the capitalist world that we live in.

The idea behind our film was worked well and we knew that it had promise, yet in execution we did not live up to the idea, i feel that we fell short in all aspects after our last film i feel that we became complacent and allowed our work slip.

My role this week was cinematographer, i tried to work with the director and writer to help capture what they wanted but i ultimately failed in the execution, as the more important shots and some of the very arty and impressive material had to be left on the cutting room floor. As when in editing we found that the lighting wasn't quite right or it was a little out of focus or it might not have been framed correctly and i cut of the actors head room. The shots that were left in were sub-standard and boring.

All in all i felt that making this film was good for us a learning experience as we have taken some important lessons from it, such as the need for proper planning and commitment. There are positives to be taken from the film though as some of the shots and the concept is good.

Sophie: Week 2

My first week with Group S: Week 2: 


This week we attempted to focus on the use of product placement within our film this week. We tried to create an add for Dr Pepper that originally disguised itself as a add for coke zero. In theory the idea seemed genuine and had a huge potential for a spoof advert however, the execution on the day was not so brilliant. 
My role this week was sound. Overall I believe that the sound in this weeks project could have been much better. I wasn't happy with my contribution as the sound fluctuated between being too loud to to quiet frequently within the piece. As the film was centered around a vending machine there is a general electrical hum that could be heard pre-edit and can still faintly be heard post-edit. With editing we did manage to disguise the hum by adding in cheesy style elevator music, in keeping with the spoof style of the piece, however, if the hum could have been avoided during shooting it would have saved time during the editing process. 


We also filmed at an outside location which was problematic as the action was positioned by a road and in a area that was also being used by other members of the public. We had to re-take this shot a few times due to these sound interference however overall the sound balance within the shot used seemed to be usable and didn't pose the same problem as the the previous shots. 


Overall, I would say that this weeks film was weak in comparison to the film(s) that we have made before. Some of the problem could have been avoided by better planning and organisation and a clearer structure of events. With this said, I don't believe that it is a bad film but with more time it would have been a much more effective and polished piece. 

Week 1- The Pickpocket- Andy

I was only acting in this film although I was able to pitch in ideas for example what angle to take the shot from and a couple of ideas for narrative. I do feel we made a good first film. It is a fairly simple piece, but with the time we were given to prepare I think we did well. We decided for this film we would put more emphasis into style instead of substance. Not trying to tackle any of the deeper subjects, while not going into comedy. We wanted to play with the conventions of a spy thriller. So we used iconic mise-en-scène features, for example the thief using a newspaper to block his face. We used a lot of extreme close ups of the thief’s eyes carefully watching the victim. We also made it black and white which gave the film a noir like effect. The way we edited the film was to increase tension. Using shot reverse shot the cuts getting quicker each time until the swap of the phone.

Because of the location we chose to film at we had difficulty with lighting. Surprisingly we didn’t have many issues with recording sound. As the location was a relatively busy café In relation to where we decided to shoot. There was a light which would change to and throw. This is why made the film black and white in the edit. The film was easier to edit because we weren’t allowed to use dialogue as we couldn’t stumble over any lines from different takes  not matching up. Narrative wise it was also useful as it stopped us from getting distracted with character development, so we could just focus on what the characters were doing at that precise time.

Week 1 (Sam)

For our 1st week project, we went with the idea of the Pickpocket. In our group discussion of our concept, we wanted something a bit more interesting, and ambiguous than a straight forward Crime, and victim. Thus between us, we developed the idea of a phone being stolen, but being replaced with one looking identical, with an unknown number ringing the caller. This doesn't simply suggest a crime, but something much, much bigger of a far more complex, and possibly sinister idea. I was the director of the piece, and thought our choice of shots to show our actor (Ryan) pseudo-stalking his pray through various shots, and looking fairly mundane at first were quite visually interesting, and did help build tension, and create enigma coding of who he was, and why he did what he did, which really helped me as a Director, get the most out of my actors.


Our choice of shots were mostly Long shots to establish with, with a few mid-shots, and then mostly close-ups, to show Andy's confusion, and Ryan's intentions. We chose to film in the Art Centre Cafe, as we felt it had a far different atmosphere than most other places on campus. However in Editing we found the lighting was far too warm, exuberant, bright, and cozy for our idea, and the atmosphere we were going for, so we changed it to Black and White in editing, and sharpened the contract to make a bolder image. We also added ambient sound we found on the internet, as we suffered some problems with our camera's audio recording capabilities. Overall in review, we were quite happy with our piece, and found it was quite creative, quite well-made, other than a few camera shots, we couldn't really think of much we'd have changed in hindsight, and felt feedback was mostly positive.

Mise-en-scene Drink Ad

For week two of filming we concentrated on Mise-en-scene, for this the choice was made to make an Ad we decided to make an Ad for a drinks company as we felt that the drinks cans were ideal props to be used. In hindsight this project required more effort than first thought and was probably too ambitious for only week two as we came up with the idea on that day as our original script writer was absent so overall the film was a bit rushed. Although within the filming of the Ad we all had specific roles and worked well in the limited time. My role this week was sound, however we all had a say in each part of the filming process to ensure it was of a high enough standard. We concentrated carefully on how the shots were taken and had to re film several integral parts due to the sound quality. This was because we filmed it in a busy corridor where the vending machines are situated so we had a lot of nondiegetic sound. We filmed the actor opening the can of drink on a close up shot with the microphone very close to the can to create our own sound effect of the pop and fizzing sound a drinks can makes when opened. I chose to do this as it enhanced the message of the film and the opening of a can is a well know sound and even if you weren’t watch the film and just heard that sound you would know what it was about. We didn’t have any other soundtrack to the Ad as it wasn’t needed the only other sound was the Diegetic sound of conversation between the actors. However again due to the busy corridor we had to re films certain scene and I had to play around with were to place the microphone this was due to the obscure angles of where the actors were. Within the filming I felt I learnt a lot more about sound and what was involved as we had to deal with external stimuli. Even though the sound of the finished product wasn’t perfect and in several places it was to quiet and could have been stronger I felt I learnt a lot. Such as placing the microphone in the right place, whether it is to quite or loud on the audio and how to set up.

The Pickpocket

Our first group project has been to make a silent film, based on one of three different stimuli.

They were:

1. Pickpocket

2. Late again

3. The chase

We decided to use the pickpocket stimulus for our short film, but instead of making a film just about the pickpocket taking a item we decided to use the pickpocketing as a part of a story where an phone was replaced by the pickpocket.

The film posed a challenge to us, as we were unable to use dialogue we had to convay the story using just the camera work, lighting and mise-en-sene. The directing roll was taken by Sam Thorne, cinematographer was Daniel Middleton. and Andy Nuvoletta and I took up the two acting rolls in the film.

Editing went smoothly, as we cut the film together we used all of the clips we had recorded to give the film the best chance of looking good and telling a compelling story.