STUDIO STORM

weekly short films and behind the scenes adventures

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Him - the making of

The haps and mishaps of filming our final film:

Maja (writer) -  For our final film, I took the role of the screenwriter. I felt a strong sense of responsibility due to the fact that not only this was our final film, but also my idea, so I wanted to write a story that would catch the feelings of viewers and evoke powerful emotions. My initial concept has its root in the first short screenplay that I wrote at the beginning of the first year when the task was to write 3 different premises. One of them was telling a story of a boy who reflects on his memories with his beloved person and the paralyzing fear of losing them. In the first draft, I was planning to use a window shot of a boy sitting by the window as a backbone of the visual storytelling and the quick cuts of memories as the story progresses. When I came back to that idea for our final film I wanted to develop it further, adding more depth to the relationship. One of my favorite films is Her directed by Spike Zone, which received an Oscar for the best screenplay. I was amazed by the raw emotions portrayed by the main character played by Joaquin Phoenix, the sense of loneliness, longing for love, and comfort in the world ruled by advanced technology. The concept of a person falling for an AI system, destined for a tragic ending inspired me to explore a more unconventional way of showing the relationship of my characters. At that time I was reading a lot of articles about psychology and mental health problems, including schizophrenia. Thus, I came up with an idea about the character struggling with such illness and developing a guardian, a person of comfort and love as a coping mechanism. I wrote a script trying to embody the characters, their emotions, bond, and incorporate the sense of Tom’s melancholia, loneliness, anxiety but also calmness and comfort from Sol’s character. The recurring medication shots foreshadowed the issue, slowly revealing as the film progressed. Tom did a brilliant job portraying the character, his emptiness and fear of losing control, his anchor which was the soothing presence of Sol. I wasn’t able to participate in the filming process but the rest of the team ensured to create beautiful footage, as close to my vision as possible. The climax scene with the lighthouse created a powerful effect which revealed that Sol was only a project of imagination due to Tom’s illness. I was honored to find out that my script won the best script for the final films, which encouraged me to believe in my ideas more and to dive into the world of scriptwriting deeper. I am proud of my team members, Hollie, Sabine, Tom, and Sol for making my vision come true and to trust me with creating it. They did an excellent job and I hope that we will continue to make even better films in the future.

Tom (director) - Going into the final film, I once again took the role of the director. A role I enjoy and realise and appreciate how hard it can be.  We all initially had the first problem of thinking of an idea for a film. Each week throughout the module it was easier, as we were given a theme and task, therefore knew what we were required to do. Having roam for an idea made the beginning of the creation harder, from the pressure of wanting an audience to like it and understand the narrative. The idea of the protagonist seeing someone that no one else could came quite early on during one of our meetings and we all really liked it. It then followed with the refusal of medication being the reason he sees the other person. A coping mechanism almost. When the idea was thought of, I thought of a music video I had previously seen, Twenty-One Pilots - My Blood. There was a specific shot that I remember seeing, which I immediately wanted to recreate in our own way. (See Below)

This shot really stood out to me, it was exactly the way I thought we should reveal that man the protagonist communicates with, has been imaginary the whole time. It was powerful and unique to reveal the relationship being caused through mental illness.  Maja went on to create the script. She had put a lot of thought and emotion into the script which you could tell from the lexical choices and sentence structure. Language is extremely useful in helping portray the emotion and character development throughout the film. Her idea of what the story should be really came through. It was strong, well-written and focused.   Hollie got straight to work and created the shot-list, as director and the scene breakdown, so we all knew what we were focused on the day. On the day of shooting, we did run into some problems. Our camera did not fit on to the tripod we were using and unfortunately it was quite busy at the castle location where we were filming, therefore there was a lot of noise from other people. Fortunately, Sol managed to cover it up with several different seagull sounds, which fit the environment. In total truth, we did not keep to the lines from the script and improvised on the day, we simply became too focused on the issues which had arisen, that we ended up essentially using it as a baseline. Another problem occurred when we arrived at the lighthouse to shoot the final scene. We can across a man who was fishing and of course did not want to disturb him, so had to wait for the area to be clear, in order to get the shot, I was desperate to get. Furthermore, we did not manage get all the shots we had intended. We kept a close eye on what we had from Hollie and her well-presented storyboard/shot-list and could not have achieved what we did without Sabine’s planning and the final shot which she filmed perfectly, which was vital to the narrative structure. Within Sol’s edit he found an issue with the time allocation. Again, like week two, footage had to be removed to reduce the film to just over five minutes. We ended up with a few versions of the film and managed to get it to a point which everyone was happy with. I can not stress enough of how proud I am of everyone and what we achieved. I feel as though my skills has developed mostly with editing, directing and cinematography. Cinematography is definitely the role within film production which excited me the most, hence why lighting and specific desires for shots became more apparent by this final film.  

Sabine (producer) - For our final film of the year, I took on the role of the producer.  Considering that half of the group were coming back to Aber only after the Easter break, which gave us less than two weeks to shoot and edit, it was very important do all the pre-production work on time and have everything planned for the filming days. We had a meeting each week where we discussed any new ideas or concerns and set deadlines for when the risk assessment, script, storyboard, scene breakdown and shot list had to be done. These weekly meetings also ensured that everyone was involved and felt included, as Maja could not join us when filming because she was in Poland. On filming days, we called Maja when we needed advice or just to update her on our adventures. On filming days I also brought snacks to keep high morale (it worked!).

Before our meetings, I wrote down key points that needed to be discussed that day, as well as worked on a schedule:

I also took on the role of the cameraman for most of the filming, while following Hollie's amazing storyboards and shot list. I think the switch between stable footage and handheld works as a good indicator of the decline in the character's well-being.  

As for the locations, we wanted something that bridges the gap between realistic and surreal - the beach, pier and castle ruins seemed to have the perfect atmosphere for that. The same atmosphere went for the characters, the relationship of the main characters is a mix of the narrator and Tyler Durden's relationship in Fincher's Fight Club (1999) and Alan and Christopher's relationship in Tyldum's The Imitation Game (2014). A mix of an alter ego and a comforting person.

During these weeks we have grown closer as a team, this has allowed us to not be afraid to speak our mind about any changes we want made during the production and makes conflict resolution easier, because we can talk to each other as friends and not just teammates. There were disagreements during the production about the direction the story should take and later about costume design, but they were resolved calmly and with compromise. I think we all understood the importance of pre-production, planning and the finer details of filmmaking throughout this semester. It was very exciting to be able to film together and that excitement made us work even harder to achieve the best performances and shots we could. Everyone did an amazing job during all stages of production.

Hollie (cinematographer) – For the final film I took on the role of the cinematographer. For the most part I think this was quite a challenging role to take on for the final film and I felt like there were huge shoes to fill, as our group has made quite a few films that have very strong visual aesthetics!  

The idea for our final film came from Maja. She came up with a really good narrative and as a group we all thought we could build on this and use it to our advantage. Due to the storyline being really strong I knew that the visuals needed to match that. So as a group we started looking at different shots we liked. One shot that we really wanted to include in our film came from Tom.  

The shot that he wanted to include in our final film was taken from the ‘My Blood’ music video by Twenty-One Pilots between 3.10 and 3.21. When we saw this shot, we thought it would work well with our film and we knew as a group we wanted to include it. To include this shot it was suggested that we could use it for the final scene. As shown in the shot list.  

Another aspect of my role was to create the storyboards. However, my artistic skills aren’t too great and so I needed to come up with a plan to make the storyboards. And so that is when I decided to make the storyboards in PowerPoint. To do this I went online, and I found various cartoons which I thought could work well as backgrounds and/or characters for my storyboards. Then with all of my artistic skills I created a PowerPoint version of a storyboard. Below is an example of what they looked like! (not my best work, but definitely not my worst)  

Overall, I think the film turned out well, and I believe we got some stunning shots whilst filming. I don’t think we would’ve been able to get a lot of these shots if it weren’t for Sabine’s planning and scheduling of our film. Whilst working on the edit Solomon had to cut some scenes out as we simply did not have enough time to include everything. But overall, I think he did a great job.

Solomon (editor) - At the conclusion of this module, I took on the role that both me and my group saw as my strength: Editing. Taking on the leading role in post-production, with the assistance of the director, I created a final cut of the film from the footage we had filmed prior (of which I had also acted in). This enabled a few days after shooting for the film to be correctly cut together and tell the overall story visually, and through audio that I refined and added in afterwards. One difficulty that I faced was the sound editing, when regarding the conditions that we filmed in. In the end scene, there was a large amount of wind and noise disturbing the dialogue that made the cut look untidy and hard to hear. Therefore, I instead took the initiative in Post-production to dub the voices of the actors over the film, especially the final scene by the lighthouse, to get a cleaner and more effective cut. Furthermore, there was more trouble I had in editing regarding background noise. In the scenes on the park bench there was a lot of interference with public noise as it was a busy day. This is resulted in all the shots in this scene being eroded by the noise of people in the background. Some shots were also ruined by children coming in to shot directly behind the shooting. To resolve this, I used both the technique of cutting between different shots to cut out unwanted or spoiled parts and used the stock sound of seagulls to drown out some of the background noise, also combining this with a De-Noise effect on Premiere Pro.  Considering the difficulties I faced further, I also found it challenging to re-create the plot to the precision depicted in the script or initial vision due to the improvised way that we filmed it. When it came to the shooting of the film, we found that the tripod was functioning as it should and so had to film most of the film hand-held, which resulted in a large amount of improvisation with new shot types and therefore new aspects to the script. Since we had to film handheld, this resulted in me having to use stabilizer effects on Premiere Pro in post-production. After much experimentation with this, the film’s overall look resulted on me deciding to use the stabilizers on some shots, yet also leave the natural shaky look on other shots where the stabilizers did not necessarily work. I personally think that the editing stages of the film were successful and bought the film to life, despite the factors regarding environment that interfered. I think that the editing also enhanced the performance of the acting as I was able to cut and change about the stages of the film to make the plot flow and the acting become enhanced further with the use of multiple shots spliced into one, and the overlay of external stock sounds that I believe bring the film an atmosphere that would not be as effective without. Overall, I think that this contributed to the end result of the film and is what made our final film a success. 

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FINAL FILM - HIM

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The day has finally come! We got to get together and film together as the Covid situation in Aber improved! We had a lot of fun filming this and hope that you will enjoy watching it. Stay tuned for our final film of the year tomorrow!!

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The counsellor - making of

Behind the scenes!

Solomon (wrier/actor) -  Within our film ‘The Counsellor’, I took on the role as both writer and actor. Taking inspirations from The Office (2005-2013), I decided to explore the idea of British Social realism in a similar way that both the British and American versions of The Office exhibit storytelling through the form of interview.  This includes the camera being on an individual who maybe answers question (whether those questions are asked on or off screen) or explain about certain aspects of their life/ situation that drives the plot of the story. From this, I came up with the initial idea to introduce the idea of an interview with two friends that had fallen out about something. This idea developed into a counsellor asking two siblings about an incident that had happened between them, yet with the instigation of the counsellor actually making the issue worse between the two people. I wrote this into the script, introducing suspense by carefully constructing the language and dialogue between the characters and the counsellor to make it hard for the audience to know whose point of view to believe. This enabled the exaggeration of the aspect of the film that emphasises that it is the councillor who is not being helpful and is, if anything, just antagonizing the situation further. I think this made the film both tense and also entertaining as it was something the audience had to work out as the film went on and left it down to the individuals.

Hollie (cinematographer) – This week I was the cinematographer, I found the brief for this film incredibly difficult, this is due to the fact that British Social Realism (BSR) can be really tough to get right. As a group we decided to base our film around the theme of abuse and in particular about a counsellor who interferes. In this case we chose to base it around a situation that has occurred between two siblings. Due to this topic being quite heavy and gritty, I knew we had to get the shots right or there was the possibility of the film not working out how we would want it to.  

With regards to the types of shots we wanted to use, I decided to keep it fairly simple and mainly used medium close ups and a couple of close ups here and there to show the nervousness and various emotions we wanted the characters to amplify and get across in our film. As a group we took inspiration from the television series ‘The Office’.  From ‘The Office’ It was shots like the one below that I took inspiration from.

Below is part of the shot list I made. This particular part was for the first scene and so was very important in setting the mood and tone for the rest of the film.  

Overall, I think this week’s film turned out really well, despite my worries about the topic. The footage that my group took looked phenomenal and worked so well. I think having a well written script helped us a lot too this week, along with the strong edit from Tom.

Sabine (director) - This week's theme was British social realism, which focuses on realistic, relatable characters and moments, it explores themes like poverty, abuse, domesticity, marginalization. We wanted to do something similar to The Office (2005-2013) – a documentary/interview style film. Humour was something that had to be taken out of the equation as we didn't want it to appear like we were mocking the serious theme of domestic abuse and provocative counsellors. Since we were filming in different locations, the film had to be in black & white to make it seem like everyone was in the same counsellor's office. The set design and shot structure was rather simple, so a storyboard was not needed and we could film using just Hollie's shot list and Sol's script. The unease and uncomfortable atmosphere is something that we had to convey and, after a feedback session, we decided that that could be done in editing by using silent pauses after sentences. Tom did a great job at putting across the uncomfortable feelings of characters in the edit. Although the film was supposed to be around 2 minutes, it wanted to be longer – the final edit ended up being almost 4 minutes, but it was needed to tell the entire story and not lose the emotion and unease.

Maja (producer) -  This week I took the role of producer and actress.  The challenge with the film was to create the impression of family therapy, without actually being together in the same room. Tom pre-recorded a voice over and then Sol and I recorded our parts reacting to it as if we were on an actual session. Because of the 3 step recording, we had to plan everything so that we have enough time for possible mistakes and corrections. Despite the tight schedule we managed to do all the recording according to plan within 3 days, allowing Tom to edit for a longer amount of time which resulted in a well-put film, he did a good job. I think that after all we managed to pull it off to create a strong impact of the serious matter being family abuse.

Tom (editor) -  This week I had the chance to develop my editing skills again. However, I was also the voice over for the counsellor. My first idea was that I wanted to get the voice over and the film to look like I was there and be believable. I attempted by recording it first and adding it later. I found the outcome not to be as fluid as I wanted, so reviewed it and attempted again by watching everyone’s footage and using that to record. This made it more realistic. As a group we all made the decision for the film to be in black and white, and we felt this made the film feel more like a counsel session. Evoking the sense of a counselling session being simple truth or lie. I finished the first edit, and it was over five minutes long and I knew I had a challenge. So, I reviewed the edit again and picked the parts that worked well with the mood we had created. We aimed to make Sol’s character be portrayed as if he was lying, and the counsellor look like he was stirring the pot with Maja’s character to feel helpless and isolated. I think we really brought this to film, and it worked well. The only issue with the film was the time length being over three minutes. Despite this, overall, I was happy with what we had created. Maja and Sol’s acting was excellent, and I was happy with this. I think if the acting was less believable, the film would not have achieved the same mood. The script was also strong, and that really helped in the filming.  

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This week's film - The Counsellor

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Hiraeth yn taro - making of

Check out the processes of inspiration and attempts at originality:

Tom (producer) - This week I was the producer. This meant my job was to sort out the shot-list and construct an idea of the shots I wanted the cinematographer to obtain. We really favoured the idea of Maja trying to get inspiration for a painting, which she could not quite finish. As stock footage was a key element, we aimed to get footage of all different kinds of landscapes. This was a little easier than previous tasks because we did not have to capture the footage by filming it. We came to the idea of incorporating shots of the real world and using them for inspiration. Sabine’s editing was what strung it all together and made the film look brilliant. Maja brought the shots to the table and the film achieved what I had envisioned when I first did the shot-list. The music was also added by Sabine and was a real addition to the film, adding a more emotional sensation. 

Solomon (director) - I took on the role of director within this week’s filming, steering the piece into a direction that I thought worked effectively in regard to the assigned task of creating montage. From designated examples given, I took inspiration of what montage should be, stemming down to the clear understanding that for a montage to work, the shots within have to relate to each other.  As a result, alongside the writer and cinematographer, I constructed a plot that would make the film flow, yet also not appear to just be a jumble of shots with no real links or purpose. In my opinion it was not just about the shots themselves however, it was how they were edited with each other that would move the story along and create the desired effect. After doing this refinement with the writer, to describe how the character uses her imagination whilst painting to create the visual montage, cinematographer to create the idea of how we could do this through shots and make it show her thought process whilst painting within the story. We thus decided to go with the idea of shots of other art inspiration, such as the Mona Lisa, and the crowds this art attracts, in juxtaposition with the notion of nature that was illustrated with shots of the ‘beauty of the outdoors’. This made the film flow in a better way to the initial thought of montage, which is merely just a jumble of shots. I thought this made it more successful by adding a storyline to it.  

Hollie (writer) -This week I took on the role of the writer, I quite liked the idea we came up with for this week’s film. As a group we decided to go along the path of inspiration and/or originality and how hard it is for people to be original in today’s society.  

We chose this topic as we felt the theme of it is different. The main thing that stuck with me when writing this script is ‘Inspiration strikes when you least expect it to’, I tried to show this in the script by writing the montages in some form, the beauty of nature and the busy hustle and bustle of the city. Whilst writing this particular script I enjoyed the freedom and endless possibilities I had with it. This is because as I knew we could get stock footage from the internet. Below is part of the script I wrote. 

   Whilst looking for secondary footage, I used a website called Pexels. The footage they had on this website was pretty good, and there was a wide range of stuff to choose from, all of this footage was free to download and also free to use.  With this film the storyline really came together during the edit and we have Sabine to thank for that. The footage Maja took and the secondary footage that was used really complimented each other. Overall, I believe that without both Maja and Sabines performance I think this film would’ve turned out very differently! I really loved the outcome of this film!  

Maja (cinematographer/actress) -  For this week’s film, I took the role of cinematographer and actress.  The lead theme was about finding the inspiration, creative process of painting, and pressure of being original. As a painter myself, I wanted to show that inspiration could be trigger by various, seemingly not connected things at first glance but with a closer look, everything falls into place. Because I had to record everything at home without the right lighting I struggled to make it the way I wanted it to look. I managed eventually achieve lighting emphasizing shapes and creating strong shadows which suited well the concept of the artist’s studio. Sabine put the stock footage perfectly showing shots of wild nature, empty art galleries, and monotone footage of cars and factories. It was all complemented by classical music which I often listen to when I paint.

Sabine (editor) - This week I was back in the editing chair and I was excited to edit this film. I got a lot of freedom with how the story plays out because the order of the secondary footage was my responsibility. We all found some great footage on Pexels (thanks to Hollie's suggestion) and I got to play around with the order and the meaning of each of them. I especially liked the drone shot of cars, coupled with the shot of walking through a grim corridor full of paintings and people taking photos of the Mona Lisa painting. I think it’s quite a clever way to talk about originality and constraints and pressure that capitalism may put on artists.

As for the music, we decided to go with classical music. Since there was a shot of Maja putting her headphones in, I could change the channels and volume of the song to make it appear as diegetic sound that the character hears. We decided to cut all the sound from the secondary footage and use foley sounds of brushed against canvas, so it would seem that the footage is in the character’s head. I found a great website – Free Music Archive, which has thousands of songs under the Creative Commons (CC) licenses and (most of them) are free to use if the original artist is credited. The website allows to search music by genre and reminds about the type of CC license each song has before downloading. This allowed me to research copyright laws and all the CC license types and understand what changes and distribution rights each of them allow.

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This week's film - Hiraeth yn taro

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Reading week is over and we are back from our filming break! We’re bringing you inspiration and abstraction in the form of a dialectical montage this week. Stay tuned!

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Cacophony - making of

Read behind the curtains:

Maja (writer) - This week I took the role of a writer. The overall idea was to play with the flexibility of sound. I wrote a script, telling the story of the day in the life of Sabine waking up to discover that every move that she makes has unexpected noise, completely deviating from the original sound. Sabine slowly finds her way through another reality with gripping panic. The serious situation is bending with comedic effects of a rude toaster or screaming milk. I struggled with concluding the story as I felt that it needs more rounding up but in the end, but I think it didn’t turn out bad. I enjoyed writing the script and getting creative with the vision of the emotions and reactions of the character.

Tom (director) - This week I was the director. I was firm but fair. At the beginning I made sure everyone knew when what we needed and deadlines for when we needed it for. Maja started by doing the script which I read over, and I loved it. She has such a skill in this department, which as a group we know we will consider for our final film. I took Sabine the camera so she could get the aesthetic shots with Maja’s DSLR and we begin to film. Sabine got some extremely visually pleasing shots, which gave Sol a variety of footage to work with for editing. I enjoyed the process, and it was nice to have the first draft so we could see what direction he was going with and review it. The sounds needing to sync up with the footage was challenging for Sol, but he did a great job in fitting them together. I was also very proud of my milk scream. Hollie helped in giving ideas for what the film should look like and we all came together to decide which shots stayed in the film and what got removed. Overall, I think we did a great job, and I thought the shots, script and editing were strong show of our skills as a group.

Sabine (cinematographer/actress) - This week I undertook the role of the cinematographer because, as the actress, it was easier to imagine what the shots would look like, since we filmed in my flat. After reading through Maja's script, I sketched up a storyboard. I don't have a graphic tablet or anything to draw digitally on, so I took good ol' pen and paper and, although the storyboard turned out quite ugly, it gave me the general idea of how I wanted the shots to look. There is a mixture of close-ups and medium long shots so we could experiment with the sound intensity a bit in editing. The framing of some shots is also a bit unusual to emphasise the absurdity and oddness of the situation.

The filming process was fun, albeit quite stressful. My flat mate was happy to help out, so I directed him as a cameraman and went over all the shots and their sizes, and framing. I'm glad I had Maja's Canon DSLR and we could get better quality and control over the shots than if we had filmed on an iPhone. The lack of a tripod resulted in sometimes slightly strange framing and balancing the camera on a milk carton, but I suppose that's what filmmaking is about – finding ways to solve problems and putting your camera in unusual places.

Hollie (producer) – This week, I once again took on the role of the producer. Our film for the week relied heavily on the non-diegetic sounds and the synchronisation of those sounds to the picture on screen, for this task it was essential for the group to be organised and know what needed to be done and by when. The schedule for everyone was quite tight as the script needed to be done by Saturday, and then the filming needed to be finished by Monday night ready for Solomon to start the tedious edit. Along with the scheduling I was also responsible for creating the sound list for the week, the easiest way for me to do this so everyone knew which sounds were replacing what was by creating a table showing each one. This is part of the sound table I created, we decided to use a mix of foley sounds that we created and sourced sounds from the internet. One sourced sound we used was the air raid siren.

Despite having done a sound list I think we could’ve included more sounds and concluded the film better, one way we planned to do this was by showing it was a dream, but we decided this was too cliche. Overall, I thought the footage Sabine took was really strong and the edit came together nicely.

Solomon (editor) - Within this week of filmmaking, I took on the role of editing. The importance of this week’s film was the precision of sound usage, using externally made sound from the video tracks, in order to emphasise a clearer and thus more immersive film. Usually, we would have to use a TASCAM to obtain a clear enough sound for the filming, but due to the lack of obtainable equipment, I used my phone to externally create foley sounds, and stock audio to introduce ambience to the film too. The important part of linking this video to the external foley sound obtained, was the time I spent syncing together the sounds so that the audio matched the video. For example, when our actor was boiling the kettle, I would add the kettle external boiling sound over the clip, or when she was brushing her teeth, I synced the brushing in the video with the brushing sounds in the audio.  

The plot of our film was that our main character was finding difficulty in hearing properly but was instead hearing odd sounds, such as a screaming milk or a swearing toaster. With each of these, I had to sync the sounds made to the video at precise times so that the items themselves were given character and personality. For example, I synced the milk screaming only when the main character removed the lid off the milk, using reverb and echo on Adobe Premiere Pro and Audition to create the illusion of the milk itself screaming from inside the carton. I also added a muffling effect for when the lead takes a sip from the milk in order to give the milk a comedic effect and thus more personality. I personally think that this particular scene was the most effective throughout the film.  

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PERSONA - making of

Delve into the depths of our creation:

Hollie (director/writer) –

This week I took on the role of the director and also the role of the writer. As the director it was my job to make sure the narrative of the film was fluent and could be somewhat understood throughout the course of the film. This week we had to imitate a clip from Ingmar Bergmans film ‘Persona’ (1966). For this we decided that we didn’t want to use dialogue in our film, and instead we wanted to use non-diegetic sounds to set the tone. I think making a film without dialogue is quite a challenging task. 

 I was also allocated the role of the script writer as I wanted to challenge myself. I found it rather difficult to create a script without including any dialogue. I had to take into consideration the wording of my script, so it didn’t sound like I was directing my script by telling the cinematographer the camera angles we should use. To get around this, I tried to describe what was happening without forcing the emotions onto the actor and camera angles onto the cinematographer. Below is an Example 

  Overall, I think the film came together nicely, the shots Tom took were absolutely stunning and I was extremely happy with the outcome of this film and the aesthetic Maja created with the shots. 

Sabine (producer) - This week it was my task to organise the team and schedule our work, keep everyone on track. Tom was this week's delegated actor, because he had the best lighting, which was this week's main focus. Hollie's script and Maja's storyboards were essential for the production process to go smoothly, and to make our work even more efficient, in addition I created a shot list to help Tom stay on track with all the shots he needed to film and for Solomon to have another type of outline for the edit. Each week we get better at communicating and working together, making all processes of production more and more efficient. Our work was well organised - all pre-production work was done throughout the weekend, so Tom could do all the filming on Monday, which gave Solomon enough time to edit and perfect the final version after considering our feedback.

I think most of our shots turned out the way we imagined them and everyone did a great job. In future films we should think more about mise-en-scène, because some shots had items in the background that took away immersion from the uneasy, abstract tone of the film, like this one

Maja (cinematographer) -  For this week's film, I was responsible for cinematography. Persona was heavily influenced by the scene from Bergman’s film with the same title, specifically the interrogation scene. It is characterized by powerful, dramatic lighting which emphasizes body features and creates an intimidating atmosphere. We decided that we will change the plot focusing on the story about the abuse in the household. In terms of aesthetic, I wanted it to be as close to the original. I drew storyboards creating a sense of light that could help during filming.  Tom used a very strong source of light to achieve the effect seen in the film, as well as filler lights to soften certain parts. Using storyboards we achieved a consistent and fluent story visually with a lack of any dialog that has a powerful impact on the viewer.

Tom (actor) -  Persona this week meant It was my turn to get the shots. I was anxious as the most important element of this was the lighting. Luckily, I own two Elgato desk lights which enabled me to closely imitate the shots needed. Although this was not an easy task.The difficult problem I found was lighting the back wall and myself without lighting making my whole face visible. We began using the two desk lights behind me and then two smaller lights in front of my face. However, this was frustrating as my face was still not darkening. So, I attempted again with one desk light on facing upwards, behind me and then one for my face. This finally worked, although I wish I had larger room to experiment with more. Throughout this week, I have found a new love for lighting. This exercise has really shown me how important light is within shots and how it can completely change the way a film is portrayed. This has been my favourite film so far.

Solomon (editor) - Within this week, I took on the role of editor, using my skills on Adobe Premiere Pro to montage together the shots of the film. A vital aspect of the editing this week was to imitate the cutting between shots in the same way that Ingmar Bergman establishes in his film Persona.

My role within the film was to cut the shots together in a smooth way that resembled that of Bergman’s film. This meant cutting between shot-reverse-shot regularly, as well as fixing any issues such as blur or noise in the post-production too. Another job in my post-production period of this film was to transform the film into monochrome by dictating saturation and exposure on Premiere, in order to imitate the lighting and colouring in the original.  

I also had to create a soundscape in post-production, an originality that came about in our own film that was not imitated from Bergman’s. Taking inspiration from the German expressionism movement, and the juxtaposition between picture and sound in films such as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920), I created an expressionist soundtrack, that used both ambient drones and foley sounds to emphasise and exaggerate both the story and the feeling of discomfort within the audience. One particular part of this was the recording of foley sounds, such as whispering and parakeet birds chattering, both of which I edited in post-production using reverb and reversing them, in order to create an entirely different use of sound. I layered these together and the result was effective, giving our imitation of Persona a greater horror-theme and also adding to the use of expressionism used throughout too. In my opinion, I think the sound was what made the shots come to life, increasing in volume and pitch and cutting out sharply at intense bits, such as the male character hitting the female character.

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This week’s film sure will be an interesting one. Here’s some premium content -an out of context snippet of the script and our makeshift tripod.

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New short film today! Can you tell what film we’re imitating?  👀

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The Encounter - making of

Read about the adventures and thoughts behind the scenes here!

Maja (director) -  This week I took the role of director. With the story about catfishing, we were trying to make this look as believable as possible giving the terms of not being physically together. Given the fact that both Tom and Sol are big Star Wars fans, we decided to tell a story with a pinch of parody that films that you prefer might depend on future friendship. Together with the cinematographer, we created a vision of shots and how to execute them most effectively. We focused heavily on visual facial expressions and showing mixed emotions of actors. With this week's theme being mise-en-scène I tried to emphasize the personalities and preferences of characters by quick shots of the decorations in their rooms. The flow of the film was created by using continuous Star Wars scenes playing in the background in both rooms.

Here are some stills from the finished film that display the characters’ personalities and likes, showing that they’re not at all different.

Sabine (writer) - As much as I'm not the biggest fan of writing scripts, this was a fun one. It is about a harmless way of catfishing – trying to look cooler than you are and losing a chance at a friendship because of that. After a feedback session with our professors, we had to raise the stakes for the characters. We decided an embarrassing picture being sent to the wrong person would do the trick. It was definitely hard to condense all the ideas and possibilities into a 2-minute film, so it turned out to be a bit longer. I also had some problems figuring out the natural flow of the dialogue and for the characters' messages to make sense in the film's context, but Tom tweaked the dialogue in editing, and I think it works great now. We built the story together on a video call while sharing ideas and I decided it would be a fun script to write. I used a free screenwriting program called Trelby to write the script. It automatically sets the correct font and format, has a name database, in case you can't come up with a character name and makes scene/location/character reports, that can be handy for longer scripts. I definitely recommend it for writing scripts.

Here’s a bit of the script I wrote on Trelby. We changed gaming to Star Wars as the background sound. The original dialogue can also be seen here.

Hollie (cinematographer) – This week I took on the role of the cinematographer, I found it quite difficult as it was a mise-en-scène task and I didn’t know the layout of the rooms that the filming was taking place in, to get around this I ended up creating a normal shot list with added detail of what I wanted each shot to have in it and why. I quite enjoyed having the freedom to create the aesthetic and tone of the film and I think the footage that was taken was exactly what I wanted. With the shot list, I went down the coverage route and so decided for each scene a master shot needed to be taken, this worked well as it gave Tom more options when it came to the edit. I took inspiration from films and programmes that use the coverage method as it is the safest method to use during production. An example of this is Game of Thrones (2011). Below is an example of my shot list. I really liked the way the match shots taken by each person came together well and the similar shots that were taken made the edit more fluent. Overall, I was really happy with the visuals of this film and the way they came together.

Tom (editor) - This week was my turn to do the editing. I was nervous because of the insane job Sabine had done the week before. The idea was an encounter with two people over text message. Both pretending to not like nerdy things in order to fit in. The biggest challenge for me was the text messages that had to pop up. Each one must dissolve in, and I had to match it with the film footage to make it look like it was being sent while the message showed up on screen. I wish we had more time for the film. We had several lovely shots to use but I had to cut them out to try and get down to 2 minutes. I still did not achieve this with our film being 2:52. My Bad! I tried guys! At the end we wanted an ‘OMG’ moment where Sol lets slip that he is a nerd and I managed to do this by sliding in an image of Sol in a Tusken Raider mask. The edit was constructed nicely because of the script and the shot list that was provided! Thank you guys!! And we went through the film and changed some things and ended with the 3rd edited version!  

Solomon (producer) - I took on the role of producing within this week’s film, organising the team to know what to do and when. I created a schedule and helped each one of them stick to it by giving them specific dates and timings for when certain things needed to be done for and helping them to do those things whilst staying within the risk assessment.  

Within the film, I instructed the actors to get all their shooting done in the mornings (working with the cinematographer and director), in order to keep a continuity in lighting and surroundings. Concerning the scheduling for the edit, the first draft had to be done at the latest by Wednesday, so that alterations and a final cut can be created.  

Regarding the organization of the script, we made some alterations during filming, changing the ending a more of an extremity, and enabling the audience to understand further the true similarity of the two characters, yet their insecure stubbornness also.

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A little teaser for this week’s film