George Brabham: Creative Media Production and Tech

Creative Media Production and Technology

[georgebrabham]

British Cinema week 2

Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank 2009)

Short films:

Milk (1998)

Dog (2001)

Wasp (2003)

Feature films:

Red road (2006) Cannes Jury Prize

Fish Tank (2009) Cannes Jury Prize

Wuthering heights (2011)

American Honey (2016) Cannes Jury Prize

Key themes:

Female subjectivity

Sexuality

Social realism

Diversity/multiplicity

Gender

Class

Sexual identity

'Gender Problems' book

'Disipline and Punish' book

[georgebrabham]

Melodrama

Genre and audiences

Origins from Greek music and drama

Developed through the 18th and 19th century

Musical performances

Sensational stage plays

Sensational literature

Strong emotional reaction

Often adopted from Victorian and vaudeville incarnations

Seriealist narrative

Women under threat

Perils of exterior

Greedy Villan, either sexually or financially

Rescued by a hero

Female genre

Often orchestrated around domestic spaces

Structured around emotion rather than action

'feelings'

Domestic setting

Passive, suffering characters, trapped

Marxist & Feminist

Middle class nuclear family because the focus of Hollywoods 1950s melodrama

Mary Ann Diane: the Desire to Desire

Female representation and spectatorship

1930s to 1940s female melodrama

Christopher Strong (Dorothy Arzner, 1933)

Stella Dallas (King Visor, 1937)

Now Voyager (Irving rapper 1947)

Love story - denial of desire

Material melodrama - loss

Medical melodrama - control

[georgebrabham]

Sound workshop

302 field recordings kit

633 mixer field kit

Tascam mixer

Yogurt project (use yogurt to make a sound)

Senhiser AKG 416 shotgun mic (hyper cardioid, tube pattern,best mic)

Senhiser k6 (bass mic)

Lip mic (no phantom)

Rode NT4 stereo mic (atmos)

AKG C1000S (cardiord (heart shape pattern), custom stereo, ask for Mic T bar, used for choir)

AT8 04 reporter mic (sturdy)

AKG 414 (studio, voice over mic, can be used to record figure of 8 pattern)

DPA mic (really nice radio mic)

Swit mix battery

Sankan COS-11D PT radio mic

[georgebrabham]

Project Planning

So it’s been a month or so, don’t fear, I have actually been doing work, but me and my infinite wisdom decided to focus more on the project than the blogging until the final two days of the project, so forgive the delay and forgive if some posts are a bit out of sync, but I can assure you everything will be posted.

I digress, So after looking at possibilities for my 2nd idea I began plotting idea in my head and then into my scrap book for good measure.

The idea that was clinging to my mind was idea of a gangster being involved in a gang of thugs or possibly drug smugglers was enjoying the high life of his sinful habits but after a while he wanted to leave, however trying to leave a gang that doesn’t let you is where the protagonists past comes back to bite him (metaphorically of course).

I just needed a deeper more meaningful plot, theres nothing that I hate more than a pointless film, maybe it will follow a narrative but without a metaphor then its just boring and not particularly clever; and I want to be clever in this game.

I was looking into ideas but it still didn’t sit well with me, nevertheless I had to move on.

Now it was starting to get serious, I was assigning roles to my friends and plotting the more details of the film like locations and I was even beggining to storyboard. 

Once I was at this point it was time to research and become inspired by some directors who are acclaimed in this genre, you’ll find these research posts earlier (as I said these posts are not necessarily in chronological order). 

Here we start to touch on the finer details of the film like specific locations and camera angles.

It was a problem with the experiment that we didn’t have a script and that let down the effect, so this time I made sure that wouldn’t happen again.

In this corner, we have a scene fully storyboarded with a list of equipment, necessary crew, possible soundtracks and even the location and time of the shoot.

And in this corner, a fully written script for the scene with numbers that correspond to the storyboard. This was the standard I aimed to achieve when it came to preparation this time around. 

This was unfortunately at the time of one of my possible actors depart from the plan, hense the ‘No Partner’ title, this was becoming tricky and a lot of my ideas aren’t becoming what I wanted them to be, however it is becoming more realistic, and thats whats more important. 

I was beginning to prepare for the post title scene when the unthinkable happened, another one of my actors said he couldn’t help out, this was of course understandable as they all have their own projects to complete and most probably require their undivided attention, but at least I still had Logan right?

Well,

After 3 weeks of ‘I’ll come in tomorrow’ I was beginning to get a little worried, and had to prepare for the worse (which inevitably because reality).

So I began a new project, this was going to be filmed by me alone, which yes ruins the points I was trying to make about improving and developing my skills, on the other hand there is literally no way I could get any other help since everyone I know is busy with their FMP; So, what was this new idea?

During my interview in Falmouth I decided to film some of the journey there because the scenery was quite lovely and part of me knew that the plan with Logan would fall through, The idea originally was of a man who kept arriving in different places and the same time and then he’d wake up, the story would be he was making a physical journey only to wake up in the same bed to metaphorically state that the journey he was embarking on was an emotional one.

However.

This quickly became unlikely and needed re-thinking, I was limited to only myself so since the camera could not be operated by anyone I didn’t want to risk using it outside incase it got stolen of fell over whilst I was on the other side of a field with a brief case cuffed to my hand.

So, this ultimately became the reason as to how I embarked upon this project, I had the idea to make the film about someone with Agoraphobia (fear of going outside), this of course opened up many possibilities and was so easy to film in the comfort of my own student accommodation. 

So in true ‘George’ fashion it couldn’t just be about a kid locking himself in his room, there needed to be a story of course, but anyone can make a story about that, what I wanted to create was the hidden story.

Yes, thats right! The story was just a metaphor, but for what? well I did some research and decided that I could (secretly) make my story about someone’s journey through the 9 circles of hell (as you do). 

But first I wanted to focus on something smaller, my objective was to identify the protagonist as someone who has sinned, but not so plainly that everyone knows, so of course my first thought was the 7 deadly sins, (I was really cramming a lot into this), I began thinking of what could symbolise each one and have that as an opening montage, something to establish the protagonists room.

Of course there needed to be a base plot, something to make it seem relatively normal, (when I say normal I mean relatable to the audience so they can focus on that and let the metaphor sneak up on them). 

The basic plot was that there was a person who was afraid of going outside, lonely, scared, but one day as he goes to fill his jug up with water like every other day he leaves his keys inside, locking himself out and forcing him to confront his fears of the outside world. (Pretty cool right? ) 

Now I had to actually fit the circles of hell into this. Limbo was easy, being locked in a room basically is limbo. Lust was difficult because I am not a lustful person, nor am I the comfortable with sexual acts or anything so I was going to have to think about this, eventually I decided on filming myself in a shower (with trunks on) and just using a whole lot of the colour red, (there is a far more metaphorical reason behind exactly what I chose to do but I’ll get to those in the post evaluation. Gluttony was easy, going to the kitchen to get water, kitchen = food and food = gluttony; simple. Greed took a lot of my time to figure out because Anger was going to be getting locked out on the way back so I had to squeeze it in somewhere, I just decided to have him steal some money, nothing too special but alas I’m not perfect. I already explained anger but Heresy was truly a difficult one, how could this story suddenly take a turn into disbelief? After thinking about it for a while I decided to be (possibly) a little too ambiguous and I could instead use the punishment for Heresy which is Fire. Now, due to past experiences I decided immediately not to use actual fire, but instead the ‘fire exit’ signs in the hallway were perfectly placed for both the metaphor and the plot. Violence was easy, just smack the crap out of my door, the punishment for this circle is to be boiled in blood so naturally I just needed to get my knuckles a little bloody. Once again fraud was a tricky one so the punishment ‘darkness’ was good enough to suffice my needs. The final 9th circle could have ended with being paralyzed from the waist down (as traditionally satan was trapped from the waist down in ice) or something to do with ice or snow, But instead I just showed the door on the outside of the flat to reveal it was number 9, it seems cheesy to use a number here and metaphors everywhere else right? 

Well!

If you look closely, you’ll find numbers hidden on screen when the protagonist is in each circle, (I’ll give you a clue, when I close the door before I take the money, I close the door with 4 fingers showing, the 4th circle is greed). 

These were the final storyboards for this project, unfortunately since I waited for the original idea so long this has left me with just 3 weeks to film, edit and document everything; wish me luck. 

[georgebrabham]

Short Film Research

Soft- Simon Ellis

This short film is about a young boy and his father who are both terrorised by a street gang of teenagers. 

After the father finds out his son has been bullied he told him to stand up for himself yet when confronted by the same bully he doesn’t do it, instead his son saves him from the gang.

A large portion of this film is filmed on a mobile phone camera (or at least it’s edited to look like it), this gave me the impression that this could be happening anywhere, and it does happen, I know only too well. I could really relate to this movie and its one of the reasons it drew my attention to it, the actors played their parts perfectly, the part of the father was by far the most significant, a man shocked that his own son was less afraid than he was. 

The shots in this film are what really captured my attention, both beginning and ending on this overhead shot, (excluding the 144p fight clip).

We later follow the protagonist to the shops which is where we are presented with this shot, it follows him to the end of the street which somewhat implies there’s someone following him, as the camera constantly cuts to the gang we are supported in the idea that there is going to be a encounter; it’s this sort of camera angles that foreshadow the film that I love seeing in movies and want to replicate myself. 

After the first encounter we see that the camera is now in front of the protagonist, this both emphasises the fact that he is walking away from confrontations and allows the audience to see the gang following him, creating tension and maintaining the audiences attention. 

Ellis went on to make other shorts and documentaries however it didn’t receive as much attention as this short. 

[georgebrabham]

Short Film Research

Next Floor- Denis Villeneuve

After realising that I have only been looking at feature films as inspiration to make a short film I decided to start looking at short films which would help me in developing characters in such short time and understanding how to structure, organise and document a short film. This award winning short tells an extremely morbid and just plain weird story with little to no dialogue. 

The film opens to a slow zoom out on a mysterious figure and tension building drums, we then shortly discover that a group of people are eating copious amounts of food until they break though the floor and fall to the ‘next floor’. It is somewhat unclear as to why these people are doing this, or if its in their own free will, if they receive a reward for being the last alive or even if they’re just being held against their will. 

As they break through the floor the servers and musicians move down to the next floor and follow them. Visually this film is stunning, I love the beautiful camera quality, the colour theme of the scene, the lack of dialogue only goes to show how incredible the director is at capturing the story, how the audience is kept in the dark around what is going on for just enough time for the dramatic reveal to be significant and not too long as to lose interest. 

Villeneuve also directed a movie called ‘Prisoners’ 2013 which is a mystery thriller, behind the scenes he talks a lot about the use of colour and how it’s sometimes the first thing he talks about for preparation for a scene. 

Another point that he said that stuck in my head was ‘the most important thing in cinema is to suggest not to show’. This is something that has in a way opened my eyes, just toying with the idea in my head it opens so many windows, possibilities are becoming more and more optional as I think about suggesting rather than showing; if I learn one thing from this director then let it be that. 

[georgebrabham]

Location Hunting

After vaguely thinking of ideas and making a mind map, I decided to visit most of the locations for filming prior to actually shooting to determine any barriers or restraints these locations might throw at me. 

This is the location of which I want to plan the ‘interrogation scene’, also known as the introduction, I was planning on having someone who wants to leave the gang hide here whilst he plans a flight, which is where we are introduced to the two protagonists who are there to stop him. I originally wanted this to be like a drug bust or something but I would have had to find another flat and then create several fake drugs as props, I feel like this would be a lot easier to film since it’s in the MIP base room. 

Hopefully if it still stands as a possibility the sink could be used in the film but I am unsure at the moment. 

We have plenty of room for get cameras, microphones and other members of the production team such as makeup, sound etc. behind the shot. If we shoot it after 4:30 then we should have up until 8pm (the absolute latest) to shoot which I think is more than enough for this 1-2min clip; judging on the fact that the last two and a half minute clip took around 2 hours to film. 

Lift + Hallways. 

I was thinking as we cut between the ‘victim’ trying to plan his flight (rather hastily) we could have a nice contrast between fast and slow if we shoot a few clips of the two protagonists slowly walking out of the lift and along the hallways, this also gives me an opportunity to use a lot of dramatic shots. on all 4 hallway locations we have plenty of room to shoot straight but on the outside we can even shoot a side angle because the camera on a tripod can be placed on the roof of the base room below in order to get a wider shot. 

In an attempt of movie magic I want to try and make the university not look like a university, I’m not sure exactly what I could make it into, I had thoughts of turning it into a library but of course the library is always in use until 8pm so it would be difficult to film. 

Cafe

Towards the end of the day or even just any time that isn’t lunch or break we could film here and make it look like a real cafe, I would have to ask the staff’s permission to film but that shouldn’t be a problem, the camera will be focusing on the two main protagonists talking, I was thinking of the option of doing this in one long take, I don’t know how that would look so I’ll have another camera from a different angle to be sure.

There is plenty of room for camera angles, sound equipment etc. all the tables can be moved if we need to, the one factor that may be a problem is the sun.

The sun shines directly onto the cafe so if the sun changes, (i.e. if we film after 3pm then the scene will be lit differently as the shoot goes on) so we either have to shoot in complete darkness after 4pm or shoot during the day. It will be far easier to shoot after 4pm since people would have left however I visualised it taking place around lunch time so if I wanted to push this as much as I could I’ll film around then. Small changes in light can always be edited in post. 

[georgebrabham]

Final Project Research

Matthew Vaughn

Layer Cake

After showing my experiment to my friends and peers to get some feedback one of them said it reminded them of Layer Cake, I remember hearing about this movie but I never actually watched it; so I did.

In short I think I found a director I like almost as much as David Fincher, looking at some of Vaughn’s work he has directed some really good movies in this genre, and since this is the genre I want to look at for myself I am definitely planning on looking at some more of his work. 

Layer Cake was surprisingly good the plot was consistent, there was a good twist and lots of tension, but I’m not here for the story, I’m here for the cinematography, the directing, the overall feel of the film. 

The introduction to the film is one of the most brilliant I’ve seen in a long time, not just through clever storytelling, or cool effects, but the amount of detail that is shown especially in context to the film as a whole is just invigorating. 

One of the seamless shots in the intro is when the protagonist is walking passed shelves of illegal drugs as they turn into legal ones, then it is apparent that he is actually just in a chemist. 

This corresponds to his monologue explaining that one day illegal drugs will become legal, a wonderful mix of dialogue and visual.

Another reference that I saw was that one of the antagonists goes to an opera to see Faust. This is a wonderful foreshadowing of the ending because unlike a lot of people my age I have actually seen that 1936 german folk story, it’s a story of a good man who deals with the devil and is punished for it. so naturally the ending didn’t seem that surprising to me however I thought it was brilliant none the less, this highlights a very important moral to the story which I can’t ignore as I would love to do the same. 

One of my favourite shots in the film is this, the iron. We are introduced to this shot as the protagonists are on their way to see someone, we as the audience can see the iron but not what its on, therefore we see something is wrong and the significance of the iron is made the most important thing in this scene. 

Once they arrive we see that it was being used as a torture device, the use of using the shot before the group arrived both prepared the audience that something was wrong and made it seem like it was on him for a much longer time than if we just saw it as they entered the room. 

One final aspect I loved about this movie is that the protagonist didn’t get a name, I like to believe this was a reference to how in one of Vaughn’s movies the actor kept forgetting his name, however after looking at an interview Vaughn said “The fact that he doesn't have a name is what makes him so different. He's Clint Eastwood, riding in on a horse, he doesn't give anything away. He's a chameleon”. Which really makes this stand out, keeps the audience guessing and goes back to the ‘mystery box’ theory I talked about that J.J. Abrams did a TED talk on.  

Overall thanks to this movie I have decided to become a lot more involved in Vaughn’s work, not just for research but for shear enjoyment too. 

[georgebrabham]

FMP Experiment 2

After a long time of preparation, production and performance I have finally finished my second experiment. 

The basic story is that a guy is caught up in a crime group and wants to leave but as he does the boss (spoilers) kills his relationship partner which causes the protagonist to kill him and the others out of rage. 

This is where I had to leave it for the experiment but I am planning on bringing the story to an end with the real project. 

This was one of the most difficult projects I have done and it was only a segment of the real thing, the reason behind this is because I had to do so many things I haven’t done before, like write a script, film a group of people, direct and act at the same time. The group of people I had with me were in no form actors but thanks to their ability to adapt we ended up with a fairly well done clip, considering a lot of the dialogue was both improv and unrehearsed I was exceptionally happy with the effort they all gave. After at least 3 weeks of planning shots with storyboards and notes we were ready to film. 

This highlight my development in at least one area, I have always been a sort of ‘figure it out on the day’ person but I knew that was letting me down so with this immense planning I was able to have a firm grip on what I wanted to achieve and how to do it. 

We had two hours to film the two minute sequence and yet we still ended up going over by nearly an hour, this is definitely something I will prepare for in the future. I used Adobe Premire to sequence the clips and attach necessary audio files because that would have been a pain in After Effects. 

After I arranged the clips in the right order I imported that sequence into After Effects where I could get the really fun editing done. I first spent a lot of time colour correcting the film because lighting was significantly different depending on where the camera was facing, so this became my first task. 

My second was to add movement to the sequence, I did this by increasing the scale of some clips to 120% rather than 100% and then slowly moving the clip from left to right etc to give the illusion that the camera is panning, the advantage of this is that I can decided to pan in any direction rather than whichever the camera panned on the day; this also looks a lot smoother. 

But finally it was time to do what I wanted, the shootout scene, this took a lot more time than I thought. Firstly I had an issue with the gun prop.

Using a real gun was obviously not an option so mine didn’t have a barrel.

I found this image of a gun online and I uploaded it to photoshop.

I then cropped around the barrel and saved it as a PNG file so the background was transparent. 

I then tracked the motion of the handgun and paired the image of the barrel to that track.

After adjusting the levels, opacity, adding a blur effect I was fully satisfied that it looked pretty damn real. 

Onto the actual shooting, both Josh and Tom get shot, so I had to create the effect twice, but it was  the same process so I’ll show one for each. 

There are two things that are happening here, the shot and the blood. The shot was a muzzle flash effect from Action Essentials 2 which included smoke and the flash. It was easy enough to scale, rotate and position it, but the element that really sells it is everything else. I duplicated the layer and set it to screen so it created a huge glow effect, I then put a mask around several areas that would have been lit up by the muzzle flash to create a more realistic effect. 

The blood was the hardest thing about this process because the recommended technique wouldn’t work for me so I had to lay around and find one that would. A lot of blood techniques online are too over the top in my opinion and so I wanted to make mine more subtle but still cool. Using a blood splat element from Action Essentials 2 I masked around josh’s body so it looked as if it were behind him, the only problem was it looked too bright and transparent, the problem with the method I was using was that the darker the blood got the more transparent it got because I set the transfer mode to Screen; this removed the black background the blood was originally filmed against. After a while I used a Linear Colour Keying tool to remove the background just like a green screen. The problem with this is that it made the inside of the blood look pixelated, and if I changed that it made the outside look pixelated, so naturally I used both effects and with the help of a mask I merged them together to create the final outcome. 

Overall I think this process worked really well in preparing me for the final major project, I have a great understanding of the challenges that await me and I intend to overcome them swiftly. If there were two things I could take away from this then they would be:

1. I have to be behind the camera. I can’t fully portray my creativity or ability to direct if I have to rely on someone else to capture the scene; after all, I am the one with the vision of what it should look like. 

2. Use actors. Actors are very scarce at this time of year, not to mention to someone with no connection in the drama industry, none of my friends are performers and so I’ve always had to make do with using myself, but for this project I want to use other people to act because it will allow me to capture every scene, and understand what to look for. 

[georgebrabham]

[georgebrabham]

Lightsaber test

After deciding I might make a lightsaber video for my final major project I decided it wouldn’t be fair to consider anything without testing the possibility first. So I went home, filmed a quick clip of my spinning my nunchucks, (I didn’t have any lightsabers present and I thought they would be different enough to surprise an audience). 

I filmed this in 60fps at 1080p, this way I could make the frames more crisp and clear when I move the frame rate up to 25fps in post. After cropping the clip down to about 15 seconds I began to edit and man did I underestimate how long it would take, it took around 3 hours to animate every keyframe of the mask around just one of the sticks. Then I had to animate the other but I wanted to test another method. There are two ways of creating the lightsaber effect and thats manually (green) or using an effect called ‘beam’ (blue).

Manually involved creating a 5 point mask (that will be filled with a white solid) around the nunchuck and moving the 5 points for each frame, after the whole sequence has been masked I duplicated the mask and used an effect called ‘fill’ to change the colour to green, then by duplicating the masks and playing around with the feathering and expansion you get a lightsaber effect, in about 4 hours for just 15 seconds.

Using the ‘beam’ effect it made the whole process a lot quicker and easier since there were only two points that needed to be moved and there were options to change thickness etc. However this effect was far less pleasing to look at, and didn’t have the same effect as doing it manually, it didn’t even glow the same until I added the ‘glow’ effect which seemed very tacky and overly fake.

As a final touch on the visual effects I created a separate mask for each lightsaber and roughly followed it to create the glow effect, since they give off light I wanted the second set of masks to replicate this, obviously if I had more time I would have made it so it only showed on surfaces that would have been affected however I made this in a day so it was just a faint oval shape. This was intentionally faint as it was supposed to be something you could only really see if you were looking for it, if it was too obvious then it would just look fake.

And finally to bring the whole thing together I added sound, I got a really nice sound package called sabersounds that had probably every lightsaber sound that existed, going through them all I picked out the ones that sounded useful and I added them to Premire. This was actually the hardest part because I had to find spin sound effects that exactly matched the clip, I also had to overlap the sounds so it didn’t sound obvious that they were stopping and starting, as well as a background hum sound. 

After a lot of work I finally finished the clip and honestly I’m hugely glad I did this test / experiment because now I know if I were to make a lightsaber video it would have taken months, so I can comfortably say that I won’t be using this idea as part of my final major project. 

[georgebrabham]

Final Project idea 1

Lightsaber Duel

It’s pretty much considered the ‘right of passage’ for anyone planning on a career in special effects to create their own lightsaber duel video, it is also something I’ve always wanted to do. If I do this correctly then I would have to find one or more fully committed actors, choreograph the duel, obtain props and possible costumes, etc. the biggest worry I’ll face is the actors because I’ll have to find the time to practice over and over again, I did a lot of research for this and the fight in star wars episode 3 took months to rehearse, I have weeks at most. 

It all starts with a practice, I want to create a short video with me using a lightsaber to see if I can create the effects and make them look real. Another reason why I might not be 100% sure this is what I want to do is because it isn’t original, several people have done this before and so its not the sort of thing that will develop my creative skills. 

[georgebrabham]

V&A Inspiration Trip

After a long wait for the coach we eventually got to the V&A museum in London, we all split up to look around for inspiration for our final project, but after searching for an hour I couldn’t fine anything that even resembled inspiration for my project; it’s mainly because I am planning on making a film and the V&A is more based on traditional art. I did however like the look of this pistol and rifle.

So after not finding any inspiration I went and explored the streets of London until I found a McDonald’s, I then saw that Harrods was right next door so I couldn’t help but explore through there. 

I saw this chessboard from ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s stone’ and I just found it really looked like it could be used in a film, maybe not this exact set but the idea of chess really makes you think and thats exactly what I want to do to an audience, keep 3 steps ahead of them; (or at least what they think is gonna happen). 

Next I went to the science museum where I saw this giant halo in the building with lights that travel within the edges. I’m not sure how this will inspire me I just thought it looked cool so here it is.

Moving on I found a section of the museum I never knew existed, this room was filled with tools, machines and weapons from the last decade. 

Overall I would say that I was not inspired at all thought out this trip, yes there was the chess board but considering I wasn’t even supposed to be there I don’t count it. As I’m trying to create a film I think the only source of inspiration that will be useful is media, film obviously would be more important but other forms such as animation, photography, even video games could prove to be more viable sources of inspiration that traditional art; at least for what I wish to achieve. 

[georgebrabham]

Memento Artist Research

Satoshi Kon

After researching into artists I discovered an anime director called Satoshi Kon who was hugely popular during the 2000′s. I am not an anime fan but his work around dream, reality and even cinematography is just incredible.

This is a matching scene transition, the way he cut’s from scene to scene really inspires me to be more creative with the way I do it, from the first scene we see water dripping from a pipe and then instantly we are switched to blood dripping on the floor.

His work with time, space and dreams really speak volume to the audience from his creative transitions between scenes, and even his jump cuts during scenes where he cuts crucial details like a character looking at a key, but not taking it in the shot, only to find out they did take in a later scene. 

Bertie Gilbert

Gilbert is a short film director who creates films anywhere from 1 minute to 30 minutes long. ‘The rock that bled’ was one of my favourite of his work because it showed a story with little or no explanation as to what was going on and it was only clear to the audience right at the last few minutes. He also uses very interesting visual lighting effects to display the different points in time rather than just stating in using text.

The two different scenes were set in different times, the obvious red lighting was both used to convey to the audience that the time periods were different and to support the story that was the world was soon to end. 

Visually the film looks stunning, the camera he used was incredible at presenting a clean and crisp image and it felt like a real movie. What I wouldn’t give to have an hour filming with that camera. but I digress, the colour correction was very well done which is something I thought I was well acquainted with but after my last project I realised that I have much more to learn.

Its not just visually that this director stands out its also through sound, one thing I’ve noticed compared to my own projects is that Bertie uses far more dialogue and sound effects, whenever he uses music its faint and overlaying the other sounds, wheres I only use one or the other. This is a principle I wish to develop, I want to rely less on music to drive my story and more on dialogue and sound effects, especially expositional sound effects like dramatic sounds for key points in time, this is something I have never actually used. 

[georgebrabham]

Memento Project Evaluation

Shooting on location was a lot more fun that I thought it would be which is reassurance that this is the pathway I want to take for my life. 

Each shot that was taken was setup and explained to the camera operator shortly before I took position for that shot.

Using both high and low shots was essential but I realised that the whole project could have gone significantly quicker with two tripods, one low and one high so instead of setting up for each shot we can just attach the camera to the other tripod. 

This was an improvised shot where we saw the boat and we thought that if we were to go the extra mile and jump off it then the shot would look a lot more real than if we just pretended that we did. 

And this is our humble 700D cannon with a shotgun microphone. 

After shooting all the footage I was ready to start post production on the film. My first barrier was to overcome the repeated sound problem, the sound from both shoots did not record so I had to improvise by gathering sound effects from the internet and recording Logan first hand. 

This took a long time to match the sound files to the footage, I had to work out the db level on each effect as well as key-framing some sounds when the source came closer to the camera. 

Usually when creating film projects I use Adobe After Effects because it was the only program I was able to use well, however this program was difficult to cut frames and made it untidy in the program and I always strive to create a ‘clean film’ so I used Adobe Premiere to first sequence the footage and then in Adobe After Effects I created the effects like colour correction, overlay and masking; this made the film easier to edit and I will certainly be using this method in the future.

Once I added the sequence into After Effects I knew the first thing I had to do was Colour Correction, using my favourite adjustment ‘curves’ to change the RGB channel I dulled the red and green channels whilst bumping the blue which gave the film the dramatic, thriller look. 

I wanted to change the colour further but I had two problems, the footage quality was not great so when I made changes to the colour you could start to see a decay in the footage so I had to make minimal changes. As well as this there was a huge contrast of light in the film, because we were shooting just as it was getting dark and a combination of out in the open and under a car park the lighting changed so changing the colour too significantly may look good in one shot but another might not. 

The change that I did make worked for most shots except one so instead of having to change the colour again I masked out the area that was over exposed put the original footage underneath. 

I discovered last year whilst researching ‘rotoscoping’ that it was actually more effective to make several simple masks for different moving features rather than one intricate mask. 

This was the only visual problem that I had to overcome during this project, I think that is down to the level of preparation I went into for this shoot that I didn’t in past projects. This is just an example of how my experience in past projects has affected how I learn and develop through other projects.

There are some points behind the filming of this project that I am quite happy about that ended up on screen to either foreshadow or just for the sub-plot significance. 

In one of the first shots we see the river runs from left to right, which is normal just like this section of the film, however the rest of the clips are played in the reverse order which is why on the 4th and final time this shot is shown the river is running from right to left; this also highlights the fact that this is a dream / flashback and that not everything is exact since memories fade and decay.

The film was called Memento: Traces of Identity because that was the title of the project and frankly I couldn’t think of anything better. But the point I want to focus on here is the soundtrack. I put a lot of effort into choosing exactly the right song to this film and ultimately I chose two, 

‘Falling Towards The Sky’ by Jeff Williams was made for an internet series called ‘Red vs blue’ during this song the protagonists fall through the sky after jumping off a building, but thats not why I am interested in it, its because the idea that you fall towards the sky is opposite to reality, exactly like the footage being played in the reverse sequence; so in short its just another way to foreshadow the opposition to reality in this film. 

Towards the end (beginning) of the film you see an overlay of the two thugs beating up the protagonist which was originally going to be played at the beginning where the music comes in but since the actors were too nice they didn’t want to actually kick me which A. is very kind and B. made the footage look too fake, so since I needed to add an overlay clip and this footage was missing something when the music picked up I thought it was the perfect opportunity to fit it in; after all we did the makeup and fake blood and everything. 

After this I realised that it could have a significant factor after all, this would foreshadow the unraveling of the footage. I feared that some people might not realise exactly what is happening with the footage being reversed so I wanted to show the sequence in the correct order at the end but in a space of a second, a very small space of time that shows how little percentage of reality is present here; and it works well with the soundtrack. 

As for the story I wanted the outcome of the protagonist to be fatal, tragic, etc. I didn’t want a happy ending and I didn’t want the content of the brief case to be revealed, this was the centre of the events that made up the entire mystery.

I remember J.J. Abrams doing a TED talk about the ‘mystery box’ in film and I feel that each film needs to have a mystery that is never answered to engage the audience after the film. 

This project was more or less a breakthrough for me because firstly I only have a little under 2 weeks rather than 3 to plan, shoot, create and evaluate everything, but halfway through the project I seriously doubted my ability to see this project through to the end and I was even contemplating making the film shorter only consisting of the first dream sequence. Nevertheless I ultimately came through and not only did the project but I actually created something that I was proud of; this is a very rare occasion for me.

In terms of constructive criticism I definitely feel like there was much I could have done to improve, shooting locations, time and further planning of shots etc. One definitive lesson I learned when shooting in darkness is to bring a big light, because even though I was able to see the key features the camera wasn’t, and if I didn’t just so happen to have a torch on me at the time the whole shoot would have been for nothing.

Another aspect to remember is that I should physically go to locations pre-production and photograph, storyboard and even take test footage just to be definitively sure that’s where I want to film. Doing this will allow me to plan the exact sequence in my head and allow me to convey that image to anyone else with me on the project such as actors, camera operators etc.

I was lucky in this project that I knew the area and I knew the locations would work well but if I was less enlightened I could have stumbled on to private property and the shoot would have to be canceled and re-scheduled; which in this case was no option.

[georgebrabham]

Memento Shooting Day 1

After College me and a friend went to the first location to shoot the dream / flashback sequence, We left as soon as we could because we knew the light would soon face but we underestimate how dark it would get. 

We shot the first clip and realised that it was too dark to see on the camera so luckily I had a torch on me and we used it to lighten the shot. 

Unfortunately this cause another issue that it’s obviously a torch, I was hoping it would look more like moon light, so to overcome this problem we decided to move the torch as far back as possible that yet still creates light for the scene; this created a more softer light which works even better. 

Despite the footage still being very dark we realised that the footage was of a dream sequence so it wouldn’t be too bad if the quality gets lost when we increase the brightness. 

This is a silhouette shot of me that I had Logan shoot, the lights of the industrial district really add character to this scene but I needed to add some effects in order to make sure the audience knew it was a dream.

So a few hours later I had the dream edit of the shot which has been diffused with an effect called ‘tri-tone’ which splits all the colours into 3 main channels (high white, low black and mid a dull blue) and I turned the opacity down on this effect so you could notice a change but there was still colour in there. 

Another effect I used as ‘turbulent noise’ which creates a smoke like filter over the footage which can be animated; this adds to the dream atmosphere. 

If you look really closely you can see a third effect which is a ripple effect that goes on through the entire sequence, it’s very slow and hard to notice but I feel that subtlety is the best option for this. 

Increasing the brightness was vital for shots like this where the protagonist is basically invisible without effects, I also used an effect called ‘sharpen’ on the second half of the scene which sharpened blurry footage or features that aren’t clear, I didn’t want to use it for the whole scene because at first it’s too dark and it ruined the quality too much. 

Overall the shoot went really well, I know now to go earlier next time or to bring a more powerful light source, there were other obstacles that are bearable because its a dream sequence but when we’re filming real life footage there’s no excuse for bad quality or lighting problems. Because we filmed this first we now know to set the camera to the right quality setting, the lighting can be prepared for etc. 

The next scene to shoot will be the morning scene and the chase scene witch requires other actors, In the lack of intimidating men willing to beat me up on camera I had to settle on my friends which are female, at first I thought this was going to be a problem but I decided to disregard the stereotype that men are not threatened by women in order to get this done in time and to create another sub-statement of this film. 

Music is also becoming an issue to me, I have been listening to several hundreds of songs in order to picture in my head which will work, this is especially difficult because the story will be happening in reverse, this creates a huge obstacle for me when deciding the soundtrack and since all I have as a base to choose it is the basic storyboard and the picture in my head. 

After a few days I’ve narrowed my choice down to about a dozen possibilities, I will pick one after I have filmed the footage to see which works best. The next issue is sound which didn’t work on the dream sequence due to a technical error, now we’re aware of this and we can gather sound effects separately to add on in post production and know how to be sure it’s working when we shoot next. 

[georgebrabham]

Memento Project

After returning to UCA a week later than intended I had to quickly get back on track, after a long discussion with Roz I was brought up to speed with the current project all about ‘Memento’. In short the brief was to make a short film (minimum one minute) about memories. I was lost for a while just brain storming different ideas until finally I discovered one I really wanted to work with.

This was the main sections of my mind map, after I figured out the main narrative of the idea I needed to figure out everything in my head and get it on paper, so I made 3 sections (start, middle and end) where I wrote everything that would be involved in that section despite not necessarily in order. 

The Idea behind my story is a short film about someone being chased and beaten to death, However the spin is that each clip will be shown in reverse order, (the last shot will become the first and the 2nd to last will become the 2nd etc.) 

This with the addition to a backing track will really highlight the idea of memory, especially re-tracing steps. The idea I’m trying to capture with this idea is that memories fade and corrode over time, they change and they aren’t always exactly how we experienced them, which is why I’m playing the clips in reverse. This technique creates a unique twist to this film and adds suspense as the audience is trying to figure out what is happening and why; this grips their attention and focus as they can’t understand if they don’t pay attention. 

I realised this idea was sub-continuously inspired by ‘The Young Blood Chronicles’ which was a narrative story behind the album ‘Save Rock and Roll’ by ‘Fallout Boy’. 

I’ll be using this as a point of reference in some cases but at the same time adding my own spin on it, like by reversing the order for example. 

My next step is storyboarding shots, location hunting and picking a backing track that fits in.