One Minute Individual Film, Presentation

When I presented my one minute film at our assessment screening I had put together a whole Powerpoint presentation that tells of my initial ideas for the film and the various stages of development that my project went through to arrive at my final one minute film.

I used notes from my module journal that I've been keeping, some of which have been posted up on this blog.  I wish I'd showed the presentation in full at the screening instead of just reading the script of it, so here is the Powerpoint presentation in it's entirety:

Script:

For my one minute film I had quite a few ideas, including the inside workings of a clock, a car interior as it collides with a wall in an accident, a sleep study and a mouse hole using a projected animated image combined with real time action..

Some of my other ideas included ‘The Memory Tree’ which is a shrine to a child who has died and has cards and messages, and teddy bears and flowers attached to it, but most interestingly, has film strip and negatives hanging off the branches like leaves, and when the sun shines through the film it casts an image of the child and it’s family onto the trunk of the tree.  My inspiration for this was the film Ponette.  How a child copes with death.

I also had an idea for a series of one minute films called Art Fraud.  Art Fraud #01 would have the camera positioned at the feet of a gallery curator as we watch a person recreating Piero Manzoni 1959 work Line, where the artist stands on a box and unravels his very long scroll of paper with a line that he has drawn on it.  Manzoni also created the works Artist’s Breath 1960, and Merda d’Artiste 1961.  Both o f these could also feature in the series.

Art Fraud #02 shows a gallery where all the works of art on display are actual the signature of the artist and nothing else.  The signature could be on things like cheques, contracts, letters etc.  The curator would explain how this is the artist becoming his art.

I like these ideas because I do like art.  They are meant to be affectionate, not mocking.

        

 Out of all my ideas, four really interested me.  So I set about mind mapping and planning them to see if they would work and if I could feasibly film them.

My first serious idea was to show a corpse at the bottom of a block of flats, insinuating suicide.

The locked off shot would be of the body at the foot of some flats bleeding and obviously dead.  The sound would be excited chatter as passers by came to see what had happened.  Then we would hear a clear, authoritative voice of a policeman asking people to stand back, and we see him from shoulders down pulling some Police Line tape across the scene, full frame in the film.

I planned to film this at Albion Towers, a block of flats in Salford where my friend lives.  There is a solid concrete floor and is gated so we could control the situation while filming.  It is also away from the main road and has bushes to avoid people passing by thinking it was a serious Police situation and any problems that might arise from that.

For filming this piece I would use three friends for the off screen excited chatter, and Dafydd Reeve as the policeman as he has a deep authoritative voice.  I already have the props, Police Line - Do Not Cross tape and fake blood and access to the policeman's uniform.

The second idea that I considered was for a crime scene where something terrible had happened but life had moved on and the scene had returned to normal and nobody paid attention to it any more.  This was in contrast to the fresh scene of a Police incident in the suicide themed 'Corpse' film idea.

In 'Crime Scene' I wanted to show the aftermath of crimes and how soon they become forgotten about.  It happens on the news a lot.  Especially now that we have 24 hour rolling news.  Something can be a huge story for several days and is suddenly replaced by something else.  In the meantime the suffering of the people affected by the crime still goes on, and often we never find out what happened to the original crime, it just gets forgotten.

For the 'Crime Scene' film I wanted a shot that shows how after a while nobody remembers about a crime and life has moved on.  To show this I was going to use crime scene tape that had been left and broken, across a location that is beautiful and peaceful, so the shot would start asking questions of the viewer:
- what happened? / why is it a crime scene? / what was the crime?
- was it to do with the water? / did somebody drown?
- how long ago did it happen if everything has got back to normal?
- don't the passers by care that something horrific happened here?
- is it yesterday's news already?  

I actually went ahead and filmed this film as I had a definite visual idea in my head and I wanted to see if it would work.  I used a location that I had in mind at Damflask Reservoir not far from Hillsborough.

    

By the sailing club pavilion is a dirt track road with a wall separating the road and trees from the footpath and the water's edge.  I thought this would be an ideal location as I would get the sound of water, the wind in the tress and the sound of the crime scene tape flapping about in the wind.  There is a break in the wall and I wanted the people to walk past so that we only see the shadow of them.  But I wanted them to be chatty and happy, not caring, or unaware, about the horrors that had happened in the beautiful surroundings that they were in.

When I came to film it I used a Lumix camera and the camera microphone to record it.  I did this for two reasons, one I wanted the camera in an almost impossible viewpoint from embedded in the wall so I needed to use a small camera, and two, I wanted it to be a bit 'Blair Witch' found footage style and create the emotional feel that that film did, where the audience recognises that this is amateur footage, possibly found.  Maybe the camera had been witness to the crime?  Maybe the camera belonged to the victim and has recorded the whole thing...
  
I was really happy with the shot and the location and the light and most of the sound (the tape flapping and the voices).  However, I was upset by the fact that the sound of the wind in the trees boomed and distorted with me using the camera's microphone and I couldn't hear the sound of the water at all.

I like the part at the end of the film where you hear the voices and see the shadow going past.  Looking at it now I think to further create the found footage feel I should have had the camera at more of an angle to emphasis the fact that it might have been dropped and left.  

    

I did record the scene twice but the shadow didn't work on the first shoot.  The second take was better.

My third idea that I seriously considered was for a film that is set in the changing rooms of a rugby club.  Filmed at low level so we see the feet and boots of the players as they come back in from a match, the studs clattering on the concrete floor.  Then we hear the showers turned on and the laughter and banter as the players get showered and changed (off screen).

I thought this would be quite fun and interesting.  Having played for, and worked with, rugby clubs for many years I know that the sound of the boots is an instantly recognisable sound and that when players start coming back into the changing room the sound builds up very quickly and usually involves lots of laughing, shouting and players taking the mickey out of each other as well as distinctive sounds in the background such as showers running, doors banging, boots clattering etc.  I thought this would be an interesting and possibly funny piece.

I had an idea of how it might look from a previous film that I made about Hallam Rugby club.  I wanted it to look similar to this but at a lower level.

The idea for this would be not to direct the players, but to let them act naturally.  Say what they were  going to say and behave as normal.  That way we would get natural conversation and sounds.

I filmed this film twice, once at Hallam and once at a semi-professional rugby club and I wasn't happy with it.  The noise becomes too loud and with a running time of only one minute, it builds up nicely but then ends on a cacophony of noise which is just too loud and instead of sounding layered like I thought it would, it just end up with lots of people vying to be heard over each other.  

I did get a couple of good photos from my shoots though.  The first photo is the angle and low level that I was filming at.

My fourth idea (the third one that I actually filmed) is my submission piece.  I would have submitted the Crime Scene film had we been allowed to edit the sound as that was, visually, my favourite of the three films.  However, I am equally as proud of this film 'Clock' as I think it is quite a clever set up.  Simple! But clever!

I wanted to use the clock so that I got the ticking sound as a base sound, then I thought of all the things that happen throughout the day that created additional layers of sound in the home.

Then I had the idea of knocking these sounds out one by one until all there is only the sound of the clock, and that becomes the main focus of the shot.

To do this I thought of how I could film it in a locked off shot that would end with the clock being the focus.  Therefore I chose to have the clock the focus throughout.  Then I developed the idea so that the reasons the noises get eliminated one by one is because the owner of the house is going out and turning everything off, so we end with the empty, quiet house and just hear the ticking clock.

To film this I didn't want to do a focus pull and show the owner leaving, as that would imply to the viewer that there was somebody else in the room operating the camera and that would negate the idea of the empty house.  So I filmed the whole action of the owner leaving in the reflection of the clock. 

Filming Clock: Arranged running order / audio shot list to include the various sounds in the home during the day.

Rehearsed timings to make action last exactly one minute.  Revised running order to fit.

For this film I used my friend Richard Thorpe as the person.  Because it would be a reflection and most of the action will take place away from the clock I needed to have someone who would be noticeable in the reflection.  Richard is six foot eight inches tall so I thought he would be perfect to fill up the reflection and be noticeable in the piece.

I really like how this turned out.  I was pleasantly surprised that the sound of the clock is so audible at the end because I didn't think it would stand out like it did and I was conscious that I wouldn't be able to edit the sound, but it turned out good.

The Person: I am also very conscious that in every single idea I had for this film task that the people involved are never shown fully.  In suicide the policeman is shown from the shoulders down, in crime scene the people are shown in shadow, in the rugby club film we just see the players from the waist down wearing towels heading for the shower and in Clock the owner is shown in reflection.  I think this is because I read the brief as an exercise in the use of sound and I think that to show a person full on would have been distracting.  I think as viewers, if we see someone on screen we look to them to steer the action and use their words to explain the scene.  For my film I wanted the sounds and the shot to suggest a scene to the viewer, and to ignite their imaginations.

Influences:  I got my ideas from lots of places; books,films, TV shows and just looking at everyday things and focusing on small interesting things, for example road markings while driving in the car, a spider in its web outside my flat and the way ink disperses in water.

Books that have a lasting effect on me and I think have contributed to the idea in these films that there is a person’s presence but not visible are Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, and The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, whilst Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass, and the films Blair Witch Project and Lars Von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark provided the inspiration and mood for the Crime Scene film.

I think my using reflection in Clock was inspired by iconic scenes from the films The Man Who Fell to Earth and Taxi Driver.  Although I wanted to make the character faceless so that as a viewer you focus more on the actions and sounds than on the actual person.