Experimentation with Perspective

 
Whilst we were filming some location scenery at Norfolk Park last week, I wanted to experiment with how we could adjust the composition and content of the visuals to create perspective. I liked the idea of taking a small part of the general, larger location and adjusting the camera positioning as well as the focusing. Because our idea is based upon remembering and reflection on memories, some of which are unclear, I positioned the camera at ground level and decided to focus on a view point from lower down as opposed to a more general establishing location shot. I thought about how this could fit more widely within the context of our film, and by how showing just one part of a scene that isn't the most important or dominant, could be representative of a person experiencing memory loss 'not being all there'. I took a video test shot of this, whilst moving the camera to create a feeling of disorientation, and a sense of trying hard to focus on remembering forgotten memories.

 

 

This was the larger, bigger picture of the scene:

Experimenting with times of day

The memories that we film will not necessarily follow a linear structure. Whilst experimenting with the idea of looking through windows, some photography that I did made me think about how we could film in easily accessible locations at different times of day, to convey new meaning within our visuals. We could end up showing the same content in the daytime and evening, and the two could look completely different, as well as the mood and overall tone of the piece adapting alongside this.

An example of this is the image below - by adjusting the focus on the camera the outside world seems unimportant, but the rain is focused upon from an inside point of view, which could possibly suggest that the subject's perspective that we are filming from is feeling trapped, and suggest a sense of loneliness. This could fit in well with our theme of reflection; looking back at memories which are becoming less clear as time goes on.













Another idea that I came across whilst taking adjusted shutter speed photographs is how we could possibly incorporate still images into our piece, perhaps during the beginning opening sequence, when we see an eye blink and the sound of a camera click to create the impression that a photograph is being taken. If we chose to do this, it could further be associated with the idea of a photograph being a frozen moment in time, and could lead the narrative from the perspective of the subject as they are left only with these fragments of memory.
 

 

Further Short Film Inspiration - Theme of memory

Research into creating a sense of memory through film

I have been researching several films and techniques in filmmaking which aid in creating a memory or dream like sequence. Although our idea does not have to come across too literally to viewers, we have been trying to think about and plan out how we can visually create the impression that the content is a series of memories and therefore does not necessarily have to flow in a chronological order to viewers.

 
Example - 'Quicksand'
Dir. Lance Oppenheim
http://www.shortoftheweek.com/2013/08/01/quicksand/

A short film that I came across quite early on within this research is 'Quicksand', which is currently featured on the Short of the Week website. This has become a really useful film to come across in my research, as some of the ideas used work very effectively and I feel similar ideas to how the piece comes together could be applied to our own work. Although this film takes more of a documentary style approach, the content is still relevant and has been useful in terms of sparking new ideas for how to visually approach the theme of memory, and in particular, showing forgotten memories.

The use of the flicker effect alongside the blank white space is an element of the film that I felt communicated the concept well and connected the viewer to the character's perspective, as he deals with his own memory loss and concentration on trying to remember.

Watching this short film has given me an insight into how the concept of memories, or pieces of memory can be achieved visually in more ways than one. For example, the way in which the film both begins and ends with snapshot images really gives the viewer the idea that they are being shown memories, and this is something that we could perhaps think about incorporating into our idea in a similar way.

The sound use is also very effective in leading the narrative and focusing on connecting memory with a sense of time within this film, and the clock in particular at the beginning is an idea that I have thought about incorporating  alongside different visual areas of our film.

Development of Idea

After receiving feedback on our idea, and researching and watching other short films on the theme of memory, we have realised that our idea can be simplified into a experimental piece purely about memory. We have found that this has been much easier to work with, and a lot of our ideas visually fall better into this idea as opposed to the more broad idea we originally had, which was to show life flashing before the eyes before death.

With the memory theme in mind, we have come up with the name 'Fragments' for our piece, as we feel that this fits well within what we intend to show; a series of memories that won't necessarily have to be in chronological order, as memory fades along with time.

Visual elements

In terms of the way that we intend to shoot this, the use of poor focus as well as the possibility of slowing down the shutter speed on some of the visual sequences are ideas that we are experimenting with in order to convey the theme of blurred memories, and thinking back, to the viewer.

Use of repetitive sound - to imply a sense of thinking back/remembering

Recording a range of different repetitive sounds has informed our idea for our opening visual sequence. We intend to have an eye, shot out of focus, along with the sound of a camera clicking each time a blink occurs. This will link into showing the viewer snapshots of memory within the later visuals of the film.

This idea originally came to me when we had a guest lecture on how narrative functions in the still and moving image, and the term 'frozen time' was used to describe photographic time. Our idea incorporates both time along with memory, and how the two can be closely linked together; when time moves on, memory fades. I like the idea of using the camera click audio as early on in the film as possible, as using this idea of 'frozen time', it could imply to the viewer that what they are about to see throughout the duration of the film, is not really happening- but is a moment, and memory, that has been interrupted by the passing of time.

Opening sequence

This is how we are visualising the opening title sequence linking in with the opening establishing shot of the film at this stage:

'The Life Size Zoetrope' and 'Life and Stuff' Reflection

Two experimental short films that I have come across which are similar to our concept are 'The Life Size Zoetrope' and 'Life and Stuff' featured on the FutureShorts website. Both of these short films are useful to refer to when developing our idea, as the theme of life is what we are focusing on within our concept of memories flashing before your eyes in a situation of death.

 

The Life Size Zoetrope(Dir. Mark Simon Hewis)

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-75uRHYHWE

 

I really like the cinematography and visual style of this short film, as well as the way that the narrative is told through a mix of both voiceover narration and other background sound use. The pace of the visuals is also interesting and something that we could incorporate into our idea when we add visuals to our audio piece at a later stage. The main aspect of this short film that I have taken away and considered also applying within our own audio as well as visual project is the way in which the start of the piece is repeated at the end, in order to tell the story in a non linear structure. We could perhaps do this with the sounds of beeping hospital machines, or even just a simple concept such as somebody breathing, without the need for a voiceover narration. The short film seems quite busy in terms of the pace as well as mixture of sounds used alongside the visuals, which works well in creating a sense of urgency or feeling of a fast paced life for the audience.

Life and Stuff
(Dir. Kumar Satjunarasa, UK, 2011)

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWrmAuEwKRs

This short film has been useful to come across in my research as we are developing our idea, as it features a voiceover narration of a series of events within a single lifetime. Although at this stage we do not aim to include a voiceover narrating our project, this could be an option at a later stage if our concept is still not coming across strongly enough to our audience. I also think we would like to achieve something similar to the simplicity of this short film; the mixture of sounds at the beginning and the end and the background sounds in between. The pace of the piece also adds to the intensity of fitting in a lifetime's worth of memories in a few minutes worth of visuals and audio. This has inspired me to think about the development of our project, in terms of how we could use pace as a tool to create a build up of narrative development within recreating memories. I like the idea of slowing down the sounds that are reflections of the memories within the later stages of life, and speeding up the older, more distant memories. I also like the idea of attaching this with a theme of memory loss as the person is aging mentally as well as physically, in a non- linear structure, although I am not sure that this would be possible given the short running length of the piece.

 

Post - Crit. session feedback - Development of concept

After our crit. session last Thursday (14/11/13), we received some very useful feedback from the rest of the seminar group on our idea as well as initial first cut of our audio project. We are aware after listening to our sound piece through speakers that it sounds quite different to when we had previously listened back to it, and that our main development at the moment needs to be focused upon coming up with solutions as to how we can clearly communicate to the listener the idea behind the piece, which is to be taken through a lifetime of memories in a 'flashing before your eyes' sense through the use of audio .

Some useful feedback that we received suggested possible ideas as to how we could show the development of the different stages of a lifetime in such a short amount of time. With this in mind, we have begun to further work upon the idea of showing weakness from the suggestion below, and a deteriorating state of mind.

Another piece of useful feedback that we received was the idea of including sounds associated with achievements throughout a lifetime, which would help the listener to establish that our piece is a journey through different memories within different stages of a lifetime.

 

With this in mind, I have created a list of the different stages of growing up, and some possible sounds that we could gather which are associated with each of these stages. I found this feedback session very helpful towards the development of our idea, as the concept seems a lot more simplified and easier to work with now, and the feedback received has helped us to explore further areas around how we can go about communicating our idea to our audience.

 

Sense of Place audio project - Inspiration and Experimentation

Inspiration

Films

I have been researching and watching some films that I feel can be used to demonstrate how sound usage can contribute to the idea of exploring a memory or journey of the mind. These have  inspired me to think of new ways of creating our memory inspired audio project on the theme 'sense of place'. Two films that I have watched and found to be particularly useful in my research so far are Donnie Darko (2001) and Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind (2004).

Locations

After discussing the possibilities for the future visual content to go alongside this project in the tutorial session, we have been thinking about how to make use of the spaces that are easily accessible and available to us everyday. For this reason, instead of our original initial idea of the visuals being based on a train journey with a window view, we have developed and expanded upon this idea further to come up with a list of possible windows we could use in the visuals. This could be applied as an overall theme to the project ; the windows as objects could be used to direct the narrative and create the impression of the memory montage from the subject's point of view, which could be done even without the need to show the subject in the visuals at all.

Some possible examples of these could be:

A series of windows through another window - in order to generate ideas around the subject of watching and the passing of time, as well as to show the subject's physical location - in this case inside looking outside.

I like the idea of using space as an object - Gaining a closer up view through a window, to create an entirely different meaning, e.g. this door close up could be seen and interpreted as a subject being trapped, whereas the further away shot shows it in its real sense and does not leave much room for exploring narrative interpretations.

Another concept that I have thought about is using smaller spaces to convey meanings (e.g. through key holes, viewers on opposite sides of doors etc.). An idea which is appealing to me is that as the pace as well as tone of the piece progresses, the windows get smaller in size to mirror the subject's emotions/state of mind. This idea would mean that we would also not have to show the subject in person at all visually, but instead focus on the strength of the audio for now. The changing sizes in the windows could be used to represent the memory moving further away from the subject's mind, as they are trying to focus on their personal journey (shown through the visuals) and forget and move on from the memory.





Experimental Audio

The main thing that I am exploring with my research, and would also like to incorporate into my own project is the idea of creating something unordinary out of the ordinary through the use of sound. I wanted to explore some basic, everyday sound and listen back to see if any new ideas or inspirations came to mind. I recorded a few minutes of audio beside an open window, purely to listen back to and discover new thoughts on where else this could have been recorded, other than the location that it was originally. I found this to be a very useful exercise as it has made me realise that for our audio project we won't need to overcomplicate things and can instead find a very simple idea and location and experiment with transforming it into something entirely new.