Hyperthermia!

When we completed the filming we were satisfied that it all went as planned.
However, we did not take the weather into account and it was absolutely freezing! Even though we planned to film a few more shots we decided to call it a day as all our clothing was wet through and we were on the brink of hyperthermia, we also wanted to keep the actor comfortable when clearly he wasn’t. Our hands were numb so we couldn’t pick up any of the items.
While we wanted to enjoy the experience of filming and directing our project we were slightly miffed that some of the project was ruined by this annoying cold weather.

Call sheets

Project Roles

As the brief required we were asked to assign roles for each individual of the group. I volunteered to be the Director/Producer. At first I did not know what this role required of me but I knew I had to be the overseer of the project. For my first role I discussed with the group which location we should base the shoot at. We all agreed that Grenoside woods would be the best due to it being convenient for everyone to get to and the large scale of the woods meant we wouldn’t be interrupted by the public. Also a member of the crew knew these woods well and scouted a suitable, safe location for us to film in.
My next role was to acquire an actor for the shoot as we all knew it would be un-professional to have one of us to star in the project.
I asked around to see if anyone would be available until I found someone mature and responsible to be the actor.

Once the location, plotline and actor were safely taken care of, I assigned who would need to bring what props on the day. I knew it would be un-fair for one person to be delegated with this job as some of the props were too big to carry, so we equally shared this job by agreeing on one person bringing the camera equipment and actor, another would bring the large mirror and sound equipment, whilst the other would bring the other essential props and paperwork.

The next job I had to do before the shoot was to fill out the risk assessment and develop on the call sheets for the day.

Meshes of the Afternoon

Meshes of the afternoon is a short experimental film directed by wife and husband, Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid. This short clip was shown to us in our seminar, even though it has a circular narrative with repetitive symbolic images this clip stood out for me. The film contains various recurring images including a key, a knife and a scary looking figure which is hooded and uses a mirror as its face.

The use of circular narrative and the attention plus repetitiveness of certain props inspired us into using this technique for our project. Meshes of the afternoon also uses multiple repetitiveness of the same character and as a group we agreed we wanted to interpret this.

Overall we agreed that this film is a massive influence to use for our project. It helped us develop our ideas and even experiment interpreting some of the ideas in Meshes of the Afternoon.

Experimental Project Lists

Once we had our initial idea we started to jot down what we would include in the film, what sounds we would need and various locations.

PROPS:
- Cereal
- Milk
- Spoon
- Hammer
- Nails
- Large mirror
- Small mirror
- Phone
- Tin can
- String
- Camera
- Tripod
- Portable TV
- Shovel
- Jacket
- Razor
- Folding chair
- Umbrella
- Bag
- Birthday card
- Pen

LOCATIONS:

- Woodland – Grenoside woods?
- Reservoir Edge/water edge
- Long country road
- Think of more potential locations?

SOUNDLIST:

- Static
- Footsteps- Path, tarmac, mud, grass, woodland, gravel?
- Leaves crunching, water
- Wind
- SOUNDTRACK
- General ATMOSPHERE
- Cereal, milk
- Bag, opening and closing/the zip
- Eating
- Phone
- Interference
- Laughter?
- Twigs snapping etc

Idea Processing

As a group we decided to meet up and discuss our ideas in full. We all had an input and decided on an idea which would be experimental, innovative and contain all of our work and ideas.

After all the planning we came up with a concept for our film, it is a little confusing but i'll explain it best I can. Our film will not contain a storyline. The main character who is going to be walking around is represented as the 'ego' - the consience, ordered, raional and stable moral part of the mind. The character who will be reflected in the mirror(s) represents the ID, or the unconcious mind.. the unstable, dreamy part of the character's brain. The mirror also represents the ID.The camera itself (the camera on-screen) synbolises the character's consience.. be consience of being watched. In our film we wanted to explore how mirrors can represent different parts of a character's mind, ego, consience etc.. for example being afraid or paranoid of being watched, exploring voyeurism. By layering a variety of shots over the top of one-another I feel we managed to convey a message that these 'different' people all link together in one-way or another. For example the person looking through the lense of the camera, and the same person on the other end being 'watched'. Whilst the same person is looking into a mirror, perhaps seeing his alter-ego, the side of him in-which is paranoid or psychologically unstable.. The shot that features the main character forcing a shovel into the ground is meant to represent 'normality' or 'anger'. An activity that is percieved as a 'normal' thing anyone could do, contrary to someone sitting in front of a mirror looking back at themselves.
Other shots that feature mirrors in the background are there to obscure normality/convey a message that the character is being 'watched'. The soundtrack we used feels well-suited for the piece we created, by syncing the visuals on-screen to the beats/notes in the music, we set ourselves a rythm that feels fluid yet obscure.For example in the cereal scene, the soundtrack dips/changes in tempo when the cereal is being eaten, perhaps portraying a message to the audience that by eating the cereal, something has changed or is about to happen, the whole point of this scene was to think of something that you would rarely see or even think of in the real world, creating something obscure.

In our final shot we hopefully want to symbolise ID (the unconcious mind) taking over the ego (the rational, realistic, ordered part of the mind).. we want to cleverly take the character 'out of the mirror' and showing him taking over the ID, this will result in a smashed mirror. Another way of interpreting the scene is that the character will attempt to overcome his paranoia of being watched, by smashing the mirror that features the camera (symbolosing being watched/vouyerism).

Project Discussion

After watching various Experimental Films we were asked to go into groups. After choosing our three we decided to assign roles.

I chose to be the Director and Producer, James chose to be the Sound Recordist/ Editor and Lewis is the Camera/Editor.

On what time we had left we thought of ideas we wanted to interpret into the Project. I had the idea of using stock footage which would give the benefit of using various footage which we might not be able to capture.

Through the Inspiration of Fernand Legers Ballet Mechanique, I wanted to use shapes. These shapes could be in front of the lens or manipulating other images which I thought would be very creative. Another idea which inspired me from Fernand Leger was the use of quick editing, but also shots either reversed or turned upside down.