Experimental Film Reflection

REFLECTION ON MY OWN FILM "SINNER"
Positives (Cinematography)

Our film contains a lot of symbolic meaning as we put a lot of thought into the designing and planning of the shots. I think we have been able to portray the two extremes of greed and provide the audience with a sensuous experience eg. the lipstick shot that made most people went "ew" when they saw it proves that we were able to provoke their disapproval towards greedy behaviour. The audience also understood that the symbolism shots that are superimposed on Charlotte's body are supposed to represent her mind (the rotten apple symbolizes evilness) vs. her heart (the orchid symbolizes "lust").

Negatives / Improvements (Cinematography)

What I think can be improved are things like - making sure all of the shots are not grainy (this has been a recurring problem in my film projects, and has been reduced but not completely removed in this film) as there are a few shots that are noticeably grainy / blurry / shaky:

    

Another thing is that I did not communicate well with the editor about some of my artistic intentions, for example, I planned for the water tank shot to be flipped upside down during post production to distort the audience's sense of direction but I did not make our editor aware of this.

We followed the storyboard for all the shots, but I think that as cinematographer I need to think outside the box for more creative shots and try filming the subject from different angles. 

Quality of the Film

Even though I felt that I spent more time and effort in this project on perfecting the shots compared to previous projects, I have to admit that the overall standard of our film (and my past films) is still incomparable with the films produced by other groups, because their standard is way higher. I believe this is because they have more passion for film and are willing to eg. spend the night out filming for the nice fluorescent light shots that they want, and they also invest in better equipment and have more experience with film outside of class as their interest in film extends outside of school. In comparison, when I was filming throughout this year, a lot of the times I just wanted to finish filming as soon as possible because to be honest, with so many other subjects to balance at the same time, I could not find enough time or motivation to film. Film is definitely one of the most time-consuming subjects, but the outcome you get when you put the time and effort into film is so satisfying and I wish one day I could put 100% effort into a film and produce something that I would be fully satisfied with.

 Not Experimental Enough?

After watching other students' films, I felt like our film is not experimental enough. We did not take enough risks in most of the aspects of film. The most experimental part would be how we had the audio and visuals portray different storylines but a common theme. I really like how the other groups made use of this opportunity to develop their film skills eg. Isaac experimenting with hyper-lapses and using still shots to form a sequence. Our main inspiration came from past student films and most of them are quite similar to the style of our film, but I wished I had taken more risks and steered away from the conventional symbolic film style to make our film different from all other films. I also find that I have the tendency to have good ideas but is always unable to execute them well / make them look the way I visualised it. If I were to redo this film, I would like to experiment with colour correction and special effects in Final Cut Pro, changing the exposure and focus of the camera, and making good use of Hong Kong's scenery and filming more outdoor shots. An idea would be to make a film only out of silhouette shots?

My Contribution 

After three film projects, I have become more familiar with my teammates and more confident as a cinematographer. I proposed a lot of ideas to my group, but unfortunately some of them did not work out in the end. For example, I had the idea of creating our own symbology in the film - where we put "price tags" on the objects in our film - to reflect our obsession with materialism. However, our editor does not think it works well in the film and therefore we decided to scrap the idea. I was also responsible for organising the shoots - the borrowing and returning of equipment, making sure we had all the props we need.

As an IB learner, I improved a lot as a communicator and was very open-minded as I expressed my ideas to my teammates very freely and was open to receiving feedback from them. I could've been more of a risk taker, especially in this unit where we are given the opportunity to film whatever we want.

THE FILMS THAT STRUCK OUT THE MOST TO ME

CINEMATOGRAPHY
"雨過天晴"

One of the shots that was very memorable and meaningful was the shot in the restaurant where the camera first focused on the old man in the background, then shifted the focus to Jeffrey in the front, which shows the generation gap in Hong Kong. The overall film is heavily inspired by local filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, which makes the film even more meaningful as the theme is directly related to Hong Kong.

FML

I really enjoyed the hyper lapses / time lapses, and the shot where the harbour was framed like a square was very unique. The use of symmetry in their shots also help enhance the aesthetics of the film and portray the idea of being isolated / in an existential crisis.

SOUND

"Splinter" definitely deserves a mention here as I think that their sound was the highlight of their film and really helped enhance the audience's viewing experience. I am not sure what the director's intention was because we did not get the chance to discuss this in class. My opinion is that, even though they were mashing up different movie genres through the different aspects of film, eg the acting represents drama / horror, with the sound representing comedy and stealing the spotlight, the film turned out to be more of a comedy film, which really demonstrates the power of sound in a film. 

EDITING
"Vision"
The special effects used were very unique and how I interpreted the glitches was that they represented the stalker's mind - how it is dysfunctional and so distorted that he would make the decision to stalk someone.

Experimental Film Screening (31st May)

aNEW (David, Derik, Arif)

- Loading a gun vs. taking pills

- Repetition of the same shots - reliving same events 

FRAGRANT HARBOUR (Gio, Jamie)

- Comparison of countryside vs City life

- Good use of slow motion to highlight the rapid pace of life in HK

- Cool Time Lapses and transition between shots 

- Mainly consists of Time Lapses

- From outside a tram to inside a tram - smooth transition

- Gets too repetitive after a while

- Time Lapse / Hyperlapse / Slow motion 

FML (Alex O, Isaac Y, Kevin, Ocean Pak)

- Great transitions between shots and interesting framing (harbour shaped as a square)

- Great cinematography

雨過天晴 (Ryan C, Arnold, Chris B, Jeffrey)

- Slow motion of the close ups of Jeffrey at the restaurant 

- About sickness / abuse?

- Theme: Occupy Central 

- Yellow umbrella in the end unveils the theme of the film - I like how its not revealed until the very end 

RETROGRADE (Isaac Um, Wing Kwan, Trystin)

- Rose as recurring motif

- Silhouette shot is cool

- Great cinematography

- Last part of editing was interesting

- Theme: Unrequited love?

YIN YANG (Chih Ning, Kaia)

- Shots in the beginning are noticeably grainy

- Comparison of two different lives?

- Transition from a drawing of a flag to the real life flag shot was cool

- Water - recurring symbol

- Comparing someone who's good at ballet and someone's who still trying to learn 

- Black and white shots where some parts of the shot has color - interesting 

- Interesting transition from egg yolk to sunset

SINNER (Candace, Tess, Charlotte)

- In the water tank shots you can see the reflection of the camera's light

- Last shot of the fish tank is very shaky 

- Lipstick shot helps provoke sense of disgust 

VISION (Karuna, Celine, Catherine, Lauren, Jackie)

- The feeling of being stalked / followed

- Cool glitching effect

- Sound matches the pace of the subject's action

- Sound reflects the subject's mood

- Fast paced = nervous, being followed

- Slow = calm, peaceful 

- Glitching symbolises the mental state of the stalker?
- Creepy

PULSE (Juliette, Ellen Tay)

- Beginning is really cool - finger gun 

- Heartbreak? anxiety? Suicide

- Words on the wall uncovered by hand - that shot was cool

- Good use of colour filters to highlight emotions

- The contents of the film explain the opening shots - your biggest enemy is yourself when it comes to mental illness

- Eyeball shots overlaid with shot of Hong Kong - cool

- Framing is great - good use of shapes / geometry

- Superimposition is well used - shots go well together to create more meaning

SPLINTER (Bernd, Chris C, Henry Teng, Ian Choi)

- Smooth opening shot 

- Different genres paired with music that doesn't match the genre

- Sound effects help enhance the film

- Different parts of film represent different genres

- Horror, drama, comedy

- Sound is the highlight of the film  

EXPERIMENTAL FILM SHOOTS

13/14 MAY
- Filming white wall shots
- Putting extra effort into getting the lighting and framing right, to make it look aesthetically pleasing
- Props and makeup: preparing gold hands and rotten apple
- Putting the LED light under the water tank so that the reflection of the camera and the lights cannot be seen on the surface
- Putting LED lights from both sides of the fish bowl
- Putting a green filter on the white wall shots - experimenting, will see if that fits the film well (filming two versions of the shots - one with a green filter and one without)
- Need to figure out gold makeup (for the lips) - not gold enough

21 MAY
- Could not get the dripping effect for the lipstick, therefore I told Charlotte to smear it downwards with the brush instead
- Lighting - kept making the same mistake of adjusting white balance when the lighting is already set up, which changes the lighting of the same scene
- Spent too much time on preparing props
- Worried that we won't have enough footage to fill in 3 minutes
- Need to start brainstorming for more shots: shot of a torch shining on the black wall

23 MAY
- Using class time to record voiceovers, added more dialogue to our script to make it longer
- Filmed two shots using film classroom curtain as the black background

25 MAY
- Class time: rushed, black cloth as black background, used white wall outside music classrooms as background, using paper cutouts instead of actual people (must match Charlotte)
- Adding jewellery as props - for the "price tag" idea
- Using lights to create shadows, tried warm lighting and cold lighting, whichever matches the footage problem
- One problem is the black cloth couldn't cover the entire frame if we want to do a medium shot (half body), editor can try masking it.
- Orchid shot taken from Youtube, asked for permission
- A lot of problem solving skills needed - eg. how to make it possible to film the shot? eg. splattering the paint - must do separate shot

26 MAY
- Filming at Tess' house, using paper cutouts instead of people because it would be impossible to achieve the effect we want with real people (we'd need a drone)
- Gold paint dripping was difficult because it was hard to get the paint to drip and move the camera down with only two people
- In the end we just poured the entire container of paint down my arm
- Common problem: lights do not have enough battery so it would suddenly start flickering in the middle of the shoot
- Paint is more yellow than gold
- Kept dripping paint on the white paper, couldn't do the shot properly, needs a reshoot

27 MAY
- Filming last two shots by myself
- I feel that we are making effective use of lights in this production
- Sometimes shots are overexposed? Should use barn doors or would be good if there was someone moving the light as the camera moves
- Apple shots were grainy at first, made lights really high to get rid of that
- Reflection of the light can be seen in the paint splatter shot 

Experimental Film

• What is Experimental Film?
• Bizarre Stories
• Abstract qualities of film images
• Exploring one technical aspect of film 
• Motivated by emotion, outside factor (political, social)
• Associated with art and social change movements including:
• Surrealism
• Queer Cinema
• Feminism 

• Theorist Scott MacDonald: "these films confront us with the necessity of redefining an experience we were sure we understood."

• Barriers to Experimental Films
• Rarely present straightforward stories or characters
• Aesthetic, philosophical and / or political means of expression
• Isolate items of film language and scrutinise
• Reject traditional methods of combining sound and image: could have two completely different stories running, audience naturally tries to process what's happening, but there could be no story

• Gestures of Rebellion
• Time lapse photography
• Fast, slow & reverse motion 
• Negative images
• Scratching and painting (directly onto the film)
• Superimposition
• Non-synchronized sound
• Sensual, emotional & aesthetic experiences as opposed to linear, chronological film 

• Characteristics of Experimental Films
• Autobiographical elements are common
• Create own language and symbology
• Value chance and spontaneity 

• Try walking around with camera non-stop

• Surrealist Cinema
• Rebelled against narrative form
• Grew out of Dada and Surrealist art in Paris
• Explored the unconscious mind beneath the surface of reality 
• Subvert chronological time and narrative 

• Un Chien Andalou (1928)
• Most Shocking Moment: Slicing of the Eye
• Motivation: Not doing anything that makes sense
• Vigorously mocks narrative form
• Sequence of events not coherent
• No cause-effect logic
• Titles are useless
• Characters have no clear goals
• Soundtrack parodies narrative cinema
• Slow motion use arbitrary

• Kenneth Anger
• Characters that represent archetypes and symbols
• Compilation soundtracks incorporating popular music
• Fragmentary narratives
• Lovingly ironic treatments of popular culture
• Scorpio Rising
• Recognisable soundtrack, no dialogue, pace is kept going through the music
• Connections can be made between the footage 
• Political Motivation

• Maya Deren (1917 - 1961)
• Personal and poetic
• Film works on two axes
• Horizontal: Narrative, character, action
• Vertical: Mood, tone, rhythm
• Less about what is happening but what it feels like or what it means

Artistic Response to Balloons

Balloons (Candace, Charlotte, Tess, Kaia)

Since my role is cinematographer, I will be evaluating the cinematography of our film Balloons;. The overall response from my classmates regarding the cinematography is quite positive. One of their criticisms was that the shots filmed under dark lighting were noticeably grainy. This was an issue in my Film Noir and Twilight Zone films as well, and to prevent this problem from happening again, I should try adjusting the ISO settings on the camera. 

I am quite satisfied with the overall mood and look of the film as I think the colour scheme was able to give off the sad and helpless atmosphere that the character was living under (a stressful school environment and society) with colours like blue, black, grey, and green:

 There were, however, a few shots that did not match the colour scheme, mostly the shots from the cafeteria scene. There was a sudden change from the cold colour tone to a warm colour tone between the classroom scene and the cafeteria scene: 

To make the film more aesthetically pleasing, I think that I should have put more work into location scouting and set design. I should also mention that the major problems we faced during the filming process were related to locations. Since we could not film at an actual local school, I had to try and make CIS look like a local school by using a lot of overhead shots and close ups. I was able to conceal the real identity of the location well but I did not put enough consideration into the colours of the locations. We should've filmed at the new cafeteria rather than the old one because the colours of the furniture matches the colour scheme of our film better. 

The repetition of the overhead shots is meant to help with reinforcing the theme of our film - to reflect the repetitive, "spoon-feeding" education system HK local school students suffer under. To keep the film visually engaging, I tried to widen the variety of shots by filming the overhead shot from another angle, as seen in the third screenshot below.  

Even though the camera was already mounted on the fig-rig, many of the shots still turned out to be shaky and this was one of the major flaws of our film. It was very difficult to keep the fig-rig stable while filming overhead shots. I noticed that other film groups were using another type of camera stabiliser, which I hope to look into and use for the next film project. 

As mentioned above, a lot of close ups were used in our film to help emphasise the character's emotions. I was largely inspired by the use of close ups in the Odessa Steps sequence in Battleship Potemkin.

The audience also seemed to enjoy the two shots that go around Tina's head, which were used as transitions from bedroom scene to the rooftop scene. I was inspired by the donut selfie trend (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcHAHZhBCUk) and I think that it turned out very well. I originally wanted to film this shot using the dolly, but I realised that the shot was too close to the actress to use a dolly. I asked the actress to hold the fig-rig by herself and move it around her face and we managed to achieve the same effect. As an IB learner, I became a better problem solver - we realized that it wasn't worth it carrying the dolly all the way from CIS to Central just for one shot, so I decided to use the fig-rig instead. However, I really enjoyed the use of the dolly in the other group's film (Bernd, Chris, and Isaac) and I hope to make more use of the dolly in the next unit. 

The use of intellectual montage is very evident in our film with the use of symbolism shots, the most prominent one being the balloons that are meant to represent the character's thoughts and feelings (the film starts off with colourful balloons and ends up with red / white / no balloons). The rope around Tina's neck is a symbol of stress and suicidal thoughts; the Winnie the Pooh falling off the table is a symbol of the loss of innocence and childhood; the shot of Tina putting spoons of rice into her mouth placed next to the shot of her flipping through her textbook is representing the spoon-feeding education system in HK; and at last the semicolon in the close up of her writing is a universal symbol of mental illness.

It was interesting to see how other groups presented the use of symbolism in their films. I found it very unique how one of the groups (Raghav's group) placed American food and Mexican food separately to represent the US-Mexico border. 

In terms of storytelling, the audience was able to understand the story well, even though I worried that they wouldn't understand the purpose of the balloon shots because they seemed to be quite randomly placed (which turned out not to be an issue after Kaia finalised the edit and added a few more balloon shots in between). Overall, I am very happy with how our film turned out and I think that I expressed more of my own ideas in this unit, especially because I am in control of the camera. I found that we filmed a lot more efficiently as I made good use of the storyboard and shot list. They helped me a lot with organisation (making sure that I don't miss any shots). 

Film Shoot (9th March, 12th March, 14th March, 17th March)

9th March, 2017

We filmed the teacher shots with Ms. Wong (Brankie) and the clock shots today. We learnt our mistake of using the digital clock in our last film and are using a bigger clock this time so that the audience can see the time clearly. We will have to reshoot the clock shots because we didn't borrow a tripod and it was very unstable to just use our hands to hold the camera. For the close ups of Brankie, the shots were out of focus at first, then back in focus. When the audience watches the film, they will be looking at the teacher from the student's perspective and hence I wanted to let the audience feel how the student was very tired. 

12th March, 2017

- Problem Solving: Instead of using the dolly for the "donut selfie" shot, I decided to have Tina hold the fig-rig and move it around her head to achieve the same effect.

- Problem Solving: We were filming under dark lighting because it was supposed to be an evening / midnight scene. The lights in Tess' bedroom were too bright, so we used a T-shirt to cover the light to make it dimmer. 

- Problem Solving: The red light on the camera was reflected on Tina's face when we were filming the close up, so we used tape to cover that up. 

- Problem Solving: We used the iPhone light for the donut selfie shot because the shadow fig-rig could be seen on Tina's face. The iPhone was placed on top of the camera so that the light would follow the fig-rig. 

- What I wasn't very satisfied with was that Tina's face looked very yellow in the shots with dark lighting. 

13th March, 2017 - Class Time

- Filming the balloons shots 

- The colors are supposed to represent Tina's emotions, so we took away the balloons that symbolised the positive emotions one by one until only the negative emotions (red and white) were left. 

- The difficult part was trying not to get our hands in the frame when we were removing the balloons and also to try and get the balloons in place. This required good co-operation and communication between me (who is controlling the camera) and my teammates (who are controlling the balloons). 

14th March, 2017

- Filming after school: cafeteria scene, the clock and rope shots 

- We wanted to film on the CIS rooftop but we can't access it. We need to find another rooftop as soon as possible. 

- Many close ups in the cafeteria scene so I filmed using different shot sizes and from different angles so that it won't look too repetitive.

- I made sure to do white balance properly even when the camera just moved a bit, because last time when we filmed the classroom scene in the drama studio, one of the shots looked very yellow, even though I already did white balance. 

17th March, 2017

- Last Shoot

- Ms. Ward suggested that we film on the IFC rooftop. 

- Problem Solving: Tina forgot to bring her shoes, but we needed her to wear the black school shoes because there are a lot of close ups of her feet. We had 2 hours before we needed to go back to CIS and only a few shots to film on the IFC rooftop, so there was enough time for Tess to go home to get her shoes.  

- Problem Solving: The living room scene was filmed in quite a hurry because our original location (university counselling office) was unavailable, so we went to ask Dr. Mok for permission to use her office. She was also willing to act as the parent for us. We were in a rush to finish filming because Dr. Mok had a meeting afterwards, so there wasn't enough time for me to setup the location and use better framing. We did not plan as well for this scene compared to the rooftop scene.

Film Shoot (4th March and 7th March)

4th March, 2017
Our first shoot on Saturday did not go very well because we were not allowed to go on the rooftop we were originally going to film on. We had previously gone up there to film for our last project, so this was very unexpected and we only managed to film 3/13 shots. The orbit dolly was very heavy and I was only planning to use it for one shot, but in the end we weren't even able to use it because we couldn't film on the rooftop. I also realized that the shot might not work with the orbit dolly, instead, we should use a fig-rig to create the "donut selfie" effect. Our actress also forgot to bring her school shoes, which she absolutely needed for the other scene we were filming because it was consisted of close up shots of her feet. In the end, I decided to change it so that she can just wear her sport shoes for that scene. This was a very unsuccessful shoot and I think the problem was that we did not have a backup plan. 

7th March, 2017

Our second shoot is after school on Tuesday. We filmed the classroom scene outside the drama studio in CIS, the going to school scene outside CIS, and part of the bedroom scene at Tess' home. We were quite productive today, but there are still a lot of shots that we have to film during class and outside of class. It is very difficult to find a time when everyone is free to film because we all have our own activities and assessments. As cinematographer, it was a challenge filming the classroom scene because some of the shots are designed to be overhead shots. I had to stand on the 'desk' that our actress was sitting at in order to film the overhead shot. We also made some changes to the close ups of the face, because the ones I designed were too close and it looked awkward when Tina's face filled up the entire frame. I think I was influenced a lot by the use of close ups in Battleship Potemkin. A lot of the closeups are meant to show Tina's emotions. Another difficult part about filming the classroom scene is that we had to make it look like a real local school classroom because we do not have access to a local school and we had to film at CIS. When filming the scene where she is taking the exam, I decided to have someone standing in front of Tina and we will have that person's shoulder in the frame so it looks like she is in a classroom with another classmate in front of her. For the running to school scene, I filmed two different versions - one where the camera is still and another where the camera follows Tina so that the editor can pick whichever suits the film better.