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.