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.

Tech Class: Track and Dolly

Camera movements:
1. Dolly
2. Pedistal
3. Track
4. Pan
5. Tilt
6. Roll



Always have motivations behind your shots!

https://help.sketchup.com/en/article/1220896

- Indie-dolly (Independent Dolly)
- Dolly (you sit on it)
- Straight Tracks (12 ft total)
- Curve Tracks

CALLS:
Quiet on set
Roll SOUND - SPEED
Roll CAMERA - ROLLING
(SLATE - MARK)
ACTION!
CUT!

Reflection: Indie Dolly vs. Orbit Dolly
Indie-dolly: Offers straight tracks and curve tracks, can provide a perfect straight line movement
Orbit-dolly: Allows you to "customise" your track up to 360 degrees, but movement may not be as smooth for straight tracks because of the texture of the track (made out of rubber) - better to be used when there are specific movements that the indie-dolly track cannot 'micmic'

Montage Editing in Battleship Potemkin

About Battleship Potemkin

In June 1905, the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin rebelled against their officers, which later sparked off the 1917 Russian Revolution that led to the eventual rise of the Soviet Union. Sergei Eisenstein, Soviet film director, released his second full-length film - a silent film - in 1925 named Battleship Potemkin that tells a dramatised account of the mutiny. Eisenstein's intended to test his theories of montage through this propaganda film as he believed that he could elicit the greatest emotional response and make the audience feel sympathy for the sailors and despise for those who oppress them, ultimately influencing political thought through his editing methods. His editing techniques are known as the five methods of montage, which are metric, rhythmic, tonal, overtonal, and intellectual. The film failed to attract masses of audience, but received positive response from overseas. Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels commented on the Potemkin saying that it is "a marvelous film without equal in the cinema ... anyone who had no firm political conviction could become a Bolshevik after seeing the film".

Narrative Structure

The plot of the film is divided into five acts. In Act I: Men and Maggots, the sailors are given poor quality meat and start protesting. In Act II: Drama on the Deck, the sailors take control of the ship, but the leader is killed. In Act III: A Dead Man Calls for Justice, the Potemkin arrives at Odessa and the people of Odessa mourn over the leader's death. In Act IV: The Odessa Steps, imperial soldiers massacre the Odessans. In Act V: One Against All, another battleship that was sent to intercept the Potemkin decides to join the mutiny and help the sailors. 

Montage Methods

Eisenstein uses metric montage and manipulates the length of the shot in order to elicit an emotional reaction from the audience. For example, in the famous Odessa Steps sequence, shots of the baby's pram rolling down the steps were shown (10:36) and while the pram starts falling faster, the number of frames of each shot remains the same, making it seem like the fall of the baby is taking more time than it would normally do. This helps with creating a dramatic effect and makes the audience feel anxious for the baby. Rhythmic montage is used where the shots of the soldiers marching and the people fleeing in the Odessa Steps sequence were cut rapidly to create tension. The contrast between the two images is dramatic as the shot of the soldiers marching shows order while the shot of the fleeing crowd shows disorder. Tonal montage is used in the opening scene of Act 3, when sailors and workers were mourning over the death of sailor Vakulinchuk (31:40). Shots of Vakulinchuk's body are intercut with shots of the harbour before dawn and mourning faces, which creates a sense of melancholy and enhances the sense of mourning over a brave soldier. An example of the use of intellectual montage is the three rapid shots of the marble lions at the end of the Odessa Steps sequence (go to 11:45) - the first sleeping, the second waking up, the third rising, gives the audience the feeling that the lions are rising up because they are angered by what was happening at the massacre. This symbolises how the Russians are awakened and ready to fight against the tsarist forces.

Montage Editing

What is editing?

• Continuity Editing is the predominant style of film editing and video editing in the post-production process of filmmaking of narrative films and television programs. The purpose of continuity editing is to smooth over the inherent discontinuity of the editing process and to establish a logical coherence between shots. 
• A way of placing shots next to each other so that it makes sense.

Montage Editing: Condensing time, Placement of Images to create meaning

• By definition, a montage is "a single pictorial composition made by juxtaposing or superimposing many pictures or designs." In filmmaking, a montage is an editing technique in which shots are juxtaposed in an often fast-paced fashion that compressed time and conveys a lot of information in a relatively short period. 

• Montage is "the nerve of cinema... to determine the nature of montage is to solve the specific problem of cinema." - Sergei Eisenstein, 'A Dialectic Approach to Film Form'

• The production of a rapid succession of images in a motion picture to illustrate an association of ideas

• Rocky Training Montage: Comparison of Two Characters, Completely Different Settings, Bringing Two Locations into the same eye line. Tree falling vs. Man falling - the way they are cut together creates meaning.

• Soviet Montage Theory: Idea that the juxtaposition of different images an lead the viewer to reach different conclusions 
• The way the audience interpret why the images are placed next to each other
• Same sequence, playing with the audience's mind
• The Kuleshov Effect: Not just the acting or the content of the scene but to elicit an emotional response

Sergei Eisenstein (1898 - 1948)

• Believed that editing could be used for more than just showing a scene. 
• Felt the "collision" of shots could be used to manipulate the emotions of the audience and create film metaphors
• Differed from Kuleshov in believing that "each sequential element is perceived not next to the other, but on top of the other"

• Elongates time, creates different emotions, meant to be jarring, variety of shots, different pacing / shots / angles keeps the audience engaged

Eisenstein's Montage Theory

• Discontinuity editing
• Violations of continuity rules including the 180 degree rule
• Transitions between shots are deliberately obvious, less fluid and non-seamless
• Argued that montage is inherently dialectical (new ideas emerging from conflict)
• Methods of Montage: 

1. Metric

• Length of the shot is used to create meaning
• Editing follows a specific number of frames regardless of what happens to image
• Simple relationships between images

2. Rhythmic

• From "Battleship Potemkin" (1925)
• When the rhythm of movement comes into conflict with the rhythm of the editing 
• E.g. Slow march of soldiers / fast cutting 
• Good for portraying opposing forces
• Giving time to tell story - longer shot is more slow and meaningful

3. Tonal

• Focuses on the emotional meaning of the shots
• Uses the emotional meaning of the shots to create meaning
• Images often contain symbolism

4. Overtonal

• From 'Strike', 1925
• The interplay of the metric, rhythmic and tonal characteristics (pace, ideas and emotions) to create an emotional response as well as to communication action.

5. Intellectual

• From ' Strike', 1925
• The introduction of ideas, symbolism and associations into the edit.

Montage Me

Take 6 photographs, each answering one of the questions below:

1. What is your deepest fear?

2. Where do you feel safe?

3. What is your greatest ambition?

4. What is your greatest strength?

5. What is your weakness?

6. A selfie that best captures how you see yourself.

Twilight Zone: Film Screening

1. Fated? 

Bernd, Chris C., Kaia, Henry

Storytelling

From my understanding, the plot of this film is 'Fate' chasing main character Jake and he keeps revisiting the times when 'Fate took his family's lives away (?) - signifying how we cannot control our fate. I was confused about the ending of the film as Ian returns to the first scene again but in a different costume, but when I rewatched the film, I realised that there was a narration in the beginning of the film saying "For the 32nd time" and in the end before the first scene repeats again, the narrator says "For the 33rd time". I think the narrations sounded a bit muffled and hence they were hard for me to notice and made the film difficult to understand at first. There seems to be some minor editing errors, as the flashback sequence suddenly went black. I think that the pace of the story could be faster by using more cuts in the scene where Jake confronts Fate in the corridor to heighten the atmosphere, accompanied with faster-paced music. There was also a change of costume in the film, which made it confusing for the audience. 

Cinematography

I really like the use of dutch angle shots in this film. They really help portray Fate's superiority and enhance the tension between him and Jake:

I also like the shot where you could see Fate in the mirror and the camera pans to Jake and his mother:

However, throughout the film, the camera is quite shaky as there were many panning shots and it does not seem like a fig-rig was used. 

There is some inconsistency in the lighting - in the 'hospital' scene, the color of the lighting suddenly changed from cold to warm, and then back to cold again:

Sound

One of the major issues with sound in this film is that Fate's dialogue can't be heard clearly because he was wearing a mask. The group tried to portray the idea that Fate should not have an identity by giving the character a mask, but the prop evidently lowered the quality of the audio. I think the audio quality could've been improved by doing voiceovers with Fate during post-production, which should not be difficult because the mask covers the character's mouth and so the voiceover doesn't have to match with the video. There was a voiceover in the opening scene (0:49) that did not blend in with the rest of the audio very well because you could hear the ambience. In addition, the music was sometimes too loud and the audience would focus more on the music rather than the actual dialogue.

2. Mayday 

Tess, Candace, Charlotte (My Group)

Storytelling

Our film matches the characteristics of a Twilight Zone film - we challenge what's real and what's imagination with portals and by keeping the film quite vague and open to interpretation. Twilight Zone films are usually social critiques as well, and as the scriptwriter, my intention was to show how teenagers are very vulnerable to stress and struggle to cope with it (control their 'evil' side). I was worried that the plot might be unclear to the audience, because there were some details that weren't portrayed clearly, such as the shot of Evil Charlotte holding the pack of cigarettes which was meant to help convey how Charlotte is stressed out. However, in the end, the audience was able to understood the concept of the film, because there was a close up shot of the cigarettes and the drugs. I think my team did a great job modifying the script to make the audience understand that the second character is the evil version of the first character. Originally, there was not much verbal interaction between Charlotte and Evil Charlotte, so it was unclear what their relationship was. Adding in the dialogue "Don't you see, Charlotte, I'm just trying to help you. After all, I am you." helped clarified Evil Charlotte's identity. Overall, I am glad that we are able to portray the script the way we envisioned it. 

Cinematography / Editing

The lighting of our film is quite cold, which helps convey the theme of the story, but unfortunately, because a lot of the shots were filmed in dim settings, the shots eg. in the bathroom scene were blurry.

The use of the flashes to show that the characters teleported was inconsistent, because when Evil Charlotte teleported, there were no flashes, but when Good Charlotte did, there were:

We wanted to portray the passage of time with the shots of the clock in the beginning / the end, but I realised that it is actually very hard to see the time and that the audience would probably not notice such minor details. The running scenes were too long, and the audience felt nauseous. They suggested that we should use jump cuts in the running scene to keep the pace going and show how frantic it was, or shoot from different shooting the entire scene in one shot because it would bore the audience. The ending was quite ambiguous, which was our intention, but is also too abrupt. The start of the film was much stronger. 

Sound

As the sound designer, I think that the music I found on Audioblocks fits the film quite well, but the music in the end might have been too fast and did not match the pace of running. I was unaware of how loud the music and the ambience was that it drowned out the dialogue because I only watched the film on my laptop with in-ear headphones. When I rewatched it with over-ear headphones, I realised how loud the music was. The voiceovers eg. the one on the beach when Evil Charlotte said "Do you really believe what they say?" and the one on the rooftop when she says "No, no, I can't go down that road again" were a bit too soft. Next time, I should edit with over-ear headphones to assess whether the audio levels are appropriate. The sound in the ocean scene was difficult to control because the waves were so loud and sounded different in each shot (because sometimes we were closer to / further away from the ocean), but I managed to make the ambience sound consistent by putting another track of ambience under all the clips from the ocean scene. The audio can be improved by lowering the volume of the ambience and the music, so that the voiceovers can be heard clearly, and to also choose a piece of music that matches the pace of running in the street scene. 

3. Dimensions

Chris B, Arif, Derik, Raghav

Storytelling

I really like the plot of this story - it's very simple and easy to understand, but at the same time very intriguing. The audience is able to understand what happened to Raghav in the story despite having very little dialogue. There were some parts that were inconsistent - for example, in the beach scene, Arif gets out of the water, but his clothes suddenly turn dry, which may have been an editing error:

                    

Cinematography & Sound

This film is the best out of all four films in terms of cinematography, in my opinion. The flashes between scenes seemed unnecessary at first, but after understanding that the group had to use the effects as transitions because the framing and the lighting between the shots were inconsistent, I think that the scenes were actually matched up very well. However, it was still obvious that there were some issues with the colour balance as it fluctuates from location to location. For example, in the elevator scene, when he enters the lift the color is warm, but when he exits, the color is cold: 

                  

 This may have been because white balance was not done properly. At the end of the film, I really like how they used their lights very effectively and made it seem like there was a car in front of Arif: 

                                     

I also like the extreme close up shots of Arif and Raghav in the end, paired with the sound of a heart beat in the background:

                  

There were some issues with the sound in the rooftop scene as the ambience suddenly disappeared. The group said that it was because it was too windy at the time, but they could have recreated the audio with foley. 

I really like this bird's eye view shot - it looks very pleasing because of the spiral staircase.

4. I'm not dead, I'm Mark

Isaac Y., Isaac U., Wing Kwan, Alex

Storytelling

The plot of this film is very unclear due to the lack of dialogue. The title of the film was able to give us the idea that there's something to do with the character being dead, but the ending is quite ambiguous as the main character just lies on the bed and closes his eyes. The group tries to make up for the lack of dialogue by adding in visual effects, but it makes the story even more confusing. It would be a good idea to have the actor narrate his thoughts throughout the film, which could be easily done in post-production. From this film, we learnt that problem solving is a much better idea than changing the script and the idea.

Cinematography

I really like the transitions between the shots, especially from the swimming pool scene to the beach scene. I like how they were able to film the actor underwater: 

                                              

However, the camera seems a bit shaky at times, and the use of effects was a bit excessive. They used three different effects within the first minute of the film - the rainbow effect, the black and white effect, and the blur:

                                               

                                               

                                               

The shakiness of the camera plus the use of so many effects made me very nauseous. The group's intention was to represent Tavis' mind, but I think they were just very random and that they could have just used one effect throughout the film. 

Sound

The group said that the microphone did not work, hence they changed the film to something more experimental, because they would prefer having no audio rather than bad quality audio. However, I think they could've still filmed the sound with the camera's internal microphone, or use multiple iPhones as suggested by Ms. Ward, and later on in post production do a lot of foley and voiceovers. The volume of the foley in the film was inconsistent. It was too loud and did not sound realistic. Ms. Ward advised us that it is better to make the sound subtle, otherwise it would be very obvious that it is added in. However, I really like the idea of muting the music when the actor jumps into the pool to let the audience experience what he is experiencing. Putting the sound of the heartbeat when the actor tries to escape is also a good idea, but it was a bit too loud.

Throughout this unit, I have definitely grown as an IB learner. The biggest improvement is in my communication skills, as I now feel more confident when sharing my ideas. 

TZONE: AS THE SOUND DESIGNER...

Foley Work

The microphone was not working for some reason in the scene where Good Charlotte runs towards the ocean, so we had to recreate the sound of her footsteps. I did so by simply recording Charlotte running in the corridor at school as I follow her with the camera. It was important that I was barefoot so that the sound of my footsteps would be minimised. When I edited the sound in, it did not sound realistic, but after I added in the ocean ambience, it blended in very well. I also had to recreate the slamming of the bathroom counter because when we filmed the scene, it didn't sound very realistic. We went to the school bathroom and recorded the sound of Tess slapping the marble counter, with the microphone placed quite closely. I tried recording the sound of an actual clock ticking to put in the opening / ending scene, but it was so soft that the microphone could not pick up any sound, so I decided to find audio on Audioblocks instead. During the shoots, I made sure that the sound did not exceed the 4 white bars on the DSLR.

Selecting Music

The theme of our story is quite depressing as we depict how teenagers struggle to cope with stress. I therefore selected two different pieces of piano music which both have a slow tempo for the beginning and the end of the film, which makes the atmosphere very sad and lonely. I left a few seconds of silence before the sad music in the end cues. There was also no music during the voiceovers. This is so that the audience wouldn't be distracted by the music and understand why Charlotte is so stressed, and also to have some time to process what just happened in the film in the end.

When Evil Charlotte appears, I used a piece of music that sounded very creepy as well as some drumming (the volume of the drumming goes from soft to loud) to enhance the suspense of the film. 

For the chase scene, I used a piece of music with a fast tempo to make the scene seem very frantic. I muted the ambience of the street scene because it was too noisy and it would be very distracting for the audience if there was music and noisy street ambience at the same time. 

Overall, I think the music matches the film very well. I had to use different parts from different pieces of music because some parts did not suit the film very well. I had to cut out the best parts from each track to create the final outcome. 

Putting in Ambience

Layering ambience in the ocean scenes was very important because between each cut you could clearly hear a difference in the ambience track (because of the sound of the waves):

Challenges

I had to edit in a voiceover in the ocean scene, which was difficult, because I had to make it sound like Evil Charlotte was yelling all the way from the ocean. I did some research on how I could make the yell sound more realistic and the websites told me to fiddle with the EQ. I experimented with the Graphic Equalizer, but in the end, I thought that it did not work very well and figured out another solution. I simply made the voiceover one pitch higher, since generally, when you yell, your voice would sound higher. 

              

Originally, Charlotte added in the sound effect of a punch (?) when Evil Charlotte got pushed off the cliff. I thought it was too unrealistic, so I muted the sound effect, and instead replaced it with a scream. Our actress was screaming for quite long (a few seconds), which does not really make sense if she screams for so long because realistically, if someone falls, they would only scream at the second they start falling and be too nervous to scream anymore. I couldn't trim the scream because it was continuous, so instead, I sped the scream up by 300%. I made sure that I placed the scream at the exact time when she starts falling. I also added a few seconds of black screen after the scream while the music fades out, so that the transition between the two scenes would not be so abrupt.

                                                 

Twilight Zone: Third and Fourth Shoot - Scene 6-7 / Scene 2

18th December, 2016 

Today, we went to Clearwater Bay Beach to film the beach scene. We modified the story as we thought that it was weird how good Charlotte follows Evil Charlotte into the ocean. Instead, Evil Charlotte will be pushing Good Charlotte off the cliff / into the ocean. Therefore, we had to decide on the framing of the shots on the spot, but we had sufficient time to plan and complete the scene so the shoot went well. There was a shot where Good Charlotte was yelling to Evil Charlotte from afar, and to create the yelling effect, we placed the microphone further away from the actress than usual. The sound of the waves was quite loud, but I made sure to record ambience so that later on if the sound covers the dialogue we can record a voiceover and lay the ambience track under it. We may also have to do foley for the footsteps. 

19th September, 2016

We wanted to film the street scene and reshoot two shots from the rooftop scene today. The reshoot went well, but afterwards we realised that there might be a problem with 9costume continuity because in the previous scene, Evil Charlotte puts her hood on, but in the rooftop scene she doesn't have her hood on. We need to check the previous footage and decide whether we need to do another reshoot.

I suggested that we should incorporate some more chasing in our film. Originally, we wanted to do a split screen with the crowded street scene - where Evil Charlotte is chased by Good Charlotte, but we realised that we couldn't do so because the people in the background will be different. We figured out another way to shoot the scene - I will be the stunt double (Good Charlotte). However, we encountered another problem. Since the cameraman has to follow the actresses who will be running on the street, there is no one to look after our bags (Charlotte Lai wasn't here for this shoot). Due to safety reasons, we decided that we will shoot this scene on 31st December.