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.

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.