Archive for February 2016

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ONE TAKE


This project was weirdly hard for me. I think this project sort of documented some of my recurring problems as a filmmaker -- getting impatient and dancing around too quickly between images, not spending enough time in one place, focus issues, cutting off peoples' heads, spending too much time on minutia like hands and games pieces, occasionally forgetting about making purposeful camera movements, etc. -- and it was frustrating because I couldn't just cut around these issues and hide them with other footage. I'm unhappy with in this video is my lack of movement (actual movement around the table, not camera movement). It's funny, because I have 30 more minutes of footage where I'm marching around the table and experimenting with zoom, but this was the footage I chose to work with and it's pretty dang static. I really, really, really wish I would've swung around to the other side of the table -- just taken four or five steps to the left -- to capture a head-on shot of the Dungeon Master behind his little fortress of charts and plans. 

 That said, I'm happy with some of the framing -- the CU shot on the Dungeon Master's cheek with the rest of the table out of focus worked nicely, I think -- and I'm also happy with the way the "story" worked out. I think one of my biggest motives in choosing this specific moment out of all the footage I got was that I captured the various important layers of the story within these few minutes. For instance, I think you get an idea of the actual game that they're playing -- and there's a little bit of suspense and intrigue based on what the Dungeon Master is saying and how the players are responding -- but we also get a sense of the story of these friends and their close relationship from the jokes they make and the way they work together. 

Overall, I'm not completely thrilled with the way this piece turned out, but I think for a one-take it's a nice little vignette about this group of interesting friends playing Dungeons & Dragons and I'm not upset about it.
2/22/16, 12:11 PM

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PHOTOS (7)


1) This is the reflection from a stoplight on the wet pavement. I think this serves as a way of showing how using color can make any surface -- even gray concrete -- seem like something new and interesting, simply by turning an ordinary color expectation on its head (i.e. GRAY pavement shouldn't be RED, etc.).


2) This is a time when I think a lack of color served an image better than if it had used color. By turning off the color we really bump up the richness of the tone in the image and it makes for a more interesting read of this character, I think. 


3) I just think the thing that happens when there are a bunch of mirrors pointed at one another is really cool, but the thing that I didn't really capture in this shot was the way the yellow beauty lights made my hair look lemon-yellow and my navy blue shirt black. I wanted to get the crazy colors that I was seeing in real life, but wasn't able to figure out how to do so with my camera.


4) This image was just meant to serve as the only image sans color in this post (even though I ended up with another in black and white after I edited). This is the only picture that is black and white without putting on a black and white filter in post. I wanted to show how a lack of color still can read as a variety of shades even just with the eraser marks and chalk on this blackboard.




2/20/16, 11:50PM

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PHOTOS (6)


1) Hey, look at the orange/blue complementary color contrast! The smudge of grayish cloud in the bottom right is sort of excruciating, sigh sigh sigh.

 

2) I framed this photo just slightly crookedly and it made all the difference. Instead of having a cool symmetrical image that spoke of balance and structure and sturdiness because of its stout horizontal lines and hard rectangular shapes, I've got something that doesn't really do much of anything. This is just a crappy photo taken from the wrong angle. Boo.


3) This image turned out fairly well, I think. The dark, cool tones of Sariah's clothing makes the bright, warm colors of the comic book pop out and seem even more lively and vibrant. Moreover, they pair nicely with the warmer tone of Sariah's face which I think is a really nice touch, as it connects the radiance of the book with a radiant "character."


4) This image sort turned into a jumble. I wanted the people all to stand out from the shelves in the background, but I think because the lines and colors aren't quiet different/distinct enough, we lose the foreground in the background and the image reads as super flat, but not in a very interesting way.
5) An arrow on the road. Sure. Basically the only thing that I was thinking about when I shot this was the (obvious) contrast between the black of the asphalt and the white of the paint. 


2/16/16, 4:26PM

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CHASE SCENE


* The alternate version of this video (with the other song) is on its way. It failed to upload to Vimeo yesterday and it's taking forever to upload to Youtube right now. All in good time, etc.

 Here are the things I feel like I got right: There's definitely a palpable tone of female frustration about the nuisance of casual male power systems, and I'm happy that I found a way to make it readable to a general audience through direction (the irritating taunting of the male actor and the rage-y fist clenches/stomping of the the female actor), costuming (the high heels!), and writing (the bloody ending). I'm super happy with the way all the fish-eye footage felt and worked on screen (all thanks to James being a superstar DP, honestly), and how it distorted both the sense of the woman's fury and the man's derision. I think we got the weird "security camera" look due to the combined fluorescent brightness of the inside and the darkness of the outside, and even though it wasn't an effect that I really planned for, I still think it's interesting in the scope of the story (even though it sure doesn't match the quality of the Scooby-Doo hallway footage; oops).

 Here are the things that I'm still winching about a little bit: The ending! Blergh! Like, I love the composition of the final two shots and I love the blood splatter, but it would've been 10000% more effective if I'd directed my actress, Emily, to make the *tiniest* movement a nanosecond before the blood sprayed (as if she were really doing a throat-stab). I think there are some obvious points where the editing could've been tighter. For instance, I meant to speed up the insert of the numbers changing as the elevator goes from floor 1 to floor 4 and then just didn't, so it's too long. Moreover, the actor looks straight at the camera as he's punching the elevator button and at first I thought it wasn't too noticeable, but the more I watch it the more painful it is that I didn't cut around it. Lighting was -- excuse me -- a bitch on those fish-eye hallway shots because the lights we set up wouldn't reach one end of the hall so it was kind of choppy, inconsistent light throughout. I was trying to push those shots to be faster because I was already taking way too long to get everything (one of my biggest failures as a director is taking one million years on every shoot; sorry James), so I overlooked our lighting needs in favor of timeliness. As for lighting problems in the big open cavern of a room right after the hallway stuff, I honestly have no idea what could've been done, even if we had, like, five Lowell kits instead of the one. It was just so big and already full of this tinny fluorescent light and we were shooting on the 8mm which captures everything, so I don't know where we couldn't hid lights even if they were powerful enough to fill the space. Maybe we could've talked about skipping that location. I don't know.

 I've been thinking a lot about our class discussion about my movie, about how there was some discomfort/frustration from the boys and more understanding/validation from the girls. I'll definitely stick to what I said in class about not wanting to make anything that felt like a declaration about hating men. That said, I've been feeling pretty discontented about the response to a piece that -- after looking at it again and again -- reads in a way that is definitely confrontational about the way men are societally trained to take without asking and even condemning of this behavior, but doesn't damn men as a whole. The thing I tried to make a movie about is problematic behavior and I'm upset about it as a woman; it was a really valid and appropriate thing for me to make a movie about. There are certainly things that I did wrong in the film, but honestly I'm so uninterested in hearing a bunch of men tell me and the other women in the class why our experience isn't convenient for them. If this made some guys uncomfortable: good. I'm uncomfortable, too.
2/11/16, 1:20 PM