Evaluation

Experimental Evaluationn 2000 Words

Final Project Feedback

The feedback we were given was a mixed bag.

It was suggested that the piece would work better as an installation, being submerged with the sinking colours. Once said I could picture this, and thought that it would indeed create a nice effect, and I know that is what Luke had in mind for the piece if it was possible to do.

As for how it works as a film with all the philosophical meanings that I wanted it to portray I understand that it couldn't quite be perceived through the imagery alone and it was the title and the explanation of the piece that allowed people to understand what it was about.

Still everyone agreed that it was visually hypnotic, and the images and colours were well chosen and the music fit. I really enjoyed the final product and it was fun working with Luke.

Post Production Take Two

Unfortunately I hadn't been able to find any archive footage of what I wanted, so I was happy to leave things as it was. I did a bit of editing, just tweaking to make sure everything fit and flowed well, namely with the images of Luke over the ink.
The images were overlapped by an effect called Overlay which made putting the images together a lot easier

In general, while editing the piece you had to stay concentrated otherwise it could get confusing as there were a lot of slow motion/speed up and reversed shots.

After we had finished Luke was tinkering around with what the other effects did and found something called Difference, which inverted the colours and considering we were using a range of colours the effects were interesting. We then decided to invert our favourite clips at the end of the sequence which I believed would fit in with the theme of The Human Situation, the idea of realising that you are trapped in a world/life that you didn't want to end up in. The knowing causes an internal burning rage but there is still nothing you can do to change the life you are leading. You are trapped.

After that was done there was only the sound left to do, and as Luke knew what he wanted and had explained it to me (Two chord monotonic sound to resonate and flow with the sinking and lifting ink and complimenting the characters slow falling.) he went to a friends to create it that night, before putting it together with the sequence ready for the presentation tomorrow.

[Screen Grabs Luke sent me of the process that him and his friend went through when creating the sound for the piece]

Post Production: Merging the two images.

The images look and work really well together and still manage to stand for good metaphors for The Human Situation, but as I suspected there isn't enough to fill five minutes of screen time.

I am looking for any archive footage or imagery that can maybe fit with what we have, My idea is to have someone dancing underwater but so far I can only find still and no moving imagery of what I have in mind.

The last thing now is to put together the sound element, with changing the imagery the idea of having unnerving, chilling and borderline upsetting sound doesn't seem to quite fit the bill, so we are re-evaluating and trying to find a droning type sound.

Production: Re-evaluation (Thursday 25th April)

As per the previous post we had intended to use a dancer in out piece, but unfortunately the person we had in mind got tonsillitis, which we got told at the last minute. Therefore we had to come up with an alternative plan. Originally it was going to be based off of this trailer for the BBC show Luther


But unfortunately due to space constrictions and where we were filming (S1 Arts space) we had to change the idea and based it off this imagery I had of someone falling in slow motion. Also due to the short notice no other actor could be found and therefore we had to use Luke.

It went really well and because of the white background I think it will work out really well in the post production stage. The only downside is that I don't think we have enough to fill the 5 minute mark.

Revised Shooting Schedule

Production: Practice in the Warehouse (Friday 19th May)

Today we down to Hope Works, a warehouse owned by a friend of Luke's, this is where we intended to have the dance section of the film shot, but due to time constraints we weren't able to get the footage we wanted so decided to use the day as a test shoot. We asked the dancer to do a few moves and inspected the space, noting things that we would need to move around for when we came back the following Wednesday, added the need to use lighting.

Production: Ink (Wednesday 17th May)

We had The Workstation booked to film the ink in water sequence, this location was best because there was a sink which meant that we had easy access to water with out the extra worry of the box not fitting in the sink etc.

The only negative and potentially dangerous thing was that the box had a leak and we were working with three point lighting. I had a stack of paper towels on hand to periodically mod up any leakage before it left the table and got anywhere on the floor. This was easier for me to do as I was handling pouring the ink into the water as Luke worked on the lighting and the camera placement.

We filmed in both a normal and higher frame rate, as well as using a microscopic lens so that the shots could be tighter. We also had a range of food colouring colours; 

Which all depending on the order added to the water created a new effect each time. The only tricky thing was that each colour had its own consistence  Some would plunge straight to the bottom and others would float at the top and sink slowly and gracefully to the bottom of the tank. 

We captured a lot of varied footage, the majority of which seemed usable to me which is a good thing as it meant we could tick this off of our list and focus on the next task.

Pre Production: The Ink Effect

We went to the tutorial where we discussed what we had done so far and what we were planning in the upcoming week.
The task at hand for the day was to find a tank. We had a few ideas in mind...
-Going down to Sheaf basement to see if they had any lying around
-or they had the materials we could use to build one
-Buying a fish tank

When we went to Sheaf and told the technicians about the idea they said that using plastic perspect sheets wouldn't work as the water would cause it to burst. They said that using glass would be easier but that it is more trouble that it's worth to get it made and we would be better off buying a ready made tank.

We then went and found a computer and checked the nearest Pets At Home store for tanks. The shop was pretty far so we looked a little more local and found that we could get a decent sized and decent priced fish tank from B&M Homestore. When we went there we found the tank but there was a debate as to whether we should use a large plastic container instead. It was decided to take the plastic container and if that diodn't work exchange it with the glass one.
We went to Lukes to experiment with how the plastic container would work and whether food colouring was a good substitute for ink.

The results were positive and thus we decided to stay with using the plastic container and get a range of food colouring colours for when we film the following day. The only negative was that the box had an undetectable leak. This was due two one of two reasons, one; that what the technician at Sheaf had talk us about Plastic not being built to hold a large capacity of water without bursting was correct, or that it was a defective box.

Sound Recording

The tone of the film is to have a juxtaposition between something that makes your skin crawl and something that makes you feel bored.

The Uneasiness is a metaphor for how you feel when you realise that the life you are leading isn't the one you had in mind and the boring monotonic one is a metaphor for the unawareness that occurs when you are living in the life that you never intended for yourself.

We focused on recording the creepy uneasy sounds today and to help pinpoint the sounds we wanted to recorded we listened very closely Unheimlich - Animacion, trying to guess what we were hearing in order for us to then go and find similar things to record.

Experimental Sound Recording Lodger

Pre Production: Shooting Schedule and Equipment List

Equipment needed throughout production stage

Canon7D body
Zoom Lens 15-85mm f3.5
Lens 35mm f1.4
Lens 50mm f1.2
2 x Canon LP-E6 Battery Packs
SanDisk Extreme 8GB Compact Flash
Dedo DHL4 Kit
Multi Coloured Translucent Perspex Sheets
Tripod
Track and Dolly

Hydro Microphone

Marantz 660

Shot Gun Microphone

Synopsis

Based on the idea of The Human Situation whereby we are trapped in reality and suppressing the essence of the life we were meant to lead. We have decided on the images we want to use to convey this philosophy and have deconstructed metaphors out of them. The ink in water effect will be a constant image throughout and its slow tentacle like movement will be the consistency and never changing almost fate like presence of life. The next imagery involves a dancing segment, this will be contemporary dancing, a lot of pops and locks that when shown in reverse will look really disjointed and almost painfully weird. This is a metaphor for reverting back into the womb as if to start your life again and live it the way you choose, but showing that it isn’t an easy task.

To heighten the uncomfortableness the sound track will be that of creepy skin chilling sounds in an attempt to make the audience feel really unsettled. This feeling is to be mirrored with the dancing, making it look spastic and unstable as we feel this denotes how people feel uncomfortable with any sort of change the their situation. On top of this will be a droning sound that goes with the inks, making something that looks beautiful sound boring and monotonous, this juxtaposition shows the illusion of the reality.

So far these are the images we have in mind and are still speculating on one or two more to add to this current set up as we feel that it won’t be long enough.

Pre Production

After having two weeks off to ponder, consider and reconsider a range of visuals for the piece we came together to work on what to film deciding it would be easier to take certain sections of the idea and find visuals that could be seen as a metaphor for them.

We also came up with a list of things that needed to be found and done within the week to ensure that we could start filming for the following week:

-Dancer
-Tank/Perspects
-Ink
-Warehouse/Derelict Building
-Test Shots
-Sound

To give us an idea of how we would go about creating the ink in the water effect