Studio Shoot #1: Initial Idea & Development

Green Team

Role: I signed up on for the camera crew for this studio shoot as I noticed I have had a reoccurring interest in my past projects of lighting, framing of shots, and colour. I really like the idea of having an artistic input as well as getting the chance to work directly and technically with the shooting of the film. Furthermore, I think these are the skills I would like to work on, and get better at

ZOOM Call: Thursday 5th Nov. '20

As a team we had a Zoom meeting (organised by Reagan, our producer) where we were able to discuss which photos from the brief we were drawn to and the ideas that we came up with. Prior to this, a shared google doc. was created by Reagan which allowed us to share these ideas before hand to give each other a sense of what kind of narrative, set and overall project we wanted to work on. I think this process was really successful as we all bounced off each other with our ideas and even before we zoom called, there was lots of ideas and development just on the docs. 

Google Doc Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dcc1b72xmwAJ8AR_YVyYrAcG1rzauKrIJQd3PHA24C0/edit

Ideas that were the most prominent to the group:

IDEA NO.1

Ralph Eugene Meatyard Untitled 1962

   Es Devlin  - Suggested by Ellie

Based on the Ralph Eugene Meatyard – Untitled 1962 photo.

   On the Zoom call, we found that we were all drawn to Devlin's 360º set design style. Especially because like Meatyard's photo we felt inspired to work with both an interior and exterior with the set. This would also allow us to experiment more with lighting from the exterior through the window on to the set. In Meatyard's photo there is great contrast with lighting and the opposite clothing of each child. This makes the photo feel somewhat playful, yet haunting.

Es Devlin's Set

We also really liked the use of colour on the inside vs black and white on the outside and wanted to interpret this on to our set. Furthermore we really liked the idea of having the audience look in on the set as an outsider much like the kid in Untitled 1962.

Annie's Suggestions:

I really liked her comment of using B&W but with different moods and incorporating an older fashioned aesthetic. This also applied to our core idea of the set design. 

Furthermore, we were also drawn to the idea and challenge of incorporating a mirror in the narrative and filming with it.

Leah

I think Leah's idea of looking at distorted perspective really stuck with people as our ideas began to evolve around this as well. I really liked her idea of exploring colour palettes and how this could distort reality. We began to apply this and seem to fin our self with a basis of an idea along also inspired by the previous ideas above. 

Me + Andrea

Inspired by the previous idea of projections, I thought it would be cool to have a shadow/silhouette of elongated figures bouncing around the room which draws the protagonist in and they would represent different voices in his head haunting him. This idea took well and Andrea then developed it in finding the artist Boltanski who has installations involving shadows:

After the zoom call I went over the notes we had all made and the photograph by Jeff Wall called 'The Invisible Man' these were some of the ideas I came up with inspired fro this photo:

• Maybe the room could be crazy cluttered like this and each object is a memory, therefore, the room is his bank of memories or thoughts as we previously said

• maybe haunted by the shadows (who are potentially stealing these memories?), so he is racing against these shadowy people to find this specific object

• And he is in search of the specific object and maybe each object has its own soundscape to it as he picks it up? 

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After going over this with the group the next day we decided we need a balance of prop clutter with chaotic sound and camera movements. So having a majorly cluttered set like Wall's photo was not the best idea. However, as we are looking in his mind it would work that each object represented a memory or had a meaning.

All these works, especially the Es Devlin set really kick started to our core idea and really got the conversation flowing. From here we came up with quite a strong first initial idea of a man looking in and then exploring the set (which is a metaphor for his mind) frantically in search for something. Rodrigo and Reagan came up with the initial synopsis:

A man forced to look inside the cubicle of his own mind struggles with processing his existence, he descends into a state of madness, trying to shatter, repair and crush his ego, who gazes right back at him. There seems to be someone else, a shadow, haunting him. His various selfs surface, observing each other and grasping for control and stillness.

Combining all our ideas and Vicky's mood board and story outline, Reagan did an amazing job at putting together a powerpoint clearly explaining our idea and inspiration:

IDEA NO.2

Reagan's Idea:

Inspired by these photos, Reagan came up with the idea of creating a home environment where a mother is distressed by her chaotic family life. It was inspired by the film we viewed in Rosie's session called "Three Women," and the long shot used in it. 

A main point she got across was that she could imagine it to be a living room/ dining area but in an outside setting. Initially we thought this would be a good plan B as we found a lot of our attention going on to the other idea. 

Annie and Alya:  bought up the issue of having to do risk assessments for children and more than two actors during Covid-19 as well as payment. In response, Annie came up with the idea of having the woman (mother/wife) play all the parts of each family as a compromise. However, we noted this could be done badly depending on the actors skills and how we would actually get across to the audience what would be happening.

Because this was a back up idea, we did not put as much thought as we did in to the logistics of this idea compared to the other one but we did go over the basis.

Overall, for a 2.5 hour zoom call, I feel like this was a super successful outcome; having two solid outcomes and we worked really well together and tried to include everyone's ideas and really talked through things. We really pushed each other's ideas further and make the best of them. 

BRODIE'S ZOOM CALL Friday 6th Nov. '20

Brodie's zoom call was quite useful in the sense that she really outlined whats possible and was too ambitious which was good as it was our first form of clarity. Notes from Brodie's zoom:

- Corona training and how we would need a corona supervisor/monitor

- we need to consider ways of adapting to outside if it comes to that and ways we can achieve this. making furniture out of cardboard, maybe playing with dimension by having some of it painted on a backdrop.

- How the roles worked and how working with actors works too.

- A 360º set was a bit too ambitious for the time scale and space we had. Because the exterior and interior in our story was a main idea, this was important for us to keep and figure out a way to adapt.  After a short discussion, Flora had a great idea which we stuck with in the end:

As depicted here by Flora, we have a normal U shaped set with a front flat that would have the exterior with a window to it so we can look in to the set in some of the establishing shots.

ROSIE'S SESSION Friday 6th Nov. '20.      Rosie's session was super useful as she talked us through each idea and what worked and what didn't work. 

Idea 1: Not to overcomplicated the idea and that sometimes it okay not to have to combine all ideas, reiterated the issue of a 360º set. How would we do this outside. If we chose an idea we put our all in to it and not fall back on a plan B. Glass may be an issue in the window due to risk assessments as well as broken mirrors so we will h

Idea 2: was initially unclear in how we would achieve this story with just one actor as multiple characters. But alternative ideas such as camera movements and set adaptions on how we could make it work. 

In the end, it was confirmed that we would go with idea1 and work more to refine it.

This session was useful and needed as we were able to be in person and split in to our production departments and chose specific roles.

In the camera crew and sound department:

DOP: Kaitlan 

DIT: Flora

Gaffer: Ieva

Camera Operator: Laura

Camera Assistant: Lili

Sound: Miso, Flora : 

Miso came up with quite a few songs that could be used for inspiration for the film. Collecting a bunch of song ideas and sounds from the start would be interesting to see how it changes throughout as our film changes and develops.

    As a group we looked at 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' (2004) Dir. by Michel Gondry. The film is about memory and delving in to the depths of the protagonists mind. So we felt that it was very suitable in reference to our film. We realised that when you are thinking of something or if you close your eyes to do so, all of your focus is on the one thing you are thinking of and everything else around you becomes blacked out. This was captured in Gondry's adaptation of the story as there is a scene where they are in one of his memories in his head and he is losing the rest of this specific moment so he is trying to focus on specific bits. There is a spotlight on him and everything else around him is blacked out. We thought this could be a useful technique to include in our work. Instead of it being completely blacked out we would work with a dark set with a slight colour tint in response to the colour palette we end up going with.

Overall everyone contributed massively and so much progress was made in just 24 hours, now having organised roles we can start working on more specific sections each and fulfilling these roles