Today in class, we had group reflections on our projects' progress and ideas for improvements on different aspects of the opening. It was interesting to see how other people proceeded with their openings such as their chosen genre (and presentation of the genre), pre-production items like casting and props, and useful things for production. For example, one person was going to use constant references to the Bible, incorporated as a major theme, with excerpts (intended to be read) that would signify and represent themes in the main character's life. She had already filmed these inserts of the Bible's excerpts, using a lit match across the screen to light it, which contributed to the idea of a dystopian world, which was her genre. I was impressed with the product.
Another project was similar in genre to mine, as he envisions a coming of age film of a black teen exploring his interests and where he fits amongst different communities. His form of creation specifically surprised me, but that is mostly because of a clash of interests. I am not much intrigued or enjoy specifically conventional, cliche teen flicks - coming of age films. But as he discussed his project it excited me to view the final product. Although my film is also a coming of age, I believe the reason I enjoy and have been well-vested into the project is because of the psychological, supernatural aspects of it. For example the main character experiences hallucinations, and the entire film opening is void of dialogue. The manner in which I create stories doesn't follow what Ms. Stoklosa advised: genre, research, outline. Instead, I generally proceed from an idea, (very rough draft) outline, research, and then decide on whatever genre fits the story the most.
Some ideas proposed to me was to include shots that conveyed the opening wasn't a definitive ending. For example, Nyx and I decided to include a cut to drinking water at the end, but it isn't significant in portraying how the rest of the story plays out. So, the idea of grounding the character back into reality came to light, such as my dog pawing at her legs, and then, as Nyx proposed later, to have an appointment reminder on the fridge next to her, to have some allusion to the character's issues, and the film's remaining plot.
As for the obstructive piece, I discussed the issue of how to continue with its contents, to which we decided upon criticism, that the piece should generally be empty since logically it would intend for the artist to fill it up. From an artist's perspective, that would make the most sense other than a black hole.
As previously discussed, the actor playing the main character will be my sister, and the location will be my living room. These factors are ideal as my sister already understands what it means to face artist's block, an interestingly consistency within my family as my sister draws and paints, my brother draws, directs, and edits films, and I am a writer. Anyways, she has experience that is beneficial towards our project and will help simplify the acting and direction portion of production. The living room has large, nearly floor to ceiling windows surrounding the space I plan to use, which would allow natural light to enter as the main lighting source. This feature adds to the peaceful tones intended to be expressed, and can be manipulated through eliminating the source and use darker tones instead (during the appearance of the obstructive piece). If need be, we have ring lights, able to use warm and cold tones, and a cylindrical light that is versatile in different RGB settings.
Evidently, in order to have natural light as the major source, production needs to occur during daylight hours, preferably before noon - noon, as this period is when the sun will hit the living room the most. This is somewhat restricting, and so is Nyx's schedule, so our filming days are limited, whereas we have much time for post-production and work on the CCR. To work around this problem, prop set up of the obstruction piece and discussions of how to position cameras and our use of setting will occur first, and afterwards, after-school time will be used to work on shots not needing natural light with Nyx. All other shots including the natural light will be filmed on my own, during weekends. It is a somewhat tight schedule, as I also would like more time for Nyx's help to overshoot preferably, but it is possible nonetheless.
Nyx and I have become set on the aforementioned story, and planned out the direction we want it to take, including the format as to what sections of the story would take up how much time and what they would represent.
The initial 30 seconds would be introducing the character and setting, mainly used to present the necessary credits in the opening. The shots used to present these takes inspiration from 1917's ending, slowly closing in on the main character, using natural light and expansive scenery to portray a, for lack of better words, happy ending. They institute light-hearted tones and definitive-ness in its use of lighting, scenery, and shot. The opening will be portrayed similarly through mainly using my living room as the setting, which has lots of natural light entering. The room's contents, sofas, carpet, maybe the tv as well depending on its difficulty, will be removed out of frame so that the room is presented as expansive, limitless, a metaphor for the endless inspiration and ideas an artist can have. Using natural light and the same expansiveness, light-hearted tones will be conveyed, and because of the story centering around art and painting, the introduction will also portray the artist's deep passion.
From then on to 1:15 would portray the artist's freedom in painting, and her deep passion for it, portrayed mainly through accumulation of shots, and possibly sound, rather than facial expressions or direct conveyance. I feel a direct presentation of the emotional values of painting to the artist would degrade the product, and using shots, sound and editing (through slow movements, elongated cuts, maybe jazz? I'm simply a big fan of jazz) would portray our skill in filmmaking, and how we can implement the techniques we've learned in class through implementation of our product. This timeframe would also include rising anxiety of reaching an artist's block, unbeknownst to the artist herself that the block is coming - only feeling the anxiety like the artist. This would be portrayed generally through editing and sound. We will include faster cuts, closer shots, and sound, through maybe stings of a ticking noise or an increasingly louder ringing, to portray this anxiety until its final accumulation. At this point, there will be a supernatural, mind-bending moment where at this peak of anxiety the sounds, quick cuts, and all would cease and in place of it, there will be a large obstructing piece, as described in the previous post, about 9x5 feet in dimension. What will be on it is to be determined, however, Nyx found a large canvas we could use from Amazon that would be perfect for it - it's cheap so... literally perfect.
As seen in the planning sheet, there are storyboards of a transition that includes the obstructing piece and the artist looking at it. It transitions, passing closely behind the artist's head, closely to be able to include a cut for the transition, to the opposite side of the artist's head, with the obstructing piece now replaced with the title. This shot takes inspiration from a previous film opening project, available through Ms. Stoklosa's wonderful website, which I will link in a moment. The project use the character's movement to present the title appearing slowly, as the character moves from the left side of the screen to the right. It was beautifully and creatively done, which we will use in our own way. The title will appear in similar fashion, or simply blatantly appearing without the clever appearance the students used, instead to represent that the artist is seeing this obstructive piece in her mind - that it simply doesn't exist in reality, only in her mind that is representative of her artist's block. I realize I've been talking about this character without explaining a crucial part, casting. Simply, my sister will be the actor. This hallucination will be detailed further, so that the audience definitively understands that it is a hallucination by using other shots to portray it. This definitive-ness is necessary since films often use transitions with titles only for creative purposes, so the audience may interpret it as creative technique, not hallucination.
The storyboards, finalized obstruction piece, and possibly filming, will start the next week.
Again, as the title suggests, we scrapped our idea again. This isn't because of inability to film, or gather necessary locations or attain intended mise-en-scene elements, the opening was feasible. For example, I already have appropriate clothing to fit a lawyer in the workspace, my father would have acted as Death being he is overwhelmingly tall and owns a large dark cloak he wears for Halloween that would both instill preferred tones for a "Death" vibe, and my mother's company's workspace is similar to a generic office building location so we could have filmed there. However, I simply didn't click with the idea, and I couldn't brainstorm ideas, enjoy the work, nor did my interests align with the genres the opening would embody. Thus, we begun researching other ways to genre-align our opening additionally with our interests, again taking influence from previous film opening projects.
Although I currently am not set on what genre this opening idea would be, but I had begun brainstorming from what I have, what interests me, and the possibilities from the two's possible versatility. To start, artistry runs in my family amongst my siblings, as my brother was a previous student of Ms. Stoklosa's, of whom I can receive assistance from, and my siblings both enjoy drawing, painting, and other mediums of art. Personally, I aspire to be a writer, and so something consistent within each is an artist's block, which is the issue of the film, and introduced by the opening. From this, I thought of casting my sister as the main character experiencing the artist's block, using inspiration from the layout of where we live to present the mental struggle and the interior spaces to represent the struggle in a physical format. For example, I plan to completely remove all furniture from some rooms to create the sense of a serene, expanding space, which would be emphasized by the lots of natural light entering the room. Some ideas for representation are as follows:
(brainstorming sheet)
Noticeably, there is a large, rectangular piece, entirely black except for the very middle, which would be white and a similar piece below in reverse. The inspiration for these pieces, which I plan to create from large pieces of cardboard or canvases each representative of artist's block and surpassing the block, comes from the show Love, Death, and Robots. In the episode Zima Blue, the artist consistently, and increasingly uses a zima blue square in the middle of each piece they create, instilling an ethereal and ascendant sense of personal art.
This ethereal sense can be applied into the film opening by using a similar mostly black piece as aforementioned to be representative of artist's block, appearing in an abrupt manner, a scene similar to an extreme close up of a pencil breaking cutting to a black screen (an idea input by Nyx, which I enjoy). Soon I will upload most likely several storyboard outlines and discuss them to decide which interpretation would be most versatile in production and one to be proud of.
As the title indicates, practically the entirety of the previous film opening idea was scrapped due to simply being an unrealistic standard based on what we have available, location, and mise-en-scene, simply seeming outside of what we could afford and offer through production means. This is partially due to viewing previous projects and seeing the differences in how other students were able to create well-produced and enjoyable pieces without extravagant means.
As we had discussed in class, a very lengthy and frankly tedious process for how to move forward, taking inspiration from Stranger than Fiction's film opening for its comedic aspects taken through a serious, monotonous lens, using movement, shot/angle placement, and editing to create comedic effects, and a previous idea I had for another class for a 10-minute play involving a lawyer meeting with Death.
The story would roughly ensue as a series of clips portraying a monotonous life, abruptly ended by the main character's death, preferably off screen and slowly played out like when a character's death is portrayed off screen with blood slowly seeping into vision.
This monotonous, uniform effect is something we wanted to facilitate the comedic aspects of this story outline through dramatic techniques and production that exaggerates the opening's tones. Evidently, it would culminate towards the end of the opening by the character meeting Death, within the differences of setting, darker lighting, and appointment-like tone. The ending would be portrayed as the character sitting across a desk from Death, where he is handed papers in a script-like font and format declaring his death, means of death, and processes from that point forward as the rest of the story would revolve around this changing aspect of his life...or rather, death.
Of course, the previous research conducted based on suspense rising to the introduction towards the title card like in Joker, or Arrival's subtleness in introducing the movie and its themes is not for naught, as it is still valuable and versatile for our use in our own film opening.
A new, surprising and extremely helpful addition to this project: I will be working with Nyx! We got together to discuss project management orientation and how to tackle different aspects such as direction, photography, retrieving actors, extra help on the side to help with lighting, mise-en-scene elements, and more. As a result, we were able to fully develop how the film would play out, and the significance of the film opening towards acting as a prologue sequel type which I’ll explain in a moment. Before that, there is one major concern that can overthrow our current processes and diagram of how this film opening and the project will go: pray that Ms. Stoklosa will green light this film opening since it does include violence, most likely some blood, and death.
FILM OUTLINE:
Opening includes: A fight between two men, as the initial attacker kills the first - first in terms of order of character appearance - where the attacker is seen combatting his thoughts/emotions/actions and fades to white, and this is left to interpretation by the viewer through technique aspects (to be explained). Opening ends with the same very first shot (a wide, long shot) instead with a different color palette changed to one more soothing, comforting, and light-hearted, as the attacker now instead approached the first in an embrace as the two walk out of frame (embrace and walk-our not necessarily set in stone) meant to represent the film’s story as the story of these two characters, their relationship, and how it reaches the point initially viewed in the murder. Upon reaching the initially viewed murder, it will skip/replay (undetermined) the scene, but adding more scenes afterwards to further explore the themes developed. Or it just may end with an extreme wide long shot of the two characters.
Evidently, the film will embody the genre of drama, despite, and possibly enhanced by depending on how production is executed, the opening’s introduction of violence since the remainder of the film revolves around themes of examining the human spirit, bonds, friendship and love - their relationship is undetermined and frankly I feel it is not necessary to the story, mainly the opening, but to the story as a whole since I’d rather like to portray emphasis upon thematic material over specificities and it’s undetermined-ness would contribute to that. And so, this opening would heavily include the techniques discussed in the previous post with influence and inspiration from Society of the Snow’s portrayal of themes and action sequences.
Nyx and I formulated this outline and genre-centered film based upon today’s influences and ideologies. For example, the reason as to why the characters are men, with the opening, opening with violence and murder contrasted with ending in warm-hearted tones and friendship/love is because of gender norms and societal expectations. The film would revolve around questioning these sociocultural concepts, portrayed within the characters by again questioning their own identity (could range from emotional vulnerability to sexuality to societal pressure for masculinity), and breaking these stereotypes.
We accumulated research from numerous film openings, drawing upon Arrival’s opening through a tilt down and introducing the birth of a baby and communicating with the baby, symbolic and contrasted of communicating with alien life. This is an important contrast that we will attempt to portray through different material in our own opening through aforementioned techniques. Specifically, the tilt down would slowly introduce and set the scenery of the opening, to further be able to instill intended tones. For example, during this we plan to utilize a black screen/shot of the sky for credits, tilting down to introduce the opening. However, we will also use an increasingly louder ringing noise throughout the credits, silenced by the fade to white, to instill these tones.
Another example of an inspiration we plan to use for our opening is how to introduce the title - currently to be determined. Initially, we discussed to place the title before tilting down into the scene, that used a style of diction that can further instill suspenseful and eery tones like in Scream’s title card that used the connotation of the word, the sting of a scream, and a bleeding font to carry out its intended effects. However, with this being a drama opening from an intense to more mellow, warm-hearted effects, we transitioned towards something more similar to Parasite’s title opening’s serenity and Joker’s intensity.
Joker’s intensity is fully demonstrated by the context of a beating upon the main character, followed by a screaming title encompassing the entire screen, bleeding outside of frame at the edges, portraying an exaggerated use of title for the purposes of thematic development in a film. Our film opening can manipulate the similar techniques through the use of sound for exaggeration, and possibly use a bleeding title outside of the frame to define the extent of how deeply significant the emotional impacte and themes developed in the reminder of the film are in relation to the characters and the world. Additionally, this title card is used after the grotesque beating, additionally exaggerating the drama. Therefore, we plan to place the title during the fade to white after the fight previous violence to create more of an impact.
Parasite opens the title slowly in a section of the screen where there is little to no movement, as the letters form slowly, similar to a parasite infecting its host. It contrasts this movement with the rest of the screen displaying day-to-day activities of the city’s streets through a window, again contrasting by needing to peer through a window to access this life, instilling a sense of a caged life, barred from normalities and well-versed in poverty. This slow opening title formation integrated into contrasts is something very applicable into our film opening. During our title’s opening, we can manipulate the formation of the word, placement, and contrasts to develop our intended emotional impact and to signify the how a deeply rooted and powerful relationship can spiral into violence, thus developing the story’s thematic material and initially setting the tones necessary during this transition from the violence to the relationship they had prior to this event.
For the film opening, as I talked about in the previous post, I already have an idea for the story of the film opening, despite having many flaws. In a basic sense, the film would open with a eerily still long shot to establish setting and stylistic choices such as colorization and cinematography. A man would be exactly in the middle frame without movement. Eerily tones and suspense would arise through no direct movement until another man charges at him from out of frame - into frame and a fight ensues. The reason for this simplistic idea formulating was because of recent inspirations and stylistic measures I wanted to incorporate into future projects: use of distinct color palettes in post-production, extreme close ups contrasted against extreme long shots, experimenting with the 0.5 feature on the camera of an iPhone, a fishbowl lens or POV shots, etc. There are many opportunities for stylistic implementation with a fight scene, especially in this scenario's introduction and how to shoot the initial fight. Evidently, not all these techniques will be used since their usage should be implemented towards developing certain tones or to provide a meaningful contribution towards my intended tone/vibe, and how it plays into the remainder of the opening and film.
Some major inspirations for this was Society of the Snow's beautiful usage of color, extreme close ups, and camera lens to film intense sequences and definitively instill tones of the film to reach its intended sequences. This can especially be seen during the scene of all the survivors taking shelter within the plane when they are avalanched and suffocated by large amounts of snow. What I particularly love about this scene is the techniques it uses, aforementioned, to create a sense of chaos, impending death, and suspense among the characters and within the audience.
(1:03:07 picture)
I intend to use such technique within my own film opening to create suspense, chaotic movements, and frantic desperation as the characters fight back against each other. These techniques can be used to enforce the dramatic sequence and instill a definitive sense of life or death, finality, and the importance of the characters' desperation throughout the fight.
Although the story outline can use a lot of work, and the opening will most likely change dramatically due to the rest of the film's story, I still plan to manipulate colorization, movement, and contrasts heavily within my final product.
Upon completion of the music video/marketing campaign project, I am left with many inspirations and determination to create a piece reflecting my personal visions and my improvements in cinematography, directing, editing, and especially production. I feel previous projects lacked some versatility in cinematography and production where I could have improved with using various settings, design and props, and in shots, angles, and camera movement. Therefore, I hope to see much improvement in this upcoming project.
Already, I have some ideas as how to approach improvements for the film opening - I am mainly interested in researching types of character v. character, nature, supernatural, or society, especially revolving around conflict generally applicable to any genre that I focus the story around, or within establishing background and setting within dystopian or utopian genres, some of my favorites. Additionally, establishing tone primarily has become a favorite interest because of the versatility it has in opening possibilities, or within the visions I have in mind.
Some inspirations towards establishing tone, conflict, and setting is the film openings of Raging Bull for its still shot, internal movement, and colorization in black and white versus the alarming red title. Also, there is Scream's opening through alluding to conflict but mainly establishing tone through alarmingly increasing sounds of popcorn steaming, long shots contrasting quick cuts.
I hope to be able to follow set schedules to easily time manage and complete the aspects of the project with time to spare and revise. I am already pretty excited for this project and how I can express my creativity and full control of the piece, with ideas for openings already in place which I will discuss numerous opening ideas within the next post and decide the route/opening I want to take.
