Reflective evaluation

I feel our finished film is a success, and am happy with how it turned out. We had many issues that affected how the film looked and sounded, but the finished piece is close to how I imagined it whilst planning. We originally intended our nightmare sequence to be longer, with two more 7 second film clips and other scenes shot on tape. However, unfortunately due to issues developing the film two film clips were destroyed, leaving us with only the other two. I feel the strongest areas of the film are the opening and nightmare sequences, where the pace of the film is much quicker than other scenes, we experimented a lot with different styles/imagery and the music helped create atmosphere in these scenes. The saturation fading down the tunnel conveyed the protagonist’s blindness, and the low quality of the hi8 tape format added to this. Weak points of our film are that some parts, like the reception, lift and corridor scenes are quite slow and boring, as well as being too narratively driven. We gave the film a subtle, non-linear narrative that can be interpreted by the viewer, but the narrative elements of the film detract from the experimental, stylistic scenes that don’t require narrative.

Although most of the slow narrative parts were too slow and unexperimental, I did like think the lift scene was unnerving and emotional, and I’m happy with how the footage looked.

I feel our use of three formats was successful in conveying the varying states of the protagonist’s vision; tape whilst blinded, film (and more abstract footage on tape) for the nightmare sequence as we see through his minds eye, and digital as he awakes and takes off the bandage, connoting his sight has recovered and colour/quality has returned. The tape/film sequences also suggests a time difference, as if decades had passed between scenes, and technology had improved. Although this is not what we intend through this, it makes time much more ambiguous. We also scratched into exposed 16mm film for the scratch transition to the corridor scene, and scratched/burnt into 35mm film for the burning into the nightmare scene and the titles.

I was inspired to use the camera formats we did by The film’s Gummo and Julien Donkey Boy by Harmony Korine. Julien Donkey Boy was a dogme95 film shot on MiniDV, transferred to 16mm and blown up to 35mm, giving the film an ugly, off coloured aesthetic that is as headache inducing as the camerawork. In Gummo, Korine shot much on 35mm and handed out 16mm, 8mm, VHS, hi-8 tape and Polaroid cameras to the crew to use in the film. The varying mediums and saturation levels were also inspired by how Tarkovsky used both colour and black and white in all of his films shot in part in colour, from Solaris (1972) to The Sacrifice (1986).

From shooting the film I learnt a lot about scheduling shoots, as it was nearly winter and we required daylight for many shots, meaning we often couldn’t film past 4pm. Deciding to shoot on 3 formats was my own individual contribution to the film. I shot film as a hobby, and decided to attempt shooting 5fps video individually before we started shooting the film. The effect was successful, and so I pitched the idea to Natalie and we agreed to incorporate it in the nightmare sequence. I had not seen any similar effect used in film before, and had little idea how the footage would look, so the effect was very experimental. Shooting using a low frame rate was inspired by the opening scene of Chungking Express (Kar Wai, 1994). Step printing was used to repeat frames, lowering the frame rate of the footage from the scene. A slow shutter speed/camera shake makes these frames of the scene blur, creating a jumpy, blurred style that conveys the rushed, cramped and claustrophobic street setting perfectly. To create our slow frame rate sequences, the frames were placed two frames apart in a 10 fps sequence. The second tenth of a second of each frame I flashed black, making each frame flash on for 1/5 second then flash black for 1/5 second.

 I also suggested shooting on tape, yet we had both previously used tape in our film last year, Scarlet Heath. We worked well as a team and balanced the workload between us well. I did the majority of the cinematography, whilst Natalie recorded most of the audio. Working in a team did not prove a challenge, yet working in such a small group made shooting to simply carrying equipment to the set difficult and time consuming. Thankfully our actor, Dan helped us carry equipment and set up for shoots. We both came up with the concept of the film together; we went through many different ideas before settling on the story of a blind man who mysteriously doesn’t realise the disrepair of the world around him.

The lampshade man scene was a scene I had planned personally, and felt it was not as successful as I had hoped. As I held the lamp and played the lampshade man, Natalie filmed, and the footage was not how I imagined it. I imagined the footage being extremely subjective, filming the mans hands as it made contact with first the shoulder of an unseen receptionist (making him believe he was in the presence of a person), then he feels again and it has mysteriously turned into a lamp, making him question his sanity, reality or expect the supernatural. Unfortunately, the first shot had a poor zoom mid shot, the shoulder was visible far too early and her shadow blocks half of the shoulder, and in the second shot the lamp is visible far too early. This damaged the meaning of a scene, and so it is now harder for the viewer to follow. Apart from this  small issue I am happy with how we worked as a group.

Although I am happy with how the film turned out, I feel it hasn’t aided much in professional skills development. Filming using tape and stills film are not popular formats to shoot on, and shooting on these is not developing professional cinematography skills in the same way shooting on a high end digital camera may. There was very little actor direction, and our choice of location was unrealistic for a practical, professional film. However, I learnt a lot about how to go about planning and creating an experimental film in small groups or as an individual, as many experimental films are. I also got the opportunity to edit to some fantastic music which helped create atmosphere and gave me experience filming for and editing to music, which is a useful skill for editing and music video production, an area I am interested in.

Bibliography

Kar Wai, W. (Director). (1994). Chungking express [DVD]. Hong Kong: Criterion Collection.

Korine, H. (Director). (1997). Gummo [DVD]. USA: fine line pictures.

Korine, H. (Director). (1999). Julien donkey-boy [DVD]. USA: fine line pictures.

Tarkovsky, A. (Director). (1972). Solaris [DVD]. Soviet Union: Artificial Eye.

Tarkovsky, A. (Director). (1986). The Sacrifice [DVD]. Soviet Union: Artificial Eye.

Post-Production

final cut link

We filmed, as planned, using 3 mediums; tape, film and digital, to reflect the varying ways in which the protagonist views the world.

I scratched the titles onto partially exposed ends of 35mm film strips, making the image vary in brightness.

The film grew a sort of possible, non-linear narrative from the experimentation,  that the protagonist had visited this hotel in it's (and his) prime, burnt the hotel by accidentally dropping a cigarette (and perhaps perishing with it) which caused the fire that ultimately destroyed the hotel. Blinded by guilt and unable to see/accept what he has done, we see him return in a dreamlike state, unaware of the hotel's disrepair, reliving his terrible past. He then awakes in the clear, truthful present, having, through his subconscious suppressed guilt resurfacing through the nightmare, come to terms with what he has done, he takes off the bandage and sees again, and we, like him, see the world in it's true colour.

The second nightmare shot was achieved by shooting burst mode at 5fps as the man takes a drag, and as he breathes it out, I stopped recording and tightened the tripod at the same time to preserve the frame as if it were still recording. Natalie then donned a Poncho and danced as the shutter was left open for up to 30 seconds per shot, as me and Dan altered the light. I varied the exposures to make the figure vary in blurriness, altering the aperture to correct the exposure. This effect allowed us to manipulate time entirely, tricking the viewer into thinking they are viewing real time, when actually they are viewing 30 seconds at intervals, condensed into each frame and presented as continuation.

The two shots give unnatural lifelike features, such as veins and a ghostly apparition. This anthropomorphises the hotel, as it is a character in the film, and adds to the guilt the character feels; did he burn this place, and if so, did anybody perish? the growing black vains and ghost could be those haunting him in his nightmare, or could simply be a figment of his own tormented mind.

Daniel Dowson, the star and musician of the film, with the lampshade. We didn't use many shots where he also played the lampshade man walking around at night. He allowed us to use some of his music for the piece, which fit perfectly with very little editing, as if made for the piece.
Links to the music used for the Opening and Nightmare sequences on Soundcloud.

For the end of the nightmare i quietened the track and mixed it with the background sound, panning it to appear as if it were emanating from his sleeping head. As the man wakes, the music disappears.

The Pentax Q we shot the digital part on. The small sensor and scale of it make it similar in depth of field and camera shake to the tape camera. The sensor is so small, the crop factor from 35mm is x5.6. The 8.5mm lens was adapted down to 3.825mm, equivalent to a 21.42mm lens.

The tape camera was a Samsung VP-L500, standard consumer hi8 tape camera. Due to it's inability to transfer digitally i filmed a television screen playing the footage. The screen stretched the footage to the 16:9 proportions, and i recorded it on a Canon EOS 550D at 16:9 (1920x1080) I then squeezed the footage in to 1440x1080, the correct 4:3 format.

I burned holes into an exposed end of film of varying sizes, scanned these and put them in order to create the burning of the film after the cigarette drops. This connotes the dropping of the cigarette could damage the film itself, and could perhaps be the cause of the location's destruction.

 I shot the animation sequences using the canon EOS 5, as planned. I shot on fomapan 400 black and white film, and developed the film using a budgetary/stylistic alternative to traditional developer, Caffenol. The mixture includes Coffee (caffeinated), washing soda, vitamin C and water. The image is darker, grainier and higher contrast than most developers. I left the film out to dry in the open to collect dust and hairs. I then cut them into strips to scan.






I discovered the wide angle adapter i used for the pentax q could also be held over the lens of the tape camera to create an extremely distorted fisheye effect. This helped create an uneasy feeling that we are seeing through the eyes of an unseen observer.








We booked and using the steenbeck, but ultimately scanned the 16mm scratch transition. I made sure to scratch a large area with no black at all to make the transition completely hidden. The transition is important, for it marks the transition from seeing the truth, feeling pity through dramatic irony for the man, to a much more subjective view of the world, as we see the intact hotel he is imaging and visualising in his head for his surroundings.





Although not the best software,  I edited on Motion 5, as it was affordable I could use it at home, allowing me to edit, develop and scan in the same place.

Production folder

1 minute experimental link:
https://vimeo.com/190608847

Modified treatment:

A man is followed by a strange presence to a run down hotel, where he books a room. The man is driven insane by the hellish hotel, and is consumed by it in a nightmarish sequence.

A man walks down a long dark urban tunnel, carrying many bags and rolling a suitcase behind him. The camera follows, and as he drops his suitcase gains ground on him. The man swiftly pulls the suitcase up, looking at the camera and hurrying away. Later he arrives at the abandoned hotel, where the man, in confusion, enters and finds his room. He finds his corridor and room eerily intact, enters, lights a cigarette, and goes to sleep.

As he falls asleep the film enters his nightmares, in bizarre visions around the hotel and perhaps beyond. He finds himself trapped his dream and trapped within the hotel.

Further ideas/development:

A blind man goes to a hotel to regain his eye sight. The cinematography reflects his blindness. In his nightmares he is symbolically given his eyes back, and sees the hellish hotel he is living in for the first time. His vision fades from broken images on film and tape to digital, altering in quality as he leaves.

Inspiration:
Julia's eyes (Gulliem Moralles, 2010)
Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977)
A scanner darkly (Richard Linklater, 2006) and Waking life (Linklater, 2001)

Style notes:
Camera:

For our one minute piece we shot, for convenience of movement and its ability to deal with low light, on a Pentax Q, a digital mirrorless compact capable of standard HD 1080p@24fps. The small sensor allowed deep depth of field even with a wide aperture (f1.9), making refocusing unessential whilst moving the camera. The weightlessness of the camera allowed for fluid handheld movement yet susceptible to human hand shake due to this. To make this less evident, I used a 0.45x adapter on the 8.5mm lens, making it a 3.8mm (21.4mm 35mm equivalent, 5.6x crop factor). Making the frame wider also allowed me to follow the character with ease whilst moving myself.

For the 5-10 minute, I hope to experiment with other mediums more such as tape and film. We used tape briefly in our film Scarlet Heath last year, but did not experiment with the medium to it's full potential. By recording the playback, We are able to pause, fast forward and rewind the tape as it plays, distorting the image. I hope to also use film, both scratching onto 16mm (perhaps for transitions, to build up, consume the image, and die down to reveal the next shot) and perhaps also 35mm. I have experimented with shooting using stills 35mm film through an electronic film stills camera (Canon EOS 5), shooting 36 frames at 5fps, giving me 7.2 seconds of film for one roll. I will develop this myself to give it a rough, grainy and dirty aesthetic. Although substantially cheaper than cine film, shooting this way would still be very difficult financially and time consuming. However, integrating this with the tape footage (made similar through a 4:3 aspect ratio and black and white) would be affordable and provide variation. I hope that the gradual destruction of the image, moving to older and lower frame rate mediums (from tape to stills film) will convey a form of reduction narrative, alike Outer Space, where the film slowly dies.

 (stills in the location using the film I plan to use in the 5-10 minute)

Shooting burst mode also allows me to shift seamlessly from 5fps continuous shooting to slow shutter speed stills, as if there were no cut (on a tripod). This allows us to create ghostly slow shutter effects

in the same take as actual moving footage.

Costume/ Props:

The lamp was made from an old lampshade and most of a broom attached to a base, and painted black. We shot the lamp so as to appear unimportant, yet due to us rushing to fit into one minute it was difficult to convey the lamps significance to the man, as it appears only briefly at the beginning. To give the body a timelessness that the lampshade and location had, we had the lampshade man wear a brown trenchcoat, an article of clothing that has been around since the late 19th/ early 20th century. This gave the film no clear certainty in when it is set, or what time period this being is from.

Sound:

Due to only using synch sound we have been unable to experiment much, however this will match the visuals' broken style. Tape static sounds, crackling, sound from mechanical fault is perfect for this. Synch sound from the visuals can be distorted, such as altering the pitch to give the audio an uncomfortable wrongness. We don't hope to use any or much dialogue. The protagonist, if any, should be struggling internally, and not express himself through speech, at least not to other characters.


Location:

Before shooting our 1 minute, we decided we wanted to film in an abandoned location, one unseen and hidden away, one that has been, since it's desolation, unaffected by time. We researched local locations using an urb-ex (urban exploration) website www.28dayslater.co.uk. We decided the best two locations were Park Hill or Hallam Tower, so we looked around both.

Park Hill looked fantastic, however it was much more open than we had hoped (all interiors had been blocked). The location was very public, and also littered with used syringes, making the location simply too unsafe to film.

Hallam Tower was perfect, as although not all of the structure was safe, the floor we filmed on was clear and safe. The walls were laid bare, with pipes jutting from the ceiling and wallpaper peeling from the rooms. We searched the area first and made sure it was clear for our actor, who had limited visibility to about 2 meters in front of his feet, although was always well lit from his head.

Influence and inspiration:
Directors:
-David Lynch (Inland Empire, Eraserhead, Lost Highway, Six figures getting sick
The films of David Lynch have heavily inspired our approach aesthetically and thematically, in particular Eraserhead (1977),  Lost Highway (1997) and Inland Empire (2006), which for me create the strongest sense of nausea and claustrophobia. I hope to perhaps use similar methods of breaking the fourth wall in Inland Empire, and a similar dark and gritty aesthetic to Eraserhead.

-Darren Aronofsky (Pi, Requiem for a dream)
Pi's (1998) aesthetic, claustrophobic sets and unstable, paranoid protagonist are all strong inspirations for own own piece. I hope to create similar feelings of helplessness Aronofsky creates in Pi and Requiem for a dream (2000). Addiction is also a possible theme for our film and struggle for the protagonist, and the Requiem's techniques (such as the fast editing) can perhaps inspire our own.

-Andrei Tarkovsky (Mirror, Stalker)
Less thematically, and more visually and structurally from his films Mirror (1975) and Stalker (1979). Mirror's non-linear narrative structure flows back and forth over decades, yet does not attempt to make it clear what time we are viewing, forcing the viewer to piece together a puzzle of images, dreams and memories. Stalker is perhaps the best example of using simple, existing locations extremely effectively. Although not shown, through the script, camerawork and editing Tarkovsky creates an unsettling uncertainty in the true nature of the location. It is as much a character as the three men, ominous and ever present, visible and invisible. In the editing and cinematography style however i hope to take a very different approach to Tarkovsky.

-Harmony Korine (Julien Donkey-Boy, Gummo)
The nauseating cinematography and upsetting scenes of Gummo (1997) and Julien-Donkey Boy (1999) are inspirations for our own film, particularly the manipulation of the film image in Julien Donkey-Boy. Intended as a dogma-95 film, the film works with it's limitations by filming a screen of a slow motion dancer over music coming through the television. The detail of the image is almost completely destroyed.

Other films:
Tetsuo: The Iron Man (Tsukamoto, 1989) - I love this film's gritty black and white visuals, low budget practical effects and it's insane and creative editing and camera effects, creating the appearance of impossible movement through high speed burst shooting. The film is simple in plot, being playful and experimental in it's use of time, rather than using it to communicate a clear narrative.
The Shining (Kubrick, 1980) - I plan to use the same trope of a haunted hotel affecting the mind of its residents, driving them to insanity.
Antichrist (Von Trier, 2009)
Irreversible (Noé, 2002)
Persona (Bergman, 1966)
Under the skin (Glazer, 2013)

Short films:
Outer space (Peter Tscherkassy, 1999)
Fridge (Peter Mullan, 1995)
Six figures getting sick (David Lynch, 1996)