Originally, plans were made to travel to different urban areas to shoot footage that could potntially make it into my New Wave Film. The first destination was in Manchester where I planned to shoot footage of built up streets which would incorporate nicely into my film concept. The concept being a drunk individual wandering the streets trying to find his way home whilst questioning his concept of reality as he starts to see bizarre images and creatures along the way. Therefore some establishing shots in this built up metropolis would have worked very well. In the film I wanted the character to be portrayed as 'lost' in a sense, and the complex layout of Manchester made it much easier to convey.
However It was then decided that we would visit the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. It was in here where I figured i could get some fairly abstract shots of different art pieces and settings which would match the tone I was looking for. The idea was to transpose this footage onto the footage that I was yet to shoot of my actor portraying the drunk person walking home. This was to make the film seem more surreal. I decided on establishing the tone of the film as surreal after watching example films of the Czech New Wave which I have been studying for this unit.
Research and Influence:
Whilst researching the Czechoslovakian new wave, I viewed 3 example films which really stood out to me and made a massive impact on how i perceive Cinema. There films were "Dasies" 'Valerie and her week of wonders" and "Morgiana" I took inspiration from all three of these films and decided to take elements that are present in each of these films and incorporate them into my own New Wave film. The idea of magic realism which was inspired by "Valerie" was planned to make an appearance in the final film. This related to the creatures that the character of my film was going to witness during his journey home. I was in need of shots of bizarre creatures and contemplated modelling my own and shooting them to appear larger than they actually are. However an area in Birmingham next to the Custard Factory in Digbeth presented presented large sculptures that I was able to include. These included a large lion's head as well as a giant tree man.
In regards to inspiration from Daisies, the different colour filters to express different emotions is the aspect that influenced my film. I used different digital effects in post production in order to produce the desired effect. I took inspiration from "Morgiana" in regards to the shot types, for example the introducing shot which was captured from the point of view of the dog. This emulates the shot in which the cat "morgiana" enters the room and jumps up onto chair next to one of the sisters.
Methods/Techniques
I ensured that the shots were filmed handheld in order to give it a disorientated feel which reflects the current state of the main character. This was also the only way to ensure it was possible to capture the majority of the shots effectively as well as practically, for example the point of view of the dog. I encountered issues with exposure whilst shooting, more namely the white-balance caused the shot to present an orange tint to the image due to the lack of lighting. Any other setting resulting in underexposure. Therefore I came to a compromise in which I added coloured filters to reflect the mood of the scene as well as distracting away from the poor white-balance effect. The colour filters were also influenced by the colour filters used in Daises in which they appeared fro time to time. This effect also gives the film a much more surrealist feel. I ended up shooting the film chronologically in just one day giving the single actor a very loose idea of what he is required to do. This was in hope that he appeared even more lost and disorientated. I contemplated on both the actor as well as the camera person to get drunk together before shooting to give it that genuine performance as well as off -putting disorientating and frustrating camera movement and angles. I also ensured that influences from new wave cinema would be identifiable in both the filming and editing process.
The result of all this can be seen in my final video entitled "Beer Goggles". I included many jump cuts in the final edit of the film as the takes could be seen as a little over-stretched which had the potential to bore the audience and become uninteresting. Luckily this suited the tone as well as the context of the film as it it gave it a more disorientating feel. Jump cuts were also used in the majority of the films I studied in this unit, most notably "Daises" (1966) in which the film would seem almost careless with the amount of sudden scene transitions without any explanation
or clearly apparent reason. This technique is also one of the main reasons that Daises appeared to have a very loose narrative structure. One that I wanted to replicate in this film. There is no existing diegetic sound within the film as I wanted to completely remove as many senses from the audience as I possibly could in order to emulate the condition of the key character of the film. I chose a song that felt very slurry and slow sounding to fit in with the context of the film.
Updated Design Brief
I encountered many problems during the production of this film. As mentioned before I chose to film some footage at various art museums. These shots included very vague locations and meanings which would have not only added to the films ascetic but would have also given it more of a theatrical feel. However I simply ran out of time when editing the film and therefore could not incorporate this into my footage. However I did take it upon myself to edit a very short draft including some of these clips. in this draft, the images make no cohesive sense however it was simply a playground for experimentation with ideas that could have potentially made it into the film. The aforementioned concept of the main character witnessing strange creatures as he stumbles home drunk was also scrapped as the footage I took of the "creatures" was incoherent with the setting of the film, for example the shots of the creatures were filmed during the day whereas the shots of the character walking home were shot at night, which obviously meant the shots contained completely different levels of exposure and would not have worked as a whole.
Challenges I Faced
I had a serious problem with exposure during the shooting of this film. I completely incorrectly calibrated the white balance during some of the shots which gave the film a horrible orangey look to them. This was also due to the fact I didn't bring an LED light which would have massively helped with the exposure of the shot. However I found a solution within the colour grading/correcting tool during the editing process. I attempted to manipulate the i age to remove the orange tone from the hot however this did not completely satisfy. The image still unnatural and too heavily edited. Then I came to another solution which included using different coloured filters for certain shots so the orange looking shots wouldn't look out of place. The different coloured filters were inspired from Daisies which contained many different shots with many different colour filters, which can be seen in the image posted above. Therefore i emulated this technique.
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