My research began looking at Andrew Kotting’s work. His work was based on his daughter Edith who suffers from an unfortunate mental disorder that impairs her ability to communicate properly. Kotting takes this as a personal crusade to elevate his audience’s awareness to her intelligence by using methods of technology and film with visual and audio elements to construct a platform in which a network to her mind and ourselves can be established. I then came across one of his pieces titled ‘All in the mind.’
Following on from Kotting, I researched further developments of film and the mind and found Dave Mckean who has done a lot of work in the past linking to the parameters of within the mind. Mckean also filmed a feature-length movie called ‘Mirror mask.’ A perfect example of the augmented world an individual conceives to make sense and reasoning with the outside world. Known, commonly as reality. At this point, I was now aware of how I wanted this project theme to go and began layering in the brickwork to my idea.
All these images are short film pieces Mckean has done in the past, as you can see clearly the consistent theme is dreams and distortion of reality at times invoking a feeling of the unconsciousness and unsettling, Especially in Mckean's take on Punch and Judy offering a more violent toned view of the pair's story.
Psychoanalytic psychologists see psychological problems as rooted in the unconscious mind.
Manifest symptoms are caused by latent (hidden) disturbances.
Typical causes include unresolved issues during development or repressed trauma.
Treatment focuses on bringing the repressed conflict to consciousness, where the client can deal with it.
Dream Analysis
According to Freud the analysis of dreams is "the royal road to the unconscious." He argued that the conscious mind is like a sensor, but it is less vigilant when we are asleep. As a result, repressed ideas come to the surface - through what we remember may well have been altered during the dream process.
As a result, we need to distinguish between the manifest content and the latent content of a dream. The former is what we actually remember. The latter is what it really means speculating on the underlying meaning of common dream themes.
Emotion is an essential part of our humanity; without it, we cannot differentiate between what is subjective and what is objective. It creates awareness and a deeper understanding of the world we’ve come to call our home. In some ways, Emotion is a world within a world and truly exists!
Darwin did a study that is still used today called ‘The expressions of the emotions in man & animals.’ His book is famous for being scientific evidence using photographs as a major part of the research collected.
This was Charles Darwin's third major evolutionary theory, following its predecessors 'On the origin of species.'and 'The descent of man.'
Darwin's fascination rooted itself at the time he was a medical student and a publication by Sir Charles Bell's Anatomy and Philosophy of Expression which argued for a spiritual dimension to the subject.
Darwin notes the universal nature of expressions in the book, writing: "the young and the old of widely different races, both with man and animals, express the same state of mind by the same movements."
This connection of mental states to the neurological organization of movement (as the words motive and emotion suggest) is central to Darwin's understanding of emotion.
Darwin opens the book with three chapters on "the general principles of expression", introducing the rather awkward phrase serviceable associated habits.With this phrase, Darwin seeks to describe the initially voluntary actions which come together to constitute the complex expressions of emotion. He then invokes a principle of antithesis, through which opposite states of mind induce directly opposing movements. Finally, he discusses a direct action of the nervous system, in which an overflow of emotion is widely discharged, producing more generally expressed emotions
MY PIECE FOR MAPS AND NETWORKS
My piece is a direction that begins at another end. What are we to emotion?
Robert Plutchik’s theory is that we all carry the 8 basic emotions, which you can see in his wheel of emotion.
In my piece, I intend to have 8 actors who represent their allocated emotion, beginning with the first 4 in Act 1. They will transcribe the emotion visually for my piece whilst also be giving verbal speeches layering onto the ambient audio features to be added on in post-production.
The entire piece is intended to be spread over three acts. Act 1 will be the focus of maps and networks titled 'worship me.'This will be looking at the individuals, as an introduction to their titles as it was. The short film will be played out with the emotions (Actors) cloaked, gazing into the singular light that shines down on their faces from above, almost as if a supernatural phenomenon has transpired. The idea here is to metaphorically speak of the transportation into this dimension immediately placing the individual and the audience into a spiritual paradox. As the beam of light deteriorates the vibrant colours of blue and red covert the light and fill the space as to say that the dimension is still a supernatural one substituting the source of lights natural colour.
The saying “heaven and earth of mysterious black” was rooted in the observation that the northern sky was black for a long time.
Hence, they considered black to be the king of colours and honoured the colour more than any other.
White was considered to be purity but also the symbol of death and so traditional Chinese people dress in white to funerals, even to this day. A thoughtful idea of the layout of my studio set piece.
As the scenes progress further a fluctuation between ambient and visual imagery will be mixed in with text-based imagery. Like a silent movie, it will script out the individual's silent emotion into words. what you will see is cinematograph work infused with the text form.
Towards the end of ACT 1, a crescendo of voices and imagery spiral into crowd sounding chaos before a suction of silence consumes all and the scene cuts to a limp less arm suspended in the air. The hand of the individual reaches out to no one, but from the void, a hand reaches to the lifeless one suspended in the air and takes hold before raising it upwards. This is the moment where the scene cuts and Act one ends, setting mystery for whats to come.
STORYBOARD
CASTING CALL
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CASTING CALL - ALL ACTORS
Hiya, I’m a year two DFSA student working on a project themed Maps and Networks. I’m needing two willing male actors to participate in my short piece titled ‘A world of emotion.’ The idea behind this short film is that four actors would represent the four emotions selected in the physical form. These four are Sadness, joy, anger and fear. However, no script will be given but a performance of expression in movement and the face will be all you have to show these four emotions.
This will be a dark ‘Tim Burton.’ styled film with a touch of cultism added. Please message either me or the producer, Savina Simmons, if you are willing to participate. All details of auditioning will be given via individual messaging.
Thanks, Have a good week!
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Casting actors we first began searching through the acting and performance course in our uni and emailing course tutors for recommendations on available actors best suited for the roles and even went to social media such as Facebook pages and posted notices to those who would seem interested.
It was relatively a difficult time for us to be looking for available actors in the uni as many were preoccupied with individual projects as well as us. This prompted the thought of hiring actors for the day via external outlets. It seemed like a good idea, however, one of the difficulties we faced was not being able to have an extensive budget which subsequently leads us to wipe this idea of the board as it were. Despite this, fortunately, were able to find four able actors to perform on their allocated days.
LAYOUT AND EQUIPMENT
During rehearsals, we began laying out the equipment in the studio for what it'll look like in the actual shoot.
Based on the shot plan the lights (fresnels) were staged up in three different positions. The first was securely fastened onto the railing above with a light truss clamp holding it in place and then securely tightened with a climbing rope about 5metres long. Extra precautions were done so to minimalise the possibility of hazards as this was potentially the only object with the highest risk level. Continuing on, another fresnel light was placed on the right-hand side using a stand that was set to its lowest height. This light had a slash of red light that projected onto the back wall, this was to give the back wall some visual colour using the red gel filters giving the studio set that eerie effect we wanted.we achieved this by leaving the barn doors slightly ajar.
Lastly, the final light stood on the far left of the set behind the light on the far right. This light made up the foreground red lighting with its gel filters and shun at the actors as they were to perform their piece. In the original shot plan, we had to amend the design slightly to coexist with the layout of the studio itself. However, it had little affect on our shoot schedule and consequently, we were ready to begin filming for the following day.
Days of shooting
The first days of shooting began on the 13th November and ended on the 15th of November. Fortunately, the shoot went very well, recording sadness as the first emotion to be displayed as it is chronologically planned. In a team of four, we excelled at communication and timing the switchover between the spotlight and the main red light on the far left.
The whole production during shooting went again smoothly. The crew arrived at 5pm and took an hour to set up at this point the actors would arrive at 6pm and for a good hour we'd shoot on set before packing up at 730pm.
CUTSCENES
All footage taken was done by me and non of the images were appropiated from other sources
POST EDITING
What I wanted from post editing – Visuals
To have the four characters playing the emotions put in the order of sadness, joy anger and fear.
Each sequence should last about a minute maximum for the four and this short piece should total up to 5 mins max pls
The idea is that they first begin with the heads facing the spotlight and then when that switches off they then focus on the camera after a few seconds of pause has passed (intro text in bold white letters in the black background will momentarily pop up to introduce us to the emotion.)
They then begin the sequence based on the emotion they’ve been given. After, they go back to their original position the camera goes back. This is when the camera transitions to the next sequence.
Continuing on the progression of the story this happens for all of them and in the end like a broken record the emotions become fast-paced and jumbled and chaotic until it all stops as if it's broken and then when this hand is in the air still, a mysterious hand pulls up from the corner and lifts it up and that’s the end of the scene. Want this scene to be slow motion but not too slow just to give it a dramatic effect.
As the mysterious hand touches the hand in the airlifting it up the scene cuts abruptly and a to be continued. This is the end and should be approx. 5mins
the side scenes that are mixed in when they are doing their sequence which are the objects like
sadness has the heart necklace falling and the box
joy has the zoetrope and the music box,
anger to have the side of and the rage sign filling up with red
and fear to be the claw and model and the words fear.
I wanted it to have that gothic dark feel to it.
Software tools used in the making of both sound and visuals of the short film.
During post productions, we were faced with many obstacles. One being that time was short and the other I personally had to edit and add sound which usually is okay for me, however, at times it became overwhelming with the sheer amount of work that was left piled on top of me. Because of this, I resorted to going back to the software tools I knew best. Even though we had been inducted and taught in Pro tools for sound and some of the team in Avid. It was difficult to ask them for more help considering my team had other individual projects to be dealing with which seemed highly unfair, in my opinion. To take more time out of theirs for mine, this is one of the problems I faced during post-production.
Personally, my editing skills aren't exactly perfect and far from it, I didn't like the fact I had to edit my own piece visually as this area is still a work in progress for me. Although will say I felt a lot better about doing the sound for the piece but considering that no sound was made on the day of shooting, simply because I wanted to manufacture the sounds artificially as part of the overall theme it was a whole task in itself and editing visuals in premiere pro took enough time as it, to at least look presentable. So, I harvested the royalty-free tracks found surfing the web and even purchasing a SFX pack which produced thousands of helpful sounds. These sounds were appropriated accordingly to the individual's emotional state.
Some sounds included an old-fashioned camera flash, crying woman in the background of sadness (it was intentional that the voice was not meant to match with the character.)
Also, not all sounds were completely from appropriated sounds affects found online. During editing, I used the piano in garage band to create a short sound piece in a synth pad with a celestial voice filter added on top of it to give the ending scene with the hands more of a display. Furthermore, the sounds that were personally created by me was the knocking sound of the heart pendant on the floor, which was done using the piano and then processing it in Adobe Audition by adding an EQ and then extending the delay and adding an echo.
What went wrong:
The difficulty of the resulting piece was the length. The overall piece was approx 10 mins long but due to unit requirements, I had to half this time in order to meet it.
Because of this, the film at times could be seen rushed in some areas more obvious than others. furthermore, I also had to cut some of the sound edits between each transition scene for ex. At the end when all the scenes rewind, there is a bit of dialogue before that, that had to be cut out, unfortunately, that would've connected the two scenes, however, the compromise could suggest an artistic purpose.
Another problem that also went wrong was the sound. The music I used are all royalty free however it wasn't what I had planned. In particular with anger where the music didn't fit the piece correctly.
Exporting
EVALUATION
Overall I was fairly pleased with the end result, although I felt that the footage used, has deterred the visual quality of the piece itself, which frustratingly I tried to fix but was limited to my skillset. I'm glad of what I could do in the time that I had. A lot of it was down to preparation and being well organised and managing to stay on schedule and in control. Which, made it easier to complete the project, though it had its fair share of troubles. I myself as the director of the piece was fortunate to have the situation run smoothly.
One of the most stressful parts was actually hiring actors to perform in my piece. This was my first time working with actors and it was suggested by my tutors that I attend the actor's workshop which definitely proved useful in directing actors on set and giving me the best possible advice in order to achieve the best possible outcome for my project.
After the workshop, I set out to look for actors and found four who were willing to be part of the project. I then arranged days in which we could discuss my idea and answer any questions they had. these conversations lasted about 10 mins and were informal, this was so we could get the opportunity to know each other better and for me to personally find out what emotion they'd be comfortable to show. After this, I kept them up to date via messages on Facebook. I made sure that communication with both the crew and actors was consistent.
What I took from that experience of being a director was how impressed I was with how coordinated we all were when it came down to transitions with the lighting, the camera panning in, the setup and the good working environment we put ourselves in. Certainly was stressful, to say the least, but the experience has made me look forward to my next project.
The post-production could've been a lot better, but I do not wish to critique myself too harshly, I'm leaving that to the examiners. The overall piece had a few flaws in it such as the background music not being the appropriate sounds I originally had in mind for the end piece, however, they were the best I could find at such a short time (all royalty free.) The visuals were tricky but I finally came up with an order that would create a narrative towards the end, keeping between the borders of film narrative and digital art.
If I had to choose an area that could've been more developed I would say, budget. Why I think this is because overall I spent a fair bit on food and props and I believe that I could have distributed the budget more frugally. Another would be arranging to have more assistance with post-production rather doing the job solo. It was a lot to do just by myself and realising that help from fellow peers would be increasingly more difficult nearer to the deadline, the only option was to outsource to a freelance editor, however, despite my budget already being high It wouldn't have been possible as quotes for a 5 mins film meant a three-digit sum payout on average.
I think personally I'm a perfectionist and don't tend to realise that the job has been executed well enough. Often it leaves me to overdo areas that could make or break the short film. It's hard to feel satisfied, but reflecting on the whole production I am quite pleased with the level of commitment everyone involved put into it. This being my first time directing, has left much room to improve my skills and that is something I look forward to accomplishing throughout my career in the film industry.
