Entry 7 - Mouline Rouge and Story Planning
This lesson we watched a short film that used lots of editing techniques and discussed what we would like to do for out short silent film.
I missed the first 10 minutes of our class, so I didn't get to see the powerpoint that he was explaining for the first 10 minutes of class. However, Mr Andrews told me that it was on blackboard, but the powerpoints that are on blackboard are all the ones that we already discussed??? I'm really confused. I'll probably ask him next lesson.
The film that we watched in class was called Moulin Rouge. At the beginning of the film, there was a guy on the left side looking to a distance singing about a boy's life story. The scene was in black and white. An interesting editing technique that they used during this scene was overlaying. On the right side, when the windmill passed once, a boy appeared, as soon as he sang, "a very strange boy." When the windmill passed again, the boy disappeared. Another interesting spatial editing technique was fade in. Mr. Andrews has told us that the spatial editing technique of fade in is not often used as it is visible to the audience, and therefore disrupts the viewers from the storyline. However, since this scene was a flashback, the fade in blended in well with the overall narrative.
The next scene was a zoom in towards the town village. This was done in a cool way, as it moved in a zigzag motion towards the town. The camera also canted when there was a building near it, making it seem as if it were to dodge away from it. This effectively created a point of view shot, making it seem as if the viewers are actually there. In addition, the town doesn't seem that realistic, but rather like a pop art book as the shadows are not cast correctly. This makes it seem as if the viewers are looking at a story, rather than a scenario of a real life event.
When it zooms into the town, it does this thing where it speeds up, but then stops when it's near a person as if someone is messing with the remote control. The people are also staring directly at the camera, which does not happen often in movies. These two reasons strongly imply that this scene is probably from someone's POV (memory).
When the camera the window, it was cool how the curtains flared open with the sound of wind. It seemed, magical?
The camera zooms into a guy who's sitting at the corner of the frame. The colours are starting to appear. The way the items are surrounding him makes him look trapped in his emotions. His body language of scrunching himself into a ball while holding an alcohol bottle in his left-hand shows that he's in an emotional state. He's also in an underexposed lighting, which makes the scene even sadder. Then there is a temporal edit of him getting to the typewriter. The way lots of short shots are used to mash into one scene creates an effect of time passing by. The way he starts typing the same thing to the dialogue creates a cool effect of correlation between something from the 4th wall and the inside of the film.
The film then zooms out the same way it zoomed in at the start of the film. It then zooms back into a train station. The camera then zooms to the man in a zigzag motion, where it slows down and speeds up, like a broken record player. When the guy walks past the town, there's a graphic match, where he keeps on walking the same way, but the surroundings around him change. ( This might be useful for out media project. ) The town also seems more vibrant than the flashback from before, as they use light colours. There are also some flashbacks of people dancing, but the audience can guess that that's not a good memory for him as he starts crying heavily. The rest of the film just ends with him typing some more on the typewriter about the woman that he loved.
With the remaining time that we had left, we started planning our story. Since horror and comedy would be too hard for a 60 sec short film, we decided to go with the idea of the genre Drama. The idea that we're going for is that the girl is in a coma and that she's trying to find the exit to life. We then thought backward on why she was in a coma because it wouldn't really make sense if she was just in a coma and she was looking for a way out. If we have a backstory, it would be easier for us to choose how she exits. The idea was to have her run through lots of corridors and used canted and quick edits to confuse the viewers. It'll also reflect the distressed emotions of the character. We'll also have a map where all the places that she's been will be marked with a red pin or something. Something Red, as it is eye-catching to the viewers and red usually represents alarm.
To make it obvious that she's searching for the exit from the start of the film, we were thinking of making her write a diary entry about being stuck there for how many days and that she's trying to find an exit. We then thought of maybe putting tally marks on the wall showing how many days she's been there for, speeding up the process of her drawing the tallies. That will emphasise that she's been there for a long long period of time. We then came to the conclusion of making the day 666 for her going back to reality day.
One of the biggest plot hole, however, was the reason on having like a D-day for her to go back. I mean, there's a lot of chance that she could have passed away in a coma, but why didn't she? Therefore, we decided to put a mysterious shadow that was to be the "death collector". The shadow will start out small, but as the day passes, it gets bigger and bigger. The girl will then take notice of this and when the shadow starts moving, she'd start to hurry cause she'd have a bad feeling about the shadow. There'll be lots of quick edits for our film, as she'll be "running away" while mainly trying to find the exit.
We also thought of having a metaphorical symbol of the cup feeling up with water, which counts as her "life". When the cup is full, it's her death time, which is similar to her drowning (Water fills lungs). Sarah also thought of having a heart rate monitor at the start of the film to imply that she's in a hospital, which I think is a great idea.
Mr Andres suggested that we use keys to show that she's trying to find the exit, as keys usually links to opening something up. We decided to make the swimming pool our exit. This is because we wanted to hint that getting over your fears is the exit. We will have flashbacks of her drowning and use graphic match edits back and forth. When she is at the bottom of the swimming pool, the cup can fall down and the heartrate monitor can stop. The cup will then fill up again in backwards motion and the screen will go black. That's how we want her to wake up.
Sarah suggested the idea of making the shadow guy an actually nice guy who's trying to help her wake up from coma. For example, he can be a doctor and he'd be there when she wakes up. Correlation.
The problems that we are facing is how we show the audience that the swimming pool is the exit and where we would shoot our film. We imagined like a hospital place with white hallways, but there's none of that at our school. We'll have to resolve that with Mr. Andrews.
That's all we've done this lesson.
I missed the first 10 minutes of our class, so I didn't get to see the powerpoint that he was explaining for the first 10 minutes of class. However, Mr Andrews told me that it was on blackboard, but the powerpoints that are on blackboard are all the ones that we already discussed??? I'm really confused. I'll probably ask him next lesson.
The film that we watched in class was called Moulin Rouge. At the beginning of the film, there was a guy on the left side looking to a distance singing about a boy's life story. The scene was in black and white. An interesting editing technique that they used during this scene was overlaying. On the right side, when the windmill passed once, a boy appeared, as soon as he sang, "a very strange boy." When the windmill passed again, the boy disappeared. Another interesting spatial editing technique was fade in. Mr. Andrews has told us that the spatial editing technique of fade in is not often used as it is visible to the audience, and therefore disrupts the viewers from the storyline. However, since this scene was a flashback, the fade in blended in well with the overall narrative.
The next scene was a zoom in towards the town village. This was done in a cool way, as it moved in a zigzag motion towards the town. The camera also canted when there was a building near it, making it seem as if it were to dodge away from it. This effectively created a point of view shot, making it seem as if the viewers are actually there. In addition, the town doesn't seem that realistic, but rather like a pop art book as the shadows are not cast correctly. This makes it seem as if the viewers are looking at a story, rather than a scenario of a real life event.
When it zooms into the town, it does this thing where it speeds up, but then stops when it's near a person as if someone is messing with the remote control. The people are also staring directly at the camera, which does not happen often in movies. These two reasons strongly imply that this scene is probably from someone's POV (memory).
When the camera the window, it was cool how the curtains flared open with the sound of wind. It seemed, magical?
The camera zooms into a guy who's sitting at the corner of the frame. The colours are starting to appear. The way the items are surrounding him makes him look trapped in his emotions. His body language of scrunching himself into a ball while holding an alcohol bottle in his left-hand shows that he's in an emotional state. He's also in an underexposed lighting, which makes the scene even sadder. Then there is a temporal edit of him getting to the typewriter. The way lots of short shots are used to mash into one scene creates an effect of time passing by. The way he starts typing the same thing to the dialogue creates a cool effect of correlation between something from the 4th wall and the inside of the film.
The film then zooms out the same way it zoomed in at the start of the film. It then zooms back into a train station. The camera then zooms to the man in a zigzag motion, where it slows down and speeds up, like a broken record player. When the guy walks past the town, there's a graphic match, where he keeps on walking the same way, but the surroundings around him change. ( This might be useful for out media project. ) The town also seems more vibrant than the flashback from before, as they use light colours. There are also some flashbacks of people dancing, but the audience can guess that that's not a good memory for him as he starts crying heavily. The rest of the film just ends with him typing some more on the typewriter about the woman that he loved.
With the remaining time that we had left, we started planning our story. Since horror and comedy would be too hard for a 60 sec short film, we decided to go with the idea of the genre Drama. The idea that we're going for is that the girl is in a coma and that she's trying to find the exit to life. We then thought backward on why she was in a coma because it wouldn't really make sense if she was just in a coma and she was looking for a way out. If we have a backstory, it would be easier for us to choose how she exits. The idea was to have her run through lots of corridors and used canted and quick edits to confuse the viewers. It'll also reflect the distressed emotions of the character. We'll also have a map where all the places that she's been will be marked with a red pin or something. Something Red, as it is eye-catching to the viewers and red usually represents alarm.
To make it obvious that she's searching for the exit from the start of the film, we were thinking of making her write a diary entry about being stuck there for how many days and that she's trying to find an exit. We then thought of maybe putting tally marks on the wall showing how many days she's been there for, speeding up the process of her drawing the tallies. That will emphasise that she's been there for a long long period of time. We then came to the conclusion of making the day 666 for her going back to reality day.
One of the biggest plot hole, however, was the reason on having like a D-day for her to go back. I mean, there's a lot of chance that she could have passed away in a coma, but why didn't she? Therefore, we decided to put a mysterious shadow that was to be the "death collector". The shadow will start out small, but as the day passes, it gets bigger and bigger. The girl will then take notice of this and when the shadow starts moving, she'd start to hurry cause she'd have a bad feeling about the shadow. There'll be lots of quick edits for our film, as she'll be "running away" while mainly trying to find the exit.
We also thought of having a metaphorical symbol of the cup feeling up with water, which counts as her "life". When the cup is full, it's her death time, which is similar to her drowning (Water fills lungs). Sarah also thought of having a heart rate monitor at the start of the film to imply that she's in a hospital, which I think is a great idea.
Mr Andres suggested that we use keys to show that she's trying to find the exit, as keys usually links to opening something up. We decided to make the swimming pool our exit. This is because we wanted to hint that getting over your fears is the exit. We will have flashbacks of her drowning and use graphic match edits back and forth. When she is at the bottom of the swimming pool, the cup can fall down and the heartrate monitor can stop. The cup will then fill up again in backwards motion and the screen will go black. That's how we want her to wake up.
Sarah suggested the idea of making the shadow guy an actually nice guy who's trying to help her wake up from coma. For example, he can be a doctor and he'd be there when she wakes up. Correlation.
The problems that we are facing is how we show the audience that the swimming pool is the exit and where we would shoot our film. We imagined like a hospital place with white hallways, but there's none of that at our school. We'll have to resolve that with Mr. Andrews.
That's all we've done this lesson.
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