For the one minute film the obstructions set were as follows:
- The work must be of an experimental nature
- You must work as an individual
- The work must only use synch sound
- The work must be 1 minute in length
- The work must be shot in one take
- Therefore there must be no editing of the piece
- The work must include one object and one person
For the one minute film I wanted to form my idea around interesting pieces of visual art that I had seen. The first aspect I ran with was that I wanted the film to be in a controlled space. I began looking at short films and came across Tango (1981) by Zbigniew Rybczynski which is an 8 minute long semi-animated piece which builds up loops of many different people within a single room. From this I wanted to create a film that could be a one minute loop or basically a film that contains action but ends, visually, at the same place it started. Working with the synch sound part of the brief I decided that the film would involve one person playing a vinyl on a record player which would in turn be the one object. I filmed the piece in which a person came on screen through a wardrobe, started a record playing and then left on the other side of the screen and because of the set-up of the room I was filming in the actor could go off the other side of the screen, round the back of the camera and enter the screen through the same wardrobe again, creating the illusion of editing. the character then stops the record and exits on the other side of the screen once more which would mean that the piece could be feasibly be on a continuous loop.
In theory this piece was going to work and adhere to all the obstructions but in practice it didn't look good at all and was largely unconvincing. this lead me back to the drawing board and to a piece of visual art I had recently seen which involved dropping ink into water and filming the visuals that came from it. We had also recently had a lecture on pieces of camera-less film made from scratched film stock which got me to look into strange means of creating visuals. I carried on with this idea and used the synch sound by re-appropriating a piece of music I had recorded previously. I feel that this film worked on an experimental and visual level by creating some imagery that you wouldn't normally come across but only when it was too late did I realise that I had broken one of the obstructions by not including a person on-screen. Although there is a person dropping the ink into the water it does not explicitly stick to the brief. Given the chance to do this one minute project again I think I would try again with my original Tango influenced idea but plan ahead much more and try to create a more convincing piece.
In the pairs exercise brief we were given a new set of obstructions:
- 5 - 10 minutes in length
- 1 person or 1 object should feature with your piece focus
- A real location must be used (no sets)
- No linear narrative should be used
- No found should be used - you must record and manipulate your own sound
- No use of sound purely as an explanation of on-screen action
- You must include at least one aspect in your production that references the mechanics of filmmaking (e.g. breaking the fourth wall)
Early in this module we were shown the film The Five Obstructions (2003) by Jorgen Leth and Lars Von Trier in which Von Trier tasks Leth to recreate his 1967 short film The Perfect Human. Throughout the film Von Trier sets obstructions for Leth to work with. This idea of obstructions seems to be the basis for this exercise and the film informed the approach we should have taken to the module because throughout the film Leth finds new and interesting ways to deal with obstacles put there to challenge him and he lets the obstructions push forward his creativity rather than hinder him.
Firstly we were told to individually think of an idea for the task and present it. I decided to approach the formation of my ideas by addressing each obstruction so as to keep to all of them in this exercise.
Taking queues from some of my favourite experimental short films like Christopher Nolan's 1997 work Doodlebug and The Black Hole a 2008 short by Olly Williams and Phillip Sansom I decided to keep the film once again in a controlled environment but avoid the use of sets therefore I set the piece in a flat and on a fire escape and so I could use my own flat and fire escape as locations.
The idea was that a lonely man was experiencing an unknown force tugging his jumper out into the night. His jumper would then unravel and he would be left literally out in the cold. This would have been done using stop motion and would have established the themes of worry and loss that I was trying to get across. The structure would be jumbled up so that the viewer would have to work out narrative order. I also wanted to add some sort of point of view aspect in which the viewer would take up the role of a voyeur, like in Michael Powell's 1960 film Peeping Tom, looking in on the character. The character would then break the fourth wall by addressing the audience somehow. Possibly by closing the blinds and shutting out the viewer. The main aspect of this film would be themes of loss and attempting to regain what has been lost.
After the presentation of the initial ideas I paired up with another student and we began to work together on an idea to be produced into the final film. At first we combined our two ideas because it seemed that they would fit together really well, in that my idea culminated in someone being brought outside into the night and my partner's idea was centred around a young woman walking through the city at night. Having addressed it realistically we thought the stop motion of the jumper tugging was going to be too challenging to make successfully and discarded it. Instead we thought further about our influences and what films could inform our current idea. The 1943 work by Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid Meshes Of The Afternoon was a big influence in the way it presents a character interacting with intriguing objects. Repetition was a big factor in the piece as we wanted to convey different layers and levels of consciousness through different sequences and locations. Another influence was the 2001 David Lynch film Mullholland Drive which deals with the different levels of dream state and reality and conscious and unconscious. We also wanted the sound to be an eerie experimental audio piece simply used to convey mood, for this we looked at long-time David Lynch collaborator Angelo Badalamenti and his compositions for Lynch's TV series Twin Peaks and specifically the track Memories Of Green by Vangelis which was used in the 1982 film Blade Runner by Ridley Scott.
After this research we decided on a vague storyline, created a shot list and then drew up some storyboarding.
After this we planned our first day of filming with the locations being a basement, a patch of grass, a church yard and streets in the Bramhall Lane area of Sheffield. The filmed played out as a young woman seeing another version of herself look back at her and seeing and doing different things which act as a reminder or tool to put her into another situation or consciousness or snap her out of a dream. For instance at one point when she is walking down a street she stops at a leaf on the floor and scrutinises it which the pulls her through into a sort of dream like situation in which she is sat in a pile of leaves and running her fingers through them. At which point she looks up and see the other version of herself and then gets up and walks away distressed. For these scenes we wanted it to come across as her witnessing a fear or paranoia like in this scene from Mullholland Drive when a man witnesses the fears of his dreams in real life.
The filming initially went well, specifically the scene in the leaves but we realised later that the quality and focus of some of the shots throughout were off. Having never used the particular DLSR camera before I was unsure of some of the technical aspects on the camera, mainly making sure the focusing stayed correct. We then ran into a few problems with the light as we were filming at night in the street so we had to pick the locations that were well lit but also not busy which proved quite hard at times.
Following on from this we also filmed in a basement a lit the shots with a camera mounted light which was sometimes harsher than we wanted and because it was mounted on the camera we had to keep considering were the light source should be within the film. We filmed in total in two days but then after putting together a rough edit and having a tutorial my partner went and re shot some sections. On the advice of our tutor we looked at films like Lynne Ramsay's 1998 film Gasman and tried to create some similar shots to add in and replace other footage with.Our main goal with the editing was to create good transitions between the different layers in the film and also create interesting pacing in the film because as a whole it crescendos leading to the breaking of the fourth wall in which the actress addresses the camera and therefore the viewer. After our rough edit, tutorial and re shoot we almost completely re-edited the film taking out some of the previous shots of miscellaneous objects which we had put in to add mystery trying to reference meshes of the afternoon but which had no real reason for being there.
Looking back I think on the whole our idea simply needed a bit more substance as I would say although we were going for repetition there was possibly too much of the same sort of thing throughout. I would also want to get to grips with the equipment used more or use a camera that I am more familiar with as I think the film really suffered due to my lack of certain technical abilities at the time. Given the chance to do it again I think the film could really work if we had planned it our better, although I do think the section with the leaves and the parts in which the protagonist is being pulled through into new layers come across well and it is apparent what we were trying to do.
Bibliography
- Tango, 1981, [film] Studio Se-Ma-For: Zbigniew Rybczynski
- A Clockwork Orange. 1971. [film] Columbia-Warner Distributors: Stanley Kubrick.
- Blade Runner. 1982. [film] Warner Bros: Ridley Scott.
- Doodlebug. 1997. [film] Cinema 16: Christopher Nolan.
- Gasman. 1998. [film] Cinema 16: Lynne Ramsay.
- Meshes Of The Afternoon. 1943. [film] Mystic Fire Video: Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid.
- Mullholland Drive. 2001. [film] Universal Pictures: David Lynch.
- Peeping Tom. 1960. [film] Anglo-Amalgamated: Michael Powell.
- The Black Hole. 2008. [film] HSI Films: Phillip Sansom and Olly Williams.
- Twin Peaks. 1990. [film] CBS Television: David Lynch and Mark Frost.
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