Extra Shooting: Establishing Shot

We had all been away for Easter and working on another assignment and so to arrange a time to meet up prior to this date proved difficult. But finally today, Owen Chris and I went to film a few establishing shots.

Even though we shot at The Montgomery Theatre the exterior didn't match the theme/tone of the film.

Instead we headed to the Lantern Theatre and filmed that exterior, I went in and asked them if it was okay to film the exterior explaining a little about who I was and what it was for and they were more than happy to comply.

Getting the exterior of a hotel was a little more complex because we didn't want the establishments name in their, the word "Hotel" would be sufficient. Chris mentioned that at the hotel he worked (the one we originally filmed at) there was an arch way that had the words "Hotel". Because I wanted to get this shot at a later time, because the character is only seen in his hotel room at night, I asked Chris if he minded getting the shot alone later that evening as he was going to be there later. He did and later showed me the footage which was exactly what we needed.

Research: Sound Design in Psychological Thrillers

One of the first films that I through of as a point of research is Black Swan, in terms of the similarities in the degenerative psychological states of the characters. As well as that because of the elements of the sound design inspired by/used to emulate Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake (One of my favourite pieces of music) it was only natural that it was one of the first films I thought of to analyse its sound design.

The excerpt of Craig Henighan, sound designer for Black Swan, is great because of the way he explains the hows and the whys of the sound decisions he's made. Also there are a lot of factors that he talks about that mirror what me and Neil have discussed in the past when we were starting to think about the sound design. For example: Building up the sound, only to bring it back down again to silence/almost silence, or bring it up to a level of intolerance, only to pull it back - playing with the dynamics.

Like Ridley, Black Swan starts off in the here and now, as we explore a little bit of his reality, before it takes a tumble down the rabbit hole and into a world of uncertainty. When Craig talks about being making "this regular everyday movie that was just a little bit left of centre" I feel that we can exploit the same premise with Ridly by using sounds that are slightly off key and borderline creepy in between sounds of normality, to sort of unsettle the audience and give then cause for concern/foreshadowing danger.

What Craig says about using sound to push the story forward is something that I really need to keep in mind because mostly the benefits and the overall power that a good sound design can have, is often forgotten or back shelved.

Overall this clip gave me a lot to think about as well as a range of ideas to bring to the table.

Research: Sound Motifs

Something that we talked about very early on was the use of Sound Motifs namely for the character of Jeffrey to give the audience a foreshadowing sense of danger/mystery and intrigue about him. With this in mind I went about research how sound motifs are used in other characters, analysing their meaning their power and their effectiveness.

The first show that came to mind was Orphan Black (2013-Present) The reason this immediately popped into my head is that the shows premise revolves around the idea and reality of clones. There have been a few that have come and gone, but the series essentially follows five main clones at a time, all of whom are played by the actress Tatiana Maslany.

INTERVIEW: Orphan Black’s music composer Trevor Yuile by Martha

How do you connect to each clone and subsequently, compose a theme or music score that fits their character? Tell us about the creative process or energy that goes into getting it right. 
To answer the first part – it was always part of my plan to help separate the personalities of the clones with particular sounds for each character. The way that works is not in any sort of melodic theme per character – rather, I try to look at it as a texture, palette, or vocabulary for each. And the reason for that is, that way, at least in my mind, if characters cross paths, I wouldn’t be handcuffed to a harmonic tonality, or stuck crossing melodic motifs – I would only have to change the texture or the palette.
http://marthainafewwords.wordpress.com/tag/orphan-black-music/ [Last Accessed 03/06/14]

Of the closes there is one that has a particular distinctive sound motif attached to them; Helena.


 


It would be criminal to go without getting a few words from you about Helena’s theme! How did you create this piece of music? Once again, could you let us into the creative process behind it?

Helena’s theme was born from two ideas I had. The first thing that I had experimented with was taking a few little choir sequences (monophonic) I wrote and slowing them down… not just a little but a lot. I took a 30 second sequence and slowed it down to 2 hours long without changing the original pitch. On top of that, I knew I wanted to approach it like a John Cage piano piece. Those two were the foundation of Helena. and it was good, but it was missing something. It was creepy and angular, dissonant, but wasn’t frightening enough to me. So I have these custom made musical instruments that make really weird sounds…kinda like circuit bent toys. I was playing around with them to try and fit them in, left one running and got up to make a cup of tea. When I came back, I had no idea it was still running. So I pressed record to start working with it, and as soon as I did that was the sound that happened to come out. At that point…the theme was born.

http://marthainafewwords.wordpress.com/tag/orphan-black-music/ [Last Accessed 03/06/14]

Of course there are a number of other popular and well renowned sound motifs from films spanning across the decades. 

 

They all show them the importance and effectively the power that a good sound motif can add to a film. I think I would like to go with something a little more subtle than the ones talked about in this post, as not to exclipse the film itself, but I have a few ideas now generating after doing this research that will allow me to have a much easier time coming up with a particular tone.

One on One: Sound Thoughts

This time, with a lot of changes made and the film being down to a much more suitable 12 minutes, we sat down with Neil, who went through and made a few more suggestions of how to make the film flow a little more smoothly, and then went in depth about how plot out the sound, in terms of tones and melodies.

We discussed, a motif for Jeffrey and certain moments within the film. About building up the sound and taking it down again, to build suspense within the audiences mind. And about what the sound was supposed to help say about the character Ridley, his state of mind, foreshadowing future actions etc.

A little later than antipated, we handed over the picture lock to Owen the next day (10/04/14) we had left gaps of where we were going to insert some establishing shots, once filmed, and I told to ignore working on the final scene until we had decided on a suitable ending for it, which would include some refilmed shots after Easter.

One on One: Feedback

After the not so informative feedback session yesterday, Jess and I arranged to meet with Chris again to get some constructive feedback.

He kindly went through the film frame by frame, giving his opinion and suggestion for change/deletion and addition.

A few key examples: We had no establishing shots, the dancing scene at the end added nothing to the film and could be either deleted, or trimmed immensely. Also he suggested getting a shot where we actually view the kill of the girl.

With all of this an more in mind it made things a lot easier for me and Jess to work through what we had.

First Screening Session

Jess had trouble uploading the footage onto the Vimeo page at a high quality version and so had to upload a low quality version which really effected the viewing of the film.

The outside scenes were basically black and the theatre scenes were an unseemly shade of red.

The comments were all stemmed around those two problems, although it made it difficult to judge the film, ultimately nothing constructive was said about how to improve the film or any ideas given about what to cut, and so I was a little disappointed.

Rough-Final

Over the weekend Jess did some more editing, and the structure of the film was at a solid place.

Due to how bad the "bloody" shots looked, we couldn't use them in the final scene and so had to devise a way to build up to the characters death without actually showing it. We experimented with a range of techniques including voice-overs and blackouts, but ultimately when with a flash of images, replaying the main characters transgressions.

Jess neatened things up in preparation for the screening on Thursday.