Final week: sound and music

For the first and only time during the Media Production Project module we've come up with something original, intriguing, easy and at the same time beautiful in its form. For the first time we've created something completely dialogue-independent. For the first time diegetic sound and music don't disturb the audience but peacefully accompany the visuals of the film instead. Sound and music simply help to create a fabulous world of vivid colours, at the same time strengthening oneiric atmosphere of the plot.

The main strength of Pretend to Be is definitely the script and the fact that it was the scriptwriter who acted in the film. Under these circumstances, the director could concentrate on telling the cinematographer what and how to do. Unfortunately, some major flaws occurred during filming (skewed horizontal and vertical lines in many shots) and inaccuracy in editing, however they disturb only those who are familiar with advanced film production.

Fortunately, the module's finally over. Although it taught me how to use Avid Media Composer more efficiently or how to work in a studio better, the things that I'm most happy about are of quite different nature. The end of the module most of all means no more disputes over scripts, childish behaviour of some of the members of the group or putting pride of an individual over the quality of group performance.  Thus what I gained from participating in the module is first of all almost unlimited patience, before any other technical skills I developed.

Week 7 cinematographer:An Event Horizon in a Clown's Life

It is final week and I believe we have finally created the film we have longed for. For me what ignited the spark we lacked so far is Egle's brilliant script. What is remarkable about it, in my view, is its simplicity and artistic essence which could be a base for many different and abstract interpretations.
Furthermore,  it is more like a theatrical impression than a firmly structured script. This gave us a strong confidence and on the day of filming where we fully concentrated on the image and were able to creatively work on the construction of mise-en-scene without being restrained by time.
It is an interesting fact that each member had a different understanding and interpretation of the script, this contributed a lot to the visual richness of the footage in terms of camera angles and staging and also to the  variety of colors we used.
As a group we generally thought that it is a film about friendship and the loss of a beloved one. While this is true I have a slightly different interpretation, which I believe could be the emotional core of our film. Personally I find ''Pretend To Be'' as a poetic miniature about the rigid irreversible nature of life, shown in a bitter satirical way through the eyes of an innocent clown. Such interpretation maybe sounds a bit pretentious - I know- but if we think of it- life has some points which cannot be reverted or undone. In ''Pretend To Be'' this is shown through the simple burst of the balloon. What provoked my interest after this point was the fact that the clown in an innocent childish way tries to fix the balloon and reblow it again (more clearly shown in the original script). The innocent misunderstanding of the clown enhances the bitter feel of the tragic ending.Still the ending could not be interpreted entirely as tragic since the clown hangs herself with a scarf from her colorful bag as if it is another crazy clown's trick and thus keeps the satire, dark comedy feel of the film.

Week 7: 'Pretend to Be'

Penumbra Pictures' latest production.

More comments from the authors will be published soon. Enjoy!

Week 6: British Social Realism

This time it was me who tried to write scripts for the production. Class Struggle came to life by merging two scripts based on the ideas preached by Social Realism. One of them - the first part of the film - was the workers' hatred of the upper class. The conflict between them was the girl who the worker wanted to date and who became the point of interest of the member of the upper class. Because the former himself was too weak to face the latter, he decided then to express his feelings to capitalism by burning the money - the thing that appears to be the focal point of any capitalist system. This part was another script I wrote for the Week 6 Assignment.

Why were the two merged into one? Initially, we were to make only the money burning script, however when we finally managed to set up the camera on location, the wind was so strong that it was impossible to set the money prints on fire. In order not to loose time, we haphazardly changed the plan and decided to film the other script instead. This is why the actors weren't prepared in terms of costumes. That of course influenced reception of the film and so the audience couldn't spot who was who. Once we've finished shooting the first script, the wind calmed down and we could carry on with the burning money script as we'd previously planned. All in all, had we been prepared for filming other scripts than only the one we chose previously, the final outcome of the shooting slot would've been clearer to the audience. And so the lesson of this week is to always be prepared for plan B.

Week 6: Money- The Root of All Evil ?

\This week's assignment was to create a short film within the frame of British Social Realism. After seeing our latest production I don't think that there is something particular we have achieved to be proud of. However, I believe that we perfectly understood the conventions of British Social Realism in terms of theme and cinematic representation (desaturated colors) and we managed to think of an interesting way to present these general ideas in a short time.
On the day of shooting the weather was very unfavorable which forced us to make spontaneous decisions on set and we changed the script. We decided to shoot an alternative script without prepared dialogue. I believe we managed pretty well in a situation like this since we had an idea what kind of characters we wanted to portray and the main idea we wanted to transfer. What we wanted the audience to see was mainly the strong difference between classes , the struggle of the main character from the low working class and the ''unjust'' and easy way the bourgeois manages to win the girl simply because of his materialistic wealth.
Perhaps the conveyance of these straightforward ideas was not straight enough. As an actor decided to completely improvise with the dialogue which I aimed to sound as if I am a man coming from a low working class who is constantly being suppressed by the structure of the capitalist system, unable to escape poverty. However, I don't think I sound convincing enough since I did not use words that would usually be used from a working class person and also it was the comment of the audience that the main character sounds more like someone who is dealing with depression.
I find that there is an even bigger problem with the rich character - he did not look like one , and also he does not sound like a rich person who maybe would sound more posh. Unfortunately, we did not notice these problems while shooting but like I mentioned everything was more of an improvisation than having something planed and the result in my opinion is acceptable.
What I am really happy with is the ending, since I believe it is a symbol and root of class struggle in any society- money. Money are today's direct or indirect base of everything we aim for, it is ironic how society praises so much something with an artificial value. The question is can we do without them ?

Week 6: 'Class Struggle' - interpretation of British Social Realism

This is our latest production - an interpretation of British Social Realism. 

More comments from the authors soon!

Week 6: Research into British Social Realism

This week's assignment's quite tricky, especially for international students. The trick's not to confuse Social Realism with Socialist Realism, the dominant (= the only allowed) style of art behind the Iron Curtain. Both of them occurred in roughly the same time (starting in 1930s, Social Realism was as an artistic response to Great Depression. Socialist Realism was a feature of the USSR under Stalin from 1934 on), both of them concerned working class, however in different way. The former has to do with a worker facing the capitalist system, especially its inequalities streaming from class division of society and other flaws of capitalism. The latter was involved in glorification of labour and working class. 

Socialist Realism had its own set of rules which artists had to obey and a special Committee had to accept a work of art as worth showing, in other words it decided if something is art or not. Thus, in order to have their work accepted for public display, anti-communist artists had to use the guidelines of Socialist Realism in such a way, so that only after deep analysis the true and intended meaning could be decoded.

Having said this, what strikes me in British Social Realism is straightforwardness of the films. In contrast to Andrzej Wajda's Man of Marble (1977), Promised Land (1975), Ash and Diamond (1958) or Kanal (1957), the films I have watched to prepare for this week's assignment [Tony Richardson's The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), Jack Clayton's Room at the Top (1959) or Peter Cattaneo's The Full Monty (1997)] weren't that intellectually demanding so far as decoding of their meaning is concerned. Hence, it'll be difficult not to simply copy one of the scenes appearing in at least one of the films. It's highly probable, though, that the films I happened to find in the library (unfortunately I couldn't find any of Mike Leigh's films) aren't ones of the finest pieces of British Social Realism and so the film that we as a group will make on Monday won't be that tightly connected to the ideas of the era.

Week 5: ''Listen'' a twist of reality

Before the day of filming I believed that ''Listen'' had the potential to be one of our finest pictures so far in terms of storytelling, sound and visual style. However, due to some unfortunate circumstances on the day of filming we could not develop the full potential of our latest production. First our actor did not learn his lines by heart which resulted in a lot of jump cuts (which fortunately can be tied to the nature of the narrative) and less variety of shots.Secondly we could not make full use of lights, since one of our lights went out during the middle of filming.

Apart from the difficulties we had , I am very fascinated with the idea we had of ,,Listen'' and despite of the fact that we did not reach our full potential I think that our latest production is great. I assume others that considered  ''Listen'' a fail would wonder why. Well,  I believe the manipulation of image and sound is in perfect relation with the narrative and the visual information in the plot is presented in a such a way that is perfect for a successful twist.
In my view,the success of twist movies depends on careful manipulation of plot information- there is a fine line between revealing too much and too little. In other words in order for the twist to be effective the audience has to be tricked to construct a false fabula based on the information presented in the plot. After the spectator is aware of the twist he/she realizes the incompleteness of the audiovisual information in the plot and finds that the key to the correct story has always been in the plot. One of the main reasons, however, why the audience is unable to see it on the first place is because the information that is essential to the true fabula is subjectively presented.
In listen we arranged the lighting in such way so that it only illuminates completely the boxer. Most of the time the imaginary coach is shadowed and his face is never lit like the boxer's face.
As a cinematographer I aimed to keep the coach out of focus. This in my opinion was very important for the hidden internal focalization we wanted to achieve. In ''Listen'' the main character's experiences are presented subjectively or in other words his experience is internally focalized. Internal focalization is entirely subject to the character's way of perceiving whose account of reality could always be distorted and deficient and thus completely alter the audience experience of time,space and chain of causality. Usually internal focalization is presented through a lot of close ups and abstract point of view shots. However, the use of  more objective camera angles in our production (for example use of long shots) makes the audience believe that they are watching an objectively presented narration or in other words that what the main character is seeing and hearing is real.
This is why light and focus are major factors that represent the main character distorted perception of reality. Last but not the least the jump cuts in my opinion represented the deranged notion of time and space of the main character.

Week 5: director's comments

This week's debrief was really interesting so far as our production is concerned. The feedback from the tutors was scarce if not absent. However, looking at the audience's reaction, the film was quite effective. Especially when taking into consideration all the obstacles I had to cope with. 

First of all, the only talking actor didn't learn the lines. This resulted in recording each of the shot for 10 minutes, so that Coach could read the script and act as we went on. What's more, I received the script only an hour before actual shooting on Monday, so I had very limited time to think how to stage the film, where Coach should put emphasis on, what parts are more important than the others. Last but not least, there were only two (including me) out of five members of the group taking active part (=present) throughout the whole process of editing. And then some of them were complaining about the editing itself.

One of few comments of the tutors was to try to go away from on screen realism as far as possible, so as to let cinema work its magic. I can't agree with it more, for this is exactly how I perceive the art of moving images. Unfortunately, not everyone in Penumbra Pictures is convinced to this interpretation of film making which results in the majority of the films we've already shot and put together. Hopefully, their perception will change during the course of a few remaining weeks of Media Production Project module.

Week 5: 'Listen'

The latest Penumbra Pictures production. Enjoy! More comments from the authors soon!

Week 4: Penumbra - a Game of Light and Shadow

It is week four and we have successfully completed our latest project - a remake of Ingmar Bergman's Personna 1966.
It is quite a peculiar fact that we were given a task that is very closely related to our name- Penumbra. Penumbra literally means dim light, more specifically a partial shadow between regions of complete shadow and  complete illumination. What I consider the hardest part of this week's task was recreating Bergman's use of Chiaroscuro and Back Lighting.In order to achieve the highly contrasted signature of Personna we spent a great deal of our  time on set in carefully positioning and directing the lights. This was not an easy task to do given the amount of space we had on set. However, despite the fact that this is the first time we used lights we managed to think creatively of lighting and the way it the affected the image . The lighting we applied was not 100% direct ,we used reflectors and made a good use of the white wall we had which additionally played the role of a second reflector.
As a director my ambition for this piece was to make it as simple and sterile as I can so that the focus is only set on the characters, like in Bergman's Personna. This is why I chose a room with plain white walls which were also perfect for creating a highly contrasted image.Another aspect I wanted to emphasize on was to try to replicate Bergman's psychedelic tone. This is why, I consider the pace of our film,the timing of dialogue and the precise framing and transition of every shot to be very important. Actors movement was also very crucial and had to be staged in a very precise way so that the actors' faces were correctly illuminated and there were not unnecessary shadows, which would have distracted the simplicity of image we aimed to achieve.
One of the things I would change is the pace of the Nurse's actions in such a way that they do not look intimidating to the audience. Although I visually like a lot our production I think that if we had enhanced the brightness and contrast of our footage during the post production it would have been even a closer replica of Personna.*Nevertheless, I am quite happy with the achieved and I consider our latest to be one of our best given the fact that this was the first time we used lights.

*

Week 4: 'Persona' Cinematography

OK I agree that cinematography isn't the best thing what I can do. But anyway I was trying to do my best. Of course we could have better result if I was more prepared for using the camera. The most difficult thing for me was to find the same angle as in the original video. The thing that we could actually see the original video through the big TV while we were filming helped a lot.
In very truth this week's task wasn't that difficult for me as those before. Because we had everything - script, camera's shots and etc. The most difficult thing was to prepare for that. I made notes of all the shots in the video.

I didn't actually use that notes while we were filming because of the TV.

In my opinion it's a very interesting and alternative way to learn how to film and use technique. I think that it would be really useful if students could actually choose a module where they would be re-filming video clips.

And a conclusion would be that I really need to improve my knowledge how to use a camera correctly. And also - patience is a very important thing if you're working in a group. And anyway I am happy what we have done.

Week 4: 'Persona' - 'not nurse' character's view

Meme of this week:

I even quite enjoyed my part of the passive character of the scene. No talking = more attention paid to what I was doing and so I could get better from shot to shot. What helped me was a director (Petar) giving advice on how to act, what to do, all inspired by the extract of 'Persona' being played on a computer as we went on. Freddie (the 'nurse') was great, especially concerning voice, however not everyone during the debrief was convinced by his acting. We managed to 'translate' (as this was the task) around 1:20 minutes of the over-three-minute clip which, given the time restrictions and initial problems with lights (the problem solved and the lights operated by Ang), was not bad at all.

However, these were my thoughts on location. My initial impression was quite torn down by what I saw in the editing suite. To put it short: if I had been the cinematographer, I'd have done it quite differently and according to the director's vision so far as framing, white balance (and so on) are concerned. Nevertheless, post-production worked its magic and so the outcome of our production isn't that disturbing. All in all, week 4 showed us what not to do and what to pay attention to during the week 5 production.

Week 4: 'Persona'

Enjoy! More comments from the authors are soon to come!

Thoughts on Week 3 Production : The Clock

Penumbra pictures is up with its latest production The Clock - written and directed by Georgi Georgiev.
From my observations so far I believe that we are already used to the time restraints of filming and we are establishing a custom of making  quality footage every week. This, however, does not mean that there is no space for improvement in our short films.
What I liked about The Clock's screenplay was its simplicity for it gave us a chance to concentrate more on building the main character and delve deeply into her emotions. In terms of screenplay there is only one element I would have changed- if the cheating husband was presented as a loving caring lover before his confession to his wife - the emotional response of the viewer would have been different. This is because the audience would start to sympathize with the husband after it is given the information that his wife is cheating on him and thus the effect of the dramatic twist would have been stronger.
With regards to directing I loved the director's choices of profile and frontal shots which are shot with a handheld camera. In my view the choice of close ups boosted the visual expressiveness of our film and the camera shake is in perfect union with the narrative for it is a symbol of the main character's emotional instability and provokes the audience to enter even deeper into her troubled world.
What I think I would have changed if I was a director is light and color saturation. The way I envision the script is a combination of a low saturated grays, black and blues contrasted by a low key lighting, this in my opinion, would have been in a better relation to the overall cheerless tone of The Clock.

Being responsible for sound I also composed the minute score of The Clock with a digital music making software (which unfortunately is rather limited ), I also recorded two more tracks but we did not find them suitable in the editing process. My aim was to compose something simplistic with hollow minor tones that would accentuate on the leading character's sadness and internal chaos.
All in all I am very happy with the achieved,the wonderful directorial decisions and good acting and I hope our work together is going to get even better in the future.

The Clock OST

Week 3: 'The Clock' - playing Husband

This image reflects my state of mind at the moment when we assigned week 3 production roles. Also the moment I saw the piece in which I was acting for the first time on the screen. I'm just not able to reproduce or mimic any kind of behaviour without ending up laughing at my inborn acting disability. And when I stop laughing, I just look ridiculous on the screen. This is why I usually choose to stand behind the camera. Unfortunately, this module wants us to take part in literally each stage of the media production and there's nothing we can do about it. Fortunately, everybody else did their best (not that I wasn't trying but simply I can't act, even as an amateur). And it resulted in a great film. And it's not only my opinion. During the debrief on Friday, the tutors' comments were really encouraging to keep on working in this direction. Because of good cinematography by Ang. Because of good use of space and mise-en-scène by Georgi. Because of Egle's great acting skills. Because of well-done sound by Petar. And I only hope that we'll keep on getting better and better as the module progresses, just as we've been doing for the last 3 weeks.

THE CLOCK making of

Week 3: 'The Clock'

Enjoy! More comments from the authors of the film are soon to come.

Directing an emotional drama like The Clock wasn't easy at all. Creating a certain relationship between the characters and the audience was crucial for this piece and I think we have done quite well at the end. Interesting choice of location this time, which I find creative and interesting in terms of mise-en-scene, setting and props as you will be able to see soon.

Making of 'And That's How a Cookie Crumbles'

Week two project seen through an actor's POV

It's week two of Media Production Project and Penumbra's Pictures latest production is finally up on YouTube!

So far our work together as a group continues to exceed my expectations. What I think is remarkable about our group is that everyone has different cinematic and script writing ideas and this factor contributed a lot to the quality and originality of our latest production- And That's How a Cookie Crumbles. At first I was sceptical about another comedy- like, short film. However, what did encourage me a lot was the group's meeting on Sunday, where every team member proposed ideas about the script and its filming. One of our most important group's decisions was to change and slightly prolong the ending of our film by adding a surprising twist in the characters actions. This, in my opinion enhanced the comedy nature of the film, the absurd relationship between the two characters,and it rounded the conflict and its funny resolution.

On the day of filming what surprised me is that regardless of our differences and the little time we have known each other, we managed to work as a team.Our movement on set while filming was quick and harmonized and given the time we had we made very quick decisions about the organization of our location of shooting.
The director was quite swift in the composition of mise-en-scene and the arrangement of colors we wanted to emphasize on. Colors, in my opinion were very good reflection of the characters' nature and they also played the role of a contrasted border between their conflicted relationship. Furthermore,organization of purple and reds amplified the overall comedy feel of the film and it is also a symbol of the ridiculousness of the ''good'' character. Black at the other end of the spectrum figured the ''bad'' character's inclination to violence and ''mischievousness'.

Space is another aspect that I find to be very interestingly cinematically presented. We were shooting in a very untidy kitchen. However, the cinematographer framed the kitchen in such a way that it looked relatively clean by using a lot of close ups and this way concentrating on the characters actions.
While it would have been an interesting idea to present space more objectively, and thus create a relationship between the chaotic space and the characters,in my view, this would have distracted the audience.This is why I do find the director's decision to accentuate on close ups to be of greater importance since close ups shots more clearly present the narrative's idea and what is truly essential for the viewer's understanding.

With regards to directing, another factor I consider to be very innovative in our film- is the change of sense of pace and intensity as the conflict evolves and resolves. This effect is constructed by the continuity of the shot. In the exposition there is a variety of shots in terms of angle,size and length, the combination of these shots after the post-production resulted in very detailed visual presentation of the narrative. The progression of different types of shots in the beginning was very important for it set a subtle pace as the relationship between the characters and their traits were revealed visually. During the inciting incident, however, we filmed the whole scene in one take, the continuity of shot and the whip camera pans completely changed the cinematic pace of the film and also enhanced the comedy-absurd look of the film we wanted to achieve.
To sum up, up to now, I think that our group is a strong united team that is comfortable with experimentation which I believe is the best ingredient for a good short film.

Actor's Vision

Well, I now know that the actor's job is not that easy at all. However, filming And That's How a Cookie Crumbles was funny and entertaining. The lack of time and better location made us to make drastic changes in the script during the shooting but at the end I am happy with the achieved. From an actor's point of view I can say that the most difficult thing to show as an actor is the emotion. And for me the way of showing emotions is what distinguishes the good actor from the best actor.

Week 2: 'And That's How a Cookie Crumbles'

And there it goes! Our latest film on the topic 'The Encounter'. Hope you all enjoy it and drop us a line if you enjoy it. More comments from the creators of the film, including Making Of, are soon to come!

Week 2 - cinematographer's initial thoughts after filming

How did it go? Well... 2.5 hours is just too little time to shoot everything as we wanted it to be. The script was great, the actors were OK, but... the kitchen turned out to be really small (or the camera's lens wasn't that as wide as the setting would require it to be) and not-that-well arranged to suit needs of the script. Point to bear in mind next week: instead of meeting in a café to discuss the script, have a meeting on location. Another point to bear in mind (for the whole crew): it's the DIRECTOR that is supposed to control the overall look of the film and it's S/HE who makes FINAL choices, without further discussions. That might save us a lot of time which we could spend on filming, not arguing. And because of arguing (at least to some extent) we had to make changes to the script. The most obvious change would be the ending, as well as using hand-held shots more often than those shot with the camcorder on a tripod. Fortunately, we managed to film stabilized shots in parts that tell about order, leaving the conflict to be shown by blurry images. Now it may not make too much sense, but once the video is uploaded to our YouTube channel, you'll be able to see what I mean. What we need to do next week is to plan far more ahead than we did this week.

WEEK 2: 'The Encounter' (script writing)

While writing the script for next week I watched millions or even more of short films on 'YouTube' and what can I say, that really helped. Also i found few very interesting channels.
'Future Shorts' which has lots of inspiring and interesting films. For example this one -

Also I discovered very interesting Lithuanian director's channel 'TadasV' There are videos of funny situations most of them are animated. But there are few films like this one as well -
I read that this video was submitted as part of the 'Being 50' video competition sponsored by Saga. And as I found out later this film won first place (more videos that were participating in this competition you can find here).
I found 'YouTube' very useful looking for inspiration.

UPDATE [6:52 PM 2/5/2012]

Just came back from our group meeting. (I am an awful script writer.) And else - it so difficult to work in a group where all the people are foreigners. Lots of misunderstandings and it makes things even more difficult then they meant to be. I believe that we'll manage to film good films somehow.
Despite all the bad things we finally have our script done. So the premiere of week's 2 short film 'Cookie' filmed by'Penumbra Pictures' will be in the middle of the week. Hopefully.


UPDATE: 1:41 2/6/2012

Just realized that I am over-reacting all the time. Our group is fantastic and we will do everything great. And my, director's of this film expectations are to make funny and entertaining short film paying most of attention for details, by using CU and ECU shots. As well as use colors as a tool for making scene look more interesting and playful.

Week 1: 'Pickpocket' - assessment

Finally Penumbra Pictures's first film was assessed by the lecturers and other students. All in all, I expected more criticism about our script or the way we put the premise on the screen. Given the amount of time to think about the film, come up with something script-like (unfortunately unwritten) and finally put it through its paces, which was altogether about 2.5 hours, we did pretty well. We used a variety of shots (especially numerous well-composed close-ups), and their angles, which played a great role in telling our story. Another thing that contributed to the overall positive comments was the pace of the film (length of shots in the edited piece). I was complimented on a quite steady hand which allowed me to do a rather smooth tracking shot (towards the end of the film). Also the story was quite intriguing and not so obvious (especially the ending). However, some pointed out that especially the point of view shot of the main character looking around to spot the robber was rather confusing. On the one hand this was the goal we wanted to achieve. On the other hand, however, had this shot been carefully planned, such confusion wouldn't have occurred. I just came up with it as we went through the editing. All in all, everything went better than expected. After what I've seen during production, and heard during the screening today, I'm pretty sure that our next films will be getting gradually better.

Week 1: 'Pickpocket'

So... there it is.

Our first video as a group. Its title is Pickpocket, it probably isn't the best we could get, however, given the amount of time for preparation (30 minutes to make up a script and then 2 hours to shoot the film), this film couldn't get any better.

We do hope you like it and eagerly wait for the next ones  to come!