PRE-PRODUCTION
1. ALIGNMENT WITH THE ASSIGNED BRIEF
The assigned brief gave me a foundation to brainstorm upon, turning the brief into something more compatible with the destined audience: Teenagers and adolescents. The narrative is kept the same, with a drop exchange happening between two characters. However, by utilizing our school's facility with my teammates, I could adapt it into a developed storyline that included the participation of real-life students, which complemented the intense feel of the scene.
Additionally, I decided to delve further into the emotional impact of drug abuse upon people, more specifically teenagers, by requesting a certain amount of tension in the acting part of the assignment. The perturbation then encodes for the mental influence on teens due to drugs.
Props.
I included props (to resemble genuine substances) as a means to further enhance the reality of drug usage:
- Real Vietnamese money: 50,000 VND
- Accentuates the real-life occurrence of such events in our daily life.
- Titanium white powder (an art supply) used to encode for Cocaine (a toxic substance)
Development of character(s).
Despite not mentioning his name in the sequence, character A is Quang. Since his character was portrayed as an addict experiencing withdrawal symptoms, Quang's behavior can be described as nervous, irritated, and discontent, which frames the ideology of him being an addict.
I found inspiration for this set of mental behaviors through Rue Bennet, a character from the HBO series: Euphoria. In the series, she describes herself as "a liar, a thief. I'm violent, abusive, manipulative. And even if I got clean today, no one would forget the trauma of me not being clean." Her characteristics truly stuck with me, and Zendaya's performance was incredibly compelling, so I chose to have the same kind of intensity in my character.
I purposely keep the identity of the second person (Character B/the dealer) hidden. This supplements the intention of maintaining the focus on our main character, which in this scenario is Quang.
2. SKILLS DEVELOPED.
Storyboarding :
To come up with visual expectations of the sequence means determining camera angles, prospects of acting performance, and developing the story while considering how to cultivate continuity. I had to familiarize myself with envisioning how I would like my personal version of the brief to play out and present those images in a way that is easy to comprehend. It was difficult to put those ideas into drawing at first. However, as I gradually made up my mind about the flow of the narrative, it became easier to depict how each scene would look like, what shot type to use, and how they all make one complete story.
[PREVIOUS-PERSONAL STORYBOARD]
Added notes to indicate this is filmed in POV, the background is character A's room.
Close-up of character B's feet, walking towards a certain direction.
Assessing risks :
It is important to predict possible errors that could affect the pace of the filmmaking process. This way, we could maximize our time recording multiple footage, instead of wasting precious minutes on fixing problems that could have been prevented beforehand.
For example, since our destination for filming is the restroom, we anticipate that there will be spills of water around the floor. This can result in injuries to the crew from slippage and falling. Furthermore, equipment (such as a camera, tripod, and light stand) can also be damaged because of the disturbance. Hence, it was constantly reminded within our team to wipe the floor before and after different shots were taken to ensure the safety of the crew, as well as the equipment.
Contrary, we were unable to foresee interruptions by other people. Although the restroom was free to all male students, it was a pretty secluded place since no classes or common areas were nearby. That is why it was unexpected for me and my groupmates to see a janitor enter during filming.
We carried on for a few takes to see if we could still utilize the time and manipulate composition to have her unseen on screen. However, it is clear upon watching back the footage that it is unusable.
This moment truly made me understand the importance of assessing risks before filming and became a great learning experience for the crew.
3. RANGE OF CAMERAWORK AND EDITING TECHNIQUES
To create more sense of dimension and keep the audience "hooked" throughout the sequence, I mentally noted that there must be a variety of camera angles.
I originally planned on creating a bird-eye angle for the second shot in the first scene. However, with the given equipment, it would be a lot of trouble for us to achieve that shot. Instead, a high-angle shot was chosen to fully capture the character and his impact on the environment.
Furthermore, POV shots were also taken advantage of quite a few times, along with close-ups and some medium shots. These were included as a means to draw attention to the actor's expressions and physical behavior.
For example:
- His hands toying with the money: encodes for nervousness
- Medium shot of his face closing right before the bathroom stall: expression connotes distress and/or exhaustion.
Regarding editing, it would be best if they were unnoticeable. This could be accomplished by using straight cuts and audio-related editing techniques such as L-cut to maintain continuity.
4. COMMUNICATION OF SHOT LISTS AND STORYBOARD
[SHOT LISTS AND STORYBOARD IN TEAM ASSESSMENT]
I believe the intentions are all quite transparent through the shot lists and storyboard. However, it is our first few attempts to display this type of information in such an organizational method, so it is obvious there are some details to improve.
For instance:
- The descriptions for each image in the storyboard should be further elaborated, to ensure it is conceived thoroughly and correctly by viewers (to avoid confusion and misunderstanding.
No comments:
Post a Comment