A screen grab from our montage showing the girl alone
While 500 Days of Summer (Marc Webb 2009) and Love Actually (Richard Curtis 2003) are not in the same genre as our film, we took a lot of influence from them as they both feature montages. The opening of Love Actually is a montage of clips of people at an airport hugging and kissing and talking. It showed love. Originally we wanted our sequence to be similar to this. We were going to have lots of shots of the public that gave an impression of love, overlapped into a montage. We also planned to have the girl to do a voice over saying how love is this thing that everyone wants and thinks is amazing and incredible, but it hasn’t been that way for her. The sequence would have ended with a shot of her from behind, slowly panning out. We wanted this to be at the beginning of the film, introducing the character and the story. However, when we begun filming we realised that it was quite difficult to get specific shots of the public. We tried shooting in the town centre but it wasn’t busy enough and we couldn’t find enough couples that were acting ‘in love’. We got some friends to pretend to be together so we could get some shots but we ended up not having enough for a whole 2 minute sequence. Instead, we changed the concept and included shots of the girl alone to contrast with the couples. However, there are still a range of different shot types in the Love Actually montage which we took inspiration from for our sequence.
A example of a shot from Love Actually that we took inspriation from in our montage
During editing, we also decided to use music to get the girls message across instead of a voice over. For this, we looked at 500 Days of Summer. In this film the central protagonist does a celebratory dance along to piece of music as an expression of his happiness. This sequence stands out in the film and we wanted our montage to have the same effect.
During editing, we also decided to use music to get the girls message across instead of a voice over. For this, we looked at 500 Days of Summer. In this film the central protagonist does a celebratory dance along to piece of music as an expression of his happiness. This sequence stands out in the film and we wanted our montage to have the same effect.
This is a screen grab showing how we layered up sound effects and music ontop of our footage
The final extract is a montage showing the girl on her own. She’s featured walking, sitting and standing in different locations, but she is always shown being alone. There are also short clips in the sequence of groups of people, couples and friends who are happy to contrast with the girl’s loneliness. The purpose of the montage was to create a sense of depression for the character and to generate a sad response from the audience. I feel that this has been successful and the audience reacted exactly how we wanted them to.
I acted as the director for our group and had to set up our actress and the scene to ensure our cinematographer got the best shots. The first thing I had to do was plan the sequence shot by shot on a story board and decide where each one was being filmed by scouting out locations. We knew that we wanted the main character to be alone in the shots so I purposely chose places where there wasn’t likely to be crowds, such as back streets, alleyways and fields. I also tried to get some shots in places where you would expect there to be lots of people to show that the girl still felt alone even when she was surrounded by people. Our cinematographer managed to get some shots like this in the town centre and in a local park. We needed crowd and couple shots to contrast with the lonely girl and so we mainly filmed these in busy public places. In addition to this, I made sure that the costumes we used were true to the character. For example, Sophie, our actress, wore a typical teenage outfit; jeans, a jumper, UGG boots and a coat. I chose this because I wanted it to seem like the character could be any of the real life girls who walk down the street. There aren’t any bright colours in the pieces of clothing either. This was a conscious decision. The clothes were all dark and dull colours like blacks, greys and blues to show that the girl was feeling sad and upset. In my role as director, I also had to position Sophie in each shot, make sure the lighting was ok, approve each camera shot, watch over the post-production and editing and try to get the best out of my team.
I acted as the director for our group and had to set up our actress and the scene to ensure our cinematographer got the best shots. The first thing I had to do was plan the sequence shot by shot on a story board and decide where each one was being filmed by scouting out locations. We knew that we wanted the main character to be alone in the shots so I purposely chose places where there wasn’t likely to be crowds, such as back streets, alleyways and fields. I also tried to get some shots in places where you would expect there to be lots of people to show that the girl still felt alone even when she was surrounded by people. Our cinematographer managed to get some shots like this in the town centre and in a local park. We needed crowd and couple shots to contrast with the lonely girl and so we mainly filmed these in busy public places. In addition to this, I made sure that the costumes we used were true to the character. For example, Sophie, our actress, wore a typical teenage outfit; jeans, a jumper, UGG boots and a coat. I chose this because I wanted it to seem like the character could be any of the real life girls who walk down the street. There aren’t any bright colours in the pieces of clothing either. This was a conscious decision. The clothes were all dark and dull colours like blacks, greys and blues to show that the girl was feeling sad and upset. In my role as director, I also had to position Sophie in each shot, make sure the lighting was ok, approve each camera shot, watch over the post-production and editing and try to get the best out of my team.
I positioned Sophie in the left hand side of the shot to show that the scene was from her perspective
Given more time, I think I could have ensured our group got a better variety and a better quality of shots as it was hard to get good shots in such a public setting and in such a short amount of time. This would have allowed us to develop the montage and the narrative more and to guarantee that we’d made a piece to the best of our ability. However, I do think that this project has been a success and I am proud of the final outcome. Finally, I have enjoyed learning about the different aspects of film making, in particular directing, and also working with others who share a passion for film like me.
No comments:
Post a Comment