Final Editing

Chemical Brothers - Hanna OST

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBmwcuLa1as&feature=related

Mosaic Investigation Wall

Matthew Stone

http://www.matthewstone.co.uk/music/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C_LMYdKzWY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qo5wdMiXHQ4&feature=related

Installation cont.

Setting up Final Installation

I have started to set up my crime scene installation for my final show. I am going to have my evidence hung up and my videos playing on a multi screen format.

Storyboard Layout

Throughout my project I have been playing around with the format for my storyboards. I like having my images in the top right of the page, and have decided to stick to using A2 for my submission.

Crime Scene Shoot

Elements of Filmic Space

Elements of Filmic Space

We talk about time and space as if they were separate from each other. Actually they’re only different aspects of the same phenomenon. We know time as an accumulation of a series of events and their duration. What we know as space is an arrangement of the material objects of an event and our relationship to those objects. One doesn’t exist without the other. One is the duration and the other is the arrangement – of the same event. The same thing is true of filmic time and filmic space. Filmic time has to do with the manipulation and progression of an ellipsed order of events within a given time frame. Filmic space is concerned with the arrangement of the selected visual and aural elements of those ellipsed events within a given area. Each is a part of the same thing.

Real time and real space and filmic time and filmic space are inseparable but what is real and what is filmic are very different.

Filmic space is illusionary. It doesn’t exist is reality. It only exists on celluloid. Filmic space is created by photographing and then juxtaposing the photographed fragments of different spaces. By ‘cutting together’ different shots from different locations film form can instantaneously take the viewer from one place to another and create the illusion that distant places are contiguous.

Reaction shots and cutaways

Reactions shots and continuity editing cutaways are customarily a part of the scene in which the primary action is being performed. A reaction shot shows how others are reacting to what happening in the primary action. A cutaway shows something or someone else in the scene. Reactions shots and cutaways are not customarily specified as such in the screenplay. Reaction shots are traditionally a part of the film director’s coverage of a scene. Cutaways may be suggested in the screenplay or may be developed during production from elements within the mise-en-scene or actors business.

Intercutting

Intercutting – cutting back and forth between shots from two or more different scenes – is generally specified in the screenplay. This technique indicates that the actions are occurring simultaneously and/or reveals secondary but related actions.

Reorganising Time

In addition to expanding, contracting, and transitioning time, the motion picture medium can reorganise time. It can make the present come before the past, the future precedes the present, and the past follows the future. It can make what’s unreal seem real. The techniques for doing these omnipotent things are flashbacks, flash-forwards and dream and fantasy scenes and sequences.

The manipulation of time and reality is one of the most challenging of all filmic tools. It can be used very imaginatively or it can be used in a pedestrian way. If used as an integrated element of memory, expectation, anxiety, and desire, the manipulation itself can provide explanations; it calls attention to itself as a device and disrupts the dramatic flow of the story. In other words, the reorganisation of time and reality must grow out of and serve the story rather than be ‘tacked on’. The difference lies in the intended receiver of the information contained in the flashback, flash-forward, dream or fantasy.

When manipulating time periods, its important to immediately establish the rules of the game that will keep the audience aware of exactly what time frame they’re experiencing. Transitions can help you do this. Transitions can reveal the reason for the time manipulations at the same time they’re creating the connections that sustain forward movement and dramatic fluidity. There must be a compelling logic that demands the rearrangement of past, present and future. The mixing of time for the sake of mixing time is readily apparent and weakens structural unity. Each movement into a reorganisation of normal time requires its individual motivation, and collectively they must all fit into a pattern that forms an overall structural unity.

Sound track - Blue Frank

I have been analysing David Lynch's films for the past couple of months and his use of sound track is always very distinct. I am experimenting with sound and overlaying some of his co-produced music within my own films.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUcuccdGmeg

This song, Blue Frank is used in the Twin peaks night club scene and makes the scene become slow motion.

British Art Show - Elizabeth Price

Elizabeth Price User Group Disco

Elizabeth Price | User Group Disco, 2009

High definition video, colour, sound | Duration: 15 minutes | Courtesy the artist and MOT International London

Elizabeth Price was born in Bradford, Yorkshire in 1966 and grew up in Luton Bedfordshire. In 2004 Price won the Jerwood Artists Platform Prize. Between 2004-6 she was Research Fellow in Fine Art at London Metropolitan University and in 2007 was awarded the Stanley Picker Fellowship at Kingston University.

User Group Disco is the second video in Elizabeth Price’s series New, Ruined Institute. Each episode takes place in a different room within a fictional institution, this time inside a museum’s Hall of Sculptures. Kitsch porcelain dolls, ebony records and disco balls rotate to the music of Aha, while text borrowed from corporate power-point presentations and literary and philosophical tracts materialises on screen.

There is just littered debris: defunct, damaged, unidentifiable things. There are also no people here - no apparent human action, and no visible architecture. The only things visible are the objects themselves - a debris comprised of mundane and ubiquitous objects, utensils and ornaments. And these things drift in a black void.

What ensues during the course of the video, is a series of reveries and hallucinations concerning these objects.

Price presents us with strange and miscellaneous objects to classify. ‘I don’t want my work to be seen as institutional critique, but perhaps one of its descendents. I’m interested in working with it not as a failed project but as an unfulfilled narrative.’

I love this idea of an unfulfilled narrative and keeping the viewing wanting to see more. The darkness wirthin this video captured my imagination and the close ups of these objects are just like the dream like fantasy I am trying to create within my own short films.

Multi Screen narrative

I have started to construct some of the filming I have been creating as a multi screen story. The left screen shows the original CCTV footage which I edited and transferred from VHS to digital, the second screen is my own crime scene investigation filmed in the same location as the original footage, and the last screen shows an interrogation scene.

For my show I would like to show each film as a separate screen, on video monitors like the one scene below

Lelands Interogation

This is my first attempt of recreating Leland's interrogation scene from Twin Peaks.

Original scene:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVVwX2QGY6Q

David Lynch use of Puzzle pictures and dream sequences

Presentation Script

David Lynch’s use of puzzle pictures and dream sequences

Run Audio: Theme music from the Twin Peaks TV series – 30 seconds then fade out.

Projector: Famous image of David Lynch smoking a cigarette

Presenter: David Lynch is famous for his own unique style. His first film, eraserhead (1976) automatically attained him cult status and established himself as a distinctive filmmaker, popular among the arthouse crowds.

Video clip: Clip from Eraserhead – 0’ 43”

Presenter: My research is based around the use of puzzle pictures and dream sequences within Lynch’s films, and how dreaming plays an essential part within his cinematography. I have been focusing on the film Mulholland Dr, as well as looking at his other classics such as Lost Highway, Blue velvet and his Hit TV series Twin Peaks.

Video Clip: Dream sequence from Mulholland Dr. – 1’07” This clip shows Naomi Watts screaming hysterically, whilst having a nightmare that her Grandparents are coming to get her.

Presenter: From what I have read in my research, people seem to try and over analyse Lynch’s work, to pin point a specific answer or evn define reasoning to what he displays in his films. They argue that his films are too hard to understand.

From whether you are trying to grasp the non-liner narrative in Lost Highway, or trying to figure out what you are watching is reality or dream, in Mulholland dr., to keeping up with the double roles played by same actors.

David Lynch films are not supposed to be fully understood. Lynch describes his paintings like how he sees his films; hes says they are “lost in darkness and confusion”

As long as you know this before watching a Lynch film, you will be able to enjoy it more, rather than over analysing it to try find an answer at the end. There are never concrete answers within Lynch films, which makes them unique. Some films end with cliff hangers, making you ask yourself, ‘What’s going to happen next?’ where as after watch a Lynch film, such as Lost Highway, which ends with a Police chase down a long dark highway, the question in mind is ‘What just happened? Let alone what next.

Video Clip: Mulholland Dr. Trailer – 1’47”

Presenter: As you should have notices, the word ‘dream’ fetured twice within the trailer, emphasising the central role of dreams within. The most prominent attribute to Mulgolland Dr, come about an hour and a half into the 2 hours 20 minute film, throwing the whole story off course. However there are other smaller story lines intwined, the main storyline follows the arrival of Betty (Naomi Watts) to Hollywood, ‘The city of dreams’ where she find her self caught up in a dangerous mystery, with a woman with amnesia (Laura Harring), known as Rita. After finding a key to a mysterious ox, things get complicated, as Betty suddenly wakes up. Her name is different, now Diane, as well as her personality changing. Other characters from earlier have also changed, as well as their relationships to one another. As each new scene unfolds after this peculiar change, a different level of significance and mean becomes apparent when the spectator looks back on what had already happened. This consecutively builds a sense of apprehension and anxiety. The film ends with Betty/Diane committing suicide, which adds to the confusion of the entire film, as you’re left debating questions to yourself about what’s gone on. Was the first Betty all a dream? Which would mean, Diane was the ‘real’ Betty visioning her fantasies

Video Clip: Clip of Betty Auditioning for a part in a movie, where she seems quite intimated by the room of spectators – 1’22”

As you can see the original Betty had a more timid voice, she is a stereotypical American actress, who had moved to Hollywood in search of stardom, where as Diane is a lot more tough and hard

Video clip Clip of Diane paying a hit man to kill a woman called Camilla. – 0’ 46”

Presenter: Even if this is true, that does not explain how some of the characters pathways interlink with each other. Ultimately it would seem that Lynch’s ‘thrill of discovery’ takes over here, and that he would rather leave it open to interpretration.

Video Clip Lost Highway Trailer – 1’ 50”

Presenter: The most significant quote from Lost Highway is when Fred Madison (Bill Pullman) says, “I like to remember things my own way, not necessarily the way they happened”. This is David Lynch’s way of describing the disorder within Lost Highway, as it is up to the viewer to interpret what happens between the parallel worlds of the film.

This film also has a surprising twist within the narrative, and is similar to Mulholland Dr., in that half way through everything transforms. The main Character Fred, gets arrested and put in prison for the murder of his wife, when overnight in his cell he suddenly becomes a different character. This new character, Fred gets arrested and put in prison for the murder of his wife, when overnight in his cell he suddenly becomes a different character. This new character, Pete Dayton (Balthazar Getty) leads a completely different life but strange things start to happen to him, and he meets a woman, who you instantly identify as Fred’s murdered wife. Her name and appearance have also changed. Before the ending, the swap is reversed and Fred comes back, on the run from the police. The question is, was Fred dreaming?

Mulholland Dr and Lost Highway both end puzzlingly, tormenting the viewer over what had just happened, but is there any reason behind why Lynch does this, or is it just his belief that ‘”abstraction in movies intensifies an audiences participation”, therefore making you want to understand the questions that have no answers?

Video Clip: Twin Peaks trailer – 1’ 43”. This shows a brief outline to the story.

Presenter: Lynch is also well known for his TV series, Twin Peaks. Lots of characters within Lynch’s work are shown to experience dreams, or in some cases nightmares. In Twin Peaks, FBI agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), arrives at the town of Twin Peaks to investigate the murder of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), a stunning high school girl, with dark secrets. In the second episode of the series, Agent Cooper has a dream, which is then looked back at, throughout the rest of the series. It shows a very peculiar set of images, with himself sitting in the ‘Red Room’

Video Clip Twin Peaks Ep.1.2 – ‘Cooper’s Dream’ – 5’42”

Presenter: As you can see, Cooper is looking old and wrinkled, there is also a midget and Laura is alive. The midget tells Cooper some mysterious information and then before he wakes up, Laura comes over and whispers something to him. When he wakes up he claims, “I know who killed Laura”

Compared to Fred’s dream in Lost Highway, which is more like a nightmare, to scare the viewer and entice them into his crazed life, where your never quite sure what is a dream and what is reality, Cooper’s dream in Twin Peaks consists of shocking images, which in turn provide clues to help him solve Laura’s murder. In both cases, the dreams play crucial parts within, and as Lynch writes the films himself, he has total control over the narratives, which means they are meant to be centered around dreams and puzzle pictures, and not just show random dream sequences. Lynch says “It’s a dangerous thing to say what a picture is. If things get too specific, the dream stops.”, which shows how he doesn’t like to give the audience any solid answers, he says “I never interpret my art. I let the audience do that.”

Lynch has many trade marks, which emphasize his distinct style, one used often is his ‘close up shots of eyes’ which allows the audience insight into his characters souls, to help them unlock clues into his puzzle pictures, as for the changes in their personalities. Another Lynch trade mark is the ‘ Use of slow-motion during key scenes of violence’ which helps created a distorted dream like world, where time is drawn out to prolong what is happening, which resembles a real life dream and empathsize the non-liner narrative, as for the flashing mirrors and the inordered structure. Lynch’s films are hugely influenced by his artistic background, and he constantly borrows from surrealism, as for the artist Dali, and h uses elements as ‘live ants and rotting flesh’ in his art work. He has also cited Luis Bunuel, ‘The father of cinematic surrealism, as an influence of his work. Through these influences he is able to createdepth and space within shots, through the use of clever technical skills, as for the colour and lighting, which add to the dream like vision

Image: Comparison of Lynch’s work to a Dali painting.

Presenter: It is not because Lynch uses dreams in his films, which makes them unique, as many other directors show characters having dreams or nightmares in their films, but I would say that it is Lynch’s unique style that makes his out of the ordinary. He does this by making the dreams the central role in his films and creates puzzles around them to create an abstract film. Since Lynch does this in more than one film, it had become his distinct style and one reason that people go back to see his films.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVPHF3_zSIw&feature=player_embedded

Scream Analysis - camera, lighting and sound.

I have gone back and looked at my original analysis, from the opening scene of Scream. I felt this was a task that was unfinished from 3A as it didn't really work as a written piece. As part of my project, space and time is a crucial element. I have now read the analysis as commentary over the scene so it describes what is happening with the camera, lighting and sound as you watch. I feel this is a much more effective way of analysing the scene, and has really helped me to grasp a better knowledge into film making and understanding the filmic space.

Mike Figgis - Time Code

WHO DO YOU WANT TO WATCH?

'Timecode is a 2000 American experimental film directed by Mike Figgis.

The film is constructed from four continuous 90-minute takes that were filmed simultaneously by four cameramen; the screen is divided into quarters and the four shots are shown simultaneously. The film depicts several groups of people in Los Angeles as they interact and conflict while preparing for the shooting of a movie in a production office. The dialogue was largely improvised, and the sound mix of the film is designed so that the most significant of the four sequences on screen dominates the soundtrack at any given moment.

The movie was shot on videotape. This was transferred to film for the theatrical release, but the VHS and DVD releases present the original videotape stock.

The film was shot 15 different times over a period of two weeks and Figgis selected the best version for theatrical release; this version was recorded on November 19, 1999, beginning at 3.00 p.m, and ending a little after 4:30 p.m. The DVD release includes the first attempt as a bonus feature. Additionally on the DVD release, viewers have access to all audio tracks to allow for custom sound mixing, rather than the mix of the finished film.'

The Screenplay: A blend of film, form and context

Crime Scene

Interrogation - Test shoot

Interrogation

I have started to design a set for my crime scene interrogation. Lighting is key. I am going to get some more props and start to write a script for the interrogation. This will be one of my films that I want to have playing within my installation, to start bringing together a narrative of my evidence and crime scene. I will also build character profiles.