Directions Unit: Research - My directing style

This isn't anything to go towards my director's statement; this is simply to help give an idea of how I style a film and how I envision the scenes.

I like dark films, not necessarily in terms of it's genre like horror but in terms of it's visual style and it themes and messages inside the film, along with the emotions it gives out. Examples of what I would class as a 'dark film' are:
Watchmen (also my favourite film)
The Dark Knight Trilogy
The Green Mile
Sin City

I love sound, I like to focus on the sounds of a film, going for the rawness of what we see and emphasising them, instead of just adding typical sound effects. I like to try and link those sounds in with the current mood of the film, even if they're an unlikely grouping. The best example I can give is the street-shootout scene in the movie Heat (which is my favourite scene in a film ever):

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

Another aspect of sound I love is ambience: complete silence in terms of dialogue with the main sounds (if any) coming from background sources e.g. birds, or distant traffic. I like to play with the idea that you can create a powerful scene without any dialogue (we were shown the opening few minutes of There Will Be Blood which shows exactly what I mean). One of my favourite musical artists is Brian Eno who is known for his ambient music, mainly his 1983 song (and my all-time favourite song) 'An Ending (Ascent)'. The music can essentially work with anything, which is why I love it so much: because it can interpreted into many ways and really emphasise a particular scene. There are other ambient songs by other artists too which I shall link below.

An Ending (Ascent) - Brian Eno
Drift - Brian Eno
Ekki mukk (Moving Art) - Sigur Ros
The Oh of Pleasure - Ray Lynch

Moving on now to the actual shooting of the scenes. I purposely try to avoid convention in terms of cinematography as much as possible. For example, where you would have a shot-reverse shot set up for a conversation between two characters; I would try to do it in as little edits as possible or as one take or even just position the camera in a different place than usual. I have a love for continuous shots also, they feel more natural when watching as there are no edits to distract your immersion. I am quite fond of the director Alfonso Cuaron as he is known for having long takes, particularly in his 2006 film Children of Men which features several along with his 2013 film Gravity. A couple more examples of great continuous shots are in Oldboy (2003 version) and The Protector (2005).

The Protector Restaurant Scene
Oldboy Hallway Fight Scene

Directions Unit: Idea Development - Sharing and altering my idea

After thinking about how I could go about making my idea, we were told to group up into our theme groups (e.g. Loneliness, Sorrow) and share our ideas, hoping to get feedback and potentially improvements to the project.

I volunteered to go first and shared my dream sequence idea with the group, who liked the idea a lot, but I still had my concerns with it, mainly showing that it is in fact a dream sequence and the unlikliness of a person getting their friend to wake up just to hand them a suicide note. There was also the difficulty of showing the loneliness in the first place if it's supposed to be set before the person suggestively killed themselves.

After voicing these concerns they were a little stumped at first as what to suggest, so I proposed the film being about a person who is already alone: a homeless person. This then sparked a tirade of ideas based on certain aspects of the script. after a short while the group had suggested some great ideas alongside my own and I finally had an idea I was ready to go with:

The main character is Unnamed, a homeless person, looks early 20's.
He see's a public pay phone ringing and decides to answer it.
he then walks to a location where he meets a well dressed, almost god-like person, same age, if they were to smile their teeth would sparkle.  He hands our protagonist a nice-looking bag, it is clear there is something in the bag, maybe full of food.
After returning 'home' our protagonist is sat on a bench, obviously unhappy, sad even.
The bag is now a plastic shopping bag, and is empty.

What I like:
- Works very well with the theme loneliness.
- Ending is easier to understand as opposed to the previous one.
- Everything else, it just works well.

What I dislike:
- Some people may still not get what's going on.


So, to explain what's happened in the film further, our protagonist has lived on the streets for so long (safe to presume at least 6 - 12 months) that his mind isn't all there any more. He's seeing things that aren't actually happening such as the ringing phone, meeting the man, the bag of food. These things also suggest that what we are seeing are his desires: someone to talk to and food.

So the final question I had is: how do I subtly show what is real and what isn't? Since the film doesn't go back to show these and nor does it actually explain what's going on, I wanted to put something in for those who work out what is happening and to show that they're correct. I liked the idea, which I had a version of for my original idea, of hiding an object in the frame of every scene that isn't reality. For example: in the scene where the protagonist answers the phone an item will be in the frame also to show that this is a figment of the characters' imagination, an item that isn't blatantly there.

 I thought of a black scarf, as this can symbolise the protagonists' desire for warmth.
So in the pay-phone scene the scarf can be hanging from a tree branch in the background, or on the top of the phone cover itself (discreetly though).
In the scene where he meets the god-like man, the man is actually wearing the scarf as part of his attire, but no attention is drawn to it.

I feel I have a solid idea to work with now.

Directions Unit: Idea Development - The Script

After reading the script I initially felt like going for Loneliness might have been a bad idea as I couldn't think of how I wanted to do the film. But after some thinking I came up with a potential idea:

Our main character is dreaming the entire sequence, the 'new character' is their friend who passed away and so our MC is having a dream about the last time they saw their friend.
The package is a suicide note.

What I like:
- Interesting and provocative.
- Works well with the theme.

What I dislike:
- Hand delivering a suicide note may be unconvincing.
- Might be tricky to show that it's a dream if the film starts with the MC waking up.

Directions Unit: Idea Development - The Project

Our project consist of three separate pieces:

1. 4-minute film
2. Director's Statement
3. 1-minute sound film

For the 4 minute film we had the option of Sorrow, Loneliness, Love, Anger and Freedom.

The moment I saw the 'Loneliness' option, and before even seeing the script, I wanted to do that option. Mainly because the themes and genre of loneliness are similar to my writing and directing style (something I shall go into detail in a later post).

With my mind set on Loneliness from the get-go we were then given the script...