Summer Brief: Self Directed Music Video

Summary:

I chose to make a self directed lyric video for one of the songs I have produced in a collection called Where Angels Fall. The themes of the song and video are all about coming to terms with change and facing corruption.

Narrative:

The story implied is about an angel who has fallen from grace for being judged on his actions. However, he has been judged unjustly but no one can see or listen to what he has to say about it. He goes through many stages of frustration and anger at how unfairly he has been treated. But, through self preservation and accepting that he will never win against corruption, he comes to terms with the situation and moves on living as 'an angel with black wings' with the moral high ground of knowing he was right.

Technical Practice:

Certain shots of the lyric video were shot in 50fps for the effect of slow motion with smoother movement. the rest were shot in the DSLR standard of 25fps.

Location Choice:

There are some woodland hills in East Staffordshire outside Burton Upon Trent that offer open hill tops and dense woodland in the same place. These factors were useful when deciding where to film because I was looking to alternate the visual space around the character from open and tight; as a way of showing his vulnerability and also the darkness and confused anger he possesses inside him.

Analysis:

The character in the video is wearing a brown coat with a black top underneath. This was a design choice to allow him to blend into the location of the shoot. Especially when he is out in the open, his brown coat blends the major half of his body to create affinity of tone as a way to suggest he is nothing special anymore having now fallen from grace. He is just like everything else on earth around him. And the fact that he blends more out in the open marks his new vulnerability in the open space; as if he needs to blend to camouflage himself from danger.

When his black top is exposed, it instantly creates contrast with the brown. This is to show the internal conflict underneath the surface. He is still trying to come to terms with the injustice he's faced. The choice of black is symbolic to the term "black sheep" where he is now labelled an outcast from angels; which are often associated with brighter colours.

During the climax of the song, where the beat of the music creates the most intensity, there are more shots in the forest with the sunlight shining through the trees. Compare this to the outside where the tone is much brighter, there is a major contrast as the tone gets darker.

-Brighter tone in the open

- Darker tone under the trees. There is more contrast in the frame as the sunlight is shining through)

This contrast of tone is to make the internal conflict he's been facing more external for the audience to see. It has consumed him so much that he can't hide it away anymore and there must be a confrontation and a release of anger before he can move on.

For the editing, the film begins with a lot of slow motion of the character observing the world around him. The choice of slow motion for these moments when he looks around was to give a feeling of the absorption of information. As he is learning about learning to live without grace, the audience is learning more about his story; this information is included in the music and the lyrics as they appear on screen for the audience to read. The duration of shots is also longer to add to this effect and to contrast the editing in the climax.

At the climax of the video, there are more short and fast cuts with single frame inserts of the character lying under the tree and standing over the edge of a drop. This is the height of his confrontation with his aggressive emotions and the turning point for him

For the ending, the colour begins to come back into the frame of the shot. Throughout the video, the colour has been partly de-saturated and the exposure has been lowered (in post)  to create the impression of  a shadow overhanging on him. But by the end, he has accepted his situation and walks on with his life;  by this point, the colour and brightness returns to him; even if  he now has a reputation of being an outcast. 

Evaluation:

Overall, I feel the video was successful in delivering the emotion intended for the audience watching a character that is confronting change. The visuals and the music depend on each other to help get that emotion across. Shooting in 50fps for the first time was a success for making slow motion, however, some shots were not focused correctly or did not have the right exposure on the camera when they were filmed. In attempt to resolve this, I tried blurring them more into the background so the audience can focus more on the lyrics that appear on screen whilst still seeing the general motion of the character in the background. 

If I were to re-shoot this, I would give myself more time to shoot on location as we had only an hour there maximum, I would also perhaps include more symbolic props and locations; such as a church or cross in order for the anecdote of an angel to be more specified.

Module Report/Evaluation

In my opinion, module four has been the module that has brought out my best work. I feel that I have a better understanding of the visual components theory, I feel that I have expanded on my research skills to see how other film makers use visual storytelling to make their films, and I feel that I have improved on realising the importance of the sound design in film. I have also learned how to tell complex topics with simple ideas.

Originally, I had already started previsualising ideas on how to exhibit this film. I wanted to try projection mapping at first; however I realised that learning such a technique required more time than this module could allow. Incidentally, this method of exhibition was quickly put aside when I actually found my selected text from the public library; a book about cultural theory and human morality called After Theory by Terry Eagleton. The quote I chose was about the question of how we identify what it is to be human.

I felt like this was an idea I could really play with. My initial approach was that the definition of what it is to be human is different and unique for everyone. And also, that there is no one definition of who we are; instead, we are defined by the things we associate ourselves with. For example, hobbies, culture, upbringing. I endeavoured to ask the question what would be left if all these factors were stripped from a human being.

I then began to develop ideas with this; mainly about a person who has lost all sense of identity and need a connection to remember who they are. Then I read up upon a theory by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. It was a concept called “The World Navel”; a source of energy in which the world of the story revolves around. I thought to link this with humans’ connection with nature.

I concluded that I could make a film that showed a common connection between a protagonist who felt unrequited love and an animated wolf that had lost his pride; that connection was the beat of the earth. The theme of unrequited love came from the idea that when you give yourself to someone else with no measure of reciprocation; you have no identity of your own and cannot learn to love and look after your own wellbeing.

However, I consulted with my tutor Matt after writing a draft for the script and we agreed that I was making things far too complicated for an audience to follow. Then we discussed the idea of visual poetry which inspired me to approach the film from an entirely new angle. I looked into Japanese Haiku poems and how they are simple syllables that explain the deep concepts of Japanese philosophy.  I wrote my own Haiku and came to the idea of a character struggling to survive in the wilderness without fire.

In the final cut of my film, the visual subtext of fire is that it should come as top priority for keeping the moral high. In the film, the protagonist is trying to keep a smoking pile of ash lit to start a previous fire again. In the end, the ash grows cold and the smoke chokes him. He has to endeavour on creating his own fire in order to survive.  This explained the idea of learning to love and respect yourself first above others makes you a better person for it. Matt and I also talked about the idea of introducing a scene that showed childish innocence in an adolescent young man as a method of sparking his journey to recovering his identity. Something as simple as climbing a tree or skimming stones; where small actions start big reactions.

The film was shot on location off the beaten track in dense woodland. There were extra hours of daylight to allow longer hours of filming. Prior to the shoot, myself and my Dad had collected dry grass and twigs as the props and natural fuel for the fundamental climax of the film. We were able to film without any showers delaying schedule.

In post-production, I had the mind set to edit the film from one angle; the angle in accordance with the script. However, Matt explained to me the idea of being free with cutting and having experimental iterations that were non-linear to the original storyboard. With Matt’s assistance, I finalised on a version of the edit that created fast and sharp tension and also a look deeper into the protagonist’s desires of wanting to feel the warmth of the fire.

With colour grading, I experimented on what the protagonist would feel originally in certain moments. I came up with the sequence of empty, sick, refreshed, active then warm. This being his transition from feeling cold and lost to remembering how to love himself and his identity. I made an alteration of adding blue at the end to bring out the warmth of the fire to the audience at the end.
If I ever shot this film again, I would take more time to make the journey feel more personal. There are elements of narration in the sound design; however, I feel it could have been more from the heart. I would even find a way to explain the concept of unrequited love in this form with a shorter version of the story. I feel that short and sweet can make the audience easily wonder the sense behind what they saw.

The message I wanted to send out with this film was to ask the audience to take a moment to think about who they are. Do they have respect for their identity and who they are, or do they give themselves more to others that do not reciprocate the feeling? Linking back to the quote, the message of the film is to remind us that as humans, we must respect ourselves to respect each other.

The Final Cut: Flame - Analysis

Flame

Text:

"To discover what we are, to know our own natures, we have to think hard about it; and the result is that we have come up over the centuries with a bewildering array of versions of what it is to be human." -Terry Eagleton, After Theory 

One Liner:
You only need a spark

Logline:
When smoke rises from the embers of a dying fire, the discovery of who he is can light a fire of his own.

Synopsis:
Lost in the wilderness, One man is struggling to live with himself. He is chocked in his attempts to keep a fire that has long burnt out going. His aggression and frustration lead him to realise that small things have large effects. His journey to rediscover the meaning of who he is could lead him to feel warmth inside himself once more.

Director's Comments:
Flame is a personal journey. It's told in a retrospective sense from the point of view of a character that is a wiser person from it. And although the underlying theme is unrequited love; the picture of trying to feel the warmth inside of you is something that we can all relate to on some level. It's the very thing that defines us not only as humans but as individuals.

Applied Theory:
I wanted to use Joseph Campbell's theory on The World Navel in my film from the beginning. The way I've done this is make everything in the protagonists actions, struggles and motivations based around the fire; wanting to keep it alive, letting the smoke consume him, throwing away bits of wood in anger, climbing a tree like the flames ascending and then lighting one all on his own. Fire in this film is a symbol of warmth, clarity, strength and contentment; all of which are implied in positive moral which is something bush craft expert Ray Mears recommends when out in the wild: fire is the first priority to keep moral up.

Sound:

The sound throughout the film begins with non-diegetic emptiness with ringing flashes as the fire cuts in. This is to create the internal feeling inside the protagonist of what he is feeling. There is a lot of reverb to suggest that this is an empty void. When the protagonist touche the ash, the ringing builds as a stress to the audience. The next scene returns to diegetic sound when he is throwing sticks in the water. This more natural sound makes the audience more comfortable and appreciate the lush green that is also included in the frame. Gradually, non-diegetic music is  introduce to build up the moment to climax where there is then total silence in order to absorb the visual of the flame being lit. The music then ends on an uplifted emotion in the composite scene of the moon, fire and the protagonist.

Analysis:

In the opening sequence, the audience is thrown right into the fast rhythm of the internal pulse of the protagonists emotions. From a sequence of jump cuts of him sleeping, we know that he desires warmth of a fire and desires it with a terrible passions as it jumps out at us momentarily but frequently:

To also increase the intensity of the moment, the fire has been shot with two sticks forming a burning triangle. In the context of the film, this is a sharp point eating away at the protagonist's desires of wanting to light a fire desperately. In subtext of the film, the triangle in fire is a reference to the awkwardness of love triangles and how there's always one person in that triangle that feels unrequited love. 

In discussing the theme of unrequited love, there is a loss in a sense of being to the person giving themselves to another. The protagonist is using every last bit of fuel he has to keep this smoking hot ash pile going. He has resorted to ripping up a picture of himself in younger days when he was happy. The entire picutre shows him wearing a white suite on a white background. In that picture, he's innocent, happy and not aware that his life would come to a point where he'd have to rip it up to kindle in ash. This is.

This act of tearing the picture is the visual storytelling of the effects unrequited love has. A person gives themselves to a cause that they think is worth fighting for; even if there is a small chance of hope (like warm embers in ash).

The reality of this though is that you're giving yourself, time and effort into someone that doesn't know or doesn't appreciate it in the way you do; as is the implication of being clouded by the fact that "love is blind". The smoke of the warm embers is chocking the protagonist, clouding his judgement on the fact that the as is going to cool no matter what he does.

Also in this scene, the protagonist's surroundings have been desaturated whilst he remains slightly more saturated in colour. This is to show that whilst at first he might not feel poisoned yet in trying to save the fire, the environment around him is from the smoke that is rising into the air. In a more political subtext, humanity's blind lust and greed for energy (in the case of fossil fuels) is having a damaging effect on the environment. But the people who have the power to stop it (international governments and cooperate businesses) are blind by their desire and love for the money they can get from the energy industry.

Speaking in the context of the film, the protagonist still holds hope that he can relight the fire; even though everything else in the scene is telling him that it's getting colder and colder with more smoke.

Flashes of the vibrant orange are edited in after the coughing to remind the audience of the protagonist's desire to light a warmth in the fire.

This scene follows up with the impression of a sick green. The protagonist is blurred out of focus as he grabs the cold ash and realises that the fire is dead. It's in this point that there is a jump cut to show what he wanted and the reality of what he got; cold ash. In context, this is the moment when someone realises that the person they were giving themselves to was never reciprocating the effort; and now the person feels unrequited love affect them like cold ash blown in  their face.

With this scene, I have applied the use of the rule of thirds principle. 3/4 of the shot is lush green whilst the protagonist stands out contrasting the colour. The reason for this principle is to let the audience absorb the lushness of the image as the new start of where the story will go now that the chocking of the smoke is over. With so much lush green surrounding the protagonist as well, the audience can feel sympathetic in watching his aggression in throwing away a potential source of fire. We as a viewer are safe in the knowledge that he needs to let all this anger out; so that the lushness of the green can help him have a fresh start as we can see in the frame overall.

All other previous shots up to this were were shot on a rig, this is one of the few shots that is actually static on a tripod. This gives the feeling of balance and order; that which will return to the protagonist after he lets out his anger. In short, this shot is the beginning of him healing his wounds.

Cutting this scene after his anger calms is the moment of discovery. When he realises that a splash sends the ripples a long way across the lake, this starts the motivation to get back on his feet.

Below is the sequence where he climbs the tree broken down into stills:

There is constant contrast of movement bringing the camera in and out rapidly and from different angles, this is almost the last scene of intensity where editing is done in this way. This is his trial to prove he can be motivated. If he succeeds in climbing the tree, he knows he has the mentality to light a fire. Fast editing with contrasting movement therefore projects his climb to gain the ability to win.

The colour grading in this scene has been done in a way to show his active willingness to climb the hypothetical mountain. The lime green, closely resembling a shade of yellow shows his commitment and motivation to climbing the tree. It's not something that he needs to do to survive, it's something he has to do to feel accomplished enough to light his own fire.

 Lime yellow is also quite a childish colour and this is reflected in the act of the scene itself. Watching an adolescent young man climbing a tree isn't usually normal. However, he realises that life before his struggles was simpler when he was younger; therefore to help regain his individualism as a person, he goes back to the basics of climbing a tree as a child. The innocence of this makes the audience route for the protagonist in achieving his goal.

As the climax of the film approaches, blue saturation is added as a contrast created by the cold of the night; which enhances the orange when the fire begins to light. There is also the addition of white in the birch tree to show the purity of the flame that will follow; in the sense that it has be lit entirely by his own hand and not manufactured from anything else.

The climax of the film. Orange is the dominating colour in the shot to show the height of the protagonist's achievement in lighting his own fire. He has created it all on his own which has given him a sense of individualism to who he is inside.

In the ending shot, we see the moon rise above the protagonist whilst the fire glows and warms his face. Closure has been created to end the film on a triangle that sums up what "this" feels like in the words of the narrator.

 The fire is a symbol of the identity he has about himself; one he made on his own and not giving up himself for a lost cause. The glow on his face represents the fact that others can see the change he as undergone, he radiates a warmth about him that he can now share with others after kindling his own light. The moon represents the spiritualism of the ascension he has taken. He struggles and pain have led him to an enlightened moment where everything perfectly falls into place.

The message this film has on the audience is an awakening into getting to know themselves better on the inside. It begs the question "Who are you?". What I want this film to do is make the audience realise that the nature of being human is to respect one's self so we can respect one another.