Pre Production 31/01/2012

Today we went over to Dans house which is where the piece takes place, we had no actor and the room wasnt ready to be filmed so instead we spent the day writing down all the new ideas we had come up with over the past few days and working out days we were all available to film and what we would film on each of those days.

The test shots that we did do that day was quite successful in terms of knowing that it would work when it came to the production stage.

An idea that we used came from this stop motion video that Joeley found on Youtube.



We then mimicked this idea and tested to see if we could incorporate it into our own work.

Some of the materials we would be using later on in production and a picture of us doing some test shots and getting props ready

Experimental Artist: Fernand Léger

The second experimental film artist I am going to look at is Fernand Léger and in particularly his work Ballet Mécanique (1924) which we had a look at during our first Experimental project lesson

I thought this piece was incredibly riveting, it showed me that you don't always need to know or understand what is happening in front of you to generate a response. Léger was an artist as well as filmmaker which I think shows in this piece. Further research shows the imagery and score were not originally created to be part of one piece of work but instead composed separately and came together. As well as this the score was originally 30 minutes long whereas the imagery was only 20 minutes, finally the piece has be manipulated, moulded and added to over the years to get it to what it is today.

Experimental Artist: Maya Deren

After having watched this piece during the seminar and me personally having already researched her in depth prior to the project I felt like her film: Meshes of the Afternoon related heavily to the piece we were trying to create.



The film is a lot to do with the characters delusions of what is reality and what isn't, in a way its a puzzle wrapped in an enigma surround my mystery in the sense that you are never quite sure what reality you're seeing is the real one. The film is about a battle within yourself which can be denoted by the mirror faced figure.
In terms of the piece that we are making, the main character themselves has a problem, as they lead a colourless life and can be said to seeing thing.
Due to the problems in terms of time, I was thinking that we could use a lot of Derens repetition methods.
Maya Deren had a heavy influence in the post war American Avant-Garde movement so to use her work as a focal point when looking to create our own work I think is good thing.

Pre Production

In terms of ideas, Joeley and Dan already had one when I came into their group but they gave me a play by play in terms of the general plot and a few storyboarded shots.

There is a guy who is black and white and all of the events are set in a black and white room, this guy seems unhappy/depressed but colour slowly starts to creep into his life (How is unexplained and albeit unnecessary). The colour surrounds him and pushes the darkness out of his life and everything including himself is now colour.

The four shots that were shown to me are as follows
1. Guy in black sitting on  the couch
2. The character has a stand off with his reflection, they are treated as two different people (Green Screen)
3.Colour emerges and makes it's way around the room (Shot using pictures-stop motion)
4. Colour is now present around the room and on the character as well

It does seem like a difficult task especially with all the stop motion that needs to be done, but hopefully it will be a formidable challenge.

Experimental Project

The next brief we were given was to create a 5minute experimental piece.

Though I think this will be very interesting and outside the box project I also think that for the same reason it will prove quite challenging. The main reason for this being that we are all used to making Linear Narrative based films and so with this experimental piece we have to almost forget everything we have learned in order to make it fit in with the genres codes and conventions which is opposite to all other genres conventions.

In our first session we looked at the following experimental pieces

Ballet Macanique by Fernand Leger (1924)

Star Guitar by Michael Gondroy (2004)

Blue Monday by Duvet Brothers (1984)

An Optical Poem by Oskar Fischinger (1938)

Interval by Peter Green Way (1969)

Meshes of the Afternoon by Maya Deren (1943)

Kustom Kar Kommandos by Kenneth Anger (1965)

A lot of similarities in these movies included the use of shapes, movement, repetition. Of the Experimental filmmakers we looked at I was already familiar with Oskar Fischinger and knew a lot about Maya Derens life, stylistics and her other movies such as At Land and A study of Choreography.

In terms of partnership, I didn't find anyone to work with over the holidays but during this session I was invited to join Dan and Joeleys group. They had already come up with the base of an idea though there was still a long way to go in terms of planning and production. That day we booked out equipment that we could pick up on Monday where we would also discuss the base idea and work on when we would be able to start filming.