Rosa+Park.

Journal 1
As a director, I was responsible for creating a original story. First of all, I had to decide a genre that can be applied in to my film. Among genres I learned during the course, I chose magical realism as the optimal genre for my film. I started to research on magical realism in films., but It was hard to find the exact definition of magical realism in film because the genre is originally derived from literature. I watched two movies that deals with magical realism- 'Wings of Desire' and 'The Purple Rose of Cairo', and I found out that they two have a common in that the main characters of each movies struggles between surreality and reality. I decided to apply that feature of magical realism into my film. Therefore, I started with the premise that the main character of my film struggles between his fantasy and reality. And then my group member and I began to build the story based upon such premise.

The basic story line of the film goes: a man tries to find his reared apart mother and recalls his childhood memory with his mother while he looks for his mother’s whereabouts. Towards the end of the film, the man struggles between reality and his fantasy. He has been stuck in fantasy that his mother is alive and has been sought her son for her entire life. However, when the close relatives and the detective tell the man that the mother is actually dead, his own world starts to collapse.

In the most of the magical realism films, each of the main characters does not take a metamorphosis as they were put into dilemma between surreality and reality. However as a twist, I determined that the main character to be a boy at the initial point of the film. The fact that the little boy acting like a grown up man suggests that the man’s mentality was stopped when his mother left the man in the childhood. But the boy takes a metamorphosis into the grown up man when he awakes from the fantasy and faces the reality. Basically, the main character’s conflict between his fantasy world and reality is shown through his physical metamorphosis.

The theme of the film is consistent with some magical realism films such as ‘The Purple Rose of Cairo’: the reality is severe than fantasy. However, different from other magical realism movies in which the story goes with third point of view, my film is first person narration-driven. The man’s narration will be applied to the film and his narration is basically the letter to his mother. I intentionally chose his first person narration because I want to make the film evoke dreamy and reminiscential mood showing how desperately the boy wants his mother back. Also, this dreamy mood created in the initial stage of the film would make the film more dramatic as his hope collapses when he realizes that he mom is actually dead.

Journal 3
One important responsibility of the director is to determine the effective title of a film. The title should not be random, but should rather convey significant meaning that is discussed in the film. For instance, Park Chan Wook in his movie 'Old Boy' used paradoxical phrase with 'old' and 'boy' combined as a tile of his movie. But the phrase Old Boy has significant meaning in that it represents the doubleness of the protagonist whose physical age is old, bit his mental has stopped in his childhood when his sister committed suicide. Inspired from that director, I decided the tile of our film to be 'Becoming Adult'. This seems to be an awkward phrase since the article a/an/the is missing for the word Adult. However, this is intended to show that the mentality of the main character of our film has stopped when his mother leaves him while he was still very little. Therefore, missing an article represents the perspective of a child who makes frequent mistakes on grammar. Title as a whole can be interpreted as two meaning. On the one side, it suggests that the boy undergoes physical change to an adult body as he accepts the reality, but on the other hand, it suggests that the boy mentally grows up as he faces the reality.

According to Peter D Marshall, a director of 'The Butterfly Effect', a director should let the protagonists do rather than say. And I remembered my film teacher had said when making a film, a director should show rather than tell. These two advice made me revise the script since the basic story line was so much depend on the narration. In other words, my original script was written to tell rather than show. Therefore, I decided to reduce the narration at the ending scene of the film. Originally, the film ends with the protagonist narrating that after he hears about the death of his mother, he realises that he should stop linger himself on the memory with his mother. However, I realised that it was unnecessary since I can indirectly hint at that point rather than let the protagonist directly tell the audience. Thus, the ending scene of the film just shows the grown up man walking towards to crowd of people and emerge himself among the crowd. This action would enable the audience to understand the protagonist's determination to leave the memory behind and take a step forward.

Another responsibility of a director is that he has to judiciously determine which shots are to be used and which shots are to be used when and where. My film contains a montage of the boy revisiting the reminiscential place in which he and his mother used to spend time in. It was hard to determine whetherI should include the montage in the film or not because long montage can bore the audience, and I remembered another responsibility of the directors is to make the film interesting so that the audience can constantly focus on the film. Therefore, I decided to eliminate the scene where the protagonist interviews his mother's childhood bed friend and put the sound out from the scene and voice over it while the montage is played. This would not only make the scene evoke dreamy mood while the boy hanging around the places missing his mother, but also make the story proceed naturally without dragging.

http://www.filmmakers.com/features/director/director6.htm http://actioncutprint.com/film-directing-tips/#16

**Journal 2**
My basic story plot was inspired by the point made in the book called 'The Director's Idea- The Path to Great Direating'. In the book, the author claimed that a good director can use the 'surprise of plot to promote the transformation of the character in the character'. This fits with the plot of my film because the main character changes as he realises the reality that his mother is actually dead. The surprise of plot is that the fact that the mother is dead because the story provided the audience with the hope that he could find his mother as he finds her mother's close friend and her traces, but in the climax of the film shows that the mother actually died. This is a surprise for the audience.

Such technique of taking away the audience's catharsis was gotten from Michael Haneke's movie 'The Funny Game'. In the movie 'The Funny Game', the director breaks the audience's expectation and rather lets the audience feel very despairing using different film technique. When one of the murderers gets shot, Haneke seems to give in the audience's expectation that murders will lose the game, but the director evades such expectation by letting the other murderer rewind the scene with the remote control. Just like Haneke, the plot of the film takes aways the audience's expectation by taking away the hope of the boy and this is shown by the boy taking metamorphosis into the grown up man.

After I wrote out the script, I read some books that are relevant to the role of a director in order to get some ideas that can be used when I turn the written script into a visual form. According to 'The Director's Idea- the Path to Great Directing', the director is responsible for constructing audience's experience as they watch the produced film. In other words, the director should incorporate different film elements in order to build audience's experience. Even though the basic story line may be simple, but director's choices can make the film an 'overwhelming experience'. For instance, in the movie 'Amour' by Michael Haneke, the director's choice of certain camera shot successfully made the audience understand the loneliness of the main character. Especially in the shot where the main character George leaves the house following the apparition of the dead wife, the static shot is used to make the audience more focus in the setting, which is empty house that reflects the motif of death. This can be applied into my film with such well chosen director's camera shot. In the opening scene where the boy is sitting alone on the bench in the park, I can use wide static shot to capture the lonely mood of him with the boy placing in the middle of the shot. Also, I can juxtapose the two shots: one with bunch of parents playing with their children and another with the boy by himself. This juxtaposition will make the audience feel the same loneliness as the boy seeing the juxtaposition of one shot with the boy sitting alone and another shot with a lot of people.

Journal 4
One of the important jobs of the director is to find the most suitable location for the film. For the part where the boy revisits the place where his memory with his mom resides, I wanted to location which can evoke the dreamy mood but lonely mood at the same time so that it can be seen as the boy's fantasy. The first location I thought of was amusement park because it is a symbol of dream and fantasy world, so it would be great to show his mom and him enjoying the ride together. However, the amusement park would certainly evoke the fantasy mood, but crowed of people in the amusement park background would deter the film to reveal the loneliness of the boy. I wanted more aloof place so that the boy can quietly reflect on the time he used to spent with his mom. Therefore, I decided to change the location. The other location I selected was the nearby compound where there is a huge clock tower, wide space, and most importantly not many people are around. This was a perfect place for the film because the boy hanging around the clock tower represents his desire for turning back time and walking around the wide space with no person around shows aloneness he felt in his own world.

Another director's essential job is to create meaning on every scene, so called mis-en-scene. As a mis-en-scene, I used a public telephone booth as a way of communication that the protagonist used. The fact that the protagonist uses a public telephone booth looks anachronistic because he could have used mobile telephone. I intentionally chose a public telephone in order to suggest his state of mind. As the time passes, the public telephone booth is no longer frequently used by the contemporary people, but the main character frequently uses it. This shows that his time has stopped at the time when his mother left him several years ago, and his physicality and mentality still reside in the past where he was with his mother. Moreover, the public telephone booth works as an important mechanism that shows how the boy undergoes change in his mentality and physicality. In the film, the boy keeps contact with the detectives without knowing the death of his mother. During the middle of the process of seeking the mother, when the boy leaves the booth, the camera follows the boy's movement. However, when he realises that his mother's death the camera stays static even the boy exits the booth. This difference shows his change in attitude towards his memory of mother in that he starts to accept the reality. That the camera follows the boy even after he exits the booth shows that his still lingering feeling for his mother, but the fact that camera does not follow the boy at the end shows that he leaves every memory with and obsession for his mother in the telephone booth.

** Journal 5 **
While filming, I applied the technique used by Roman Polanski whose works are consistent with mine in that when the main characters are abandoned, they go through the emotional collapse but they finally overcome such suffering. This can be seen in his movie 'Chinatown', Chinatown is chosen as a location of the ultimate scene to convey the 'sensibility of dread and aloneness'. This loneliness was visualised with full frame with a wide shot, often placing the protagonist in the middle with emptiness represented in the background. This technique well evokes the loneliness of the protagonist. Just like Roman Polanski, I carefully selected a final location that can convey the significant meaning. Thus, I decided that i open up the scene with the boy sitting alone in the middle of the frame with nobody in the background. This will be shot with wide shot in order to show the aloofness of the main character. As a last location, I chose wide open square with crowd of people, which is just opposite to the first location of the film. A open space with bunch of people will represent the change in the main character's mentality in that he decided to accept the reality. Thus, the boy walking towards the crowd at the end of the film show his final determination to overcome his suffering ensued from realisation of death of his mom.

When the cinematographer and I started to film, there were some unexpected problems. Since most of the scene of our film was shot outside, we had time limitation. For the scene in which montage of the boy revisiting the place he used to spent time with his mother is shown, I planned to film that scene within one day around 3-5 o'clock when the sun is almost down, creating natural dreamy lighting for the scene. However, no one shot was able to shot with one at a time because we continued to refill in order to make the shots look more perfect. Seeking perfection within the shot ultimately dragged the whole procedure down, and finally we had to continue to film the very next day, which was the day we were supposed to shot another scene. Also, filming outside caused another problem in the scene where the boy takes a metamorphosis in the telephone booth. The shot had to be filmed at night in order to show the time passage, but since the location was outside we did not have any lighting that can work without electronic code to light the main character in the dark telephone booth. This was a huge problem we had to face because we did not expect that to happen. However, we certainly lucked out with that scene. The telephone booth was right next to the cross walk and when the red light was on all the cars had to stop. And the lighting from the cars shined the telephone booth, so we were able to film with proper lighting, and even more the colourful lighting from the created more beautiful an dreamy lighting in the telephone booth.

After shooting the first rough cut of the film, I once again realised the importance of the pre-production. Time really flies when filming so without careful and thorough planning, we could not have filmed until this far. We tried to stick with the original script and story board, but some of the scenes were decided to be abandoned. I was able to judge more critically and visualise the whole scene in mind when I really got outside and started filming, putting written work into visual work. I realised that some of the scene do not work. For instance, in the original script there was a scene where the main character meets the detective in the cafe and they two have conversation about finding the mother. However, as I filmed that scene, I found out it would be little bit off to have them have conversation, which is third-person point of view while all the other shots are narrated with first-person point of view. Therefore, even though we filmed that scene we decided to abandon that in order to make the story more coherent and consistent. I learned that I have to be critical in judging whether one scene is really necessary for the scene because if I put every footage into the film just because I personally think the effort put into making that footage cannot be discarded, the film would not be what it is supposed to be.