Rosa,+Helen

__Journal 1__
====Our final film is inspired by a motif of magical realism that people often choose imagination as a way to escape from their cruel realities, either unconsciously or intentionally. The director of our team gave a premise, setting of the film as an amusement park, and I came up with a rough idea that a young boy is confused with his reminiscences or illusions and the desolate reality. The boy cannot accept the reality that his mother died, so he is embroiled in past memories with his mother. By the end of the film, the young boy eventually realizes and complies with the reality that he needs to deal with throughout the rest of his life, and a grown up man leaves the amusement park alone.====

====My role in this film is cinematographer: I need to work on camera shots, angles and lighting to communicate the theme and establish tone effectively. I will use many establishing/wide shots to show the setting of the film. The setting, amusement park, is a very fundamental element in this film. Amusement park is often associated with dreams and innocence of children, and it will as a setting really well reflect the naïve and fragile minds of the boy that resist to acknowledge death of his mother. I will also use some medium shots not to show the face of boy’s mother: only the shoulder to legs of the boy’s mother will be taken in the medium shot. It is to eliminate the sense of reality by revealing that the boy’s mother is not alive and only exists in the boy’s imagination. There is a scene when the boy and the boy’s mother conflict with each other because the boy wants to leave an evidence and be confirmed of the fact that he spent happy time with his mother, while his mother persistently resists to. In this scene, I will take them in wide shot, at ditched angle and slightly out-focused to set unstable situation and build tension because this scene shows conflict between adherence to the imagination done by the boy and attempt to accept the reality done by the mother. Lastly, at the beginning of the movie when the main character is the young boy, I will mostly take him from high camera angles to let him look relatively small and not cognizant. However, at the end of the film, when he becomes an adult, I will take him from low camera angles, so that he will look calmer, and more receptive towards the cruel reality he is in.====

====As for lighting, I will use bright and natural lighting for scenes of his flashback/illusion in the amusement with his mother. I am thinking of applying some colors, such as pink or yellow to emphasize the sense of illusion and chimera, but have not come up with exact way to do so as most of the scenes will be taken outside in amusement park. I will use dark and low key light for scenes of his realization of the reality.====

====Based on the script that the director wrote, I will create storyboard to refer to in actual filmmaking. I will also fill out the planning sheet to see how my cinematography will work to contribute to conveyance of the overall theme and the mood.====

==== As a cinematographer, I am solely concerned with how to establish proper moods throughout the film, so that those moods can develop the overall theme of the film that people often unconsciously believe in their imaginations as the reality to temporarily forget about the cruel reality. For this final film, the mood I mainly need to set is loneliness of a young, naive boy. I referred to some sources to find out how to utilize lighting and various camera shots to set such mood. ====

==== According to "light source: in the mood? creating mood with light," intrigue lighting can be used to portray the mood of loneliness or danger. This single back light placed high above and between the main characters will act like a street light in lonely corner of the world. According to "lighting to set a mood," high and low key lightings can be used to create happy and bright moods, and dark and serious moods, respectively. These two lightings will be contrasted to each other to amplify the contrast of complex emotions - happy when with his mother and sad and lonely when alone - of the main character. ====

==== Besides lighting, rules of composition can also help build a sense of loneliness. "Stills in motion: achieving a cinematic look on a budget" suggests that 'dead space' or 'negative space' (an empty part of the scene) is critical to creating emotion through cinematography, and is part of the language of cinema. I can use the rule of thirds, and let the main character be positioned with four blocks of dead space in his line of sight, giving a sense of loneliness - a blank stare into empty space. ====

==== Close-up is a camera shot taken at close range and showing the subject on a large scale. According to Karina Wilson (Hollywood screenwriter and producer), this close-up sot shows very little background, and concentrates on either a face, or a specific detail of mise en scene. This shot magnifies the object and shows the importance of things, and takes the audience into the mind of the main characters. Through close-up shots, I can convey the complex (sad & lonely) emotions of the boy due to realization of absence of his mother. Picture of the boy and his mother taken in front of merry-go-round can be also taken in close-up shot to transmit the theme and lonely mood by showing that only the boy is in the picture and that in fact, his mother did not exist in reality. ====

==== As for camera movement, forward tracking can be used not to show the face of mother throughout the movie. This forward tracking is the tracking shot with smooth movements forward, as if the camera follows the main characters walking forward. This camera movement is significant in our filmmaking as it is related directly to development of both the plot and the theme. Through forward tracking shot of the mother, I cannot show the front of the mother and emphasize that she is only alive in her son ’s imagination. ====

[]
__Journal 5__ After the first day of filming, I realized that detailed planning was very important in filmmaking because our lack of thorough organization made our first filmmaking very unproductive. As a cinematographer, when I drew some shots on storyboard, I simplified drawing of characters’ actions too much. For example, when the boy waits for his mother, he leans back on the chair, puts her head down, or leaves the place to buy a balloon and comes back to show that he is bored to wait for quite long period of time. I only drew the boy sitting down and staring into the air, and the boy holding the balloon. I skipped the whole process of lowering his head or moving out of the frame to buy the balloon or just jotted down ‘moves his feat back and forward’ in words. Thus in the actual filming, I had to spend extra time on figuring out for where to let the boy head out and directing him what to act besides actions drawn on the storyboard. Similarly, when I planned how to close up the boy, I simplified this process as well: on the storyboard, I drew the boy taken in wide shot, then in medium shot and in close up shot at constant angles in 3 consecutive boxes. This cursory simplification on storyboard resulted in making the shots look like parts of a horror movie, in which the figure is closed-up in a very awkward sense. I had to spend another time on improvising to shots at slightly higher and lower angles, from the front, from the side and from the back as I approached the boy waiting for her mother. Through the first actual filmmaking, I learned that elaborate storyboard is necessary to refer to for prompt and effective cinematography.

There were several unexpected situations that went out of our control. First, all of our filming should be taken outside, so the weather must be sunny or at least not rain. However, when we filmed only half of our film, it suddenly rained and we had to stop the filming at that point. Another unexpected situation was that there was not enough space in front of the merry-go-round. There was instead a gentle slope, so it was very hard to film the mother and the son having arguments in front of the ride in a medium shot from low angle. In addition, a park bench where the boy is supposed to sit and wait for his mother was surrounded by several large sculptures, so it was quite hard to take the boy in a wide shot and creates lonely and isolated moods.

As for weather problem, we had to finish our first filming at that point and schedule for another day. Since there were more restraints in the location we chose than we had previously assumed, I talked to the director and suggested that we change our whole setting, some of the plots. As the result, some changes were made in the cinematographer’s shot lists. I still kept dutch angles, so that those tilted shots can represent the complexion of boy’s desire to meet his mother and anxiety that he would not be able to find his mother. I newly included closed-framing in which the boy is confined in a virtual box: the boy was often taken over fences or inside arches. This would establish a sense that he was embroiled in his own illusion and rejected to accept the reality where his mother had died long ago. I also added many static camera works and took the boy in wide or medium shots to distance the audience further from the boy and let them stare at the boy’s isolated world and illusion, which was totally separated from the real world. This use of static shot was influenced by Michael Haneke’s the White Ribbon. Lastly, I would try to incorporate z-axis that I learned in the class and saw in Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane. I will take the boy walking to the z-axis or the diagonal line towards the center of the shot, so that the boy will look relatively tiny compared to the large rides and represent his naïve and not accepting attitudes towards mother’s death and his powerless figure against the cruel reality.