William+C

When I set about creating the story as the director, I planned to also take on writing the story, as that way I would have the clearest vision of what the short film would become. In doing so, directorial decisions that affect cinematography, editing, lighting and sound would come to me more easily. Hopefully, this kind of “Coen brothers” approach to the film would help me make a tighter and more compelling film.
 * Journal 1**

As of now, our movie is essentially about a man trying to return a bag to the person who dropped it. As an added twist, we hint at darker undertones by suggesting the dropped bag is for a ransom pick-up. The film should have a tonal shift from a more upbeat-happier mood to one that’s darker. That way we should be able to trip up the audience’s expectations.

However, I’m finding that writing the screenplay of the movie is much harder than I thought. I try adjust the events of the film to create plot points that satisfy the idea that a man is returning a bag that belongs to a ransom, but then I also have to make it not quite obvious so as to make sure the audience is actually surprised at the end. That’s where the strange man comes in place in second plot complication on the plot chart. It’s supposed to be able to be a second plot complication/obstacle for a story about a man trying to return a bag or a ransom. Still, his appearance in the script feels somewhat random without a proper way to lead him in. I find that if I spin the story toward just a man looking to return a bag, then the real story about the ransom doesn’t make much sense anymore.

The theme is my attempt to somehow tie these two contrasting ideas together into one cohesive story. I’m trying to figure out why the character would want to return this bag with such vehemence, but I can only come up with a explanation that he desires to be cared about. One of those explanations would be that the protagonist (as seen in the creating meaning chart) is young, that would explain his naiveté. Another explanation for his vehemence would be the flowers. In this story they would be highlighted as such with the coloration of the film, i.e the flowers would be a bright crimson in a relatively desaturated world.

__Film Direction__ also gave me several good ideas on constructing story after I redid several draft of a story. Ultimately it pushed me to scrap most of the ideas I had before. It says that “films about problems to which you have the answer” or “anything or anyone ‘typical’” will never make a good story. My story before was exactly about a typical incident—a boy getting his phone taken away by his brother. After reading these “subjects to avoid,” I realized that my story before had not enough of a dramatic question to ask to the audience, like many people said, my story was just not compelling enough had it been just a everyday situation. So instead, I followed the book and wrote a completely new story that “[arose] from a core of belief” which incorporated part of my own philosophy. I think ultimately that helped me create a much more interesting story as I was vested in it personally.
 * Journal 2**

The __Film Direction__ book made a great point on preparation, more specifically, making use of a floor plan. Before on previous shoots, I found that certain shots—while they looked fine in my head--didn’t quite look right in real life or some character actions weren’t viable when shooting on location. It didn’t occur to me to use a floor plan. In doing so, we would recreate our shooting location down to the obstacles and so we could see what obstacles the cinematographer would face. This is especially important when it comes to shot composition and blocking. Now, instead of wasting valuable time trying to find a solution on set, we could fix the problem while going over a rehearsal with our actor.

When it comes to the actual shoot itself, I noticed that in the past I just made the actors jump into the action cold turkey. I did no formal preparation for them to warm up. That’s not good; __Film Direction__ helped me realize that. So before I begin to shoot, the book suggests that I take my actors somewhere private and tell them something special to create a director-actor bond. That way when it comes time to the shooting, the actor will place more trust within my vision and perform better. As the book suggests, the first time shooting is tense. I need to alleviate that tension and get everyone to know everyone. After all, shooting with friends is better than shooting with strangers. However, I can’t actually forget that I am a director. While I need to understand their concerns or suggestions, I can’t play the role of a friend and sympathize with them. I need to get people to focus on their jobs and to get it done.


 * Journal 3**

I’ve noticed in past projects, my job consisted mostly of preparing all the technical sides to a project, the script, the cinematography, etc… When it came time to shooting, I would take a more laid-back approach and watch as the filming commenced. However, I began to notice that the content I was seeing in the editing room always seemed like it was lacking something. Only now did I realize that I didn’t try hard enough to direct my actors. Like a headless chicken, they were without direction. So in my final project I’m trying to rectify that. The first resource I went to look for was unsurprisingly about directing actors. I found this great article on nofilmschool.com about taking care of non-actors that basically says to be extremely, extremely patient with them. It says since non-actors are somewhat clueless to the whole filming process i.e they think it’s just a one shot and one take deal, I need to clue them in on every single process that goes on. Whenever there’s a slight pause as the cinematographer adjusts something or the lighting is fixed, I’ll talk to my actors. That way we can establish a nice director-actor rapport. As the article says, they need to be engaged in the process in order to be emotionally vested in their performance for as long as possible. If actors don’t get why I’m doing this and that, then actors get bored. When new actors get bored, they want to go home. However, above all, the article reiterates many times I need to be supportive of them when they do act. Nothing makes a performance bad than actually feeling bad. I’ll try to keep them as happy as possible with encouragement and some food/drink. I also learned a couple things about when to redo-takes. The article says that the biggest thing I need to tell my crew is what exactly was wrong with the take I previously just did. That way they won’t get upset with me in their assuming that I’m just doing this out of spite. Especially with new actors, I need to tell them what exactly they could do better—in keeping with positivity on set. In general, I need to be happy with all the shots I get. I shouldn’t get into that mentality of just “getting the shot;” the shots need to be beautiful. If I get into that mindset of being generally okay with everything, then that will reflect in the final quality of my film as just being generally okay. While my crew will get somewhat annoyed, I need to push as far as possible without also going overboard—something I’ll have to judge for myself when I’m filming. I need to avoid overshooting (something I’m somewhat guilty of in the past) considering I’m not paying them 6 figure salaries.


 * Journal 4**

Under the Pixar’s rules of storytelling I read that in creating the protagonist of the movie, you need to “give your characters opinions” as passive protagonists are evidently poison to short films. This came to me as somewhat of a surprise considering how completely unaware I was of this rule previously while writing the script. I realize now though that the first step to doing that is to give your characters more clearly defined objectives. In terms of my script, I can spend more time explaining through shots what exactly is stopping my character from accomplishing his goal. That means spending less time on many events and more on showing the emotions that come with his objectives. I must try to make the journey to success as problematic as possible for my character in order to help him convey just how much emotionally he needs/wants to do something.

That line, “What’s my motivation,” has become a huge cliché but it is something incredibly important to making my film compelling. I was worried that my film would become boring as it seemed at times it was merely documenting steps in solving a problem with the same intensity as reading a manual. However, I realize now that I need to take advantage of my direction to **get the actors to emote** much more than what’s in my head, or rather, what’s on the script. The script may just say MICHAEL GETS MAD, but I need to go much deeper than that when I direct my actor. Instead of one character merely shaking his head at another’s folly, that character should frown and furrow his eyebrows and look genuinely mad. These reactions will make failures and success in the movie much more compelling.

Another good point I gleaned from the elements of cinema website was the idea of coverage. Coverage was something that I also neglected in the past that ultimately showed on the final products. I believe that the reason why some of my past films seemed a bit off was because of the lack of coverage. In this last film, I’ll try to correct that by using a variety of angles and at different heights. By doing so, I’ll be able to convey tension and emotion through series of well placed reaction shots and shots of what caused those reactions. In short, I’ll use a more complex version of the Kuleshov effect more often. This kind of coverage will also help a lot more in post production when I go over the film with my editor. More shots means more opportunities to mask transitions and ensure a tighter/smoother film.


 * Journal 5**

=== Blocking has become one of the more important aspects of our short film. As our location was deliberately chosen for its simplicity, it has become a lot harder to create meaning when there is so little of our surrounding to take advantage of. Initially the large bar-like barrier on one side of the bus stop posed an obstacle to our shots since it made some shots impossible to film, but I found that the bars actually helped our film in terms of mis-en-scene. The wood bars created a metaphorical prison for our protagonist to ultimately escape from. The bars also created a divide that separated our protagonist from the bum, injecting yet another metaphorical compositional framing that implied the clash of two completely different entities. By using the rule of thirds, we placed the two characters equidistant from each other to create a visually appealing shot whilst creating meaning. ===

===When filming the incoming bus, we adapted our shots to accommodate a bus that refused to wait for us to film. Despite all our best efforts, we could not get a decent enough shot of the bus to include in the film for our originally planned split screen. Instead of doing a split screen of the bus on one side and the protagonist on the other, we took inspiration from the intercutting in Pulp Fiction. When Mia Wallace is overdosing, Vincent Vega faces only toward the left while staying on the right side of the screen. Meanwhile the drug dealer faces the right and stays on the left side of the screen. In our film we replaced the two characters with the bus and our protagonist to imply a clashing of two opposing people and to fix our strange shots of the bus. Now we have a great "fresh" split screen. ===

===For some shots that required an actor who had left already or shots that was discontinuous, we decided to adapt and use off-screen sound to cheat the necessary shot in. When we needed shots of an actor walking away or other similar shots akin to that one, we filmed other characters’ reactions and—in post production---played the sounds of the footsteps of the missing character to imply movement. Off-screen movement turned out to be a godsend for many parts of the film in terms of continuity and time saved. ===

===Speaking of footsteps, we were inspired to use several “hitchcockian” shots of feet. We tried to show visually at least the protagonist’s hesitation to do the right thing in a more unconventional way (not through simply relying on the character’s facial expression). We have a shot of the protagonist’s feet hesitating before heading toward the bum to help. We also have a shot of the protagonist walking back and forth and left and right to show tension within the character to make a decision. One cannot tell in this suspenseful moment if the protagonist will make the right choice. I feel that these shots, although improvised, helped our film substantially to create refreshing angles of conveying emotion. ===