Trick of the Dark- Visual Ideas and influences

This is a blog post in order for me to express and suggest some possible visuals for the cave aspect of the film which makes up bout 80% of the film, as a result this will be the predominant style and it is important for me to really nail the look that I want and establish a solid visual theme. As a result my first port of call was to look at some films that also feature caves and look at their visuals and the mood this creates.

The first place I looked was to a personal favourite film of mine, the hobbit: an unexpected journey. This film features two different and very contrasting cave scenes, the first image is a behind the scenes shot of the riddles in the dark scene which sees Gollum playing a game of riddles with Bilbo. This is predominantly a tense scene that features heavily on suspense and being trapped, this is done through close in shots mostly in the scene and the addition of the huge lake that hems in Bilbo and renders him trapped as it acts as an invisible almost psychological barrier that keeps him there. This isn’t strictly like the film I would like to make as it is more suspenseful and a little bit more action based than I would like my film to be, however, there are aspects I can mimic, for example I now see how effective manipulating the empty space in a shot can be to making people feel trapped, although there will have to be a healthy blend of close shots for trapped and wide emptiness for isolation, this will be a struggle to get the correct blend but it is certainly possible. The second scene is closer to what I want to achieve in that it features multiple characters, although most are little more than background in this scene. Though it does feature heavily on character and conversation. As a result it is somewhat brighter so we can properly see the people involved, but it also stays dark and gloomy to keep that feel intact. The colour in this scene plays a big role, it’s mostly dark shades of dull couloirs, which adds to the darkness but also the overwhelming feeling of them being in a bad situation with little hope.

This shot is taken from the ogre story thread from Tale of Tales. This cave is probably a little off what I want to achieve due to its clearly open nature and the fact that it is much too bright for her to be physically trapped in there. However she is still trapped, by the ogre granted not a physical wall like in my film, but the shot choice still reflects this, if we look at the one I chose, what space is available is between the two of them, showing they’re not close, metaphorically, and every border of the shot is dominated by the walls, this again boxes them and particularly her in, it really makes her look isolated and alone even when she’s with someone, couple this with the fact that even though this is a wide shot not a close up as in the Hobbit, she still seems trapped, this is something I will definitely look to replicate.

The final film I looked at was Samctum, granted this is not the best option for comparison to my film and I mainly looked at it to explore another possible angle, however, there is one key thing that has come to mind and been made a must for me in my film and that’s practical light. Seeing this made me realise that just by adding a second light into my scene from say a torch or lantern or fire, then all of a sudden I have opened a whole host of doors to experiment and manipulate lighting. I’m adding a practical light I no longer have to think of why would there face be lit this way if their only light is a small opening, this is because with a practical light I have a justifiable extra light source to act as a key light or fill light, whereas before I would have had to limit my lighting options based purely upon how natural light behaves.

That’s all for now this has been just an outline and summary of some potential lighting styles and visual themes I have seen and will potentially mimic.

Trick of the Dark- Character Man

This is another character post this time about the character of 'Man', firstly I have chosen to not give the character a name because, firstly there is no way for the character to give his name other than him introducing himself and I am not sure it would be that realistic for him to do this within the conversations that he has. I also feel that it adds to the dynamic of his character to not have a name to really highlight his selfish nature and that he is there to help not to be remembered. Furthermore, without getting too edgy or perhaps preachy, his character is symbolic of the help that people in Scott's position need and how it can come from anyone, it is symbolic of how the kindness of a stranger can be a saving light and a way out of a destructive, trapped life.

The first character I thought of when thinking about Man was Gene Hunt from the TV series Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes. Not so much in terms of the personality of the character because Gene is a stereotypical hard nosed policeman of his time and he lacks the emotional characteristics of compassion and care that I want Man to portray, or at least he hides these qualities and only shows them on odd occasions in the series. What I did take away from Gene Hunt was his purpose as a side character but much more than this is the fact that he is a catalyst for transition in the protagonists of the two series. In essence, Gene serves as a sort of ferry man to the afterlife for the protagonists in the two shows. He allows them to move on from their deaths and eventually when it comes to an end he allows them to pass on to the afterlife which if memory serves is heaven. This is something I analysed and dwelled upon when writing Man, this is because his purpose is similar. Man serves as a transition between pain and attempted suicide to getting better for Scott and this takes place in a fabricated world, much like the occurrences of Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes. So in essence the similarities of the characters is that they are inhabiting a fabricated world and helping the protagonist move onto the next stage of their life, also a key aspect is that both are assuming a role that isn't their true role. To expand upon this, Gene is a posing as a policeman but in actual fact in essence he is an angel of sorts. Man, is much less ambiguous, he is a seemingly strange man who happens upon the cave, however, in the real world he is a doctor who is helping Scott in this way but in the fabricated world he is just a kind stranger.

It is all well and good to think about a character's context and what they are, but ultimately one must think also about who the character is and specifically what their personality is like. In the building of this for Man, I thought a great deal about Robin William's character in the film Good Will Hunting which won him that years best supporting actor Oscar (Sean Maguire).

This character is an older man than the other key characters in the film and he carries with him a degree of wisdom that I feel he shares with Man, though the real aspect of his character I really wanted to portray in Man was his laidback attitude that actually carries with it a great deal of care behind his nature. This is a hard thing to explain in concrete terms, but it is clear in the way that Sean deals with Will in the film that he is extremely calm and reserved and almost care free. However, at no point do we feel as though this equates to him not caring, it is very clear that he is a very compassionate and caring person who wants to help as much as and where he can. Although interestingly he is not one to lie for the short term gain of making a person happy, this links back to the aspect of his character being wise. It is indeed a wise decision to not give a person false hope and it is indeed the case with Sean, it is harder for me to portray this aspect in Man due to the short nature of the film I am making, however, I feel that one would get the impression that Man is a wise character and in the same way as Sean, he has a knack for saying what needs to be heard, even though it may appear to hurt to hear. This is a little insight into the character of Man (a sentence that out of context would sound a lot deeper than it is) but as he is a smaller character, I feel it took less time to really nail what he was about, though I could have spent more time fleshing out his backstory and minutiae, I feel that it wouldn't be a valid use of time as there is only so much detail can be shown in the screen time he has. I am also a believer in actors making the characters their own so I only fill out the character so that I know his personality and purpose so that actors can fill the shell I have created for them.

Trick of the Dark- Character Susie

The character of Susie in Trick of the Dark is essentially that of the love interest, however, though this is the case, she is a little more than just a one dimensional showing of this aspect of who she is. This is due to the fact that while she does end up somewhat romantically involved with our protagonist, she is not solely there for this purpose but she is also not the true love of our protagonist. In this sense she has a similar relationship to our protagonist as Eowyn does to Aragorn in the Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers.

I draw upon this character dynamic because in LOTR:TTT Eowyn finds herself falling for Aragorn despite his heart belonging to the similarly named Arwen. Though where this differs to my script and my characters is that in this there is very little reciprocation for Aragorn and he does noted her on in any way particularly, she falls for him but he never suggests that the feeling is returned and instead does what he can to be a friend. Susie differs in a few ways in my film because firstly, the feelings are more instigated by Scott, though they are returned by her. However the similarity can be drawn that there is an attraction between the two but ultimately they are meant for other people. The other notable difference between Eowyn and Susie is that Eowyn longs to be regarded as an equal to the men in the film and as such she strives to push and be part of the battles they take part in, while Susie does not shy away from the arguments of the film, she is much more calm and passive than Eowyn, though it could actually be argued that in this they are similar because Susie is not afraid to be strong and deal with conflict, though the script perhaps doesn't demonstrate this character trait enough.

The second character I drew upon for Susie was Scarlett Johansson's Molly from the film Chef, though she is a relatively small part of the film, she still has a part to play as a well rounded support character.

In the film Chef it would have been easy to make Scar Jo the 'eye candy' and have her simply play this role and just be a 'what if' for the character of Casper, however, she in no way serves this purpose, granted she is made to look attractive in the film, but this is not what her purpose is, in the film she acts as a voice of reason and a leveller of emotion. She basically is there to bring Casper round to a level headed way of thinking, her purpose is almost to remove the heat when it is turned up by the male characters. In this Susie is very similar to Molly, when Alex and Scott start arguing and tensions rise between them, she is the one to bring the tension back down, of course if you know the plot eventually it gets to be beyond her control. However, this is symbolic of the mental struggle of Scott, Susie is his coping mechanism but as she is a human and no one is perfect, so to is his coping mechanism and as such it eventually fails and his aggressive, destructive nature (Alex) wins out and does some almost irreparable damage. However, just as Molly is at times a light in Casper's life, more so is Susie in the life of Scott, while in the cave he is the only positive thing that is constant. Though it is worth noting that though she is always there, her role is sometimes minimal, this is predominately due to the fact that she is symbolic of hope and of the positive thoughts in Scott's head which often take a back seat, hence the point of the film.

The third and final character of note that I drew upon in the creation of Susie is 'Girl' from the 2007 film Once, despite her lack of name she is the second main character in the film, it was just a creative choice to name the lead roles 'Guy' and 'Girl', you never actually hear their real names in the film.

I drew upon this character in part because all through the film she is a positive force, even when things are hard for her she can look on the brighter side and figure out a way out or through the issue. In addition to this, she is creative but also reserved and I feel this is something in common with my imagining of Susie, she is a creative person who is also practical and focused but she doesn't really express her creativity until given the proper platform, it could be said that this part of Susie is a reflection of Scott stifling his own creativity, this is because Susie only shows her creative side on one occasion in the film and thats to create the contraption that leads to them getting attention from the 'Man' (I'd like to say his name is homage to Once, but that is not the case). It is of mention that none of these characters are Susie, however it is worth mentioning all three of them because a combination of these characters and some real people in my life have come together to make the character of Susie and it will be interesting to see how closely this marries up to the eventual actor's portrayal of her.

My Name is John- Shoot 2

This will be a very short blog post as it was a very short film shoot, there was basically three shots we needed and a few cutaways. So I think the best way for me to go about this would be to simply talk about each shot that we did after I have given brief description of where and what we were shooting. The shoot itself was in what used to be our old base room in the first two years of uni, it has changed a fair but since then but now fits perfectly for what we were wanting to shoot.

This is the room we used, although we moved the table and chairs out, as well as the CCAD advertising, this was so we were essentially left with a blank canvas of a room which just really looks like a community space whereby one might hold a meeting of alcoholic anonymous or similar, which is exactly what we needed from it. We then brought in some chairs and she extras to make the room fit the purpose better, we then positioned these people in a circle and positioned Liam in the middle to act as the person running the meeting, this I thought would cause a slight issue as Liam may look too young for the role but in actual fact when I've since seen the footage, he is in it so briefly that I don't think it presents much of an issue. I thought maybe we would have the same issue with the other extras but again I don't think this is a problem. The scenes themselves in this shoot were that of the beginning and the end. Seeming as though the bulk of the film is shot to be a recap of the events leading up to the beginning it meant that the two scenes actually follow directly from each other chronologically which was ideal in terms of shooting them both at once. The premise of the scenes is that John is at a meeting to try and sort his magic addiction (that is his addiction to magic, not an addiction that is in some way magical). So the first thing to shoot was the beginning of this when John stands up his testimonial. This we shot from a static that moved as he did but in a deliberately crude manner so that it feels live and like a real fly on the wall shoot. Ethan did an excellent job of filming this in all honesty, whether it was deliberate or whether he was just struggling with new equipment I don't know but that is not at all what matters, what does matter is that we got the shot we needed of John at the meeting. For this scene we then got some cutaways of reaction shots of the leader and some of the extras as they listen to the testimonial from John, then in the same shot Ethan moved the camera down to the extras to see them looking bored and not laughing at John's joke which I think was excellent.

We then shot a close-up on Liam as he listens to John which we can add at any point in the edit but it was shot with the intent on putting it in when he makes a joke. The next bit was to shoot the ending which starts on Liam at a close-up as he asks John to be more serious, the shot then moves and adjusts to John who then delivers the final line of the film when he gives his confession that he is a magician, which in terms of this film is the same as him admitting to be an addict. The line delivery from John I feel was spot on, it feel authentic and like it comes from someone who is struggling with an issue and has now just found the strength to admit it. I also feel that Liam, though he only had one line, did a good job and really captured the somber feeling in the scene. I really feel that the way we shot this and the way that the characters behaved goes a long way to giving a tone and emotion to the scene. I am unsure if this was the original intent for the scene as I always felt the final line was supposed to give a big final laugh. However, I feel this mood is much more effective as, if the rest of the film works, then we will at this point care for John and actually we are done laughing at him and we now see his pain and we want him to get better and of course the meeting has that goal within the world of the film. On the whole, I feel this shoot went quite well and if the rest of the film can set it up well enough, the finale can definitely have a lasting impression. On one final note it is worth mentioning that this will be my last shoot on this film as the rest are unfortunately while I am in Sweden so I wont be blogging about these because it would feel too much like lying as I wont be there, but it is worth saying that I feel the ones I have been on have gone well and will make a good film if the quality keeps up.

My Name is John- Building characters

It seems to me that my main role on the production of My Name is John is to assist in direction in what I have made my specific field after minor, which is getting performances from them and building a character for them to fill and live out on screen. I realise this isn't a method which all actors will be used to, especially the amateur level we tend to work with, but if I can get them on board with how I work then the production should benefit greatly from it. So in doing this role my first port of call was to do character sheets for the characters that I felt gave enough tot he film to warrant the extensive prep, the fact that the only characters with extensive dialogue in the film are John and his wife and coupled with the fact that the schedule meant that I would only be in the country for 2 shoots I decided that the only character sheets worth creating are for John and his wife (these sheets will be added to the VLE) so I created these sheets based on how I felt the characters should play out and how I felt they fit into the script (after having conversations with the director and writer). So upon creating these I had the platform to sit with the actors and work out the subtleties and worlds of the characters. It is worth mentioning that by the world of the character I mean how the character relates to the world around them in the same way that we, as people, relate to our world in an manner that is unique to every person, it is the same for fictional characters in both real and fictional worlds.

On shoot day one for this production whilst equipment was being set up I took John and Susie into the front room and started off by asking how they saw their characters and the world of their characters. Interestingly, Susie was a lot more on board with this way of thinking than John was. We had great conversations around how she was very understanding (as the character) but was losing patience and we talked about how her relationship with John functions on a  daily basis. These were all fabricated from her created world of the character and the only input I had was to mould and refine the world she had already created, all of the basis for said world was her own world and then I simply changed and tweaked a few things to fit more of the vision that I had for the character. Literally beyond her created world I only reshaped what was already there and encouraged her to changes some minor details in her thinking that would have small effects on the way she came across in the film. Most notably on these changes was how close the character was to leaving her husband, she admitted that in this she wasn't sure whether the character was on the edge or whether nothing could shake their relationship, to which I suggested that she is probably somewhere in the middle of the two and that she was getting closer to the edge but she would be a lot more secure if it looked like John was getting help, in other words it is implied that when John eventually does get help some of the stability in their marriage would return. This may seem like a minor difference in the character but it does affect how she plays the role because a woman on the edge of divorce will behave very differently in the minutiae of a performance than one who is confident that nothing will break that bond. I do feel that Susie benefitted from the time we spent and gave a more three dimensional performance as a result, it would have been nice to see a before and after character work comparison but unfortunately this is not something that benefits the film so it would have been unnecessary.

My time with John was much shorter due to time restraints as they were finished setting up and need to start shooting as soon as possible. But in the time we did have we were able to use real John (as a stage performer) as a base point and from there we worked out what subtle differences there needed to be from that version of John to our character of John. After great discussion with John about these two things, we decided that John is stuck in the performance mentality and shows flashes of the man behind it all in parts but for the most part, in his daily life it is a show and as such he plays a man who is playing another man in a sense because it is an act of a man stuck in his ways who wants to change but is addicted to the facade of telling people everything is okay and trying to deflect his issues by making people laugh and smile. Admittedly, this didn't seem to hard for John to grasp as he got the impression from the script that it was a multilayered performance and he was fighting to break the performers mentality but was losing the fight. In this sense John was a joy to work with because we established his character's world very quickly and we were on roughly the same page from the get go, which is excellent considering we had limited prep time, this saved a great deal of that time because I didn't have to make any drastic changes to the world which would affect his mentality. In doing this prep, I feel we got the best from John as an actor as he played the role perfectly, I do wonder to what degree he was playing himself, but as I don't know him personally I can't say, but as a director watching a great performance I must say that I also don't care. To sum this up, I feel that I got great performances from both actors after doing my character prep with them and while I can't prove that it had any effect on the performance I do feel that my work with them will have a huge positive effect on the film, especially if John carries that work we did into the other shoot days beyond the ones I will be on.

My Name is John- Shoot 1

Shooting for final major project starts here then, much earlier than expected but this is down to the fact that we only have John Archer (our lead) for a short amount of time and as such we have to shoot efficiently and quickly in that small window that we have to make this film. All that being said the first shoot was was to take place in Middlesbrough at Andrew's housed was to feature an interview with John's wife while John is unpacking his shopping in the background. This leads to a breaking point where he clatters around in the background and she asks what he is doing, to this John tries to play it off and she attempts to carry on her interview before then questioning what he has actually said to her, this then leads to an argument between John and his wife before he tells a joke to the camera. The scene itself is relatively basic; we film his wife being interviewed with him in the

We'll get to the shoot itself but at this point I would like to say that it is while they were setting up the camera and sound equipment I took the two actors into a separate room and did character work with them, this I will go into more detail in its own post but I will say that this was very easy for them to build their characters, though it was easier it seemed for Susie than it was for John, which is fine because John was playing a character closer to himself so needed less work anyway. So anyway, on to the shoot itself, as I mentioned, the shortlist was fairly basic as to shoot the mockumentary style you need to make the camera as fluid as possible so it seems like you're shooting live and not scripted. So in this sense we had plenty of time to get coverage so we started with the shot of the interview which was much like a two-shot with John out of focus in the background. We shot the whole scene from this angle for safety and I must say it went well although the only issue we had was making cards fall out of the cupboard on cue for the punchline of the scene.

I must also say that we got good performances from both actors in this scene and I certainly felt that they embraced what we had been through in terms of character prep. The only issue I had in terms of performance in this scene was the line "what do you need a hairbrush for anyway, you've hardly got any hair" I hated this line from the beginning as I can't help but feel it is a huge example of telling the audience what's funny and thus making it not funny. I supposed this to Sarah on set that we cut the line in half and just make it "what do you need a hairbrush for?" so that we still have a line in there and don't explicitly explain the joke away, but after a few takes with this new line, we changed back to the original and my advice wasn't taken. This wouldn't be the last time I felt ignored on set. However my next piece of advise was heeded and I do feel the film will benefit for it, when it came to  cutting into another shot from the dining room to the kitchen they wanted to do a straight shot from one room to the other, I advised against this as it wasn't very documentary like and instead the camera should stay rolling and we should physically move in, that way the situation feels more organic because it is as though the crew are reacting to a real situation instead of fulfilling a scripted encounter. So we did this moving shot and to be honest from what I can tell, after a few attempts and takes Ethan did really well to get a shot that worked well (I havant yet seen the footage to know if this is the case but it seemed that way). From here to be honest it was all cutaways and coverage angles that weren't necessary but worth shooting just to be safe, what really annoyed me was the words "can we just get an interview with the dog" this may be me being pretentious but it looks incredibly childish and amateurish to want to do an impromptu interview with a dog, the camera was rolling for a good few minutes, not a sound from the dog, it is unprofessional and cringe worthy, I could understand if it had some bearing on the plot or even was a part of a joke but there was no planning or relevance. That entirely pointless interview did however mark the end of the shoot so there is not much else to be said about this shoot other than it went well but I came away feeling undervalued somewhat and like this production had became a joke very quickly, hopefully I am wrong and I'm overreacting to what was just a bit of fun.

My name is John- Shooting Mockumentary

Because I have never shot a documentary or mockumentary in the past I though it would be a useful exercise to watch (or in some cases rewatch) some of the more renowned ones to try and discern what it was that they did well so that I can try to emulate this in the production of My Name is John so that it can get a real life documentary feel but still be fictitious and scripted. So in doing this research I pulled out some key elements that need to be addressed and implemented I feel to get the best out of this film and its genre. These in some cases relate to the film as a whole or specific aspects of films, but without further ado, my first film is What We Do In The Shadows (2014), this is Taika Waititi's vampire mockumentary which follows a group of vampires who share a house and try to go about daily life. The scene I picked out to highlight the style and theme of the film is its opening scene.

This scene serves as a very good introduction because it leads you one way with the text about paranormal activities and then crushes this instantly with comedy, this change in tone catches the viewer off guard early on and as a result of this they laugh harder because it is unexpected, I'm not sure My Name is John has the same effect currently in the script, though it could be argued that it does and the punchline is at the end when he owns up to being a magician at the films climax, this is a conflict in expectation that may lead to a similar laugh at this point, but I do feel that this is definitely something the film needs to be a successful mockumentary, though it is not vital I do feel the film will greatly benefit if it is in there. The other thing I think is very important in this scene is that the actors are playing characters who know they are being filmed, this is vital because people act differently when they know that they are being filmed, you only have to watch any reality tv to see that and to see how people exaggerate and play up their emotion or put on a certain persona. This is evident in what we do in the shadows as our lead is clearly trying to put across a nice neat individual who is in charge and organised, whether this is how the character is when the camera is off we wouldn't know because the character only exists to be filmed in his own world. I think that My Name is John has this in the script the "is this your card" line comes to mind particularly from our script, he acknowledges the camera and also puts on a  facade of a funny man that he wants the audience of the documentary about him to perceive. There is more that can be taken from this film but it is also evident in other examples I use later on and as such I will mention it when we get there. The second example I drew upon is 1984s This Is Spinal Tap, by Rob Reiner. Considered by many to be the best mockumentary ever made, it would be stupid of me to not visit this film for an example of how to get the genre right.

The above scene that I picked out specifically from a long list of iconic scenes was the famous Stonehenge scene whereby they are performing a gig and because of a mix up between feet and inches they have ended up with a tiny replica of Stonehenge, instead of the life-size one they really wanted and then to top it off, to try and make it look big they get dwarfs to dance around it. This really doesn't sound that funny when written down but the scene itself is comedy gold and is iconic in its own right. The key and beauty of this scene is that we feel like a fly on the wall, this is what documentaries that follow bands are meant to be like as they follow a band and get a behind the stage look at what their lives are like, it is this look that Spinal Tap mimics perfectly and as such the advice I take from this is that you need to find a genre of documentary to mimic in order to successfully mock it in a mockumentary, in all honesty, I don't feel the script is currently mocking any style of documentary in particular and needs to be more refined so that it is. That being said this wisdom is not simply for a blog post, I will pass it on to the writer and see if this can be amended. The other key thing in this scene we can take and implement into My Name is John, is the performance aspect followed by the backstage reaction. My Name is John has this but it is the other way around, we have his pre-show interview followed by the performance, then we get a bit of a post-show reaction similar to Spinal Tap though it is more interview like so isn't exactly the same, but had it been a real documentary it would be a side of John that fans wouldn't usually see and thats what is important when mimicking documentary.

Probably the weakest of the three pieces I have pulled out is Trailer Park Boys, in terms of similarity to My Name is John, because it follows multiple convicts and is a much different comedic style as it features lots of stoner humour and American gags. However, it is from this piece that the most important part of a mockumentary became evident to me, more so than in the other two. Make the camera a character. Honestly, if you look at any mockumentary piece you will realise they all do it (or at least all the successful ones do). Now this can be as simple as what I talked about previously in that the characters act differently when being recorded or it can be as explicit as in this piece where Ricky fights a cameraman, it doesn't matter, either way the camera and camera man have an affect on the characters in front of the camera and as such they play off of them. This then by extension means that when shooting a mockumentary you must think about the motive of the camera, are we meant to be seeing what is happening or should the camera man be hidden. So to take an example from My Name is John, the alleyway deal, in this scene, presumably the dealer wouldn't want to be filmed so he should therefore be uneasy at the presence of the camera, or the camera should be hidden from him, I would even suggest going one better and saying that potentially his face should be blurred as if to say he didnt give filming consent. Any of these minor changes to shooting style have a big impact on selling the effect that we are filming a real documentary about a real character. To conclude, I feel that the main aspect is the last one I talked about, if you start to make it too filmic then you lose the documentary feel and it just becomes a film not a documentary, in this there is great freedom though in that shots can be shaky or out of focus because thats how they may be in a real documentary when you only have one chance to shoot something.

My Name is John- Directing comedy

As co-director of My Name is John, I am somewhat responsible for knowing how to direct it on my own in case the other director should look to me for help, as is the case, within the production of this film, I do not see the partition of power as 50/50 between me and Sarah, which is fine as upon discussion with her, my role will be more of a helper than as a major creative force in the film, this is because of my directorial experience. However, as a helper I feel I must have an idea of how the film would be made if it were solely my film so that I can give solid advice and help out to the best of my ability. As a result of this I feel it is important to know how to direct comedy (as this is a genre I haven't explored myself) so that I can know how to effectively portray the genre despite my lack of experience. As a starting point I found this quote from John Landis (director of the Blues Brothers) and he said this:
"It's my job as director of a comedy to set up the joke. I'm a Jew. If I hear an anti-Semitic joke from a stranger, I'm offended and outraged. If a close friend or relative tells me the same joke, I'm laughing. The joke hasn't changed, just my perception of how the joke is being presented. That's how directing comedy works. If I set it up properly, it works."
It is very interesting to dwell upon his observation as it is very true, at what point does something stop being comedic and start being offensive.

As an example of this I raise to you Robert Downey Jr's Oscar nominated role in Tropic Thunder (as pictured above), for those who don't know, he is a white man usually, so why then is this considered to be comedic genius and not 'blackface' which is definitely not okay? It's the set up of the gag, because the character is also a white man who has a 'pigment changing operation' to make him stereotypically African American, so instead of just an offensive stereotype we have a  commentary on society which is actually very funny and is rightly praised. So then the key to comedy is the set up? Well, yes it is one of the keys, but there are other things that will see a joke or gag fall flat if they aren't executed correctly.

Upon further research, the other key aspect is pacing, this can be firstly to give the audience time to laugh, as if you cram too many jokes too quickly the audience may miss some from laughing at the others (perhaps that's ambitious to assume your film is already funny enough to achieve that) the other thing is that if you have a big laugh this will more often than not require a big build up. Then there is also what I'd like to refer as attritional comedy and pacing.

I think to Hail, Caeser's 'Would that it were so simple' scene which executes perfectly (in my opinion) both a big pay off from a long build up but also and probably more so, attritional comedy. It quite literally wears you down with the same monotony until it is funny (and it is funny, I am not criticising the scene). This is because it gives a long amount of time for you to begin to feel the awkwardness of the characters and laugh from an outside view, mostly at their strife and discomfort. Then we have the 'it's complicated line' which in essence plays the role of the pay off, to see all that struggle for nothing and for the director to have given up is funny to an audience, it is the big pay off.

Moving somewhat away from the jokes themselves and looking more narratively I also found and consolidated with my own film knowledge that, great comedy has almost always got great drama at its core. Upon reading this I decided to think about my favourite comedy films, to name a few, The Big Lebowski, In Bruges and something a bit more lighthearted in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. All fantastic films, all (in my and many's opinion) hilarious and yet all with strong narratives at their core. In Bruges deals with the idea of death and suicide and features some very complex characters, Big Lebowski has a very complex plot that follows one person in a maze of plot lines and character groups with the Dude (the protagonist) being so larger than life that we can't help but love him. And Ferris Bueller's Day Off, perhaps the least complex or deep of the three but nonetheless it still gives us a narrative that we get sucked into and it gives us characters we feel emotion for.

So, I have hopefully made my point that good drama makes (or can make) good comedy, but why? Well you see, if we don't care about the characters we can laugh at the situations and the slapstick, they can still be funny. But if you give us characters we love and put them in drama, it makes the comedic relief all the more satisfying. This is particularly effective with the black comedy style of In Bruges, a particular thread comes to mind of Ray (played by Colin Farrell) getting put back into the fray of the film because of a seemingly throwaway scene where he fights a Canadian in a bar, the comedy is made more funny by the consequences of it, sure the fight is funny in a slapstick kind of way and he says a pretty funny line when the Canadian goes down, but the real comedy comes when it comes back to bite him in the actual plot. In the same way that a series of good set pieces can make an okay drama film, the same for comedy, a series of single moments can make a good comedy film, but the best is when the jokes have meaning and play upon the narrative to a degree.

Trick of the Dark- Characters: Scott

While writing my films I like to take my characters and think of what similar characters there are in other films, in doing this it helps to flesh them out more but also helps me to think of how these characters would react to certain things based on how similar characters react in other films. This doesn't however mean that they are a direct rip off of another character as they are often hybrids of them or they are based on real people I have known. I don't think that any character is truly original because theres so many variations of people in the world and in film that of course some will be similar but when we factor in the actors portrayal and different people's writing styles, I also believe that no two characters are the same either. Anyway, the point of this was not to tell you that characters are similar or different, it was to tell you about my characters and how I made them and where I draw comparisons from. So without further ado:

Scott
The first and most important of my characters is Scott, the protagonist of the piece and the one who we are supposed to be most aligned with is an amalgamation of a few characters and people, the first of which is myself. Look, I said this was based on experience, but I don't want to make it overly personal so much so that I only I get something from it, however, the starting point for this whole process was my own experience and as such it would only be logical that a part of my own personality has gone through to the final character, so I will say this, the character's experience of being alone and isolated stems from my own experience of these feelings and some of his actions stem from my own. However, I did not want to make Jack Blakeley the movie, so I tried to mould the character into a person different from myself, the first way I did this was by giving him a family and a wife, unsurprisingly I am not married and as such this means then that I would have to push the character away from myself and draw upon other influences, A very useful experience in making the character more three dimensional, for me the inspiration for this aspect was Tom Hardy as Ivan Locke in the 2013 film Locke, a film I mentioned in my pitch it is a powerful character study that cleverly highlights a man's inner turmoil and mental battles, though again Scott is not an exact replication of Ivan Locke, there are obvious comparisons such as his problem solving mind that is still prone to emotional influence and the fact that he tries to please everyone at his own expense often. There is also his passion, he is a reserved person but when it calls for it he is also a passionate character. And finally he is also emotionally conflicted throughout the film and this is something he shares with Scott.

The difference however, between Scott and Ivan is that Ivan Locke is having a bad time but seems to have his life and health together aside from this bump in the road. Scott however is much more of a mess, though outwardly he seems fine, beneath the exterior he is damaged and isolated and he feels as though there is no space for happiness in his life, he has the outwards appearance of a man like Locke but however underneath he is hiding a lot of inner pain and loneliness that the film will serve to highlight within the overarching metaphor of the cave. In terms of the character though I would suppose that this aspect of Scott would be closer to someone like Ed Norton's 'Jack' from Fight Club, while this is the unofficial name of this character in the film for clarity I will refer to him as Jack, in particular I am referring to the character at the beginning of the film before he meets Marla and Tyler, as this sparks a transition in the character. In particular, to get back on track, I am referring to the manner in which Jack coasts through life with no purpose or joy or even without anything other than his monotonous job to give him a reason to keep going. In this character, though to his peers and anyone even remotely close to him (though he doesn't really have anyone) he would seem like your average joe with not a care or worry in the world, in actual fact he is emotionally damaged and he loses sleep over his issues as well as the fact that he tries to find joy in purchasing furniture though it does nothing to help him out at all. 

The final character I would like to very briefly talk about is Jennifer Lawrence' character in Silver Linings Playbook: Tiffany Maxwell, of the three of the characters I have mentioned, she is the one that explicitly is dealing with depression, the film is about two people who suffer with mental health issues who find each other and as such it is made clear why she is the way she is, while in my film it will not be explicitly clear why Scott is the way he is but this will be the same reason and it is interesting to see in Tiffany how like Scott she is very unstable but still seeks to make people happy and he has a lot of love to give people despite often wanting to be away from people. Essentially both characters are just looking for someone to help them escape from themselves and move on from the damage that has been done to them, that essentially is the crux of what I want to portray, no one want to be in their situation but its something that is a constant battle to escape from they just need the help of people around them and they need to be forced to not isolate themselves, though this contradicts what they will be telling themselves to do.

This has been something of a messy post about Scott as a character but it has been useful for me to identify similarities with other characters so that when it comes to rewriting the script and evolving the characters then it will mean that I have a much more solid idea of what the character would be like on screen and how they would react to scenarios.

Introduction: Final Major Project

The end is nigh! That's right I've started my final major project, the final set of films I will make as a student. So lets cut out the pointlessness of this post and get right to the important bit, what Im doing and what I'm making. First up we have the film I pitched: currently titled the Trick of the Dark, this is a study into the psychology of loneliness even in an environment whereby one isn't alone. It was hard for me to pitch this as it is somewhat based upon my own experiences. I didn't want this to seem like a big 'woe is me, I have problems' pitch and I find that as soon as you mention mental health people assume it is a cry for help or worse, attention seeking, this was not the case, however, it is a subject that I do feel needs to be talked about and I do feel I am in a position where I can make something that might have at least a small impact on some people and if I can do this then it will have been a useful experience. That all being said, I was unsure about whether to pitch this film due to my own maturity on the subject and also due to the fact that  the plot itself was very much in its infancy when I pitched the film. In hindsight I am still more or less convinced that I have pitched this too soon, however, there is no use crying over spilled milk and from here I have to work to convince myself I am ready to make it and more so work to do the film justice.

The second film which I am involved with is My Name is John, a much more light hearted affair which is done in the mockumentary style and follows magician John Archer as he struggles with an addiction to magic and being a magician. My role on this seems a little bit murky in terms of my responsibility, I am listed as Co-director, I have no issue with this, I am happy to be involved in the creation of this film and I am a fan of the concept, however, I am not overly sure what is expected of me in this role, though I am sure this will become more clear in the coming weeks.

The final film I am involved with sees me working in conjunction with Brad as a co-producer (he is also co-producing Trick of the the Dark I believe) of his latest film: Echoes of Silence, a gargantuan production by our usual standards which deals with the ideas of playing god and science vs nature. This is a very big production as mentioned and not one I would like to be taking on alongside two other productions without the help of Brad, however, I feel that with him working with me to make the production happen I can be much more confident of making it happen.

I am looking forward to this module however, do feel that this will be the hardest thing I have ever done, the productions have gotten bigger and my worry is that I will not rise to the challenge in terms of ability, though I will have to get out of that mindset or I will only serve to set myself up for a fall. My plan for this module is basically to try to compartmentalise the films as much as possible and list the aspects I need as much as possible so that the work load doesn't build up too much for any one production, thus meaning that I can stay on top of what is essentially my biggest flaw: not being able to effectively manage my work and get it done swiftly so as to reduce stress from feeling behind.

With all that being said, let's see what is to come for me in the coming months, one way or another it will all be over soon.