Trick of the Dark- Dark Knight Practise

While writing Trick of the Dark, I wanted to create a scene that builds tension in a similar way to how The Dark Knight scene below does this in terms of camera work. The way that the free camera rotates and keeps close in to the erratic subject adds tension into the scene and makes the scene both uneasy and also unpredictable due to the unhinged nature of Ledger's Joker. In my scene I would like Alex to portray a similar erratic nature where we (as an audience) really don't know what he will do next. The motivation in the scene for this is that he has snapped in the cave scenario and is lashing out because the isolation both from the world and from the other two people in there has gotten to him and as such he is threatening them with a knife, although he is unhinged and not thinking straight, he doesn't know himself how it will play out and because of that it adds a level of tension that filters from the performance.

Having now established the motive of the scene, It then comes down to the mechanics of how we make it work, below is our result and I would like to spend some time talking about how we achieved what we did. Firstly, we tried the camera just handheld on Liam's shoulder, this was nowhere near stable enough and as a result we decided that the best way to now deal with the shake and jitters issue was to put the camera on the fig rig and to shoot it on this, in doing this Liam was coming from a much more stable stance and as such the camera was able to flow better which was no end of benefit to the scene, I have no doubt in Liam's ability to get the shot without the fig rig but in saying that, there is no sense in not using the fig rig if it is beneficial, which it is. At this point, we know that the camera work was fine, the next thing for me to get sorted was the choreography of the scene in terms of both where the actors would be going and also in terms of where Liam would be going in reaction to their movement.

What I wanted was Shaun to approach Ryan and then to back off as though considering his actions, because Alex the character is distressed and having an internal war with himself and as such is trying to both instigate the conflict and distance himself from it. It is as Alex reenters the conflict I want the camera to do the same and tightly frame everyone so as to draw the audience in and add to the tension.The camera then circles around as Shaun does too so as to keep the focus upon the faces of the two and also on the knife (in this case a chisel) so as to keep the focus on thing that is causing the conflict, the knife in this case is a visualisation of the battle and the aggression of the two men. I must admit, I absolutely love this shot, Liam did an excellent job of mimicking the Dark Knight shot and I feel that this will do precisely what I want it to in the final film should we take this forward. The other key part of the scene in terms of shot is the dipping out of focus in the final shot as Scott goes unconscious. This was mostly improvised from Liam, I had the idea of the shot but didn't tell him when to do it, it mainly stems from the organic nature of the scene, so Liam thought about when and how fast someone would fade out of consciousness, (whether he did this from active thought or subconsciously, you'd have ask him) this he did really well and the shot really mimics someone fading away perfectly and we will almost certainly take this forward. On the whole, this test was a great success and the only thing that may limit us using it in the same way we have here is whether the space we shoot in will allow it.

Professional Practise- My current situation with film making

In three years of doing this blog to show my research this will most likely be the most (for lack of a better word) ‘bloggy’ piece I’ve written. To give this a bit of context, I had a conversation with my lecturer and it became like something of a therapy session whereby I let go of a lot of my built up stress and anxiety and told him that I felt lost and aimless in life. He told me two important thing during this, firstly that to be lost is still a path, and secondly, if I put this in a blog post I can be marked on it, so thats what I’m doing. So to put it in basic terms, right now my views on film making are basically this, I love it, I really do love making films and being on set and seeing it all come together. However I have found that during my university experience I learned that doing this for work has taken some joy from this for me and as such, I’d very much like to be a film maker, however, I want to do it as a hobby (albeit a very expensive hobby) but to do this as a job is no longer my goal and I don’t feel it will bring me happiness in the same way that it did when I was making films for fun and essentially for me. That leaves me with the question of well if not filmmaking, then what? And of course this is not an easy question to answer, I am struck by this question on the daily, I do feel lost a lot in life, but like most things in my life Lord of the rings helps me, I’m constantly brought back to the famous quote of “not all that wander are lost” I see this in myself, I am wandering in life (or more accurately feel I will be after university, but actually that’s okay, I’m 20 years old and will still be (by a day) when I graduate, not many people have their life in order at 20, there’s no shame in me being the same. Now that doesn’t take the anxiety and pain away but it does help me see reason and to be honest I feel often that I am wasting my potential, however, the main thing that will lead to me wasting my potential is me sitting feeling sorry for myself and worrying about wasting it instead of going out and making something of myself, even if that means being a wanderer.

So then, if I’m doing this for professional practise and not just to let people know how I am what have I done or what will I do to further a career out of this? Well first a probably most importantly, I am seeing a councillor, there’s no denying I have mental health issues, I don’t use them as an excuse and I refuse for them to be a crutch, but they do exist, so the best thing I can and have done to get myself out of the rut of negative thought and no hope thinking around my life and career is receive professional help around these issues, I feel I am able to talk about this issue in the manner that I am because of that help I have received, as if I had written this a few weeks or months ago it would tell a very different, much bleaker story, but one that I realise would only be true if I let it be. It is very important to me that at this point I acknowledge that this definitely wasn’t a solo effort and I needed the incredible support I received from around me from lecturers and my councillor. But this still raised the question of what next?

So right now my “what next” looks like this, graduate, take a year out of education and away from the careerist stress, focus on me and getting better and laying foundations for a long term life, work my 9-5 cex job and when I feel ready and somewhat stable, revisit this idea of what I am meant to do in life and what my path might look like, but in the meantime I am content to wander but I have to be wary of getting stuck in my Cex job and that becoming my career because I personally feel I am meant for so much more than that job can ever give me.

Trick of the Dark- Trying to build a cave

One of my responses to the cave issue and it being the crux of the film was to try and build a cave, in doing this, I went to B&Q and bought some supplies, these were, some polystyrene blocks, gorilla glue, some chisels and sandpaper and some stone effect spray paint. Me and Andrew then took all of these into the studio and began making a practice wall to see if it would work on a larger scale.
So then the first thing we did is take on of the blocks and began chiseling out chunks to form grooves and used sandpaper to smooth the corners to imitate the grooves of the rock on a cave wall.

Having done this we then took the second block and did the same so that it matched up with the piece it would be laid next to. Then at some point during the carving of this block we realised that while it was starting to shape and look quite nice, we had the issue that it would look too flat and as such it would need to have bit attached that would stick out to add the the 3-D nature. So in reaction to this we decided to sacrifice some size on the wall by cutting up the fourth block to create some bits of rock that stick out. So we cut out some shapes and placed them on some of the grooves and shapes on the wall. We then numbered the small pieces in relation to where they were on the wall and began gluing them together. The next step was the put weights on all these pieces so that they would glue over night. While this was happening, I took a spare piece and sprayed it to see what the stone effect paint looked like on it.

So at this point the wall itself it chiseled and glued so it is in the wall shape and we have a spare piece painted to see how the paint adheres to it. It is at this point I would like to evaluate the wall as an idea for the cave shoots.

Basically, shape ways it makes a fairly convincing wall, the paint isn't all that great as a blanket cover, it wouldn't match all that well with a real cave, this is defintitely possible had I planned and done it sooner to make a full set but given the time left and my ability to paint it, I feel this is where this option ceases to be one, however my main reason for this is in fact the cost, for that one wall I spent around £30-40 which was expensive for that one wall so to then push that up to a full cave we are looking at a rather large cost which I would only want to do if I was to have the perfect cave.

My Name is John- Poster

This post is to briefly take you through my process of creating the My Name is John poster which I created. The first thing to talk about is my inspiration for the poster: The Lobster, a weird film that doesn't have anything in common with My Name is John particularly but I really like the art style on the poster and its use of black and white.

This is more a cream colour where as I will probably use a pure white to save on printing and also to make it stand out more,  but this is definitely my main inspiration. I really like the simplicity and the single central image of the film's lead character that is just a bit odd which creates intrigue and by extension a desire to see the film.

So firstly I took a picture of John holding a card and removed everything that wasn't his skin, so clothes and background to leave just this cut out of John and the card. I then reduced the saturation so that he was black and white. I then turned the contrast up slightly to emphasise shadows and tuned the brightness down slightly as well for the same effect.

I then added the title, I wanted a simplistic, typewriter style font to give that basic but sleek look, I didn't want it to be flashy just to look professional and sleek.

I then added the JOHN words in the alternate corners so as to mimic the style of a playing card where it would normally say Joker, I got this idea simply from the card which John is holding, to make it look like a playing card to illustrate the idea of magic because the only thing other than gambling that really uses playing cards is magic and as such I can expect audiences to draw this connection.

I then added a mini version of the poster to the card which John is holding to create the picture in picture effect, I then added a second even smaller one to the card in that small version I had just added, this was to create the effect that no matter how far in you go it will always be him holding the card of himself, however I didn't add a third because it wont be seen when the poster is printed.

I then googled what fonts are typically used for the fine print of film posters and mimicked this by adding the crew and director line at the top so as to add to the professional film look of the poster as well as to simply credit those who deserved it. At this point I was happy with the poster and considered it to be done so I sent it to the crew for their opinions.

The feedback I received was very positive and people seemed to love the poster, the only suggestion I got was to add the banner to make it look more card like, which I did and I must say it worked really well, I then had to go back over and re-insert the smaller cards so they matched the large image, this was no issue as it was just a case of hiding the writing layers and then screenshotting the resulting image and putting it in position, I then lower the opacity and erase the bits that would be covered by John's finger. Easy. and that was the final step for the poster. There were a few minor edits to the text to change people's roles but aside from that it was done.

Here is a final higher quality image of the finished poster, I am extremely happy with how this poster tuned out and think it would look great up on the wall, the only thing I would hopefully like to add in the future are some awards badges just above the title or perhaps underneath it, but we have to win some first.