For my first project of my second year of university I was assigned the theme of maps & networks during the briefing with the intention of creating something that is connected with the title of the module.
Having taken the assignment quite literally as you can imagine I carefully searched the meaning of the words "maps" and "networks" even variations of the words such as synonyms or even verbs like "networking" and what these could mean not only in the dictionary but also in this day and age of technology. Having spent a long time trying to come up with ideas I just couldn't come up with anything. Although I had already implanted in my mind what I wanted to improve on this time around in terms of production and post production, I still had no idea what I was going to do.
I have this friend of mine who will video call me at least 20 times a day. Do I enjoy video calling? Sure. Do I find it necessary? No, unless we are in a distant country. The way I was raised I will walk up to your house and ask your mother if you can come out to play! All jokes aside, some individuals prefer face to face encounters rather than social media but if we think about that for a second... now everyone with connections abroad or relatively far from where they are based in is in a way forced or encouraged to participate more virtually as to lower the spread of COVID-19.
Don't get me started on COVID-19 as it has also been another factor which has annoyingly hindered my progress with this project but all in all it has made me more of a fighter, stronger, more adaptive to circumstances surrounding me and has most certainly made me have to work harder if I am to take my education seriously and progress in the areas I want to.
As an artist, one tries to find inspiration in various things I for instance have a few things that inspire me, unique situations in life that affect or have affected me, emotional events in life that bring different perspectives once experienced or a joke at my favourite pub that I extended too far in my vivid imagination thus creating the basis of something that could be worked on.
Do you see where I am trying to get?
By observing this random image of a man with a camera in front of a lighting set up facing a computer that has zoom open we can slowly start to digress my comments about unique situations, emotions etc.
I knew after receiving my 50th facetime call from my friend (only counting from when I was briefed on the project) that there was something I could do with virtual relationships. My relationship with this man is face to face whenever we want as we are lucky to be in this position because we both reside in Macau and also work together for my events company. Whilst I thought there was no need for this much calling I have come to realize a lot of people in other countries only have this way of socializing nowadays which made me feel quite sad so I thought about putting a smile on their faces... well I tried at least. I set myself a goal to write a short awkward comedy about a couple that have not seen each other since Corona started yet they have maintained a strong bond through social media (yes in the land of make believe as we all know how long distance works).
The idea for the film was there but to get the story rolling was the hardest part in my honest opinion so I set out on a research phase. I wanted it to feel like a scene from a film so I watched 3 movies.
RESEARCH:
- - 23 Jump Street
- - Meet the Fockers
- - Scary Movie 4
23 Jump Street had a funny scene where the father of one of the partners' gets irritated because he previously had met the other partner. Even though I didn't want to follow that route it was still a good viewing as it allowed me to respect facial expressions and pauses that are necessary to accommodate humor, especially in tense and awkward situations.
Meet the Fockers was important for me to revisit a site called 16personalitiestest.com and assert character traits to the primary and secondary characters in my film. Different dads, mothers, siblings etc.
Scary Movie 4 had one important scene which we can watch on YouTube where two people are trying to open a car door but they keep clicking and opening at the same time making it impossible - this was necessary for me to think about executing visually internet problems, talking over each other and others problems we face on a zoom or skype call.
Finally a first draft for the short film AWKWARD SOCIAL (d)INSTANCE had been written.
I wasn't happy with the draft but at least it was something. It took me and some great advice from one of my caring tutors to actually shell out a better draft which then led me to do about 6 more drafts.
PRE-PRODUCTION:
After one of the drafts that I had felt it was the time to start rehearsing with my friends / actors to see if they would respond well with the dialogue and the quirkiness of it all. To my surprise they did pretty well. I had initially stated that the script was just the base of the story but I really wanted them to improvise. They did improvise and to my surprise I liked a few things and wrote them there. I was also super patient because I wasn't working with trained actors or professionals so I had to not only push them more but be more of a leader and guide them. We set dates in public areas, did script read alongs, talked about the characters perspectives and motivations and what to expect. They learned their lines rather quickly and we managed to practice with video calls.
Camera crew, I had 2 assistant cameras who helped me with positioning lights, reflectors, tripods as they were instructed however they were given a bigger task this film (having worked with them previously because they wanted to exchange knowledge with me) which was operating a camera independently. We all had the same camera so we just had to find similar lenses and set the frame rate, iso and aperture in a way that the exposure and blur was almost identical. The white balance was also an important factor. I decided I wanted to shoot on HLG 3 so we had more dynamic range than in SLOG 3 which had caused me problems on poorly lit areas which was the case because we were working with standard LEDs and not professional tungsten lights that could light up a football field like it was daylight. During the rehearsals I had told them what to film and how as to bring my vision to life. They did amazing for what I was expecting.
I tested by myself how to use OBS on my computer and how to get the sound properly from the computer to then match with a zoom and other sound equipment.
Now let us talk about a set back here - I do not have access to all the equipment that I truly require to bring this short to life. I had to run around a lot to get access to microphones, poles and other equipment. Some people would say "yes, I will give it to you on this day" on that day "I cannot give it to you" or "I forgot my boss was stingy with this should have told you last week sorry it's the day of shoot and all" promises after promises but I can't expect anything it's not like I can rent it here. If I were in the UK even if the Uni didn't have any shotgun mics or zooms left I would just open up fatllama and rent it out for 10% of its market price and use it properly.
A news station guy offered me a zoom which only allows me to connect the shotgun mic on channel 2 and has so much background noise that we need to crank up the denoise filter and fix abnormalities on adobe audition to make it sound reasonably okay. Well... at least I have something. So for this project I planned on recording with 5 devices. The two computers with OBS, a phone next to the actors and in one of the houses the shotgun mic as well to compare and see.
PRODUCTION:
Day of the shoot came rather quickly. 3 days after the first script read along since I had writers block for about 2 weeks leading up to about a week and 2 days before the deadline. We rehearsed all together 2 times, had some pizza then we set up shop in the other location and everyone knew what they had to do and I was surprised by what we got. Unfortunately we could only do 6 takes because people have work and plans to tend to (this led to 2 really important setbacks) regardless what we got was in my opinion great given our time frame.
Why the major set backs? Well, one of cameramen had to go home and that wouldn't have been a bummer had he not left with his laptop that also filmed OBS without me being able to check if it had recorded. The problem with OBS is if you have a lot of files on your desktop it will run almost glitchy like so that's what happened on one of the computers and on another computer the internet was terrible so one of the webcams looked great and the other looked like a video that had come out on 144p when YouTube first started. So no win win situation. I wanted both recording so I would get good quality imagery from both computers and could play around more on post production.
One of the actors had to go as well and his performance was awesome except for one important part where he slightly moved and that part on the film lost its magic - Directing in 2 places at the same time needs a lot of rehearsing from both sides and with the added pressure the actors feel when shooting on the actual day it's important to check the files because I am putting my full trust not knowing how it's going to turn out. Oh well the timing couldn't been better because I had to skip class, accommodate for others because my time difference is so huge compared to the UK and with my actors and assistants having their lives to attend to I had to try my luck on post production.
POST:
Did I have any luck in post? No.
But wait! There's more. I had luck in other areas. I finally learned how to smoothen out a film with colour grading and masking. I always wanted to give my films a more smooth or soft look so I bought a black pro mist filter but in Macau I couldn't find any matte boxes that suited my lenses so I have it tucked away.
Using the blur and luma key on premiere pro I duplicated the clips, added luma and blur on the duplicate and selected the blending mode to "screen" and played around with the options until I got that soft look I wanted.
In terms of timing? I noticed I wanted to do split screen cuts and all that but my lens was too tight and we would have lost action if I split the screens. Should have reshot some scenes separately not do the whole one take the whole time. I also noticed I could have played with the editing more on awkward moments as some moments lost their magic touch. I did shoot some separate scenes but I felt like without the other reshoots the film would look a bit weird so I creatively chose to leave it without the necessary things.
I noticed also, I should have directed my ops to move more. I found my own style for these types of shoots with the shifting left to right, zooming in and stuff as we could see from Emily's point of view but I instructed my operators to both just cover one angle each. They stayed relatively still and that made the film look quite still but my shots were not so still. It was in improvisational thing from me because one cameraman backed out last minute so I had to cover both angles. In doing so I realized it was much better with movement and made the comedy stick out more. It reminded me a lot of a dinner scene in Netflix's original critically acclaimed "Lupin" when the camera is shifting left to ride or vice versa and cutting to other angles - only rarely is one of the angles still compared to the others. Since one of my angles was still I should have instructed my colleagues to move more also. We would have maybe gotten some discrepancies also because each op has their own style but it could have made sense. Different feeling for a different household.
The sound was so hard to fix since none of the options I used to record were actually good.
And my computer is so slow it crashed on me at least 5 times per day having to sometimes start from scratch all over again. I have decided I will edit with proxies from now.
Overall I am happy I have finally found a way to make my films look more cinematic as I wanted but I am saddened I don't have the tools to execute my vision as I fully want it with dialogue and all sorts of necessities for films and not only do I not have tools I am saddened writer's block had me rush the shoot and I couldn't reshoot once or twice more which I'm sure would have made a huge difference as it is almost there the film! I am also saddened I didn't do as great in the editing sector in terms of changing angles and the timing but what I have been trying to achieve since last year was achieved - a distinct look for that my happiness has been satisfied because these minor set backs on my film couldn't really have been avoided and I plan on reshooting and also writing another draft to make it even better!
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