proposal
For my final film, I am hoping to be more ambitious than I have been with previous projects. My last two films have been mood pieces with little to no narrative and no characters or dialogue. This time I want to have more of an idea before filming of what the finished product will look like. Previously I have had a vague idea for my films but haven’t used a script or storyboards and relied more on mood boards. This time my film will have a clear narrative and I will pay closer attention to certain details that I probably overlooked in the past such as sound, soundtrack, colour grading etc. Since this is my final project, I want to finish with something really impressive that I can use as part of my show reel in the future.
The general idea I had in terms of narrative for my film is a woman who is waiting for a knock on the door. The film opens with her sat on a garden bench, dressed up and smoking. I want the film to start really slow paced and quiet and gradually get louder and create more tension. I want it to be clear that she is anxious and perhaps a little scared. She may be waiting for a husband/partner, a friend or a sibling but their identity is never disclosed. She moves about the house, fidgeting and straightening her clothes, it’s clear she is apprehensive about the impending arrival. She regularly checks the time and her appearance and smokes often. As the film speeds up I think the sound should become more intense and then suddenly it cuts off as we hear the sound of the front door opening and the woman turns around and the screen goes black.
I am going to need to flesh out the story and figure out exactly what I want her to be doing while she waits. I am hoping that the final film will be just under five minutes.
I have thought a lot about cinematography as this is the part of filmmaking that I enjoy the most and I think I have a pretty clear idea in my head of the general look I want the film to have. I want to film with a 50mm lens because I really like shots with a shallow depth of field which focus on something and blur everything else. I plan to have lots of close ups of her facial expressions, her hands, the smoke she breathes out and hopefully some extreme close ups of her eyes – this may require a macro lens.
I have my own dolly and I would love to include some really smooth tracking shots however I tried to do this for my previous film and didn’t get the look I was hoping for so I think I will do a test shoot at some point to figure out how to get the best shots before filming. If I can get the hang of the dolly I might experiment with some different moving shots like maybe a 360-degree pan.
I think the main issue I might have will be weather conditions for the outdoor scenes – this is something I will have to compensate for by having multiple days available to film outside.
I might also struggle with the dolly but will hopefully have practiced enough to feel confident using it for the shoot. In terms of post-production, I have become a lot more confident using Adobe Premier to edit my footage but I think I might struggle with any very complex actions so I might need to ask for help during the editing process.
Sound is always something that I struggle with too as I find it hard to decide if I want music or not, and if I do then I need to consider copyright laws. I am quite confident with sound recording using a boom mic and this is probably something I will do to get some ambient sounds but I still need to think about soundtrack. I think I might need to wait and see what my first cut looks like before I can decide if it needs music and if so what genre/song.
The general idea I had in terms of narrative for my film is a woman who is waiting for a knock on the door. The film opens with her sat on a garden bench, dressed up and smoking. I want the film to start really slow paced and quiet and gradually get louder and create more tension. I want it to be clear that she is anxious and perhaps a little scared. She may be waiting for a husband/partner, a friend or a sibling but their identity is never disclosed. She moves about the house, fidgeting and straightening her clothes, it’s clear she is apprehensive about the impending arrival. She regularly checks the time and her appearance and smokes often. As the film speeds up I think the sound should become more intense and then suddenly it cuts off as we hear the sound of the front door opening and the woman turns around and the screen goes black.
I am going to need to flesh out the story and figure out exactly what I want her to be doing while she waits. I am hoping that the final film will be just under five minutes.
I have thought a lot about cinematography as this is the part of filmmaking that I enjoy the most and I think I have a pretty clear idea in my head of the general look I want the film to have. I want to film with a 50mm lens because I really like shots with a shallow depth of field which focus on something and blur everything else. I plan to have lots of close ups of her facial expressions, her hands, the smoke she breathes out and hopefully some extreme close ups of her eyes – this may require a macro lens.
I have my own dolly and I would love to include some really smooth tracking shots however I tried to do this for my previous film and didn’t get the look I was hoping for so I think I will do a test shoot at some point to figure out how to get the best shots before filming. If I can get the hang of the dolly I might experiment with some different moving shots like maybe a 360-degree pan.
I think the main issue I might have will be weather conditions for the outdoor scenes – this is something I will have to compensate for by having multiple days available to film outside.
I might also struggle with the dolly but will hopefully have practiced enough to feel confident using it for the shoot. In terms of post-production, I have become a lot more confident using Adobe Premier to edit my footage but I think I might struggle with any very complex actions so I might need to ask for help during the editing process.
Sound is always something that I struggle with too as I find it hard to decide if I want music or not, and if I do then I need to consider copyright laws. I am quite confident with sound recording using a boom mic and this is probably something I will do to get some ambient sounds but I still need to think about soundtrack. I think I might need to wait and see what my first cut looks like before I can decide if it needs music and if so what genre/song.
Ideas research
I have looked at a number of different films which I think I can pull ideas and inspiration from for my own project. Most of them happen to have a similar premise to my idea but what mainly drew me to them were the types of shots and general atmospheres of the films.
I looked at Lady Macbeth (2017) D. William Oldroyd because it has a really eerie feel to it and a lot of the film is the main character sat at home waiting for her husband to return. What I really liked about it was the lack of soundtrack, I think that this was probably intended to make its audience feel on edge and to build tension. The film is generally very quiet as she is alone often.
I really liked the different shots used in this film. A lot of them were locked off medium shots of her sitting in silence which is definitely something I want to replicate.
I also looked at Berlin Syndrome (2017) D. Cate Shortland. This film uses really nice close ups of the protagonist with shallow focus which I thought gave the film a really atmospheric look. I want to use some close ups of my main character blank expression in my own film and this is something which was done often in Berlin Syndrome.