Filming with Ryan's Nephews

Filming Part 7

Yesterday I undertook the final part of filming by shooting the second half of the last scene. As with before I filmed in the back garden at a similar time to the previous days filming this was to ensure that lighting was as similar as possible.
The main issue of the day was the heat, this when combined with repetitive and intricate stop motion filming became quite hard work. Despite this it was a trouble free process getting the last few shots filmed and as with the other day I am very pleased with the results.

Filming Part 6

Today I began filming the final scene, this involved 2 of the dolls from the other scenes. This scene was to be filmed in day light and I used my back garden as the setting, this was because it was quite spacious and provided a natural light that gave the scene a much brighter feel. The largest change to this scene so far is the decision to film in black and white, I felt that in colour the shots didn't have the same flair or substance as the rest of the film.

In terms of issues the main problem was the weather, it didn't take even a strong wind to knock over the dolls. To prevent this I used clear Sellotape tied to the feet of the dolls to anchor them to floor during shots. Apart from this there were no problems during the shoot and after editing the footage this section is providing quite a subtle and almost chilled ending which is what I sought out to do.

Trip to the Ikon Gallery

On the 24th of May our Foundation group decided to visit the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham. This was to see how the different exhibits were displayed to hopefully get some inspiration for our own individual spaces and our exhibition in general.
The first display we saw were examples of paintings by photorealist painter John Salt, despite having a large collection of his work its was exhibited in a large enough space that his work was well spread and I never felt crowded into one area, this gave me time and space to appreciate Salt's incredibly detailed work. This is something i would like to apply to my exhibition as i don't want the audience to feel crowded together in their chairs, I want to give them plenty of space to watch the film and have their own individual experience with it.
The other display we saw were a selection of films by Tadasu Takamine, as I'm presenting a film for our final show I found this exhibit the most useful. Within the exhibition there was little to no lighting except that from the projector and screen, I think this would be a good idea for my project as it draws all attention to the screen. One feature I noticed that his films Inertia and God Bless America used was a sound dome hanging from the ceiling that played all the film's sound. This provides an interesting effect when watching these films on your own however when there are more than a few people also watching them with you it didn't have as much of an effect and because all the sound was emanating from the dome rather than speakers as well I felt as though this took something away from the viewing experience. When exhibiting his film Kimura-san a countdown was used before each showing I thought this was a nice addition to the film because our group was aware of the controversial images (in this case Takamine fulfilling the sexual needs of his disabled friend) that we were about to see, so the countdown gave us a chance to discuss and create preconceptions. As the film is about challenging our preconceptions and opinions I felt this countdown although a small touch added a lot to the film.

Filming Part 5

Last night I went about re-filming the shots that were too dark. To make sure that they weren't as dark this time I increased the lighting by moving the lamp I was using slightly closer to the dolls, I still had to make sure the scene maintained its dark atmosphere though.
The nights filming went quickly and without any problems, mainly because i was just re-filming shots.

After editing this footage the shots have come through much clearer whilst still keeping their dark edginess.

Filming Part 4

Last night I began filming the doll parts for the third scene. I encountered one major problem during recording which was that one of the smaller dolls was particularly fiddly and i knocked it over during a shot meaning i had to restart filming that shot. To solve this problem i taped the dolls legs to the floor, I also made sure the tape was out of frame.

A problem I encountered after I had uploaded the footage onto FinalCut was that the opening zoom out shot and a shot in which a dolls head is spinning came out too dark, after not having any success trying to brighten them in FinalCut I have decided to re-shoot these shots. 

On a positive note the footage I have managed to edit into the film has worked really well, the camera has a shaky feel to it which really adds to the chaotic nature of this scene in particular. 

                           An example of one of the shots that was too dark

                                    One of the shots that worked 

Poster for soundtrack

In a similar vein to the film posters, I have created a poster/cover for the soundtrack. I took inspiration from the cover for the Social Network soundtrack as my score was heavily influenced by this film's soundtrack. To create this image I took a screenshot from FinalCut and then increased the shadows and added a blur effect in Photoshop.