The purpose of the 'Shock' scene is to illustrate the initial reaction of being told that my father had died. The emotional state of the character goes from not knowing what to feel, to feeling depressed. This is shown through the character reacting to the news on the phone and then showing myself sitting in an armchair for several days. The scene takes place in my home, which is accurate to the real story and also helps to connote the depression that keeps me from interacting with the outside world.
The events shown here are accurate to my actual initial reaction to being struck an emotional heavy blow.
For the first 2 clips that show me on the phone, I decided to use a close up side shot of my face, with the camera in frame. The phone call happened in real life but also, by conveying the news to the character over the phone prevents the audience from hearing the conversation properly, as the audience can work out the context of the call from the reaction that follows. I captured two takes for this clip, as the first take was too blurred and it is difficult to make out anything in the shot. The second take is much more appropriate, due to the character being in centre frame and the focus blur being reduced. The point filming this shot slightly out of focus is to connote a sense of bluryness about the memory itself, as the character is telling the story from a retrospective perspective. The out of focus represents the numb sensation the character is feeling when being told that their father has just died. I used the tripod when filming this clip because I found that if the perspective of the camera represents the audience looking in, I wanted their to be no camera movement, which may echo the stillness that the audience are feeling when reacting to the distressing visuals.
At the 1:01 mark in the video, this out of focus medium shot from behind the main character was again captured on a tripod, for the same reasons as the previous clip. Upon experimenting with capturing shots near the window, I found that the dark lit room and the bright light coming in through the window could be used in tangent to represent the over- arching subject matter that is about the positive and negative aspects of my story with grief. I captured the shot from behind the character so that the light from outside contrasted the shadow of the dark lit room, which allowed for a metaphorical representation of the positive and negative sides of grief, with the light symbolising positivity and the shadow representing negativity. the choice to add a form of metaphor for the project concept was derived from the research I did into the 'Father and daughter' animation that also features heavy metaphors.
The next few shots were made to illustrate the large scale of time that I was sat in one place for. This part of the scene connotes the idea of emptiness and depression, as the main character does nothing here and fails to express much of an emotional reaction in their facial expression. I felt that the static, tripod shots that I have used previously were ineffective at connoting the slow motion of time. Therefore, I decided to take the advice that was given from the short film tutor Keith Temple about asking someone else to help with the cinematography. I asked the person to zoom in on my sitting down in the arm chair, from various distances for long, medium and close ups of me. The zoom in movement emphasises importance and focus on the character in frame and has seemed to be an effective method to help the transition from the establishing long shots, all the way up to the close ups of my face. This method of moving from establishing shot, to close up of a character's face was inspired by how Sergio Leone sets up a scene in his Western films. The effect of such a process establishes the setting that the characters are inhabiting and followed by emotional marker through their facial expressions. This helps the audience to know how the character is feeling in that specific scenario. As the person behind the camera was a family member that was inexperienced in camera work, there were multiple takes done, as the family member either ran into technical difficulties knowing how to operate the camera and tripod. The other problem with this part is that I wanted to capture similar shots in daylight and artificial light at night, to represent a shift in time. This meant that I had to wait until the sun had gone down. I also discovered that the camera could not pick up the image in such dark lighting, so I decided to try both turning a lamp on and turning the Tv on to create an artificial light. Whilst the lap light produced a clearer image. The light flickering from the Tv casted fluctuating light and dark lighting on my face, which I realised that this would also be effective at illustrating a metaphor. This is because the use of light and dark on the character's face represents the binary opposite on negativity and positivity that is exists throughout the narrative.
I will see what colour effects can be added in editing and I will sequence the clips in a chronological order. I am also considering using cross dissolves or something similar to further connote the idea of time feeling slow and the general low kinetic energy of the scene that emphasises the depression felt by the character.
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