Mini Experimental Film Task

We were set the task of over the course of a week coming up with our own playful experimental film ideas and then making a rough video to demonstrate them to the class and allow us to practice some of the techniques we were looking at. The film needed to be between 1-2 minuets long and needed to challenge the structure of time for example through techniques like slow motion, time lapse, montage etc. I decided to begin my jotting some ideas down which I had from the inspiration given to us. Here is my mind map:

After reassessing my ideas and after discussing with my peers I decided to go with the idea of Dreams VS Nightmares because I felt like this one had a lot of different elements I could incorporate in but most importantly it fitted the theme of time because in dreams/nightmares there simply is no concept of time and this is what I wanted to come across. I also thought that out of all my ideas it could be done with in the time constraints of a week and I already had locations in mind which were close enough for me to get to of my own accord. I knew straight away as well that this would be a very personal project because I was focusing on my own dreams and nightmares however this is what spurred me on to create it.

Because we were on such short time constraints I didn't manage to do much research even though I would have liked to as this is a subject which really interests me. However I did decided to find out what people think dreams and nightmares are by going on to the internet and seeing what that threw up at me. I found a very simplistic definition of a nightmare which said: 'A nightmare is a very distressing dream which usually forces at least partial awakening. The dreamer may feel any number of disturbing emotions in a nightmare, such as anger, guilt, sadness or depression, but the most common feelings are fear and anxiety.' (www.asdreams.org/subidxedunightmares.htm) This made me think that I really needed to make sure the nightmare side of the piece needed to explore the main themes of fear and anxiety because not only is this relatable to me but it will be the most relatable feelings to the audience. Then I looked into what dreams are and found an interesting definition which says 'Dreams are a universal human experience that can be described as a state of consciousness characterized by sensory, cognitive and emotional occurrences during sleep. The dreamer has reduced control over the content, visual images and activation of the memory' (http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/284378.php) This makes me feel the the dream side of it needs to be very random in its ordering to show lack of control over ones self when in a dream. I also feel like this means that dreams are linked to our memory and therefore when choosing footage to capture I need to think even more personally about not only my previous dreams but my memories which influence these.

I then started thinking about how I was going to film it and I made the decision that I would use split screen. I was really influenced in lesson by a piece called 'Turbulent' by Shirin Nishat which used split screen to have the women on one side and the man on the other. However I learnt when this piece is installed it is on two large screen which face each other rather than side by side. I decided this would be ideal for my idea so even though I was at the moment only going to produce them side by side I would actually given the chance install them one facing the other as I feel this create a much more tense atmosphere. Now I had decided that dreams would be on one side of the screen and nightmares on the other I then thought into the type of shots I wanted and thought I needed very whimsical locations for the dreams which were very beautiful and then for the nightmares I wanted harsher looking landscapes and I wanted it to be dark in some of them as this is one of my fears. I set a location of the woodland which is a 5 minuet walk from my house as it was easy to get too but I knew there were some amazingly beautiful landscape shots there and also the woods themselves were very scary looking. I went late afternoon and filmed into the evening so I got images ranging from daylight to night fall and complete darkness. I had a friend come along to help me as I felt it was necessary to have me in any of the shots that needed a person because it needed to be personal to my dreams and nightmares. I therefore found myself directing the camera on when to shoot and how to frame the shot and then I would go perform the action whilst she followed instructions. Overall it was a really successful shoot. I then after reflecting back on the shoot felt like my piece was very bland just using basic montage so I then came to the idea of layering images and thought it could add even more atmosphere but also a personal touch if I have my faces behind the two sets of montages. So I filmed me looking happy and placed it on top of the dreams sequence and then me looking scared which was placed on the nightmares side. I then edited it all together which took a long time as I was playing around with opacity and speed on every clip and trying to make it all flow together. I then needed a sound track so I got a song sent to me from a musician I know and I specifically requested something very dream like but also something which jolts as well to fit with the Nightmares. He sent me a song which was perfect however I still felt it was bland so I used some of the sound effects from my original footage and added that back in so that it created a layered sound-scape which I was much happier with.

Here is the finished product:
I am very happy with this because it turned out much better than I even thought it would and also I feel like whilst making it I kept constantly developing it and pushing it further too. I did feel however that if I had gone to a few different locations for shooting I could have got even more interesting shots but I think for the time constraints this worked. I showed it to my class and I got a lot of positive feedback which was that they liked the pace of it which was very good to hear as I spent so long working on this. I also got some constructive criticism which was that it was too much going on in one small screen and this is when I explained that I would install it differently however it did make me think about maybe not trying to fit so much into one minuet and instead cutting some shots out or extending the length of the piece. Overall I felt that this was successful for my first experimental film but I would love to push myself a lot further.