Production Log 2

Production Log 2 from Blaine Kenneally on Vimeo.

Cinematography: The Look of Our Film

In a previous post, I alluded to cinematography whilst talking about the films of David Fincher. I talked about his film having a 'distinctive visual style'. This style is created by the use of specific camera shots and lighting, and these processes are collectively known as cinematography.

Tom and I see our short film as having a minimalist feel. This is not to say that we will only put minimum effort into cinematography, or that we will only take minimal control of the images we capture. On the contrary, it means that we will ensure that our film doesn't have an elaborate look; it is supposed to be a personal story with a cerebral feel, and we want to focus the audience's attention in this direction, not to have them distracted by a great amount of unnecessary detail.

Good examples of this style in use are Dennis Gansel's German film Die Welle (The Wave - 2008), and the aforementioned Dead Man's Shoes (2004) from British director Shane Meadows. What both have in common with our film is that they are thoughtful and psychological thrillers. The shots are clean and simple, with an unobtrusive mise-en-scene and, for the most part, natural lighting, as illustrated in the screen-captures below. This is the kind of style we aim to recreate.

Die Welle



Dead Man's Shoes

As you can see, the focus in the shots above is clearly on the characters; the people around which the narrative revolves. One of the central aspects of our film is going to be the protagonist's ambiguous internal monologue, and a clear cinematographic focus on the protagonist will complement the monologue and add to our creative exploration of the character. To maintain such an intimate visual focus, we will mainly use mid-shots and close-ups which reveal the body-language and facial expressions of our actors, with the occasional long-shots to establish and close scenes.

We do intend to make use of effects in post-production, but again, we want to keep these simple, so that they serve their purpose of communicating the narrative, as opposed to making the film look cinematically elaborate. Some examples of effects are a monochrome colouring to show events of the past, and a translucent overlay of two different videos to show a character's thoughts. Tom is going to work out how we can create these effects, and I will post I link to this below when it is ready.

Update 2/12/10 - Tom and I have arranged to work through the methods for creating these effects with the school Media Technician, so that we will both have the knowledge and experience when it comes to the editing of our actual piece. Tom will still be responsible for posting this information, and I will provide the link to that post below.

-We actually decided to show what we have learned in a video in this post: http://blainekenneallya2media.blogspot.com/2010/12/production-log-3-experience-in-editing.html

Writing a Treatment

As we mentioned in our first Production Log entry, Tom and I recently met to plan out our short film scene by scene. The plans I drew up from our conversation are shown below. They are organised scene by scene, and are intentionally rough; there is no division of different aspects, such as sound, narrative, dialogue and shots, there are merely bullet points for everything of importance. This is all that is needed for the time being, but the animatic we intend to make will reveal how all of these things function both individually, on different levels, and as one.

This morning, I began transforming these notes into a film treatment. As the Wikipedia article states, a treatment is the step between basic ideas for scene and the first screenplay, and seeing as I am going to be writing the script, I think it will be a useful step to take. The treatment will also be useful for Tom, because he is going to be taking photographs of the locations we want to use, and also researching the editing techniques we can use to achieve what we desire. For both of these processes, the treatment will serve as a useful reference.

I have literally just completed and uploaded the treatment, and here it is:

Treatment for a Short Film

It doesn't contain information on absolutely everything that will be included in the actual film, such a shot types and post-production effects, but it does describe all of the live action that we want to show on screen, and it does give a detailed description of the film's narrative. Although treatments are consistently written in the present tense, I felt that it was necessary to break this rule by writing in past tense for Scene 2, as this scene is set before all of the other events of the film, and I needed to indicate this in the treatment.

Poster for a Short Film: Semiotics

Alongside our main production of a Short Film, Tom and I must produce two related ancillary products, and for these we have chosen to make a Magazine Review and a Poster for our film. Whilst Tom handles the preparatory research for the Review, I will be doing the same for the Poster.

For me, the first logical step is to ask: What is a poster? (i.e., What are its constituents, and what is its purpose?) Well, in answer, a poster is a placard or bill intended for display in a public place for the purposes of advertising. To fulfill this purpose, posters usually contain information about a particular event or product, and they present this information in an appealing or interesting way, so that people who view the poster will be encouraged to attend the event or purchase the product.

In essence, then, a poster is a thin piece of material that represents something other than itself, and it does this by carrying information in the form of images and text. In other words, the poster acts as a sign, and this is where semiotics becomes relevant. I began to explore semiotics last year with an introductory post, and I have summarised the main points of the post below:

• Semiotics is basically an area of study looking at signs as a means of communication.
• Signs are made up of two elements, the Signifier and the Signified;
• The Signifier is the material of which the sign is composed (text, images, sounds, etc)
• The Signified is the concept that the Signifier alludes to.
• The links between Signifiers and the Signified are culturally relative. (i.e., identical Signifiers may may allude to different concepts in different cultures)

In the same post, I concluded that, 'The media industry use signs because they are an efficient way of expressing a large amount of information with very little material.' Although I was writing with regard to mise-en-scene and cinematographic style at the time, it has since occurred to me that the same is true of any kind of advertisement, including posters. 

Whilst it would be unnecesary to delve deep into the rabbit-hole of aggregatory academia that calls itself 'semiotics,' I am sure that an understanding of the importance of semiotics will result in a more structured and rigorous approach to our poster's production. There are three distinct branches of semiotics, and each is relevant to a different aspect of our poster:


Semantics

This is what semiotics is most commonly known for, and what I breifly explained above: the relationship between signs and what they stand for (Signifiers and the signified). It is fairly obvious that we must create a poster that clearly links to our short film; otherwise, all purpose of the poster is lost! The method behind the link between film and poster, though, is less obvious. In order to build a clear relationship between all of our products, we must craft a distinct visual style that is highly recogniseable. One possible way of acheiving this would be to have an image of the film's protagonist on the poster, as illustrated in this poster for Inception, showing an image of Leonardo DiCaprio with his name clearly printed at the top.




Syntactics
This branch deals with the formal or structural relationships between signs. In order to create a film poster that does its intended job, it must be recogniseable as a film poster, which means it will need to contain the common, defining elements present in all good film posters. I will ensure that this is so by analysing a range of film posters to find out what conventions are adhered to, and why.

Pragmatics
Pragmatics is all about the relationship between signs and interpreters. The concept of cultural relativism that I mentioned above, for example, would fall under this label, because culture is something that exists in the mind of the interpreter. In our particular case, the sign is a film poster, and the interpreters are our target audience. In general, the study of pragmatics illustrates the importance of context; it shows that what a sign signifies is largely dependent upon the way it is viewed (i.e., at what time? In what place? By whom?). To a certain extent, we can control the audience our poster appeals to by emulating successful posters that have previously targeted the same audience, but in doing this we risk representing our short film as something that is just as unoriginal as our poster. The only other accurate way of building a targeting strategy is through audience research, where we can directly ask consumers what appeals to them, and subsequently discover what posters they are most receptive to.

In summary, each branch of semiotics highlights an aspect that is fundamental to the success or failure of a film poster in fulfilling its purpose, and it would be frankly foolish to prepare and produce a poster without giving the field of semiotics any serious

consideration.

UPDATE: Here is Tom's post briefly analysing the pragmatic and syntactic conventions of film posters.

Production Log 1

Now that we are into the flow of our production, Tom and I will be filming and uploading video logs to record our progress so far and our next intended steps at every major juncture. Here is our very first video log, detailing our activities in planning and research.

Production Log 1 from Blaine Kenneally on Vimeo.