If you haven't already guessed, its all about film.

The directing exercise was, as I felt, a test for our understanding of how to use or manipulate characters’ motivations in a film or a particular scene. And more importantly how significant character motivations can be as it plays a huge part in influencing the intended message of a film. For this exercise we were given the script for a famous scene from the film The Godfather (Coppola, 1972) and were told to change the motivations of the characters McCluskey, Solozzo and Michael. We did two takes for this exercise. In the first one, we agreed to portray both McCluskey and Solozzo as having the intentions to kill Michael in that scene. As for Michael’s intentions, instead of him wanting to kill both McCluskey and Solozzo (as seen in the actual film) we thought of making him a somewhat neutral character where his intentions in this particular scene is not clearly established. We thought we would achieve that as well as be able to create a sense of suspense by not allowing the camera to follow Michael into the toilet. In the actual film the camera shows Michael’s frantic search for the gun once he is in the toilet to establish his character motivation that is, as mentioned, to kill McCluskey and Solozzo. By not showing what Michael is doing in the toilet, we were able to detract from that affirmation of his intentions and create in place of that a sense of ambiguity about his character. The suspense created through this also differs from the one in the actual film. As the viewers are not led to wonder when and how the shootout will happen (and how it whether or not Michael will survive), but whether or not Michael did take/find the gun at all. Not knowing whether or not Michael has the gun also raises the stakes in this scene, because the intention to kill Michael has already been established and therefore his chances for survival is reduced a great deal.

The second take that we did was somewhat different. In this one (see attached video), the characters McCluskey and Solozzo maintain the same motivations as they have in the actual film, that is they have no intention to kill Michael. For Michael, we again wanted to create that same ambiguity as done so in the previous take. Once again we do not follow Michael into the toilet and therefore his intentions (whether or not he wants to kill Solozzo and McCluskey) are not clear. The audience does not know if he had found the gun or whether or not he even looked for it while in the toilet. There is a strong possibility that a shootout will not occur at all. Hence, the stakes in this take is much lower than that in the previous one as well as in the actual film.

It was interesting to see how two very similar takes on one same scene can have such contrasting impacts. I was quite satisfied with the way we approached this exercise and I think we did well to show how changing character motivation can so heavily affect a scene or even a film. Being the camera operator for this 2^nd take, I tried to use a consistent track in shot which I thought would help build the tension and eventually reach a certain point where all the three characters are very tightly framed together. We did not have a dolly and so I tried it with the zoom function on the camera. That didn’t work out to well, as I had lack of control over the speed of zoom, which forced me to stop once or twice. That quite possibly made the video look like a result of really bad filmmaking.

We also used this opportunity to practice our use of lighting. We tried to create the classic three point lighting set-up but couldn’t do so as there were already quite a lot of natural light coming through. But I think the video could have had a nicer look if we had added a back light right behind the character Michael. That would help bring out the characters more and maybe even cut out abit of the shadows. But I think we did well to create what we had set out to with regards to the aims of this exercise.

The lighting exercise was arguably one of the most challenging tasks given, but also one of the most interesting. It was perhaps made so due to the choice of location. We chose to film in the interior of a performance space where all the four walls (including ceiling and floor) around us were completely black. I thought that it would be a good place to work on lighting as we would be able to control as much light as we would want to since the space that we had could be completely blacked out once the lights in the room were turned off. With no exterior light source to affect the scene, I thought it would also be a good chance to experiment and test our skills with lighting. But it was much more difficult than I had expected. We had to create from ‘scratch’ even the slightest degree of brightness for the scene, and then change that brightness as the scene progressed. We also had to take into consideration the position of the different light sources that we were using/that were included in the diagesis, eg. Light from the lamp, light from the window.

The first task was to make the scene where the character is sleeping at night seen on film. So we had to create some sort of light for the scene in a way that we can establish that the film is set in night time but at the same time we had to control the amount of light so that it will not be too bright or too dark. We used only key light for this scene, placing the light source in the same position as where we had decided the off-screen window would be.  The idea was to create a sense that only a certain amount of light is coming through the unseen window. It was, I would say, a collective and creative decision to make this scene as dark as possible, that is to only allow a very small degree of light in, and just enough for viewers to get a sense of what is going on in the scene. To achieve that we used a table lamp, which we directed onto a reflector board and aimed the reflected light onto the space that we were filming. We used the reflector board to spread out the light across the whole room and also to limit its intensity. We knew we could brighten up the space more and make the scene more visible while still retaining the intended time it is set in. But as mentioned, it was a creative decision and that was based on our intentions to take a more experimental approach to this task.

The fully darkened space that we had, posed us the biggest problem when we were filming the scene where an off-screen lamp was turned on. Because of the inclusion of this additional light source, we had to create two different degrees of lighting and make one a more focused ray of light and the other a more ‘atmospheric’ one. This time the key light was the light from the lamp, because this scene was still set in the same time as the previous one, and that additional light source (ie. the lamp) was also the only light source in the diagesis that could brighten up the room. The light from the window became our fill light for this scene, and we added a back light situated opposite both the key and fill lights (creating the classic three point lighting set-up). We made the back light as dim as possible by adding filters and pushing it as far away from the objects and character in frame as possible. We also placed it in a way that the light would bounce off the wall so that it wouldn’t suggest that there is an additional light source in the diagesis.

For the next task, we experimented with ways in which we can change or alter degrees of light used in one same scene. We thought of the idea to show the change in lighting by creating the effect of a sunrise. We used the table lamp again to create that same effect as in the previous scene, and used a soft box light to create the sun light. The effect of the sunrise was created simply by moving a reflector board over the soft box light. We also used filters to cut out any yellowish glow from the light source and also to diffuse the light so as to make it look more atmospheric or more specifically to create the sense that the room has been brightened up by sunlight. Even for this scene, the total darkness of the space that we had meant that we had to create a form and degree of light that resembled that of sunlight. Also I think bouncing the light off a reflector board would have been more effective as it would have spread out the light more evenly across the room. Adding a fill light could also have helped achieve that but it would have been difficult to do as we would have to control the increasing exposure of the fill light in the same way and time as we did for the key light (because both the key and fill lights would be used to create the effect of one same light source – sunlight).

The last scene was relatively easy to do once we thought up an idea of how to use shadows in our cinematography. All we used was a reflector board to control the amount of light that the camera would be exposed to and we simply filmed the shadows of two characters having a brief conversation.

I finally completed the digitale, after managing to get the sound editing done (noise reduction and all that). I couldnt decide whether or not to include music in the credits. At first I thought it would be nice because it would kinda take away the seriousness of the story, which i think is important because the story takes place over a long period of time, that is from when the narrator was a child writing about his experience with his brother Salman, till present time when he remains alone. I was hoping that the relatively upbeat music in the end would somehow emphasize the time factor, and with that, it would reference the human nature/tendency to move on. I didnt want to present the idea that the narrator in the story is still holding on to this sad experience and I didnt want the audience to linger on the sympathy that they would offer to the narrator.

But after countless of edits, I just couldnt get the music to fit well with the story and the images. And therefore I decided to replace it with sounds of waves. I thought that would be good as it hints at the possibility that the narrator has found his ‘beautiful place’ or ‘better world’. And because of that, the ending could be seen as either ambiguous or bittersweet. I think it is nice to allow the audience/viewers to have their own ending to this story, or more precisely to create their own feeling towards this story.

Postcard for A Better World

This is my first draft for the digitale that I’ve been working on. Its short of one picture, the very last one, and I’ve been having alil trouble with sound recording, so until thats done, this is all I have. Enjoy!

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