Welcome to my on-line Blog for my film short, entiltled; Prelude.
Current Stage: Research / Experiment / Development
Firstly, an introduction to my Film Short - Prelude;
Inspired by a number of films spanning from the early-70's to even one as recent as 2005 I am still in the early stages of development, which is where the Research, Experimental and Development module can come in particuarly useful.
I am using 3-Key films in my research of which one in particular I wish to pay homage too. All are American, and use 3 different directors. They are;
- Duel (Dir: Spielberg, 1971)
- A History of Violence (Dir: Cronenberg. 2005)
- Taxi Driver (Dir: Scorsese. 1976)
The reasoning behind chosing these to study are as such:
With Duel Being Spielberg's debut directorial makes it all the more interesting to study, for me - With it also being a very low-budget production. Watching and paying close attention to the directors talk-though version has given me an insight into many aspects of how the film was shot, which infact was extreamly simple using camera rigs/supports attached to vehicles and using the same stretch of highway over and over again but from different angles, yet convincing the viewer hundereds of miles of desert and mountain road had been covered - something that is very simple yet also canningly clever.
I first watch this film in the mid-late 80's, making me around 7-10 years old which I accept may not of been the film's target audiance but non the less had the effect of either keeping my eyes glued to the screen, or hiding behind the sofa in fear!
The main areas that interest me are the positioning of cameras', their supports and the use of "pause and slide" movement when not attached to a moving vehicle. Something that is apparent to me is the similarity of some some shots/movement also found in Scorsese's Taxi Driver, produced some 5years later. What they do, is take away from an established scene causing the viewer to spit their mind out of the current flow of the film in an effort to re-calculate what is actually happening, or what could be happening, but infact the movement has left the actor behind in a sense, almost as if the film has moved on to a new scene and is waiting for the actor to catch up. I think this is a really interesting style of directing and something I'd like to expand upon myself.
Cronenburg's 'A History of Violence' is, in my opinion a very interesting film to study and my reasoning for chosing to study is mainly for the way in which the viewer is completely mis-led with the main Character (Viggo Mortensen). So essentially, I am using the storyline of this flm as a guid for my own storyline/script. As I have never scripted before I feel it importent to find inspriation from somewhere - this film is it.
As I said before, In my film short I wish to pay homage to Scorsese. In the film Taxi Driver I fell in love with the night-time driving scenes, the way the lights of the city have such an impact reflecting on the rain drenched streets, almost as if it's an attempt to show th streets being cleaned. Together with the way the camera is rigged to the Taxi providing the oh so perfect framing, depicting the NYC night life ambiance. Bernard Herrmann composed the sound track which dramatised the scenes to such a high level that the viewer cannot ignore the danger the 1970's streets of New York present though the dark hours.
Crew & Equipment:
I have and am, seeking support/crew externally and I have actually had people ask to be involved in my project - which is nice. As of 1st Nov 2011 I have 2 persons within my crew in addition to myself, both of whom will fill creative roles.
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Innitial experiement:
I plan to create a model of a city street within a shoebox/box type set up, utilising transparent coloured plastic to provide the explosive, bright lights of a busling city at night. I'm still planning this, so will update soon.
I recently spent some time working with Joe, Bob and Rob creating a scene trying out various staged ideas to create a space-age time travel look. We used a sheet of perspex, flicked water on it and utilised lighting to create a star-trek futuristic feel. I found this very useful and it has given me ideas for my own project in how to create my own scenes that will be difficult to create on-location. I will update this blog with photos soon.
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