As a little introduction, I want to talk about how my idea has shifted from its original course of being a short film about a self conscious vampire to a music video about the tenderness that independence can have. Mutha Sucka’s was the idea that I had at the end of last year for my final project but kept on being pushed back due to the worldwide circumstances. These delays kind of worked in my favour in that I had even more time to work on the project hence why I thought I was able to do it for my initial project to a reasonable degree of success. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case and the fluctuation of what you were able to do in these lockdowns made it incredibly hard to trying to arrange any plans to film anything.
It was very much a project of compromises. You couldn’t meet up with people outside your bubble so I compromised with who I got to be in it, going from the intended three actress/ors that were going to be in it to starting off with one person from the class and filming ‘test footages’ to keep the momentum going and seeing if we could eventually reshoot with the original cast at a later date. You weren’t allowed to have people in your house, so I started to film all the outside scenes first and then see if I could find a time that coincides with lockdown restrictions being lifted enough to allow us to do so. But that time never came.
From reading the two paragraphs above, it might paint the picture that I wasn’t happy with what I ended up with and that is quite the opposite of what I’m feeling. For the most parts, I loved it. The compromises I talked about previously weren’t a bad thing; it was like aiming to bake an apple strudel but ending up with a coffee cake. Yeah, what I ended up with might not necessarily be what I had planned for but, I fucking love coffee cake.
General Points - 4:3 ratio The 4:3 ratio were a decision made in post production by yours truly. I had done it in an attempt to cover multiple things. Firstly, and a negative one, any footage that isn’t in the shot in the field was filmed in 4k quality; the field was done in 1080p with minimal lighting. This difference in quality resulted in the blurriness/graininess of the field footage when viewed in conjunction with the 4k footage. Top counterbalance this I thought by making it look like the difference in quality was purely intentional by having the feel of the entire film more ‘lo-fi’ (well if you ignore the quality of shots).
Another reason as to why I used the borders for is the aesthetic of it holding onto this feeling of nostalgia for a time you didn’t experience. This nostalgic feeling is filled with warmth and that’s what I wanted the audience to get out of watching it. It’s very much the direction I want to take most of my projects in when I can and this initial project is an example of me experimenting with this type of effect.
General Points - Music Choice
As you can tell from the final piece I made, I had chosen to go with the song ‘wren’s lullaby’ by dandelion hands. The song had this very specific calmness to it that I didn’t find in the other songs I had shortlisted. I believe what you hear and what you see displays fluent synergy with each other. When I had set out looking for a song for the footage I had already shot, I wanted a sense of nostalgia that played a long with the condensed ratio that I was going to make me film into. The analogue, lo fi sound that the music embodies paints this picture of a time of naivety and innocence. Pair this with the significance of the colour yellow (the colour of the jacket she wears throughout) meaning not only are you giving visual clues what type of person the character is but also audible ones as well.
For the next part I will go through the final cut of my film for the initial project, almost shot by shot, explaining the reasoning behind each shot and the meaning behind them... 00:00->00:21 The initial shot had been adapted from what we had filmed for the test footage. In the test footage, the medium long shot of the streetlight and the medium shot of the bike being picked up were two separate pieces of footage. Upon reviewing the shots with the D.O.P, we worked out we could get them both in the same footage with a tilt and a reposition of the bike. I believed it was a necessity to keep the streetlight in due to how it is framed within the frame by the branches of the surrounding trees. It creates an aesthetic ‘layering’ to the shot and makes it not look all flat.
The character entering frame was timed with the motion of the camera tilting downwards to create more of a flow to the shot. Instead having the camera finishing moving and the character entering it shows the character is not being ‘directed’ by the camera therefore having a more natural feel to what you see. Also having the character enter from the left side is also intentional, in western cultures your eye naturally looks at the top left side of what you see first. This is due to the way text is laid out in books and on screens. You always read from left to right. By having the character come out of this particular side is what is expected and therefore those expectations are subconsciously fulfilled.
To carry on about the idea of mise en scene and where things naturally should be placed, the bike is put in the centre of the frame for a particular reason. By having the streetlight being the first thing that the audience focuses on (it’s a bright light, at the end of the day we are all children and bright stuff attracts our eyes) their eyes will now be in the middle of the screen. Because of this, it makes sense to also have the bike there when the camera tilts down.
00:22->00:38 I had always been a fan of shots that looked like they could be taken out of films and put onto a postcard or picture frame. Even though it’s quite simple, the shot of the streetlight through the trees can have multiple different connotations. For example, the harsh light emitting is acting as a man-made sun. There is no sun at night (unbelievable, isn’t it) so this is what humans have done to give themselves light when it gets dark. Another example could be nature versus humans. The fact that the streetlight is jutting through the trees but the trees have consumed the top half of it is this weird balance that we are at right now. Even after saying this, it can mean anything to anyone.
As all these scenes are done with natural lighting that were found on location. Having the character cycle in and out of the streetlights makes it feel like it’s a more natural environment. The gaps darkness accentuates the pools of light due to the contrasts and vice versa. It was a deliberate to have the film set at night as that’s when it is usually quietest. I like the idea of being awake while the world sleeps. It isn’t a lonely feeling; it’s more of a freeing feeling where you can keep yourself company.
The shot of the character riding towards the camera in an uncoordinated snake-like movement was done to add a bit of depth to the character. Pair this with the shot previously where she doesn’t pick up the bike in a clear motion it’s these little quirks that act as a way of building up a character without giving an info dump as an explanation as who the character is.
00:39->00:56 As a way to test out some of my ideas we had carried out two ‘test shoots’ of the scenes we were able to do given the pandemic circumstances. I had really liked them (the second part was involved in the final piece) but I had to find a way to connect them in a moderately visually way. In the collection of shots we had got over the span of filming, I had found a shot of Ella (who had played the character) simply looking at the trains that Liv, the D.O.P, had got while we were setting things up at the field we were filming on. So it wasn’t even directed by me. Because of this shot I thought I could make the connection between the two separate collections of footage. A sense of travel is something hard to show in an interesting way without it becoming overplayed. This is why I had the actual ‘travel’ section take place in a matter of seconds and that there was no actual camera movement during this section.
The shot of the train station is of particular interest as well, as it’s possible on the first viewing of it you might think that the shot of the station could be a picture but the subtle movement of the bag in the bin brings it to life. This subtly is something I wanted out of the whole project. I think there are too many ‘loud’ films out there.
00:57->01:14 To continue on with the theme of subtly, the light is turned on in time with the press of the piano key from the song. I think as it’s a piano key and not something like a percussion instrument, there is this soft nature to it all. It’s these subtle things that I was trying throughout to make a more cohesive final film/music video.
The shot after the torch being turned on was one that I had not used when I was presenting ‘Test Footage 2’ to the class. When I was editing the footage together I had found it and thought it had this pleasant feeling about it. There’s a natural instinct in film to always to always stick the camera facing the character. I wanted to do something different here by showing everything (the location, the light coming from the torch, the silhouettes of the trees) but the actual character. This was pretty much just me experimenting with shot types and framing and I honestly believe it came out really well.
01:15->01:24 The shot of Ella with the pen and notepad (which was the one that I was actually writing the shot list in) to her side was the one shot that me and Liv had particularly liked. I even discussed with her why we like this shot so much and we came to the resounding conclusion that... we don’t know. We discussed that the way she is positioned in frame has a certain quality to it and that it was very much taken in the moment which has an effortless feel to it. We even tried to replicate this shot at a later date but we couldn’t get it to work like it does here. The awkwardness that exudes from her teetering right at the edge of the frame further expands on what I was talking about earlier in the 00:22->00:38. As there is no dialogue I thought it was important to have these little qualities to make it feel like this character exists outside the vacuum that is this music video.
01:25->01:38 The discussion of composition and where a character should be placed can be continued into this section of shots. The first shot in this section is the first time that the character is right in the centre of frame. This could be seen as her becoming ‘aligned’ as she’s finally reached where this whole video as been heading for; this very specific spot in a field in the middle of nowhere to look up at the moon. There is this balance to her being in the centre which is even further made poignant be her not being located there for every shot up until this point. This equilibrium can however be found in such items previously seen in the video in the streetlights, the bike and even the road that she cycled up was centred right in the middle. This can create further texture to the character as it can either be a conscious/unconscious decision made to not be there, or it can mostly likely mean that there isn’t balance within the character and this small act is a cathartic release of some untold disruption.
The shot of the moon was never really planned. At such an extent that you can actually see the moon behind her in this shot, occasionally popping out from behind her beanie (it looks like the sun). Liv had filmed it on the way back home from the very first shoot we had done as we had noticed that the moon was particularly visible on that night. It is, in fact, the only footage that made it to the final piece as most of the initial footage had been redone with the Sony FS7. Even though the quality of the shot could be criticised I would argue the other way and say the shot should be commended as Liv (who was also camera operator) had got it with no tripod. The movement has actually worked in the favour for the rest of the film as it has a very lo-fi feel to it. An aesthetic I will always try and go for as it is something I am very interested in. It’s un-discriminatory as everyone is able to achieve it. I think there is a beauty to accessibility; film should be for the people and not behind a multiple thousand pound pay-wall. Saying that, I do go to university which I will have to pay back the thousands of pounds it costs to go there but that conversation is for a different day.
01:39->01:47 Continuing on about finding the balance and it being represented by being in the centre of the frame, the final shot is of the character walking back down the road she had originally cycled up. This ultimately completes the cycle (please ignore the pun) of the characters goal within the music video. Her ‘day’ is complete and she can go back home and feel much better. Her intentions are a mystery and are there for the audience to interpret in their own way.
Even though they appear relatively quickly right at the end, the credits were also thought through a fair amount. When I was in the process of collecting and making the 21 song shortlist for this project, I had written a physical list of all the songs. I had then shown my tutor the list of songs that I had made (this wasn’t the first handwritten list of songs I had made) we had discussed the visually aesthetic qualities of handwritten stuff especially in the age of digital. At roughly the same time as this I had been helping Liv organise old family home movies and on each one is a handwritten note to title what was on each video tape. I wanted to transfer this idea of handwriting the titles of what was on the tapes into my film so I thought I would make my own font. Unfortunately, my own handwriting could be compared to the results of a polygraph test so in an attempt to have the credits readable I had gotten Liv to send over the font that she had made for a separate project. I really liked the results and thought it was a perfect send off for the final scene.