Gestalt - Blog.

Monday
 We watched the short Nocturne this morning, and wrote a few notes about the Mise-en-scene. We then looked at a remake of the poem Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll, author of "Alice in wonderland". After taking in some other forms of inspiration, we were given our brief.
  We have to create a day to night sequence but the catch is that we have to film the piece in the day and use after effects to create the look of night. We also have to create the feeling of a surreal dream world, and take our cameras and equipment to Mount Edgecumbe tomorrow to film on location.
  As a group, Tash, Rob M, Rob S, Emily, Lucy and I, started to plan our idea, we want to recreate Lewis Carroll's Alice in wonderland, by using a real life rabbit, and put an Audrey Hepburn figure in the place of Alice.
We created a shot list for the dream sequence;

• Shot from behind bush shows girl lying on the floor
• Overhead shot slowly pans over the top of her
• Up shot of Bunny leaning over camera
• Down shot of girl opening her eyes and jumping up in surprise
• Up shot of Bunny looking surprised and running away
• Medium height shot of girl chasing after Bunny
• Low close up of Bunny feet running across bridge, girls soon follow
• Extreme long shot of bunny running behind a tree and disappearing, Girl follows and cant find Bunny, she looks confused.
• Long slow zoom out of animation down a pathway with girl floating down on tray of hands.
• Long slow zoom in of bunny hopping across pathway, girl is multiplied
• End.

Tuesday
We got to the ferry at about half ten, and arrived at Mount Edgecumbe at 10.50, we got our equipment together and set off look for a location. Because we hadn't been to this place before, it was really exciting to find new places to film. When we chose a spot, we set up the cameras and got to work filming, adding final touches to the costumes and so on, this part of filming took about an hour.
  We then went off in search of a lost woodland type place, and quickly found one at the back of our first location. we filmed the next part of the piece, where the girl meets the bunny, and starts to chase it.
  We then stopped for lunch, looked through the footage and decided that we had enough to work with and agreed that we were all happy with the outcome of the day.
 We headed back to college and put all the footage on a computer.

Thursday
We started to edit today, and got some critiques finished on our influences. I looked at Jan Svankmajer, as his versions of Alice in wonderland, and also looked at some other surrealist films like Insidious and Tim Burton's Alice in wonderland.


Monday
Today we were given the second half of our brief, we had to create an everyday scene, including coloured dots that lead up to the dreamland sequence we shot early last week. We started to talk about ideas, and looked at a "Night of the living dead" because part of our brief was that our scene, had to follow the pace of the scene where a girl is searching for something. We decided that we wanted to take directed inspiration from "Night of the living dead" and opted for a house to be our location. We thought about how we could use the stairs and rooms to create a panicked pace, and eventually came up with our shot list:

• Extreme close up of flowers and grass
• Medium low shot of large house, person walks past house, everything is quiet
• Darkness
• Low shot, door opens and camera watched girl run from back of the house, onto the staircase
• Extreme close up of hand running along banister
• Extreme close up of feet running up the stairs
• Low shot of feet turning into a room
• Medium height shot of Girl moving around in the room, searching for something - tracking shot
• Camera follows girls eye line as she spots something on the bed
• The camera then falls as the girl does, onto the bed.
• Girl is still, camera is close up on her face.
• Fade to black

We then had to think about how to incorporate coloured dots into the piece, and after ideas such as having over actors sat around the house with dots on their faces, we decided to create a countdown. In every shot, there would be a coloured dot, and as the girl got closer to the bed, the numbers would do down, until eventually the girl spots number 1 lying on the bed. This is what scares her.

Tuesday
Today we continued to edit the dreamland sequence, and Rob M incorporated some animation. We had to add in some extra parts to make the film seem even more surreal, so we pulled the green screen out, I took out some old books from the library whilst Tash got a tripod from the ERC and we started filming. We decided that we wanted the books to look like they were floating over holes, so we sat down holding out a blanket, and let the books fall. However when it came to editing, the books didn't quite look right and so Rob S came up with the idea of tying them to a stick so they floated. The effect was really good because he used invisible string. Tash then laid on the floor and rob filmed her arms and legs, to add into the holes that the girl is walking past. There was a few problems with lighting, but eventually they were sorted.

Thursday
After a test in the morning, we gathered our equipment up and set off to my house to start filming, we decided to put the dots in every shot, so Rob started to draw a countdown on them. We then started filming with a Zoom mic on top of the camera to catch ambiance sound. It took a while to film because we got around three or four takes for each shot, but in the end this allowed us to have more choice of what to put in. After we put the two parts together, and combined the real life with the surreal, I thought the video looked really good.