I'm not going to pretend I followed all of my research in a regimented way, I did go for a post apocalyptic theme (which doesn't really show that well despite the lack of crowds the landscapes are just not desolate enough!) and I did use a lot of experimental lighting but I was not aiming to create a film in which I directed people strictly, I wanted the spontaneity of my friends to add to the flavour of my film so a lot of the time I was trying to light and film simply what was there in front of me. All the flashback stages after they find the skateboard and note are all old footage from the past few years filmed on the 550d and an old camera phone so there was no attention paid to lighting and filming styles here I was just filming life around me like most people do when they first get a camera. I wanted this to be clear in the flashback stage that's why when it came to editing I purposely left in moments that reminded the viewer that there was a man behind the lens, check out these examples:
Me smoking
Quick camera movements following the movement of my eye
Getting the lens close to things
Lens getting hit
Lens getting hit again
I always had an idea of what I wanted from each filming day but I went with the flow and caught what I could as good as I could get it. This may sound like a cop out but this is how I wanted to approach the film from the get go. I thought of doing my film this way after looking through Tulsa (the book I mentioned in previous posts). In this book Clark wants you to see the friends he has back home where he grew up, he wants you to see the depravity of their situation more so though. I wanted people to feel closely connected with my film and I have heard people mention that it made them feel nostalgic when they did not even know any of the people or places in the film, this to me was the ultimate compliment and was basically what I wanted to achieve.
One thing I have wanted to try for a while in regards to experimental film making is a technique called lens whacking. From internet research I could not find any feature films that used this technique although I'm sure there are some. Basically what you do it set your focus to infinity on your lens and open your aperture right up and then disconnect it from your camera and hold the lens just in front of your camera usually using your index finger as a pivot. This creates focus going in and out very quickly or different random areas of your composition being out of focus (similar to a tilt shift lens). This was used in the dream sequence part of the film at the beginning where I am filming my friend's mixer, The out of focus lights allowed for a smooth transition to the fireworks.
There were three grades in my film, the first grade was very washed out, this was for the first segment which was a dream sequence. Following this was the main grade for the film which was quite a realistic look on the world inspired by kitchen sink style dramas, it was quite bleak but I wanted to show the place where I live in a good light so purples, blues and reds were graded to look vibrant. These were some of the main colours chosen in the "present" part of the film. Lastly for the flashback portion of the film I went for an over saturated yellowish look which to me makes footage look old and gives you that nostalgic feeling which was the main goal of that part. When doing the colour grading there was a bit of masking done too, for example in the shot where Jonny is descending down the ladder I loved how he faded out into complete blackness when the grade was finished. But there was bit of light hitting the image on the left and ruining this effect, in final cut pro I used the mask tool to create a shape and add a separate grade to this offending area to make it completely black therefore resulting in a cleaner image:
I could write up a lot more for this final post but I have already exceeded the word limit by a long shot and I don't want to waffle. I hope you enjoyed watching my film as much as I enjoyed making it. It has made me realise that perhaps there is an area within the freelance world I could get into. Here is the final film:
