Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Reality of Dream (Process Book)



Video Production Process
 
Title:                   Reality of Dream
Duration:                   5 min 50 sec
Genre:               Surrealism
Synopsis:
          As the story should relate to a box, a piece of cloth and a random object, my concept for this task is to continue my last semester’s work, a campaign that narrates the humanity to money through surrealist style of photographs; I used a pink colored and heart shaped model as the final object in the end of the film which gives a contrast to the beginning of the film which are 3 pills and also narrates the humanity to drugs. The box connects the entire story and it’s the changing point of the entire story. I used a piece of cloth to cover the 3 pills to give the box more myths and the audience would wonder what’s really inside the box.
 
Film Theory:
          What is the real reality of humanity? Is it a nightmare or a colorful dream? It’s up to you.
         The entire film was shot in black and white, but the ending was shot in color, which converts the entire story from dream into reality, and I picked the sound of night as the background music with frames in daylight in the last scene to make the audience wonder if this colorful presence is really the reality? Or it’s just another sweet colorful dream? I created these “mental murder” characters in this film and they are the most surrealist part of the film; their head are covered by wraps that does not make humans breath, and they all dress in formal into a business style that the humans who desire and only think about money are under a lot of pressure to live and breathe.
         A box of money knocks to visit and ends with a scream sound gives questions “is money something scary?” Well, people, you should think about this question; everybody will have different answers.
 
Process and Idea Development:
          I got most of the ideas by listening to these 2 tracks in the video, 1, Arrival of the Birds – The Cinematic Orchestra. 2, Rutten – Skream. Music inspires me a lot. Sometime the images come to my mind when I listen to music with my eyes closed, while I was listening to Arrival of the Birds, this waking up in the morning emotion came up to my mind and that’s how I had this “dream to reality” idea in the story line. While I was listening to Rutten, the heavy base gave me idea of a slide show/stop motion to follow the beat and the base of this track, so I combined the photos I took for “Money Why?” campaign that I worked on last semester into a stop motion/slide show, and there’s this sound of a flute gave me a vision of forest, and running in the forest.
           When I just got the task briefing, I came up with an idea that the video will be shot in first person’s view. A thrilling one minute video came up. The story is the person climbs the stairs to an adventure.
   
This is a brief storyboard of my first idea. There are not many frames cause the idea of first person’s view. The first idea was very simple and also the story line; a person starts walking in a really drak building and he keeps climbing up to see what is this place, on the first level, he finds a rock written “stay away” on its surface, he picked the rock up and kept walking up, he takes a piece of cloth out of pocket and wipes his sweat off and kept walking up, suddenly, a rumble came from upstairs, the next thing he sees is a box on a skateboard sliding over to him, and there was no one around him, he picks the box and opens it, money appears, ends with a scream.
           To help myself learn better, I chose not to go with this idea, instead, I chose to develop more to this video project. So I used some items from the first concept, such as the sliding skateboard with a box on it, and money in the box ends up with a scream in the final video.
            As I was saying, music inspires me. I had this new concept between “dream” and “reality” then I thought of continuing working on the campaign.
I did not start with drawing a story board for this new concept, I started doing some research on different camera shots, angles and cinematography, to understand more about filming. Then I thought of using my photography skill to create a story board, so I took those pictures for the storyboard below.                                                                        
                 


This is a brief storyboard of my first idea. There are not many frames cause the idea of first person’s view. The first idea was very simple and also the story line; a person starts walking in a really drak building and he keeps climbing up to see what is this place, on the first level, he finds a rock written “stay away” on its surface, he picked the rock up and kept walking up, he takes a piece of cloth out of pocket and wipes his sweat off and kept walking up, suddenly, a rumble came from upstairs, the next thing he sees is a box on a skateboard sliding over to him, and there was no one around him, he picks the box and opens it, money appears, ends with a scream.
           To help myself learn better, I chose not to go with this idea, instead, I chose to develop more to this video project. So I used some items from the first concept, such as the sliding skateboard with a box on it, and money in the box ends up with a scream in the final video.
            As I was saying, music inspires me. I had this new concept between “dream” and “reality” then I thought of continuing working on the campaign.
 I did not start with drawing a story board for this new concept, I started doing some research on different camera shots, angles and cinematography, to understand more about filming. Then I thought of using my photography skill to create a story board, so I took those pictures for the storyboard below.  




The character of the film is very important, a skinny actress could have follow the theme of the film. So I decided changing an actress. But getting appointment with new actress to shoot photographs for the entire story board is pretty hard, because the actress has not much spare time, so I took part of photographs for the story board and some parts are cut-screen of the video. For planning the entire film I chose to write each shot in text, such as the motion and the duration in each frames that’s in my head. Here ‘s some evidence of this video planning in text. 






In the end when I start shooting the clips, I go through these context and set up the camera and derict.
             I also did a lot of experiment on the studio scene, I wanted to see how it looks like in the frame with an idea of projecting the slide show I made. So I took these photographs as an experiment.


I also considered what colored cloths should these “mental murder” characters wear to apear the slide show better, I chose black, cause it give the frame a contrast.
Behind the Scene:



Film Narrative:
        A girl wakes up in the morning full of sorrow, depression and emptiness. She’s surrounded by needles, coke and cigarettes. She found a box next to her bed, and there are 3 pills inside, she fights really hard deep inside to decide whether taking them or not. Finally she took them, her sorrow has gone, and the happiness from the drug effect had kicked in.
        She goes to the living room, lies on the hammock and starts listening to music, then falls into a nightmare, bunch of crazy murderers chasing after her to kill her in the woods. She keeps running away.
         While she’s running away, someone knocks on the door, she wakes up in wonder, opens the door, no one is outside, when she just closed the door and walks back to where she was, the door knocks again, with all her guts, she decided to open the door see who is really knocking, darkness, still no one, but the same box on a skateboard that she sees in the morning slides to her, she opens the box, she sees money and hears a scream.
          She wakes up again in her bed, full of sunlight and surrounded by candies. The same box that appeared in her dream is next to her. She took the box, and opens it, it is love.

Problems faced:
         The actors were hard to find, and it was pretty hard to make an appointment with all the actors together. And the background sound record such as screaming and knocking, I used my laptop to record, if I could use college sound recording equipment it would be better sound effect in the video.

Conclusion:
         I’ve learned a lot during this project, such as camera angles and shots, also had a lot of fun during the video shooting in the woods and any other scenes in the film. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in the process, but I’ve learned a lot from the mistakes. And I personally really enjoy the final work that I’ve done.
















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