Kalila Snow Jan: Task 3 Cinema "For Peace, Paradox."

Final Work

For Peace, Paradox.

(short film)

It is a short film I have been working on this couple of months;

If you agree that everyone is the key of world peace, and want to support peace with us.

find us on Facebook: facebook.com/pages/WORLD-WAR-3/384921301640213

I have combined the big campaign project from module graphic design 2 part 2 together with this assignment; I had an idea of making a campaign video/short film to support our campaign "World War 3?"

The ideal of this film is to make people support peace in the way of understanding peace well. I have received some questions about this video while sharing to my friends.

"SO in your movie, peace is something negative?

I mean everyone who is put into the folder piece is killed. right?"

- In my movie, peace isn't something positive or negative, it is a thing that people need to understand; the entire film seems very negative, but it has a paradox logic into it, it's true that death leads to peace, but death is not the only path to find peace. Understanding it is the way to find peace.

Process

To begin with shooting, a story must be important! So I began with sketching out story boards.

Simple sketch of the story board on my sketch book

Storyboard page 1

After I found the ideas of the story and constructed them into a story board in A4 form, so the storyboard is concise and clear.

In storyboard page 1, there are 2 scenes involved.

Scene 1: A terrible incident had happened, to indicate that incident, I had a final solution of using the siren sound of ambulance in a scene of fast speeded car or its movement; although the very initial idea of the first scene was the shot of the main character found dead which is way too direct to indicate that. To start with the end of the story gives audience curiosity to want to keep watching the entire film.

Scene 2: The main character reads news about war and peace, that shows how much this character cares about topic "peace" In this scene, I chose to use jump cut to set the main character's morning actions in sequence, the jump shots include different camera shots and angles in eace frame, there is close-up, wide shot, cut-away shot, etc.

Close-up shot in scene 2

Wide shot in in scene 2

Point of view shot in scene 2

In this point of view, it is the point of view of the main character reading news on his laptop, to get the shot of the content in the screen, I had recorded my screen using quicktime player.

Story board page 2

When the main character was reading news, he had received a message from his friend, "Can we party at your place tonight?" he replies"OK" as a response. The next shot is the main character grabbing his camera and going out of his house for a walk.

In scene 3, originally I drew the scene that's in a shop, the main character buys magazines about world war, but I have added another scene into it which I haven't added on the story board, this new scene involves our campaign project. In this scene, it has included different shots as well.

Close-up shot in scene 3

Wide shot/long shot in scene 3

In scene 4, the main character comes back home and sits back to his laptop and started working till late and dark outside, in the shot of him working in front of his laptop, we have used time lapse technique to show this shot. Jump cut is also involved in this scene to show the main character's actions in sequence.

In scene 5, it's getting dark, his friends came for the party as mentioned in scene 2. In this scene, the background music starts kicking in which I had picked from the musician Zeds Dead's music work called "Rude Boy" (none offence of copyrights)

Storyboard page 3

A party has started, in the party, things like fighting, girl friend yelling at the main character had happened, and things like painting on the magazines and the flyers he had bought in the shop some funny stuff also had happened, these make the main character pissed off and hate his friends and girl friend for being not peaceful and respectful for peace. The editing of this scene is the hardest, each shot had followed the beat of the music, effected by the music as well.

In scene 6, he started being mad, and created a folder named "for peace" on his desktop, and dragged his girl friend's picture into the folder, afterwards he started feeling dizzy and fell asleep.

Storyboard page 4

In scene 7, the character wakes up in dizziness the next day, and did the same routine in the morning. surprisingly, he found his girl friend dead in the news page, and received another message from his friend: "we heard it, rest in PEACE" the word "peace" had leaded him to the folder he had created the night before, he opens the folder and found his girl friend's picture became black and white with a red cross on the surface. Did he kill his girl friend?

storyboard page 5

When he found out his girlfriend has died, he wants to delete the folder he had created, but the memory of what happened in the party won't let him, and leaded him to drag other friends of his into the folder, he had fell asleep again…

Falling asleep.

In this frame, it is a shot of the a close-up the subject's face, it has been recorded by the subject with a camera in his hands and tracked all the way to when her falls asleep. This frame has been recorded several times, and in the editing, they had been overlaid by 3 frames together and came out with this effect.

In scene 8, the next morning when alarm starts kicking in, empty bathroom, empty kitchen, and empty laptop with no one sits in front of it, he did not wake up.

Storyboard page 6

Later in the evening

In scene 9, the main character wakes up in misery, and had found more of his friends dead on the news, to feel relief, he grabbed cigarettes and went to the balcony for a smoke, while smoking, he heard fighting noises from the neighbours, and that made him pissed off again, grabbed his camera and going out wanting to take pictures of those people who are fighting, and kill them in the folder. but by the moment when he opens the door, something had changed inside him, he realised that he can't kill everyone to find peace. He sat back to his laptop, opened the Photo Booth and took a picture of himself, and dragged his own picture in to the folder…

POV shot in scene 9

Wide shot in scene 9

In this end of the film, I had claimed different informations of the entire film. Such as:

Actors who had participated in this film

Music that I had chosen to use into the film

(to not offence others copyrights)

Which camera had been used to shoot this film

(the technical consideration)

In this film, there are moments when the subject receives messages on his phone, I had chosen to show the content of the message by using WS with text on the frames.

Like this, the content of the messages are more concise and clear to read than a cut-away shot of the phone.

This entire film has been edited by Final Cut Pro Application. Which is my first time experience in this app. in the process of editing, I have met different problems of editing and how to do, which had been resolved by the tutorials on youtube and other sources.

It has been a fun and fresh experience working with Final Cut Pro; and in the meantime had learned many techniques of editing, such as the body language of human beings, the sound and music, etc.