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.
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.
