Here's our first rough cut of our newly written opening for "A Bat In The Belfry".
At this stage the rough cut doesn't have any sound. This is partly because I forgot to export it with sound (!) but also we need to re-record the voiceover at the beginning and all the sound for the new section.
Sunday, 19 December 2010
Reshooting - New Proposal
We have decided to reshoot our film opening, completely changing the second half of it. For our new film opening we are going to go from the first dream sequence into another dream sequence before the character wakes up at the end. This dream within a dream idea was influenced by Christopher Nolan's sci-fi/action/thriller Inception.
Our basic idea for our film opening now is:
-"Vertigo Cinema" title card
- "Simplaz" title card
- Same opening as before, the long POV shot across the white room, intercut with images of Grace dying
- "A BAT IN THE BELFRY" title card.
- Out of focus shot of spilled wine glass (though not recognisable at first, mainly would show red which signifies the blood of previous scene) slowly focuses in.
- Shot of Paul waking up in dark room. The room is cluttered and strange in appearance, with objects positioned very strangely - most prominently a sofa on it's side.
- Paul walks across to the mirror. Quick flicker of Grace looking back at him. He notices Grace laying/standing on the sofa behind him.
- He walks over grabs her hand, and kneels down. Almost proposal type of position.
- Another Grace walks through the door. Paul is confused by what he sees - he tries to shake it all off as if it is a bad memory.
- He looks at the window wishing for escape. Again a quick flicker of Grace in his reflection.
- Other Grace walks across the room towards him.
- He turns around and a shot reverse shot sequence begins. The two have a conversation with echo effects, though their mouths never move.
- This is intercut with all the sections above playing in reverse back to when his lying down.
- It is also intercut with slow motion shots of the aforementioned wine glass falling down to the floor.
- Final shots are the wine glass smashing, and returning to the shot mentioned earlier. And finally extreme close up of Paul's eye opening.
The overall plot of the film is the same as the previous version, though we decided to completely change the second section as it looked the interest and creativity shown by the first one. The impossibilties for creativity when working around dreams is endless, so we felt another dream sequence that contrasted the first one would be very interesting. It meant we could work in the same artistic manner as we did on the first dream sequence, and help further create confusion in amongst the viewers.
As the film is the same genre as previously, the films watched as research is the same. But we also want to take influence from French New Wave films and Surrealist films such as Un Chien Andalou (An Andalucian Dog) by Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel. French New Wave also influenced the quick montages in Darren Aronofsky's Requiem For A Dream, so it should go hand in hand with our film.
For the revised storyboard click here.
Our basic idea for our film opening now is:
-"Vertigo Cinema" title card
- "Simplaz" title card
- Same opening as before, the long POV shot across the white room, intercut with images of Grace dying
- "A BAT IN THE BELFRY" title card.
- Out of focus shot of spilled wine glass (though not recognisable at first, mainly would show red which signifies the blood of previous scene) slowly focuses in.
- Shot of Paul waking up in dark room. The room is cluttered and strange in appearance, with objects positioned very strangely - most prominently a sofa on it's side.
- Paul walks across to the mirror. Quick flicker of Grace looking back at him. He notices Grace laying/standing on the sofa behind him.
- He walks over grabs her hand, and kneels down. Almost proposal type of position.
- Another Grace walks through the door. Paul is confused by what he sees - he tries to shake it all off as if it is a bad memory.
- He looks at the window wishing for escape. Again a quick flicker of Grace in his reflection.
- Other Grace walks across the room towards him.
- He turns around and a shot reverse shot sequence begins. The two have a conversation with echo effects, though their mouths never move.
- This is intercut with all the sections above playing in reverse back to when his lying down.
- It is also intercut with slow motion shots of the aforementioned wine glass falling down to the floor.
- Final shots are the wine glass smashing, and returning to the shot mentioned earlier. And finally extreme close up of Paul's eye opening.
The overall plot of the film is the same as the previous version, though we decided to completely change the second section as it looked the interest and creativity shown by the first one. The impossibilties for creativity when working around dreams is endless, so we felt another dream sequence that contrasted the first one would be very interesting. It meant we could work in the same artistic manner as we did on the first dream sequence, and help further create confusion in amongst the viewers.
As the film is the same genre as previously, the films watched as research is the same. But we also want to take influence from French New Wave films and Surrealist films such as Un Chien Andalou (An Andalucian Dog) by Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel. French New Wave also influenced the quick montages in Darren Aronofsky's Requiem For A Dream, so it should go hand in hand with our film.
For the revised storyboard click here.
Second Rough Cut
After cutting this edition of the opening now with the second scene we noted down all the changes we intend to make for the next cut. We know:
- We want to fade the soundtrack in on the distribution logo so it's not so abrupt coming in
- Cut the plain text credits out, and put the titles over the opening scene
- Cut down the bedroom scene as we are struggling to fit the 2minute 30 mark.
- Speed up match on action of picking up dressing gown as it looks strange at the moment
- Include a clip of george in awkward silence to prolong it
- Maybe change the editing?
- Re-record voiceover, as this version was simply for the original rough cut.
We discussed these ideas with the audience, and they mostly agreed as well as adding:
- Considering lighting over Grace's (Laura's) shots - This was intentional though, signifies she is in the dark over Paul (George)'s life.
- When Paul wakes up, his hair style is still perfectly done. This created a slight lack of verisimilitude, but as we hadn't picked up on this until this late, reshooting wasn't really a possible option unfortuanately.
And we also recieved our first comment on Youtube...
FIRST ROUGH CUT AND AUDIENCE FEEDBACK
As this cut was by no means close to what our final edition will look like, we were aware that a lot was still to be editied and altered. We did however want audience feedback on this opening scene. From the session we found:
- The main thing for the opening was really anchoring this hallucination state of mind. Consider even more strange colour effects.
-Remove plain text titles as they take up needless time.
-Re-record voiceover
-Add second scene after "Paul" has woken from vision.
PRODUCTION SCHEDULE
This was our original production schedule with myself and Joel planning to take on most of the cinematography as Laura was actually acting in the film, but in the end especially in the bedroom scene for example she did do the filming, before we all assisted in creating the setup in the kitchen. As you can see our plan was very detailed and this made the filming process a lot easier.
Intertextual References
Our film makes use of a large amount of references to previous, same genre films. This is something we have found this genre, as well as the horror genre does repeatedly.
Character Names
Paul Bateson - The name Paul derives from victim, Paul Allen in the film American Psycho. "Bateson" comes as a combination of the American Psycho central character Patrick Bateman as well as the iconic villain from Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho"; Norman Bates. Bateson is just a variation on both names. Strangely when we googled the name Paul Bateson we found that the first search result was for a homosexual serial killer of the same name.
Grace - As well as having it's religious connotations, Grace Kelly played the central woman role in three of Hitchcock's films ("To Catch A Thief", "Dial M For Murder" and "Rear Window").
As our character took influence from his films conventions, we felt this would be a perfect name for our character.
Mise en Scene
White clothes - This influence came from Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange".
Books - In the kitchen and bedroom scenes, books of same genre feature films "The Shining" and "Silence of the Lambs" can be seen.
Script
"Hey Paul..." is a direct reference to the moment just before Paul Allen's death in American Psycho.
Narrative
The writer that flips - Is a narrative seen in both "The Shining" and "The Secret Window".
Two identical girls - Less of a direct reference but we have a scene with two identical girls in the shot, something also seen in The Shining, although they are used slightly differently.
Soundtrack
The soundtrack for the second section features two notes first when there are two identical women, and secondly when she walks across the room. These two soundclips are taken from iMovie, but we also found they are used in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.
Editing
The very quick intercutting from a shot of someone alive, to seeing them dead on the floor is a technique again seen in The Shining. We felt this idea really suited our style of film, and helps add to the confusion of the piece. So this iconic piece of editing was incorporated throughout our work, most prominently at the very start.
Character Names
Paul Bateson - The name Paul derives from victim, Paul Allen in the film American Psycho. "Bateson" comes as a combination of the American Psycho central character Patrick Bateman as well as the iconic villain from Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho"; Norman Bates. Bateson is just a variation on both names. Strangely when we googled the name Paul Bateson we found that the first search result was for a homosexual serial killer of the same name.
Grace - As well as having it's religious connotations, Grace Kelly played the central woman role in three of Hitchcock's films ("To Catch A Thief", "Dial M For Murder" and "Rear Window").
Mise en Scene
White clothes - This influence came from Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange".
Books - In the kitchen and bedroom scenes, books of same genre feature films "The Shining" and "Silence of the Lambs" can be seen.
Script
"Hey Paul..." is a direct reference to the moment just before Paul Allen's death in American Psycho.
The writer that flips - Is a narrative seen in both "The Shining" and "The Secret Window".
Two identical girls - Less of a direct reference but we have a scene with two identical girls in the shot, something also seen in The Shining, although they are used slightly differently.
Soundtrack
The soundtrack for the second section features two notes first when there are two identical women, and secondly when she walks across the room. These two soundclips are taken from iMovie, but we also found they are used in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.
Editing
The very quick intercutting from a shot of someone alive, to seeing them dead on the floor is a technique again seen in The Shining. We felt this idea really suited our style of film, and helps add to the confusion of the piece. So this iconic piece of editing was incorporated throughout our work, most prominently at the very start.
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