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When I first set out to make Encroachment I had 2 core ideas I wanted to express. The 1st was to portray mankind’s ever increasing urban sprawl and the 2nd was comparing natural environments with manmade architecture. Now that the film is finished and has been screened to my peers I feel I managed to adequately express these 2 points but am also a bit disappointed with the end result. Before I explain further why I feel this is the case, I would like to break Encroachment down into the 5 individual scenes, each with their own stylistic choices, that make up the structure of the film and look at them individually.
1. NATURAL HABITATS This is the one scene in Encroachment that I would change very little about and feel that I managed to express almost exactly what I wanted to through a combination of concept, imagery and film making technique. I filmed the footage used in this scene in a soft focus to make it appear more natural and slightly dream like, untouched nature almost too bright and active to be true. Combined with the slight overexposure this rests the focal point of the footage on the various colours of nature in autumn, making them pop out of the screen quite nicely. The slow fades that this scene is edited with, lasting a second and a half each, show the connection between the individual ecosystems of the sky, sea and woodland and also lend them an ancient and earned feel. The flute music playing under the scene lends a gentle, un-hurried melody that matches the overall leisurely pace and vibe of the scene. All but one shot is static emphasizing the ripple of the waves and the gentle, natural breeze that runs through the environment. If I have any complaint here, it’s that I would have liked to included more footage of the sea. I did film more footage of Weston Super Mares coastline but was unable to match it with the footage of the cloud in the sky and the waves lapping against the irregular shaped rock as my framing of the shots was rushed and not very accurate. If I had included it, it would have broken the flow of where the eye is drawn to from shot to shot and the overall pace of the beginning of the film and really stood out in a negative way. In future I will need to think a bit harder about the way the shots will fit together in the editing process, one of the disadvantages of not having a storyboard or shot list to refer to. Overall, this scene is the strongest part of Encroachment and makes for a very strong opening. 2. MANKIND’S ENCROACHMENT OVER NATURE The contrast the sharp, grainy, black and white footage of the construction site creates with the softer, brighter natural footage is very stark and highlights the juxtaposition between the two, albeit in a not very subtle way. This is maybe a case of style over substance a little bit as the technique used to create the meaning stands out a bit too much on it’s own, particularly as the colour of the natural footage is not consistent in some shots as it was filmed over the course of a number of different days in different weather conditions. I should have spent a bit more time colour matching this footage, a process I’m not that familiar with and find is very easy to over do if great care is not taken. Colour matching and correcting is something I need a lot more practice and experimentation with to unlock the full potential of tone and atmosphere that it can create. Some of the image associations are not quiet where they need to be. The tree and the crane is jarring in a way I hadn’t intended, mostly for the reason outlined above but also because there is several points in the horizon that have to match precisely for the images to match 100 percent. Also I could never find a suitable natural image to put up against the wide shot of the skeletal building foundations so had to fall back on yet another image of a tree that draws the eye to the centre of the image where it should be. I must confess to not using a tripod to capture 95 percent of the footage in Encroachment, as my main form of transport when filming was a push bike. As a result the 3 shots that feature pans, 2 of them in this scene, are not as smooth as they could have been. If I have learnt one thing from making Encroachment it’s always to take a tripod with me when I film no matter how cumbersome it might be. I could have saved hours of time stabilizing the footage in Final Cut Pro during the editing, more time I could have spent on colour correcting the film. I think the way this scene is edited is very effective, with the building site footage slowly overcoming the natural footage from the centre outwards. This is a visual representation of the dictionary definition of the word encroachment as a gradual advance and the very core of the central idea behind the documentary, an idea that also extended to the sound design. The JK Flesh music that I picked for this scene sounds more like machinery than music and matching the overtaking artificial footage as it grows in volume was the only logical way it could have been included. It creates a cold, creeping, menacing atmosphere that will come into fruition in the next scene and reminds the viewer of the machinery that creates these building sites. 3. INDUSTRY All the images in this scene are still, with no camera movement and could almost be photographs. I felt this lack of movement was important to convey a sense of the rigid, logical state of mind that the rise of industry creates in humans and the solid, static nature of architectural construction. Looking over this scene now, the transition from the almost fully built house to the populated high rise could have been more fleshed out visually but I didn’t have anymore appropriate footage to include. This is one of the main problems that needs to be overcome when going out to film without a shot list or storyboards and only being prepared by having an idea in your head of textures, shapes and images that need to be captured to tell a coherent story. I found this problem very hard to overcome as my background is in narrative film making where I have always had a script, shot list and photo boards to work from. I should not have underestimated how thorough planning can lead to a smoother day of shooting without wasting any time outside of the above stated 3 methods. The music in this scene really comes into it’s own here, creating a jarring, grating contrast with the natural habitats and organic flute of the opening scene. It’s overpowering and brutal and a good reflection of mankind’s disregard for natural habitats in it’s journey to expand and survive. 4. WASTE The desaturated colour of the images in this scene lends it a more gritty and realistic approach than the previous scene that takes away none of the implied seriousness of the problem waste creates. I used slow fades of 6 seconds long for each cut to show that it doesn’t take much time for waste to pile up. This is quite subtle and effective without drawing attention to itself as a stylistic choice. The footage of the crane and junkyard is very shaky, even after excessive amounts of stabilization have been applied in the editing process. Unfortunately this process also cropped the image slightly, taking away some of the sharpness of the image and clarity of the implied seriousness of the ever growing problem that the image represents. This is another negative impact of not using a tripod while filming and over overestimating my chosen editing softwares ability to fix it in post. I could have maybe found a few more images to add in between the small pile of beer cans and the large pile of scrap metal to make the visual build up of waste a bit more smoother. There was also a few other places where I could have filmed more waste that I didn’t have the time to film. The images cut very well to the rigid, mechanistic beat of the music reflecting the steady, constant problem that the build up of waste from industry creates and the klanging of the metallic junkyard yard percussion echoing the machinery that was once used to create these now used up products. I think all the individual elements mesh together well in this scene to make a solid statement. To my mind it’s the 2nd most successful scene in Encroachment. 5. MOTHER NATURE RECLAIMS WHAT IS RIGHTFULLY HERS This is the scene that I am the most disappointed with and also the scene that I planned the least for beforehand. There was at least 2 more locations I wanted to visit to film more footage of Mother Nature reclaiming disused architectural sites. With 2 more projects to work on and deadlines looming, I simply ran out of time to make the long journeys that would have been required to reach these locations. The 2nd most important lesson I have learned while working on Encroachment, after always taking a tripod with me, is that good management of time is essential to producing a high quality end product. Next time I will make sure that I have at least a few days spare for pick ups. The images in this scene are a little shaky again but I think that matches the theme of nature slowly returning to what mankind has abandoned so opted to not stabilize them any more. The colour has a slight grey tinge to it that suggests a merge of nature and mankind that just happened to be a product of shooting on an overcast day. The music and sound works well, adding some semblance of nature returning with the flute music from the opening scene reprising. After the end credits the screen fades to white then the opening shot of the clouds and sky returns suggesting that the cycle of nature has come full circle.
This is a mood video/teaser trailer that I created to pitch the idea for my documentary.
This is a mood board that I created to show the juxtaposition of colour palettes and textures that I will use for Encroachment.
This is a treatment I created to pitch my idea for Encroachment. TITLE: Encroachment
FORMAT: Nonverbal poetic documentary DURATION: 3-5 minutes LOGLINE: Mankind’s encroachment over Mother Nature’s habitat through architecture. TREATMENT: Encroachment is a film about Mankind’s steady intrusion on Mother Nature’s land, violating the once untouched, life giving environment’s of nature through it’s growing need to build homes for the human population. With people comes the need to manufacture in order to survive and grow, Industry that in turn creates a steady flow of waste that builds up. Once mankind moves on to claim new areas of the natural environment as it’s own, it leaves in it’s wake outdated architecture that can no longer fulfil it’s purpose. Mother Nature will always reclaim what is rightfully hers and nature will return to these abandoned areas, gradually starting the cycle of life once more. CHARACTERS: Mother Nature’s natural environment’s and Mankind’s functional architecture. STYLE: Encroachment will explore the textures of irregular natural formations and the angular structure of architecture in a juxtapositional manner. The natural habitats will be filmed in soft focus and vibrant and warm in palette. Mankind’s architecture will be cold and logical in grainy, artificial black and white. STRUCTURE: Mother Natures habitats will be cut with cross dissolves. Mankind’s architecture will be sharply intercut within the centre of the natural habitats, ramping up in pace until the architecture overcomes the natural habitats. SOUND: The natural habitats will be accompanied by smooth, organic flute music and field recordings of nature such as bird song. The architecture will be accompanied by the mechanised grind and electronic noise of industrial/power electronics music and harsh field recordings of building construction and machinery. EQUIPMENT: The film will be shot on digital video with a Cannon C100 utilising a 24-105mm lens and a 50mm lens. This London based music group rank among the early innovators of the 80s Industrial music scene, alongside other notable groups such as Throbbing Gristle and SPK. When the members of Test Dept initially formed the group they all found themselves out of work under Margaret Thatcher’s government. With no money to spend on conventional instruments they instead crafted a highly rhythmic sound using found objects, scrap metal and bits of old industrial machinery primary among them. The Fall From Light would be ideal to accompany the waste footage. The steady, rigid junkyard percussion representing the steady process of waste building up. In my own way, like Max and his numbers, I too am looking for order and harmony within the chaos of man made and natural forces. Encroachment is my way of searching for that order within texture and space, landscape and architecture. I hope my own search is fruitful and that, in the end, I find some harmony within the images and not spiral down in the same way that Max did. Darren Aronofsky’s debut feature film is shot entirely in several different gradients of black and white. From the more traditional grey scale to scenes where there are virtually no midtones and the highlights are very blown out, almost to the point were no detail is visible within the white. This creates a very stark contrast with the black parts of the image and parallels the yin and yang of order and chaos, genius and madness that the films main theme revolves around. Blowing the highlights out to the extent used in Pi might be a bit extreme when it comes to employing a similar technique to the black and white footage I want to shoot for Encroachment. However, it has made me think that as the artificial footage ramps up in pace I could parallel the gradual advance of the editing by making the black and white become more and more dark as the artificial structures begin to take over the natural landscape. This 2006 documentary follows photographer Edward Burtynsky around china, as he documents the country’s various sites of growing industry and the effects they have on the enviroment. From a kilometer wide factory floor, through the building of the worlds largest dam and sprawling coal fields as far as the eye can see, the film presents these devastating images to the viewer and leaves it up to us to make our own judgement. The choice the film makers made to not add narration to the film is very effective and hammers home the fact that there are no easy answers to the questions the film brings to the mind. In fact, there are no answers, just demand in this current age of ever growing population coupled with the need for mass manufactured products and their consumption. Particularly impactful to me was the presentation of Burtynsky’s work. Starting on a still of one of the photos with a particular area or one or two people in close up then pulling back to reveal the initial image as just a small fraction of the photo taken. This allowed the viewer to take in the full scale of the images taken with his camera. This editing style was used frequently yet never lessened the impact of the images presented and added to the dizzying scale of the landscapes presented. This documentary made me feel a strange mixture of uneasiness and awe. It made me uncomfortable because it sickened me to see such huge destruction of nature by the hands of human industry but, at the same time, the films images also carry a sense of devastated beauty and awe at the sheer scale of human endeavor they represent. I’m in awe of Burtynsky and the makers of this film for being able to capture so vividly the dual nature of the subject matter. The Ukrainian town of Pripyat, abandoned after an explosion crippled the nearby nuclear power plant at Chernobyl, is to me the perfect example of mankind forever changing the face of the planet with it’s need to keep up with the demands of population and industry. It deeply saddens me to think that after the human race is gone, places such as Pripyat will remain among the few reminders of our existence. The Zone of Alienation around the power plant, stretching for over 30 kilometers, contains areas were radiation levels are deadly to humans. Yet, in the 30 years that mankind has been away from Pripyat, nature has reclaimed the city as her own. Certain breeds of animal appear to be flourishing within the confines of Pripyat, despite high levels of radiation. Trees and other forms of flora are now growingamong the concrete and brick of mankind’s decaying architecture. The Zone remains a powerful reminder to me of how we are only jeopardizing our ability to inhabit this planet. Mother Nature will always find a way and will reclaim what was once hers. I think this is the most logical and natural way that balance can be maintained between mankind and nature and would like to hint towards this for the ending of Encroachment. I will do this by including images of decrepit manmade landscapes and architecture that are now overgrown by nature. I really like this track by Justin K. Broadrick’s ambient project Final. It’s very poignant and has a very faded, ghostly sound to it that is very haunting and eerie. I could use a similar style of sound in Encroachment, underneath the architectural, footage to give a sense of natures absence. A mourning, ghostly echo of the natural landscape that has been lost to mankind’s progress. I really like the way this is edited with slow fades. It gives both the images of nature, the furn trees and waterfall and the machinery, cutting out saw mill blades, such an ancient almost mythical feeling. The imagery is also slightly soft, evoking a subtle dream like feeling. I will experiment with a similar editing style with the opening of Encroachment to suggest that Mother Nature has earned her right of place on the planet through many eons. The opening images will be of clouds in a blue sky then images of the sea and coastline. Green trees and leafs will follow. Suddenly, a black and white image of a tower block will intrude for a second. As the woodland displays it’s many bright colours, more black and white images of building sites and scrap metal yards gradually invade the natural tones of nature until only the artificial structures remain. The black and white imagery ramps up in pace showing half built houses industrial estates, housing estates and eventually an entire town. Going back to the Oxford Dictionary definition of Encroachment as ‘a gradual advance beyond usual or acceptable limits’ I started to think about how this definition could help influence the editing. I could show this gradual advancement by intercutting the footage of artificial, man-made structures in an ever increasing rapid manner until it eventually overcomes the natural footage. The oppressive monochromatic sepia tinge of Stalkers opening and ending scenes, set in a grim, industrial hell hole of a town will forever haunt my mind as an example of the sort of landscape I would not ever want to live within. In contrast is the colour and natural green tones of The Zone, an area of nature that has been abandoned 20 years previous due to an anomalous event that has gifted mankind with a room that will grant anyone who enters their hearts deepest desire. The Zone has been abandoned by mankind and cordoned off by the government in, what one can only assume, is an effort to stop people connecting with their inner spirit and with nature itself. I’m very fond of the idea of using two opposing colour palettes to distinguish between different elements of our mind and environment. For Encroachment I would like to use a colourful palette to represent Mother Nature in all her untainted beauty and as human eyes see her. I will use grainy black and white to represent mankind’s cold, sterile but logical progress through architecture. Grain in this context feels unnatural and oppressive to me and represents a barrier between the architectures functional purpose and our natural connection to Mother Nature. I had a good talk with a friend of mine earlier today about how there is no right angles in nature. While strictly speaking this isn’t 100% true it did make me start to think about spatial juxtaposition as far as my documentary is concerned. One set of images that came to mind is the random waves of bark on a tree and the sharp angles of scaffolding on the side of a building.
According to the Oxford Dictionary definition Encroachment is an ‘Intrusion on a person’s territory, rights, etc.’ The definition that really caught my eye however is ‘A gradual advance beyond usual or acceptable limits.’
‘URBAN ENCROACHMENT OF HABITAT’ This fits very well with what I am trying to portray in my documentary essentially mankind’s ever increasing encroachment through architecture on Mother Nature’s habitat. I think Encroachment will be a perfect title. Very close to where I live in Locking village this new housing estate seems to have been thrown together in the past year or so on what used to be the old airfield next to The Helicopter Museum. I have biked past this area everyday now for almost 18 years and noticed recently that a lot of the wildlife I used to see, rabbits in particular, have not been so abundant since the housing estate has been built. I’ve been thinking for some time now that while humans need to build homes as our population levels rise will that expansion mean that eventually there will be no natural habitats left? Just rows of semi-detached houses all over the country. I think a comparison of natural and man made habitats and their effects on one another will make good subject matter for my documentary. Filmed in 25 countries over 6 different continents, Baraka looks beyond international boundaries of language, culture and religion to present the viewer with a deeply spiritual tour of the essence andnature of humanity. Baraka is a deeply subjective, poetic viewing experience that at it’s core represented to me the pure visceral power of the moving image and, by extension, documentary film. In presenting us with images of various different cultures religious and spiritual rituals, we are taken on an inner journey that director Ron Fricke very aptly describes as ‘a guided mediation’ Free from the need to explain what we are viewing via narration and linear narrative, Baraka opts instead for a more stream of consciousness approach to it’s sequencing and editing that better encapsulates the intangibility of the inner workings of the human soul. The images show us the great depth, both positive and negative, that the human spirit is capable of, often in the form of lingering close ups of faces. The accompanying music, sourced from various different artists, celebrates the grand diversity on display and allows us to feel the images even more deeply. Baraka to my mind is simply the perfect union of image and sound in documentary film, holding proudly aloft the age old unwritten rule of film to show and not tell. I found it deeply moving, entrancing in a hypnotic way. Out of the documentary films I have watched recently in preparation for creating my own, Baraka has by far touched me the most in it’s content and approach to film and I’m sure it will be a constant source of inspiration. What a powerful and overwhelming film! Hard to watch, thought provoking and more than a little surreal, I don’t think I have ever seen another documentary quite like it before. While my head is telling me I can’t fault The Act of Killing for its technical execution, the moral quagmire the film presented me with still has my heart reeling some five hours after watching it! I’m having a very hard time separating my emotional reaction to the film from the analytical side of what it represents and means from a film making perspective. The very concept of asking these butchers to make a film out of the atrocities they committed 40 years ago is repugnant but makes for very compelling cinema, even if I can’t honestly state that I’m any more the wiser about why the events surrounding the atrocities happened from a historical perspective. The film within a film nature of this production left me wondering if Anwar and his cohorts might not have been acting for the cameras all along maybe for political purposes or, at the very least, in part subconsciously playing to the Hollywood films that they explicitly stated a love for at several points during the film. A love that also extended to the film noir gangster films that influenced the way in which they carried out the mass killings. I had to ask myself if Anwar, while revisiting the rooftop site of so many of the killings for the third and last time during the course of the film, would have reacted the same way if the camera had not been there to subconsciously influence him? I’m still very unsure of what the answer to this question is. On the one hand, his dry heaving could be taken as a symptom of the repressed feelings he had been displaying for the last act of the film finally coming to the surface. On the other hand it could have all been another act, a convenient method of obtaining redemption for a man that the vast majority of the world would see as a monster. Like so much that this film presented me with, there is no definitive answer. I think that is where the true power of The Act of Killing presents itself, in it’s ability to make every individual who watches it think about what they are witnessing and come to their own conclusions. I really made a connection with this short poetic documentary. Based on the simple theme of water, there is no narration that accompanies the images, letting the texture and tone of the images tell the story instead. This is a very calm and serene short film that I found soothing and relaxing. The cinematography is simple, clean and beautiful captured in cool almost teal tones suggesting natural, untainted water. The camera moves are elegant and subtle. I love the shot starting at 1:05 that shows a river, the camera panning down mimicking the flow of the water. The one thing that really stood out to me though is the structure. The end loops back around to the beginning, showing a shower head dripping water. This brings to my mind the water cycle of evaporation, condensation and precipitation. Structure is something I really need to think about for my own documentary. I hope I can create something as meaningful in as little space of time as Water did. This speculative 1982 BBC documentary details the effects of a one megaton nuclear bomb explodingover London. It was written and produced by Mick Jackson. I was first exposed to Nuclear War: A Guide to Armageddon about five years ago after watching Threads, the infamous 1984 BBC docudrama that Mick Jackson would go on to direct. Both of these productions stayed with me and their frighteningly realistic, scientifically accurate depictions of nuclear war and the after effects of nuclear winter in Britain rank amongst the most unflinching, sobering viewing experiences I have ever witnessed. I can imagine that back in the early 80s this scared a lot of people. It’s lost non of it’s power and I still find it very disturbing over 30 years later. Nuclear War: A Guide To Armageddon is narrated by Ludovic Kenne, detailing the effects of a nuclear blast in a clear, measured and authoritative manner. His expository voice-over lets you know immediately that this is very serious subject matter that is tangible and well documented. The cold, hard facts he speaks shock us into believing that what he is saying is correct and logical. Given the overly political nature of the subject matter and it’s connection with the Cold War in the time period the documentary was made, many people might also consider this documentary to be propaganda used against Russia. Personally I don’t care in this instance if it is propaganda. There can be nothing positive to say about nuclear war and anyone who states otherwise is clearly deluded. Visually, the documentary uses a mixture of stock footage and reconstructions, frequently making strong use of juxtapositional editing. One unsettling example of this is a scene that depicts shards of broken glass from the initial blast wave tearing through a pumpkin that is sharply cut with an image of a smiling elderly ladies face that is shocking and abrasive in its implication. I have no more desire to continue researching the Expository mode of documentary as I feel that it can only be done full ethical justice by being used to showcase a very well documented and serious subject matter. I feel that such subject matter is beyond my grasp and scope at the moment and I wish to portray my subject in a more subjective way. THE WAY WE’RE LIVING – THE FILMS OF MARC ISAACS AND SHEFFIELD DOC FEST 2009: MARC ISAACS MASTERCLASS3/28/2017
Two very informative talks with the film maker behind Lift. Isaacs details the process of how he makes his films, how he provokes certain reactions out of his real life characters and places them in certain landscapes that capture the essence of who they are. He also explains why he dislikes the word interview and prefers to capture an emotional truth from his subjects rather than hard facts.
I must confess that while watching these talks, as informative as they were, I was quite shocked by Issacs working method. Maybe I’m being a little naive but when he talked about how he followed the residents of the tower block in Lift inside their homes and preempted the filmed encounters with them, I couldn’t help but feel a little cheated and my overall opinion of Lift has lowered some what. Worse still was the fact that he brought the fly in the lift with him. It just goes to show how subjective images can be as one critic thought that Issacs was making a statement on the death of fly on the wall documentary when in actuality Issacs states that it was simply out of a need for inserts. Personally I interpreted the death of the fly as signaling the end of the documentary and the end of Issacs status as the fly on the wall. This method of working, provoking people into responses and placing things that were not there before the camera starts rolling goes against the grain of documentary film making to me. If I hadn’t watched these two talks, I would have never been aware of the fact that Issacs works this way and that to me is lying to the viewer and represents a very shady interpretation of reality. After these revelations I have lost all interest in pursuing the Participatory mode and will now explore other modes of documentary. Film maker Marc Isaacs spends several months in 2001 filming the multicultural residents of an East London tower block from a vantage point in one of the towers lifts. Several of the residents appear to regard Isaacs, his camera and his brief questions with caution, others seem to immediately embrace his presence. As the film goes on, the residents open up more and more, capturing on camera the small details of their life’s in a broad display of everyday humanity. The opening of this film is quite surreal, starting with a close up of the lift cable unspooling then cutting to the camera seemingly attached to the bottom of the lift as it moves slowly downwards. Accompanying this slow descent is the sound of a moaning wind, the lifts mechanical mechanism and what sounds like a baby babbling and moaning among indistinct chatter. This conveys an uneasy yet mundane sense of the surroundings the film is set in and the everyday personalities that inhabit them. Isaacs himself appears on camera several times but never in great detail. We see a reflection of his hand holding the camera and a half eaten banana that one of the residents gave him earlier in the film, as if saying thank you for the small act of kindness. In another shot we see Isaac’s hazy reflection through the dull metal of the lift wall then cut to a close up of a fly buzzing around the lift roof giving the impression that Isaacs identifies with this fly on the wall. One of the residents, an energized middle aged woman, turns the tables on Isaacs half way through the film and asks him what motivates him to stand around in a claustrophobic lift for 10 hours a day. No answer is forthcoming and we are left to imagine the full meaning of the situation and the woman’s real intentions behind the question. I have to wonder if some form of previous contact was maybe made with this woman before the camera started rolling. She seemed to be provoked by Issacs’s pressence in some way. I enjoyed this documentary and found it to be touching in a very down to earth and profound way. The main idea that the film revolves around is so simple yet conveys so much of the human condition. I’m not so sure that I would like to pursue this participatory approach for my own documentary film. |
AuthorMy name is Clay Sandford and I am currently studying an FDA in Film and Media Production at University Centre Weston. I have a keen interest in directing, cinematography and camera operating. ArchivesCategories |