Menu
PSYCHOLOGICAL LANDSCAPES
https://www.recoveryconnection.com/cycle-addiction/ http://www.aipc.net.au/articles/the-five-stages-of-addiction/ https://www.helpguide.org/harvard/how-addiction-hijacks-the-brain.htm Although I have first-hand experience with substance abuse that I intend to use as inspiration when writing Cycle, I also conducted research into the psychological effects of drug addiction and the cycle of addiction that inspired the name of my film. Taking the information in the above diagram and article as a basic outline for my protagonist’s character arc, Rob is very much on the cusp of full blown addiction, driven by the need to feed his cocaine addiction as the expense of destroying the friendship he has built up with Amy. This is characteristic behaviour for an addict, the focus of their addiction being relentlessly single minded in the pursuit of their next hit.
www.moviemaker.com/archives/moviemaking/directing/why-first-time-directors-must-make-proof-of-concept/ https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/8-great-proof-of-concept-films-that-got-picked-up-by-hollywood/ https://www.lightsfilmschool.com/blog/the-proof-of-concept-short-film-moby-dick-in-space/16379 After first conceiving of the idea for Cycle, one of the first production choices I made was to treat this film as a proof of concept. The links above are research I conducted into the characteristics Proof of concept films. The above video is taken from Robert Rodriguez’s film adaptation of Frank Miller’s iconic film noir comic series Sin City. This film adaptation of Sin City utilised extensive and ground breaking green screen techniques combined with flash animation to portray the heavily stylised imagery of the comics in motion. The opening story of the film, The Customer is Always Right, was filmed by Rodriguez as a proof of concept to communicate to Frank Miller how he envisioned the film translating to the big screen. The central idea behind Cycle, that of a drug addict who becomes trapped in a time loop, is one that I fell in love with the moment I conceived of it. This idea felt like a logical and creative vessel to mix elements of characterisation and story structure in such a way that they complement one another by adding deeper meaning. When combined, these elements feed back into the habit-forming behaviour and thought process that characterizes the very nature of addiction.
As the brief stated that my film should be no more than five minutes long and set in one location, I decided to treat the creation of Cycle as a proof of concept. Now that the film is finished, I feel that Cycle fulfils the creative requirements of a proof of concept by presenting themes and structural elements that can be logically expanded upon within the context of a longer film. At the same time, Cycle still works well as an engaging standalone experience by itself. PRE-PRODUCTION With a strong idea in place and after writing a treatment that details the basics of the presentation of Cycle, I started to write the screenplay. This proved to be very hard at first as the first draft featured the protagonist, Rob, interacting with his dealer. I soon abandoned this character as I felt that a drug dealer would not give much thought or care to his client’s emotional state. Once I replaced the dealer character with a neighbour, I found that the dialogue started to take on more of a concerned quality that offered me a chance to delve into the crumbling emotional state of Rob more deeply. I find it very hard to write convincing dialogue, likely a symptom of my own difficulties when communicating verbally. While this is not entirely inappropriate for a character such as Rob who has his own difficulties in expressing himself, I feel the dialogue could have been more spontaneous. While it conveys the main points of characterization and furthers the plot, it could have been more fleshed out to feel less rigid, especially where Amy is concerned. I’m very happy with the overall structure of the script and feel that the repeating dialogue and visual elements of each scene, or “cycle” as I shall refer to them from this point onwards, portray the presence of the time loop without having to explicitly explain or state its presence. It was stated during the first screening of Cycle that the transition from Rob’s manic cycle to the following cycle, his plea for help, could have been a bit smoother with maybe another cycle in between. Watching the finished film, I agree with this assessment and this is something I shall take into consideration when I decide to expand Cycle into a longer film. As the final shooting draft is 6 pages long, I didn’t want to expand upon it any further as I didn’t want to go over the five-minute time limit. Looking back at the script now, I think I might have detailed Rob’s reactions more than was necessary while writing. This could certainly be one reason why the finished run time is nearly two pages shorter than the screenplays length would suggest. Once the screenplay was in place I moved onto the pre-visualisation phase, starting with a shot list. I wanted this to be quite minimal in terms of the shot sizes and angles used to not distract from Rob’s emotional state. I also wanted to use the cinematography to suggest the balance of power within the phone conversations of each cycle with low, eye level and high angles. I’m very fond of the two over the shoulder shots and feel that they are successful at communicating a visual connection between Rob and the source of his addiction. This pays off very well during the cycle where Rob pleas for help which instead of an over the shoulder shot moves from a close up of his face looking down to a close up of the mirror and its contents, suggesting his willingness to break away from his addiction and the cycle he is trapped within. It was at this point that I also decided to shoot with a two-camera setup. A camera would shoot a master shot from directly in front that could be used to suggest disconnection or distance during the phone conversations while also capturing any elaborate movement in performance. This angle would also provide a consistent shot that could be used to connect the looping cycles with a transitional effect. For this purpose, A camera would stay locked off during the shoot, never moving from its position on the tripod. B camera would be used to capture the various angles to the left or right that would be needed to suggest Rob’s emotional state and could be moved about freely between two tripods as needed. I also decided at this point what lenses to use during the shoot for the various angles. This is a choice I feel much more confident in making now as my knowledge of the various focal lengths and the effect they have on the image being captured has broadened during my last year of making films. This is an area of camera operating that I had zero knowledge of prior to starting this course and I feel like I have made a lot of progress in this important aspect of communicating specific ideas with visuals. I then moved on to creating storyboards, a very important aid to communicate the visual flow of the film. This is an area of pre-production that I need much improvement in. In the past I have taken photo boards, but this is only a viable option when having immediate access to the location or the actors who will star in said film. Neither of these two had been available when pre-visualizing Cycle. I decided to try out various storyboarding apps. I settled on Storyboarder, a free app that features a storyboard generation function. This function has some limitations and I couldn’t add some of the finer details that I wanted to incorporate, such as the mirror and its contents in the over the shoulder shots while using Storyboarder. Overall though, I feel that the generated boards communicate the angles I wanted to shoot from adequately enough to communicate the look and flow of the film to the actors and other members of the crew. Finally, I added the story boards to the shot list, tweaking the flow of both as needed while ordering the shots into logical setups that would cut down the amount of times B camera would need to be moved between the two tripods. I then set about scheduling the shoot of the film, adding the amount of time we had to shoot with and the rough amount of time each shot would take to film. PRODUCTION The production of Cycle was an enjoyable experience that was further heightened by the presence of the most professional actor I have worked with to date. It is always a joy to work with people who have a clear knowledge and passion for their role and Adam kept me on my toes and fully involved in the creation of his performance at all times. This was my first time using the track and dolly. Although we needed to use it only for the last shot of the film, we set it up first and left A cam on the tripod throughout the shoot. This ensured that it stayed in the same position to preserve the visual integrity of the repeating cycles when they begin and end with the master shots. To shoot the low angles I wanted to capture with B cam, we had to screw the base plate underneath the tripod, placing the camera at an angle where it films up side down. This is not a problem as the footage can be flipped during editing. The only problem I encountered when doing this is that we had to remove the carry handle and mic from the camera, sacrificing recording any reference audio onto the footage. As B cam captured footage from a low angle, shooting through a glass table, several lens flares are visible in this footage. Unfortunately, these only became visible during the editing stage and didn’t register on the three-inch viewing screens while filming. In hindsight, I wish I had booked out both Shogun monitors so I could have monitored the images captured on larger screens. Looking back on the footage now, I think we adjusted the lighting for the over the shoulder shots to be brighter than it needed to be. This creates a disconnection with the shots that precede and follow and takes the viewer out of the reality of the film, breaking the carefully cultivated level of immersion. This is something I will be more conscious of during future shoots. As we ended up being an hour behind schedule due to taking longer than expected to set up the lighting and cameras, I had to reschedule the filming of the drug taking montages. This proved to be very beneficial as the colleges media technician, Ceejee Fulmar, managed to find an old Tamron 90mm Micro lens on the day I had scheduled to capture these shots. This lens allowed me to shoot the extreme close ups that I wanted to capture with a pin point sharpness that is entirely appropriate for the intense focus that Rob has when snorting cocaine. I wanted the lighting for these shots to be very bright, almost like a spotlight to, again, highlight the intense focus and joy Rob has for his addiction and also to give them an almost transcendent tone. Rob is so locked into his addiction that the only time he can feel anything is while taking the drugs he craves. This is in direct opposition to the cold, blue tones of the rest of the rest of the film, marking the montages as a heightened sensory experience when combined with the exaggerated sound effects I intended to use with these shots. POST PRODUCTION Once I transferred all the footage and audio to my Mac, I set about tagging the footage with scene and take numbers and syncing the external audio. This proved to be a lengthy process for the footage from B cam because, as previously stated, we had to remove the mic and carry handle from the camera to accommodate the low angle shots I wanted to capture. I ended up syncing a lot of the audio from B cam by visual reference. Not an easy process with no reference audio and footage that is dark enough that I couldn’t see Adam’s lips move at certain points. After this lengthy and frustrating experience, I will take extra measures to ensure that reference audio is captured directly into the camera during production from here on. I’m not entirely convinced that the audio is a hundred percent synced during the cycle where Rob threatens to come down to Amy for money. This could be my mind playing tricks on me though as I found this scene the hardest to sync as Adam's hand is holding the baggy in front of his face for a large part of it. Having selected the takes I wanted to use from each camera, I then flipped the footage from B cam vertically and horizontally, so it matched the footage from A cam. Shooting Adam’s performance from two angles simultaneously proved to be a very good decision as the footage matched up seamlessly when edited, especially when I hid the edit points during Adam’s movements. I initially tried to use Final Cut Pro X’s native multicam mode to edit between two angles but after spending an evening experimenting with this function I couldn’t figure out how to make the footage from both angles play at once when edited together. I did a lot of searching online to find a solution but couldn’t find a satisfactory answer to this problem. In the end, I synched two clips side by side that I wanted to edit back and forth between on the time line via audio and edited them both individually by hand. Merging the results into a compound clip ensured that the time line didn’t become cluttered and messy. While editing I noticed several mistakes that had been made while shooting, chief amongst these, three shots in which the boom mic was visible. Aside from this there was also 2 instances during the eye level shots of Rob manipulating Amy into giving him money where three lens flares and a halo was visible in the left corner of the screen. My heart sank when I noticed a light reflector behind the sofa during Rob’s plea for help. This would be a major distraction from Adam’s raw, heartfelt performance. Coincidently, I had watched a video a few days before on No Film Schools website that shared a simple but very effective way to remove such mistakes using a masking tool. By cutting a hole in the footage and layering a duplicate of the same or similar footage underneath at a point where the mistake isn’t visible, I was able to cover up these visual intrusions effectively. The master shot with the intrusive light reflector took a lot of trial and error to fix with this method as Adam’s movement meant that I had to go frame by frame to ensure that the mask didn’t reveal itself as his arm moved. I also had to move the mask frame by frame during the bloom transition effect I had added to signify the start of each time loop, guessing the position where the glow from the effect ends and the light reflector becomes visible. I would have liked the transition effect at the start of each cycle to have lasted a second longer but due to the above problem with the light reflector this would have given its position away. I felt that the audience should be fully immersed in Rob’s emotional plight at this point so decided to sacrifice the length of the transition to preserve the integrity of Adam’s performance and ensure the uniform nature of the transitions throughout the film. POST PRODUCTION: SOUND DESIGN For the sound design of Cycle, I wanted to return to the style of my first university film, The Test and it’s use of drones to unsettle the audience. During the first three cycles I layered a rumbling mid-range drone underneath the scene to add a sense of the unnerving, cavernous void that Rob is trapped within. I mixed this relatively high in the mix as I felt that the background drones in The Test had been mixed far too low, to the point they became inaudible. For cycle three I also layered an infrasound bass drone under the cavernous drone to compliment Rob’s increasingly threatening and aggressive behaviour during this cycle. I’m pleased with the sound levels of these two ambiences, this being a positive point that was raised during the discussion after the first screening of Cycle. I had originally intended the cycle in which Rob reaches out for help to be silent aside from the two voices. Unfortunately, due to shooting in a TV studio that is not sound proof, this was not possible as sound from the classroom next to the studio had crept into the audio. I tried applying some noise reduction to this part of the conversation but found that it distorted Adam’s voice a lot and removed any trace of his subtle whimpers and sobbing. To cover up the noise pollution from next door I layered the sound of wind blowing under this scene, a much more gentler and lighter ambience than what had been heard previously. This reflects the fragile nature of Rob’s cry for help and his vulnerability while reaching out. For the drug snorting montages, I had decided previously that I wanted to exaggerate the sounds of the drug taking process to convey the joy and heightened awareness that Rob feels when indulging in his addiction. The shots in which he cuts the cocaine required very precise positioning of the swishing blade sound effects and extra special attention payed to the timbre of the swishes as he cuts backwards and forwards. I’m very happy with the results of these shots although not sure that the laugh that was heard during the screening was the audience reaction I was going for, even if laughter is a pure conveyance of joy and aligns itself with Rob’s feelings at these points in the story. The smashing glass sound used during the shots where the banknote crashes onto the mirror was a compromise on my part as I had a lot of trouble finding a sound that matched what I was hearing in my head. It still doesn’t quite sit right with me for reasons that I can only feel and not explain. My only disappointment with the sound is that I didn’t allow myself the time to foley Rob’s footsteps when he leaves the sofa. While it stands to reason that he wouldn’t be wearing heavy shoes, I still wanted to hear more anger in his footsteps. When picking the music that would play over the final cycle and end credits, I settled upon Aphex Twin: Gwenly Mernans. Translated from Cornish, the title means death bed. I think that this track fits in well with the rest of the ambient soundtrack for Cycle, the reverbed notes giving a cavernous feeling while the minimalist, melancholic melody speaks to the ambiguity of Rob’s fate. When combined with the last shot of the film, a slow dolly back, it helps reinforce the sadness and isolation that Rob feels. Although I don’t own the rights for this track, I felt it struck the right balance of sound design, atmosphere and emotion to make it the perfect note to end the film on. SUMMARY I feel that the production of Cycle afforded me with ample opportunity to further hone my writing, directing, camera operating and sound design skills. It also offered me an opportunity to work with a professional actor whose abilities far exceeded my expectations. I feel like I am becoming much more comfortable with working with experienced actors to create the portrayal I want for a character. When taken in the context of a proof of concept, I feel the project as a whole is successful enough to communicate the core themes and style that I wanted to convey. I look forward to the time where I can expand upon these ideas. THE FINISHED FILM CAN BE VIEWED AT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBLbeAoUUe4 nofilmschool.com/2017/10/watch-how-make-your-boom-mic-disappear-using-little-magic-post The above video and article taught me the basics of how to use masking effects in Final Cut Pro X to remove unwanted objects or artifacts, such as boom mikes or lens flares, that have somehow made their way into the frame when shooting had taken place. Lynchian Ambience from Fandor on Vimeo. One of the main creative elements of the films of David Lynch that I find a constant inspiration is the way he uses ambient soundscapes to unsettle and confound the viewer, even when the images we are looking it are often rather mundane in outward appearance. http://nofilmschool.com/2017/06/disquieting-uses-infrasound This fascinating article published by No Film School details the scientific and psychological effects of infrasound, extremely low frequency bass waves that are inaudible to the human ear and create an unsettling and disorienting feeling in the listener. I will incorporate infrasound waves into the sound design for Cycle. This will instill a foreboding sense of anxiety and dread in the audience that aligns itself with Rob’s increasingly erratic behaviour and anxiety in the face of his repetitious situation and need to fuel his addiction. |
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 |