Group Meeting with the Band - Music Video

Are whole crew held a meeting with the band to discuss their ideas for the music video and how they wanted it to look. They pretty much gave us free reign on the creative look of the video, the band just wanted a performance based style video. Damian as the director decided that he would storyboard the idea and wanted to have the video in black & white.

Influences - After Arcadia

From my initial conversations with Joe (Director) about the film 'After Arcadia' we talked about numerous creative visions for the film and how he thought the film should look and feel. After reading the films brief synopsis, I gave some thought as to what films that from a visual standpoint would really connect with this project and how did I imagine in my mind would look and feel.

'After Arcadia' is set in a post apocalyptic world and follows a lonely traveler as he walks across moorland, leaving the vast piles of ruin of what used to be cities behind him. Living life day to day he walks alone search for personal items like I.D. cards and photos desperately trying to preserve what little memories of people and human life. His lonely existence is boosted by his favoured possession, a small mirror; for which he is gives him company in the form of his own reflection.

Being set in a post apocalyptic world the first film that sprang to my mind was The Road (2009, dir John Hillcoat)

For me this is one of the finest examples of a post apocalyptic film; the photography is so grim and bleak, yet it feels so naturally devastating. I particularly like the tone of colour within the film and how it's colour palette is kept down to a bare minimum of colours. The greys and the browns seem to blend and merge into one another creating this what would normal be described as a rather bland look, but as the film is so beautifully shot those colours really pull you into the post apocalyptic world with it's rawness.

This is something that I'm going to look into further and certainly discuss with Bob (Art Director).

The next film I thought of was Children of Men (2006, dir Alfonso Cuaron).

The reason that this film came to mind is because; though I'm not the biggest fan of the film itself, the visual style and photography always stuck with me. It got me thinking about how the film made great use of it's landscapes and settings with the contrasts of what we see at eye level and the sky above. There's as if the colour at times is drained from the screen and also looking at the framing of clouds, mist/fog, smoke etc... contrasts and textures give the film the post apocalyptic look and feel whilst still having vibrant life in shot (i.e. trees, plants etc..)

I feel that I'm actually only scraping the surface with this film and feel that if I delve deeper into how this film was shot, I might uncover some really interest ideas and hopefully find something more behind the cinematography in the film.

The last film that I thought of was the old 80's made for British TV film Threads (1984, dir Mick Jackson).

The main reason why this film was so prominent in my mind when thinking about 'After Arcadia' was because Threads to me always felt real, like a documentary film. I'll list some time codes below to share some examples of why this film is so powerful and important to my vision for the project.

@ 00:09 - The man in shot is what I have envisioned for the lead character in 'After Arcadia'. The man in shot has the grittiness and dirty feel to him and without looking just like a homeless person, he looks as if the world around him has collapsed and sucked all the life and soul away. His clothes have become indiscernible and look to just be an extension of his body.

@ 00:38 - The sky in shot looks so dark and grim and with the sharp brightness of the sun shining through the gloomy clouds, the shot makes you believe that there's been a nuclear attack and the UV ray's have become stronger than before.

@ 02:21 - The landscape in shot of dead trees and gloomy clouds above giving the scene a true feeling of death.

These just a few examples of why this film will influence me for the project; as an overall piece the film just looks naturally post apocalyptic without really on any fancy photography or after effects, which gives the film it's gritty and raw feel, which I always felt captured a realistic view of how the world would look after a devastating nuclear attack.

I feel that if I can take a slice of style from The Road and Children of Men and apply that artistic style to the rawness and gritty feel of Threads, that I might be able to achieve a visual style that will not only have a stylistic look but also feel realistic.

Group Meeting with Joe Tippett and Bob Brice - After Arcadia

After Joe had told me that he wanted me to be on board as the Cinematographer for his short film ‘After Arcadia’ we had a small group meeting between ourselves and Bob Brice (Art Director). Joe gave me the early stages of the script to read through and after he and Bob talked about the influences they had for the film and how they themselves imagined it would look as a final piece. Joe expressed his desire for the film to be completely shot out on the moors and Bob made it clear that the lead characters costume was going to play a huge part with the visual style of the film and much like in The Road (2009, dir John Hillcoat) the costume should fit in tonally with the photography of the film itself.

The mention of John Hillcoat’s The Road was funny because it was actually the film that was most prominent in my mind from listening to the initial idea for the short and then reading through the early stages of the script; I also really enjoyed the visual style of that film and thought that something similar would really suit this project.

At the end of the meeting I took a copy of the uncompleted script to read through a few more times and told Joe and Bob that I would look at some more films that might influence me for this project and whose visual style would have some relevance to the general outlook and feel of ‘After Arcadia’.

Discussion with Joe Tippett - After Arcadia

After the afternoon session at college, I spoke to Joe about the prospect of possibly joining his crew on his short film idea ‘After Arcadia’ as D.O.P/Cinematographer; we discussed briefly about the idea behind the film and the films that he felt were similar in tone with his initial idea. He said that he would think about this as he had already had a lot of interest shown by our peers, but said that he would give me a definitive answer by next Thursday (27^th Oct).

I asked about joining the project as the D.O.P/Cinematographer because I’ve already got this job role on an upcoming music video shoot with Damian Suparasisi, Ross Carter and Rob Cooper for a local band called ‘Cheating Jack Ketch’. I’ve not had any experience with the role as D.O.P/Cinematographer so for the project I really want to challenge myself within this role and I thought that taking on two projects with completely different outlooks and technical aspects would be very helpful for my development as a Cinematographer.

Not just the fact one project was a short film and the other a music video; but with the music video the plan is to shoot the video in the infinity cove working with minimal lighting and the plan for the short film ‘After Arcadia’ is to be shot completely outdoors and using natural lighting only; be able to work on both projects with give me a wide range of challenges across both projects.

Lighting Workshop (14/10/11) - Music Video

Taking part of the Lighting Workshop which required us to work with students from the 2nd Year of Film Arts, was a chance to see how I would work with others and how well I was able to perform as an acting Director of Photography (DOP).

I wasn't in a group with my other colleagues for which I'm going to be working with on my RED project, but recently I've been able to find some upcoming work on numerous music videos for some local bands. The first of which is for the band Cheating Jack Ketch, for which I will also be working as DOP on.

So I decided that the lighting workshop would be a great place to test out, not only different lighting equipment for the music video to see how it would look, but to also gain some experience and look for constructive criticism from my fellow peers.

As it turned out the actual test shots turned out to be a complete failure, only really coming to the conclusion that the LED lights that we were testing weren't going to be any good for the music video. But the workshop was still very productive as I learned that I needed to be more prepared for the role; because we had gone into the workshop with just some brief storyboard shots which weren't prioritized beforehand, time quickly got away from us and we ended up not actually getting anywhere near the amount of footage that we wanted to test done.

After speaking to Andy Hardwick; who had be taking notes and the way we as a group had worked together, he mentioned that the standout problem was the apparent lack of organisation and mix up in communications within the crew.

From this Lighting Workshop, I feel the need to go and research the role of DOP more thoroughly so that I'm fully aware of my responsibilities on set and in pre-production.