The Selfish Giant (2013)

The Selfish Giant (2013) is a gritty northern realist film showing the tragedy of two young bradford 'scrappers'. The film is extremely sincere and the camera reflects this extremely well. The film is on the whole a grey film, with a number of lingering long shots showing off the gritty scene. From this film I aim to take the grey look of the film to add to the realist approach that we are taking on Of The Right Passage.

Chungking Express (1994)

Chungking Express (1994) has very highly stylised visuals. Director Wong Kar-Wai is known for using grainy, eccentric visuals in his films, especially in his earlier films. The cinematographers on Chungking Express, Chris Doyle and Wai-Keung Lau use lots of movement and colours in their shots which creates a sense of excitement in almost every shot.

In Of The Right Passage, I want to use the camera movement to create a pace that will not be created by the editing of the piece as it is a slow moving film with few high paced sequences. Therefore,  I plan to use camera movement in especially slow-paced sequences to keep the audience interested. I don't intend to create visuals as eccentric or 'out there' as Wong Kar-Wai's because Of The Right Passage is not as fast paced or exciting but I think that it was worth using some of his visuals as an influence as they do create a more pleasing view of a film.

Another thing I plan to use from the camera style in this film is the grain. As I will be using a DSLR camera to shoot Of The Right Passage I will alter the ISO to create a grainy effect.

Script for 5-10 minute short

After writing the script for the 2 minute exercise, we decided as a group to continue with the same story and to build upon that narrative to create a longer, more full story of guilt and the character's journey of becoming a better person.

Storyboards for 2 minute exercise

Problems overcome

During the production process we have encountered and overcome a number of obstacles. The main obstacle we have overcome is our main actor dropping out meaning we had to shoot the whole film again.

Another problem we encountered is the fact that some members of the group couldn't attend all of the shoot dates meaning we had to fill in for their roles meaning that certain aspects of the film were'n as up to scratch as they should've been.

Another problem we had to overcome is the fact that we couldn't secure a proper call-centre to film in so we had to re-create that environment in a class room. We had to be careful with camera angles to not shot certain things such as, the emptiness of the room and the whiteboards that were clearly for a class room

Creating TV style lighting without a TV

Script for a two minute piece.

The members of my production team and their roles are:
Louise Bailey - Producer
Danayet Gazaie - Director
Emily Ledger  - Art Director
Thomas Johnstone (me) - Cinematographer
Tyrese Thomas - Sound Designer and Recordist

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The emotion that I have am trying to express with this piece is guilt. Sean feels guilty about the way that the media deals with the world's actual problems yet he is a slave to their ways as he ignores the homeless man showing no compassion. When he finds the homeless man, he feels a dread of guilt that will kickstart his pursuit of bliss.

Character excercise

Sean O'Neill is a 21 year old, full time, call centre worker. He is almost content with his job as he gets his evenings and weekends free to spend his decent wage on booze, fags and £50 board to his parents.

Sean is interested in politics and he wants to help those less fortunate than himself and his family. He wants this more than anything as he has good parents, a job and a girlfriend.

Sean dispares at the size of the worldwide problem of poverty, repression and economical imbalance. Sean doesn't know where to start so he is stuck in a rut, this breaks his heart.