Experimental Video - Conor, Ciara & Darragh

 

 This week, I watched Roman Polanski's "Knife In The Water". I thought that there were some really intelligent shots in this film that told a lot about the story. Not a lot necessarily happens in the film, but the psychological interactions between characters is quite intense. Polanski portrays a lot of this his choice of shots in the film. The ideas of male ego and attraction are very prevalent in the film and below are some shots that I felt got these ideas across really well. This long focus shot gives the viewer a look inside the older man's mind in the film. We sense his discomfort at the sight of his wife walking off with the younger man through seeing clearly his line of sight across the water. The shot has both literal and metaphorical context i the film which is something I saw throughout the piece and really enjoyed This shot is almost a reverse of the previous with the young man's sight fixed on the woman with her husband obstructing his view. This shot...

    I brainstormed different ways that we could add drama to our piece. These are the ideas I came up with. Drama is very important in film because it helps to keep the viewers engaged. Adding drama to a piece can be done in so many different ways.  One way drama can be added is by how the piece is filmed , like close up shots, long shots, zooming in and out of the character. What is happening in the film is obviously a very big part of adding drama also. Vulnerabilities play a big part in adding drama also, by showing a characters weaknesses, this allows the audience to build a connection with the character. It allows the audience to build empathy with the character. Exaggerating facial expressions is also another way to add drama. I also drew up different sketches of different ideas I got after brainstorming. These are just a few different visuals that came to my head when I was brainstorming how to add drama to a piece.

For the word association brainstorm, I had the two words Loneliness and Tension. These are some of the ideas I came up with. I think the most common theme between the two words here would be anxiety. I think we could experiment a lot with how the character deals with anxiety and give indications of how the future ahead is looking for them or maybe hints of how they're in this lonesome position in the first place. One of my inspirations would be Sam Esmail's 'Mr. Robot'. The show has a very unique style to it and deals with the topics of loneliness and depression very well.  In the show the main character is desperate for a way out of loneliness. His way of dealing with this is through drugs. Sam Esmail tends to use a lot of negative space in his directing. This is used in Mr. Robot to signify the characters isolation, and could be very useful for us to show our own characters loneliness. 

  For this exercise, we each took some main points (individual words) from our idea (I took horror, infidelity and suggestion). We then broke down what these words mean, how to connect them and how to express these on screen This helped to think about each element of our story individually and to brainstorm imagery for these ideas without basing it on a strict narrative   After this, I sketched out some of the imagery and ideas that I came up with from the association brainstorm. This helped to imagine a bit clearer what these ideas might look like on screen.    

  Central Theme: ·       Monophobia – The fear of being alone. ·       Central character’s actions are all motivated by this fear ·       His fear drives him to fill a gap that he senses between him and his partner, but ultimately ends up worse than before and forced to face his fear Experimental Ideas: ·       Bridging drama/everyday style with elements of horror through sound and shots ·       Using imagery and sound to drive narrative – no dialogue