Tumgik
#it's a very specifically constructed one man musical show that mainly focuses on mental health during ''these current times''
juniebgroans · 3 years
Text
"All Eyes on Me" from Bo Burnham's special really hits me in the gut over and over because the line about taking a break and working on himself to get better, only for the pandemic to happen.....just.....it's so relatable. I quit working my way up the management ladder and went part-time and moved back to the city I loved and was getting therapy and was doing so much better than when I was in St. Louis, where I'd have weekly panic attacks and weekly spirals where I was dizzy and nauseous and couldn't stop crying.....and then the pandemic happened and I probably hit the lowest spot I've been in forever. And I'm doing better. but that line. just makes me realize it was probably a pretty common experience for the 20 and 30 somethings out there.
6 notes · View notes
s0023329asfilm · 7 years
Text
Post P. Evaluation
1. What were the aims of your artefact?
As I stated in my post A. Brief, my initial aims of my artefact was to make a coming of age / romance film which is about losing a relationship with someone such as family member, friend, or lover because it is one of the most common hardships that people go through in their lives and therefore everyone can empathize with it. My textual analysis was about two American teen movies, The Fault in Our Stars (Boone, 2014) and The Spectacular Now (Ponsoldt, 2013), and they are both about adversities that the characters get to face as adolescents and how they deal with those problems.
What I wanted to make at the very beginning even before I started the planning part was quite different from the final result of my short film. The storyline I firstly came up with was much more concentrated on romantic aspect rather than a theme of coming of age. It was about a young man who lost his girlfriend as she struggled with depression and eventually took her own life and I wanted to present not only feelings of grief and despair of the boy character but also nostalgic memories between the two in very emotional way to imply how fragile and vulnerable teenagers can be when they are exposed to intense emotions as they don’t have much experience of them. However, since the purpose of my textual analysis was to explain how the theme of coming of age is portrayed in the two movies as unconventional teen films, I thought my own short film should also be more focused on unconventional factors to follow the textual analysis. Thus the storyline has changed after the planning started and the the new theme that I conceived was a domestic abuse and the consequential  mental health issue of the children. It’s so often for us not to be aware of as an observer when teenagers around us are suffering from domestic violence, because unlike young children, they know how to hide it from other people’s eyes.  They tend to recognize the fact as their dirty laundry revealing that they are not like other ‘normal’ people so most of them don’t easily let others know their current situation. The message that I hoped to convey through my short film was that all is not as it seems, people always could have problems that we don’t see but still is desperate to be helped.
2. What codes and conventions identified in the TA were used in your film?
Genre
The main genre of the two films I’ve studied in my Textual Analysis was romance and drama and therefore I had focused on romance genre during the planning as it’s shown in my post E. Genre research. However, after I decided to change the story line the genre of the film became quite vague and eventually it got closer to hybrid of drama and slightly crime/thriller rather than romance. The first half of the film is shot by fully handheld camera showing the protagonist and the voice-over telling the story of him is overlapped on it, which present very dramatic tone overall. The second half includes more aspects of iconography from thriller genre, for instance flicker effects and deep and dark tone of non-diegetic sounds. Nevertheless, there still were some romantic conventions left in the film as the two main characters were connected by the romantic relationship between them. Some of the lines of voice-over are obviously revealing affectionate feelings of them two with conventional lexis uses.
Cinematography
As the one thing that I’d wanted the most while directing the film was not to duplicate the two films of my TA, I intentionally tried not to follow the exact cinematographic effects of the originals especially stylistic ones, but rather apply some of the very basic techniques. The cinematographic technique that I thought was the most important for the first half of my short film was to frame enough medium shots. Just like I mentioned above, the first half was meant to be very realistic and natural, so I shot all of the scenes with a handheld camera using medium shots so that the audiences could feel like they are looking at the protagonist right next to him, as if they’re actually with him. 
Tumblr media
Example of medium shot from <The Fault in Our Stars>
Tumblr media
Example of medium shot from <Ripped>
Another technique which was very significantly used in my film influenced by my TA is low key lighting. During the second half of the film, the overall mood totally changes and it gets way darker than the first half. Even the genre seems to change after the bridge, from drama to thriller and I thought that the best way, also the most basic way to present the mood changing visually was to dim the light which was used in the chosen sequence of <The Spectacular Now> as well.
Tumblr media
Example of low key lighting from <The Spectacular Now>
Tumblr media
Example of low key lighting from <Ripped>
The last aspect of cinematography influenced by my TA is half face shadow. It is very commonly used when the character is struggling with an inner conflict and having a hard time in his mind. In the relevant scene from my short film, the protagonist is being mentally unstable at the moment and lost himself between his original personality and the hyperemotional one.Therefore I thought the half face shadow could successfully reveal his hidden instability as he is a type of character who never shows his inside. 
Tumblr media
Example of half face shadow from <The Spectacular Now>
Tumblr media
Example of half face shadow from <Ripped>
Mise en scene
Just as I did in cinematographic aspect, I mainly aspired to get only basic ideas from my TA for the Mise en scene as well. One thing I derived from <The Fault in Our Star> was how to use costume in a way to explain the character’s mental and social status. While in the chosen sequence of <The Fault in Our Star> Hazel wears hoody, jacket and jeans and Augustus wears sweat shirt and sweat pants which tells that how vulnerable Augustus got both mentally, physically and socially compared to Hazel, in <Ripped> the protagonist wears a costume of jacket, dress slacks and hat which obviously shows stiffness and formality of his personality, also that he is originally from quite wealthy background. It is quite significant indicator as Julian is a character who had been exposed to domestic violence for a long period of time but couldn’t get away by accusing it as he shouldn’t disgraced on his family. And the fact that he still wears what he used to wear presents that he is still under the control of his past memories and traumas.
Tumblr media
Example of the use of costume from <The Fault in Our Star>
Tumblr media
Example of the use of costume from <Ripped>
Sound
In both of the chosen sequences, soundtracks take a big part of indicating a change of the mood and tone of the scene. They both starts with background musics that clearly contain sad and gloomy atmosphere and ends with much more hopeful and delightful musics that change the mood brighter. In my short film, soundtrack is also used as a very important tool of tone changing. I chose quite relaxing but delicate and mournful song for the first half as Effie talks about the memories of her and Julian in a nostalgic way. For the second half, I inserted more heavy and majestic song to give the image of seriousness and more tension in the scene, so that it can be distinct from the former scenes.
Editing
I haven’t really used any kind of editing skill that is considerably stylistic or unique, it’s mainly just cuts as it’s the most basic way of editing and my TA sequences also use basic cuts between every shot. I think what makes my artefact different from the two sequences is a dissolve transition used consecutively in the middle of the film. The technique was very useful to make the scene look mysterious as the successive dissolved moments convey the image of a defective memory.    
3. How were the planning materials used in the construction of the artefact?
The reason why I chose <The Fault in Our Star> and <The Spectacular Now> for my TA essay at the beginning was simply because they were the most touching coming of age films in my personal opinion. However after I watched them several times for the essay, I found out that the biggest common feature between them was that they are portraying teenagers in very honest and completely unrefined way. There are so many teen romance films out there and quite a lot of them is not that same with the reality. In these two films, teenagers are exhibited as very unstable, incomplete and fragile creature while they commonly get presented almost like adults in other films. The characters in those two films show us their negativity caused by things like short lifetime or lack of experiences and knowledge throughout the whole film and that makes teen audiences genuinely feel like it’s exactly what they are suffering from as well. I started to establish my planning based on that idea. I wanted to make a movie showing a problem that people don’t like to talk about or don’t recognize that easily but is still existing. That is how I came up with the subject of domestic abuse and teenager’s mental health issues caused by it.
In my case, the most important piece of planning when it came to the filming process was the audience feedback. This was the first time I made a film in my lifetime and therefore I was completely unsure about whether what I did was right or wrong. After I screened my rough edit version in the class so many helpful feedback telling me the points that I haven’t noticed at all and loads of them also lifted my confidence with such kind words. I think it was very significant process especially for students like me, who don’t have much experiences of film making.  
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Audience feedback
I don’t specifically think I needed to do more planning to be honest, of course planning is important as it’s a foundation of the film but I don’t regret that I put much more time in actual filming and editing because my plans did change quite a lot after that. When I started planning of the film, I had so many ideas and thoughts that were practically not a possible options. It’s always so different from what you think it would be like when you actually try to put your thoughts into the practice. The first thing I had to modify was who I will have as actors of my film. At the beginning I had two of my friends who was meant to act a female protagonist and male protagonist but as the former one moved out to different place after the plan was made, so I decided to change the story line a bit rather than get a new actor because I thought the new story would fit the aim of my filming better anyway as I stated at Q1. Even after that, I had a number of modifications such as deleting a whole scene, changing locations, replacing props, delaying shooting schedule, and so on. Overall I’m quite satisfied with the final result I’ve got, but still think I can produce a better outcome if I get a chance to try it again next time.
4. How successful was the artefact in achieving the aims?
I can’t say that I’ve done 100% of what I wanted to do, but think the result seems to be better than my concern and is conveying the messages I wished to say quite obviously, both for my TA and the short film. Nevertheless, if you ask me whether I want to get a chance to start again completely or not, the answer would be definite yes. Since it was the first time ever I made a film, there were things that I forgot to care about although they really do matter to me, for instance the overall color tone match and the video quality. If I get a chance to start over, I would use a camera with a higher performance to shoot and edit more elaborately, putting more effort into color compensation. I also should’ve talked to my actor more about the character so that he could lend more probability to his acting. One of the things that I feel upset the most about my film is the deleted scene of young Julian. Since I had to delete it because of the time limit and video quality problem although it was a key scene directly exhibiting how Julian got dissociative identity disorder, I’m not entirely sure that all of the audience would understand the narrative clearly without it. The young actor who played the role was such a brilliant kid and I genuinely think it could’ve gone really well if I had enough time to reshoot the scene a couple more times.
0 notes