For You, Dear Friend

Fiction Adaptation | Project Evaluation

When starting this unit, I was apprehensive that my ideas would turn out the way I imagined them due to the very short amount of time we had for this unit. However, I found that as I started doing more preparation for my project and research, I felt more prepared and more confident that the video would turn out the way I wanted.

What worked?

My favourite part about this project was the ability to be very creative and experimental within my visuals and the sound design. I enjoyed working through the poem and creating images that match the poem while also show my own perspective on the poem. 

• Research
• As I have created a video that has elements of a montage, doing the research for montages, helped me greatly. This is due to the fact that it helped me with knowing how montages are put together and what type of things I need to remember in order for it to be known as a montage. For example; montages don't follow a narrative. I had to remember this all the way through the project, and I feel like this was clear within the final video. 
• I chose to look deeply into the poem, and analyse it in a way that I could develop the images I see in my head and create them through visuals. By analysing my chosen poem, it guided me through developing the visuals and also through coming up with a very complicated sound design. 
• Having done research on the theme of depression, it helped when creating the visuals for my poem and it helped me look deeper into the emotions depressed people will feel and present.
• Scripting and Shooting
• When thinking about the visuals, I feel like my ideas have been presented well through the script and the way it's been shot.
• The script was a great way for me to note down the different elements I wanted to include in both the shooting and the editing. The footage that was shot during my shooting days clearly show my ideas, and also they show experimentation through the creativity presented.
• Some of my favourite shots are the blurry candle shots, and the black background shots with Micaiah sat in the middle of the shot.
• Editing
• The thing that I thought worked the best throughout the whole project was the editing of both the visuals and the audio.
• The editing process allowed me to experiment with the colour of the shots and also the pace of the video, which has made the video a lot more powerful and emotional. The desaturated look has created a sad and depressing tone which was what I wanted the outcome to look like. Not only do the images look the way I wanted them too, they also look more powerful and a lot better than my original idea.
• By experimenting with the colour of my shots, it helped me develop a final look that I was really happy with.
• With the sound design, I found that my sound skill developed greatly. This is due to the amount of varied soundtracks and layers I added, and also due to the build up I created throughout the video.
• The echo effect on most of the soundtracks, really help towards creating the 'inner thoughts' and I really liked the effect they had on the video. It created a dark tone and helped towards presenting the mental illness in a respectable way.
• By having the advanced sound design, it has improved my video greatly, and I think it has improved my skill in presenting different moods and tones through the audio, not just through the imagery. 

What didn't work?

There weren't too many things that didn't work, but the few things that didn't go as planned were either in the planning stage or the editing stage.

• Planning & Editing
• There were a few ideas that I really wanted to try but I either didn't have the time or I didn't have the material to do so.
• I wanted the landscape image to eventually melt down the screen to go along with the line of "melting mascara". Once I had my landscape shot, I tried it out on after effects, but I couldn't get it to move down the screen. I tried multiple times and followed a few sites online to help, but it wasn't successful which was disappointing as I thought that idea would work quite well.
• In the end, I did have to replace this shot with another clip but I think it works so much better.
• However, the outcome of that shot is a lot better than the original idea, and I think it works well within the video.
• I also wanted to try double exposure for one of the lines about flames, but I didn't have the time to try it out before the shoot day, as I couldn't get the actress to come down earlier for any test shoots.
• Saying this, I thought the shot I now have for that specific line works really nicely due to the added text and the audio behind it.

What did I learn?

Within this unit, I have learnt:

• Research and planning is very important.
• Without any research into the topic of the project you won't get very far with your work. The research can help with the planning of the project and it can make a big impact on the visuals that may be seen throughout the video.
• I found that all of the research and planning I produced helped me greatly and it made me more confident about what topic I was exploring, both montages and depression.
• Creativity is important within montages and adaptations.
• In order to make montages work, and to make the original work your own, you have to have a creative mind and come up with a variety of different shots that really push you to improve your skill in filming and editing. 
• Adaptations are generally always hard to receive, but keeping the poem tone the same while interpreting the visuals and audio in your own way can help towards creating a successful adaptation. 

Overall, I'm really proud with the work I have produced and I have enjoyed working on this unit, even though it has been a really quick turn around. I think I have improved my skill in all the pre-production, production and the post-production, but mostly I think my editing skills have improved the most. This improvement has led to me feeling confident about presenting an emotion in other projects, and it's left me feeling confident about creating creative shots and montage sequences.

If I had more time, I would've liked to experiment more with the editing techniques for the visuals seen, but I'm really happy with the outcome of my video.

A Digital Critical Analysis | Digital News

Fine Cut Feedback | Development

After showing Helen and Sam my improved video, they thought it worked really well together and they really liked it. They said that it was eye catching and kept the audience engaged in the whole video.

The one thing Helen suggested was:

• Make the words 'I love you' shown in the letter, more prominent and make it gradually get brighter.
• To do this I had to split the adjustment layer, and add several keyframes on the brightness and the contrast levels. This meant that the words would gradually get brighter and due to the flash transitions that I added within the video, it makes it look brighter.
• I really like this effect and it emphasises the romantic suggestions that are presented through the character and the person who wrote the letter.

Rough Cut Feedback | Development

After showing Helen and Sam the rough cut of my video, they really liked it but gave me some feedback on a few things I could change and maybe add within the video.

• Change the landscape shot.
• I agreed with Helen and Sam on this point. We all thought it didn't really suit the rest of the video, and instead it needs to be either a not very nice looking building, or something with a bit more movement and stability. 
• I changed this shot to a clip of waves crashing against stones on a beach. I took this previously at Whitstable and I thought it fitted the poem a lot better than the last shot. 

• Make the sound build up so the end is very powerful.

• They thought the sound should build up throughout the video, so the ending is a lot more powerful. I agreed with this and decided to work backwards when making this improvement. 
• I started by adding loads of the different sound effects I had used previously in the video, and I layered them all on top of each other. I then carried a few of them forward so they start playing a little earlier than the second to last shot.
• I think this makes the video have a better build up in emotion, and also it helps keep the audience more engaged with the video itself. 

• The long shots need to be quicker and cut down - add some jump cuts.
• There are a few shots that are too long, and it makes the video slow down in speed. In order to keep the video at a fast pace I need to add more jump cuts in these long shots.
• During the filming I made sure to get more shots than I actually needed, so now I can add these shots to make a jump cut type of effect.

• Add some text for a few words in some of the lines of the poem.
• It was suggested that there were a few shots, like when Micaiah is sat with a lot of blank space around her, that should have some text added to it, so it's a bit more 'punchy' and keeps the audience's interest.
• I don't want this to ruin the video, so when adding the text, I made sure to change the blend mode to colour dodge. This added a static effect and it made the video more interesting while also giving it the 'punch' it needed in the empty background.

• Memory sequences & dream sequences need to be more over exposed.
• Helen wasn't too keen on the dream clips, but Sam suggested that if they were more over exposed then it would look better. Helen agreed with this, and I did also.
• I added the 'brightness & contrast' effect to these clips and made sure the brightness level is increased greatly, while the contrast was at a good level. With the effects I had already used in the clips, which were the 'Channel Blur' and the 'Gaussian Blur', it made the shot look so much better, and created a really nice contrast between the two different types of shots. 

Another suggestion that was made, was having the shots of Micaiah look similar to the colour in the Queen music video for 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. To do this I decreased the saturation a little more and I added the 'brightness and contrast' effect, and decreased the brightness while increasing the contrast. I  decided that I really liked the way this looked, and wanted to keep that sort of colour and look throughout the whole video.

Once the whole video was colour corrected the way I wanted it to be, I had to redo the rewind sequence due to the colour being different. I did the same thing as before and added it in to where it was before. Along with the sound effect to that video, it looks and sounds really good, and I think it's a good way to end the video.

I also added a few 'Dip to White' transitions to add a flash sort of effect between different shots, and with this I added a thunder sound effect to emphasise the transition.

Editing | Development

To start the editing process, I separated my footage and put them into bins to make it easier for me to find the clips that I need. I made sure to have a bin for my audio files, and bins for each location.

I then made sure that everything I needed in terms of footage was where it needed to be, and the settings were correct.

Firstly, I looked at my script and started to add the footage onto the timeline, in the order that they are in within the script. I also then took the audio of Micaiah speaking the poem, and split it up so each line could be adjusted in position and duration if necessary. From some of the clips, I found there was some ambience audio in the background, so I copied the audio and pasted it all throughout the length of the video.

For the quick changes of shots I layered the two different clips on top of each other and used the cut tool to cut the end of the clips into 6 different sections. I then deleted three from one clip and then the opposite three on the other clip. This then created a quick flash effect and with a sound effect added it would add to the impact of the tone I want to create with this transition. I did this transition a few times within the video as I thought it would move the video along at a quick pace and it kept the audience engaged in what is being shown in the video.

Since the video is very audio heavy, and the main importance of it is the sound design, I started to add some sounds to bring my footage to life.
I took the audio of Micaiah saying the extra dialogue I added into the scenes, and split them up so they were individual shots. I then moved them around and overlapped them so instead of it sounding like a conversation, it sounded more like words in the characters head. I then added an echo effect by adding the 'studio reverb' effect onto the audio. I changed the preset to 'vocal reverb (large)' and this created a really nice effect which created the sense of inner thoughts which was the aim.

To make some shots more real, I added sound effects, alongside the actual audio from the clip, to make it more obvious in a subtle way. For example; I added a raindrop sound effect to the clip of raindrops on the window. I also added a crackling candle effect to the shots with the candles in it to just to add more of an impact to the video. I did the same thing with the covers tossing and turning, and the water dripping out of the tap.
To create the sense of emotion and pain, I added a variety of female crying sound effects and again added the 'studio reverb' to make them sound like an inner thought. And to add to this I added a breathless sound effect in order to create a sense of panic with links in with the actual mental illness that is being presented.

To add to the fast cut transition, I found a sound effect that sounds like a flash. The actual noise of a camera shutter, but I thought this sound was subtle and worked nicely with the transition. There's a high pitched type of sound at the beginning of the sound effect that adds nicely to the video as it makes the audio quite distorted and interesting.
I used a lot of layers for this sound effect as I wanted it to be consistent within those certain transitions in the video.

Also, in the bathroom footage, there was originally a dull noise, and I decided to use that audio throughout the whole video. This helped with the distorted effect running throughout the whole video.

Since all of the visuals and the audio files were in the right places, I moved onto creating the rewind at the end of the video. To do this I created a new sequence and copied the visuals from the main sequence into the new one. I then worked from the end of the video and reversed each clip one by one. This was quite tricky as I had to adjust the position of the clips in order to make it play backwards. Once I had completed that, I exported it and added it to the blank space it was meant to go in. It was sped up to fit the gap, and now it looks like the video is playing backwards which is what I wanted. Instead of using a rewind sound, I used a dull static sound so it wasn't silent and it created an increase in the sound design, which would then create a panic sort of impact.

Once the audio had been completed, and the sound effects had been layered upon each other and had an echo type of effect, I moved onto the colour of the video. I added an adjustment layer and used the 'three-way colour correcter' wheel to create the desaturated effect I wanted for my visuals. I adjusted the input and the output levels, to make the shot look slightly darker while keeping Micaiah's face apparent.

Before the rough cut viewing, I had all of the clips and the audio in place, however the colour correcting hadn't been completed all the way through. For some of the 'dream' sequences I made sure to used a tested version of the colour correcting so Helen and Sam knew what I wanted the shot to look like in the end.

Filming ~ Day 2 & Extras | Production

Second day of shooting:

27th November 2016

This shoot day was a little bit more relaxed than the first one, as all of the shots with the actress had been completed, and there were only a few more shots that needed to be done. These shots will help make my video more of a montage, and also they will hopefully create a lot of emotion throughout the video.

• The first shot to be filmed was the door slamming to go along with the line in the poem. I wanted to have the bottom of the door in the shot, so the camera was placed on the floor and at a close up of the left hand side of the door. This shot would allow the audience to see the door actually shutting.
• Then for the outside scene, I decided to make a time-lapse type of shot. To do this I placed the camera by the window, on a tripod, and left it to film for a few minutes. To have a variety of shots, I moved the camera every few minutes to show a different perspective of the outside.

• I still needed the audio of the voicemail, so I recorded that by calling someone on my phone and having them not answer.

Extra Shots

There were a few shots that I had filmed previously before the shooting days, and I decided that these shots would work well in my video as they matched the visual idea I was looking for. 

• The raindrops on the window shot, was at first filmed for a test run of my idea, however when it came to the shoot days the weather was dry and there was no sign of rain. It made sense for me to use the test shots as the final footage as they looked really nice and they fitted in nicely with the tone of my video.
• The really blurry shot of the flame from a lit tea candle, shot at a birds eye view, was taken for a test run of the idea again. I really liked the shot so I decided to use it within my actual video, as I knew it wouldn't be on screen for too long, but also it would add to the tone of the video.
• The landscape shot that I will use for the final video is a shot that I took when I was on holiday in France. I decided this would be a good shot to use as it will show contrast between the distorted audio and the calm imagery. I will change the colour correction of the clip so the colour is less vibrant and so it matches the other images.
• My first idea for the Christmas part of the poem, was to shoot a scene of opened presents sat on a coffee table, however I didn't have the material I needed to create the shot. Instead I decided to use some footage from a previous video I had made. This shot is of the Christmas tree decorations and it's a good resemblance of the holiday period.

Filming ~ Day 1 | Production

First day of shooting:

26th November 2016

The shoot was scheduled to start at 10am, so to prepare myself I decided to rearrange the bedroom we were shooting in, to make it more suitable for my desired set design. I moved some furniture out of the way, I took a few framed pictures off the wall so they were left bare, and I made sure all of the equipment and objects that weren't needed in the shot, were behind the camera and out of sight.

Once the actress and rest of the crew arrived to the set, we started to shoot. 

• Before the shoot day, I made sure to put the different shots in order of what is being shot first. I made sure to keep the location into consideration, so the decisions I made kept the day running smoothly.
• I started with all of the scenes in the bedroom, like the covers tossing and turning, the text on the mirror, the record player and the shots of Micaiah sat on the bed with and without reading the letter. 

• The next location was the black plain background. To create this look I used a big black screen and put it up in my living room. I then placed a stool underneath the sheet laying on the floor, so the black colour would fill the screen. 
• In terms of the make-up on Micaiah, it was best if we shot the scenes where she's looking at the camera, and then shoot the similar scenes where mascara will be running down her face. At first I was only going to get the one shot of Micaiah in the middle of the screen, looking at the camera, but when shooting I decided to shoot two more shots where she was on the left side of the screen and the right side. When shooting the mascara scenes I only had Micaiah in the middle of the screen as I knew I wouldn't use those clips as often as the others.
• In between the shoot of the 'normal' face and the 'mascara' face, we made sure to get the shot of the lit candle in front of the black background. I lit the candle and blew it out once recording, and in post I will reverse that clip so it looks like the candle was un lit to begin with.
• We also shot the 'normal' skin and the 'beaten up' skin, in between the other scenes. To do this I had Micaiah standing up, and we used the camera handheld in order to distort the shots slightly. 
• The 'normal' skin shots were done, so we moved onto the 'beaten' skin. Make-up was used to create the beaten up skin effect, and bruises were created in the multiple spots of the body that we had previously shot. The same sort of shot was filmed for the 'beaten' skin so I could cut to the different shot in post. 

• Once those shots were completed  we shot the close-ups of certain words and phrases from the letter. To do this, I ripped up the previously written script and placed the different parts on my bed. For each shot I moved them around and placed the certain pieces of letter in a particular position to make it easier to see the words through the camera.
• To complete the last shot of the poem, I placed the pieces of the letter around the bed with the most important one in the middle. I then had the camera start quite close to that piece and then moved the camera upwards to create a distorted zooming out effect.
• These shots were shot in the bedroom, and the pieces of the letter were place upon the bed.

• To end the shooting day, we moved onto the bathroom. I only needed two shots for this location.
• The first shot was Micaiah looking into the mirror, and the second was her washing her hands under the tap. 
• We also then recorded the audio of Micaiah reading the poem and a few extra clips of dialogue that will be presented as the character talking to herself.

Script Feedback | Development

After handing in the first draft of my script, I received some feedback for it.

• Create a backstory for the character and present it through the visuals.
• With this point, I knew that the character should have a backstory, but I didn't really want to present it too much. This is because I wanted to create a mystery as to why the character is depressed. 
• Since the video is mainly portraying the inside emotion of someone with depression, I wanted to emphasise this through not giving away too much about the reasons why. Someone with depression wouldn't often think about why they are depressed, and this is something that I wanted to carry through within the video
• However, saying that, I am going to write the letter and make it look like its dirty and tattered to imply something about the person who sent the letter. 
• Also, in one shot, the character will have bruises on her body, which will also imply that she either self-harms herself or she has previously been abused by someone. 
• Overall, I want the audience to think about and decide for themselves why she is depressed, through the imagery I will be showing.

• How is the isolation going to be shown?
• I will be presenting this, not only through the character being sat on the bed curled up, but also through the sound design.
• I will only add the ambience sound along with the phone text message tone, and words/phrases will be heard to portray the character talking to herself. 
• By having this, the scene will feel empty and hopefully the 'talking to herself' element will show that the character is always in her own head, which will create the sense that she is isolating herself from everything and everyone around her.

• What will the landscape shot be and where will it take place?
• For this shot, I was going to show a calm area, like a lake or a peaceful bit of scenery to create a contrast from the rest of the poem. 
• I'm either going to look for a place and shoot it on one of my shoot days, or I'll find some footage that I have previously shot.

• How will the flashback memory be presented?
• This will all be presented through the colour and the look of the visual. I will colour correct the image to start off, and then I'll add a glow effect or a subtle blur so it has a different look to the other images.
• Similar to other shots, I will desaturate the colour of the image so it is consistent throughout the whole video. I may also experiment with the exposure of the clip in order to add to the dream effect.

• What will the calm imagery entail?
• The calm element of some lines in the poem will be presented through symbolism. 
• For example; the shots with the candle will represent calmness, and the audio will be quite simple for these shots so the calm symbol is clear. 

• How will the last shot be 'strong' and 'powerful'?
• This will be done through the sound design.
• The shot before will have a build up of a lot of different layered sound effects, and the next shot which is the last one, will have nothing but the dull background ambience.
• The fast impact of the previous sound will effect the audience and the silence straight after, will add to that effect and will hopefully keep the audience wanting more. 

Risk Assessment | Production Notes

Here is the risk assessment for the first day of filming:

Here is the risk assessment for the second day of filming:

Call Sheet | Production Notes

Here are the call sheets for my two filming days. Saturday is the day I will be filming with the actress, and Sunday is the day I will be filming extra shots to complete everything on my shot list.

 

Costume & Props | Development

Before filming the majority of my video, I needed to get some props together and also I needed to think about what costume I wanted my actress to wear. 

Props

Some of the shots that I want to film contain lit candles, so I will need to use a variety of candles, both tea lights and tapered candles. I will film a variety of different shots for these clips in my video, and I will experiment with the blur and the focus from changing the focus on my camera. 

There is also a shot where I am going to show the actress sat by a record player. I will make sure to not only film the wide shot of the actress and the record player, I will also shoot a few cutaway close ups of the record going around on the device so I can cut to them and make the scene cut faster.

One of the decisions I made with this poem, is portraying it in the form of a letter. Originally I didn't know whether I wanted to go along with this idea or not, but i decided that it would help relate the poem to some of the clips I am planning on filming. I wrote out the poem on several pieces of paper, trying to make my handwriting look different. Once this was done I then screwed it up and made it look dirty to resemble the letter being treated badly, either by the person reading it or the person who wrote it.

Costume

In order to create a negative tone, and also to keep the visuals looking plain and simple, I decided that the actress would wear a baggy black top/jumper, along with normal dark jeans. Then in the crying scenes she would wear a dark coloured vest, to create the sense that she is exposing herself through her emotions. I think having this as costume will help when presenting the emotion her character is feeling, and also it will create the sense that she is isolated and very reserved by not showing too much about herself.

Montage | Research

To further understand the editing technique of montages I decided to do some research, before the filming and editing stage of my project.

What is a Montage?

The definition of a montage is:

"a single pictorial composition made by juxtaposing or superimposing many pictures or designs."

• A montage is the use of opposing images being placed together to represent Juxtaposition and creatine new meanings.
• Unlike conventional continuity, it is purposefully discontinuous.
• It doesn't use the 'Classic Realism' found in most Hollywood films.
• It's often shown in a fast-paced fashion, and it compresses time and shows information in short duration of time.

Sergei Eisenstein, an early directorial, proposed this method of filmmaking and it was often used to convey political messages. 

He used 'Soviet Formalism' in his filmmaking, which focused more on groups rather than individuals in order to explore a variety of stories. 

In the construction of the narrative, it doesn't follow the laws of time or space, and it also draws heavily on icons and symbolism.

An example of the use of montage, is the shower scene from Hitchcock's 'Pyscho':

Where is a Montage used?

A montage is usually found in action, thriller and horror films, and its used for multiple different reasons:

• To create tension and conflict
• To show time passing
• To show symbolism and present a particular message of theme
• It offers new storytelling possibilities
• It challenges the audience

Montage's can be found in movies, trailers, music videos and more.

Some examples of montages found in movies are:

• Hot Fuzz
• Rocky
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Some examples of montages found in music videos are:

• The Prodigy - Firestarter

http://www.elementsofcinema.com/editing/montage.html

Casting & Location | Production Notes

Casting

When thinking about who I wanted to cast as the female character in my video, I wanted someone who had experience with the illness itself. This was quite tricky to do as, obviously, it's a very personal thing. However, I wanted to show the pureness of the illness and the best way to do that, I thought, was to find someone who knew what it was like and could easily portray that.

The actress I have chosen is one of my close friends, Micaiah. 

I knew she would be good in this role as she has a lot of knowledge on the mental illness, and due to the fact she knows a lot about it, she has the ability to portray that feeling through the visuals and also the audio.

Micaiah is a student, but I wanted someone of that age, not for practicality, but because I wanted to show that anyone of any age can suffer from it. Within the poem Anaxagorou says 'your friends don't answer the phone and your mum's left you in tears again'. This line spoke 'young adult' to me, as she goes through a lot of emotions and it's almost like she relies on her friends and parents for help and love along the way.

Also, after doing research, students or young adults are more likely to go through depression or any other mental illness due to the stress of that time in their lives, or if they had a troubled childhood.

Location

To create a personal and intimate feeling, while also showing isolation, I've decided to shoot most of the footage with my character in a bedroom.

The room will be quite small, so it feels enclosed, but also not a lot of the room will be shot to create the feeling of claustrophobia. 

While also shooting in a small bedroom, I will be shooting outside for the sky scenery in an area that has trees and other features like that in order to create a good sense of depth of field. 

Due to my video being more of a montage, the locations I use will be quite varied, and due to having lots of close-ups of the actress and having shots in the dark, the locations may not be very clear and noticeable. 

This will keep to the depression theme in the video, as when you are suffering with this illness, you don't take any notice of the location you're in, as your brain is foggy and packed with horrible thoughts.