Final evaluation-Doors

 1. The process.

Over the course of this project I have taken the idea through a lot of changes and I have been met with problems that I have had to over come. I will be talking about what my starting point was, what I researched, what I experimented with and how I would improve in the future.

My starting point was The Wolf, The Ship and The Little Green Bag documentary. When I first watched this documentary I didn’t really like it but as I got into animation I could look past the shoddy camera work and sound, and found that it was a very interesting piece as it brought together three different animators and a film crew with the purpose of telling the stories of the three women in the film.

I used urban legends as the focus of my research for the first idea as well as looking back on The Wolf, The Ship and The Little Green Bag.  working with the concept of fear. I looked at ways different urban legends could scare their audience. They play on irrational fears, and play on the constant fear of home invasion, the fear of the dark, the fear of other people and the fear of failing in a responsibility. Looking at The Wolf, The Ship and The Little Green Bag made me want to do something similar. The way the stories were told lets us see the story unfold before our eyes, the animators cleverly using metaphors to enhance the experience for the viewer. I wanted to do something like this and have my characters around a campfire, using the same method that The Wolf, The Ship and The Little Green Bag did in my own work.The first project proved too ambitious for the time frame and I had to change it a bit. Instead of a group of people the character became two people, a male and female, friends. the female character would have an irrational fear of urban legends and fears that they would come true. The male character would try to coax her out of her shell and show her that there was nothing to fear.
I would animate onto the footage like I have done on past projects.
I wanted to tell the urban legends through animation. I’ve been doing animation a lot this year and I wanted to continue through the final major project but I also wanted to go back to the things that I started with this year like Alice in Wonderland and the video game project. The Video Game project was based around some urban legend inspired games so I though about how I could use my past experience with the subject of urban legends but also with animating onto live action footage.
Again the project proved too ambitious for me to make in the time frame that I had, also the limit on how long I could make my film was an issue too, there wasn’t enough time within the piece to create the narrative that I wanted to create. I got stuck for what to do, I got really stressed out over what my final major project could be and I wasn’t helping myself by stressing myself out so much but that stress is actually what led me to my final Idea, Doors.

I decided to create a film that was a metaphor for stress and what it’s like trying to work through that stress and all the blocks and dead ends that come with it. I planned out the narrative, starting in a classroom then to the woods, to the town centre then finally to the field. There was meant to be another location which was the museum. Each of these locations held meaning to the narrative that my film followed.

• The classroom was the beginning, the character would struggle to work and the get up to leave because they can’t do their work.
• Then he ends up in the woods, which is showing his confusion and how lost he is and he doesn’t know where to go.
• The town centre stands for the clutter that can prevent us from doing our work, all the noise and rushing around.
• The field is calm and soothing and it opens the mind to thought.
• The museum would have stood for inspiration but I couldn’t get the permission in time so I ended up scrapping the scene.
• The character would end up back where he started and would sit down and begin to work.

I wish I would have been able to get that last shot as I think it would have made the film better, but I think that I ended up working the way I wanted to without the museum scene.

In the future I would try to focus on feasibility and responding to criticism so make the message of the film more clear. When we did a group critique of the films before the exhibition I got mixed feedback. Some people understood what the film was about but then others didn’t. Though it was meant to be quite a jarring piece, were you could feel the confusion and frustration of character, there were people who just didn’t get the film and that’s to be expected as it was a metaphor but I think that the film work and that I hit my goal with this piece. I wanted to show the stress and frustration that I was feeling  when my original idea fell through and I had to start again.

2. The exhibition.

In this part of my evaluation I will be talking about my part in the exhibition building and whether or not I think my film benefited from the way it was presented.

As editing took me quite near to the deadline there wasn’t much left to do in the studio but I tried to help with what was left the best I could. I helped but sheets over the counter tops and clean paint off the floor, I cleaned and moved chairs for the cinema room. I wished that I could have done more to help out in the building of the exhibition.

My work was shown in the cinema room, I think this was the right place to show it as it was very reliant on sound and creating ambiance. though I thought it could have been a bit louder I think that I hit my audience and that people liked the film. People clapped at the end of the film and this made me feel good about all the work that I had done on it and I feel that this year and especially this project I have produced a lot of good work and I want to continue to do this at the Manchester Film School in September.

 

Being John Malkovich

In ‘Being John Malkovich’ a puppeteer called Craig Schwartz and his wife Lotte are going through a tough time with money. Craig ends up getting a job with a company on the 7th and a half floor of an office where he works as a filer. On his first day he ends up hitting on one of his co-workers despite being married, but before he goes out with her he ends up finding a portal into the mind of the actor John Malkovich. They can then control the actor for a certain amount of time.

Though this film is like some of the other things I have researched it is also quite different. This film is very psychological, there are hidden meanings and a lot of the characters never say exactly what they mean. In my film I don’t want to just give the audience the answer.  By never telling them exactly what is going on I want them to leave with something to think about.

Reflection 16/04/15

I’ve started looking at related subjects starting with some suggestions from Graham and Brian like; ‘Mr Benn’, ‘Being John Malkovich’ and ‘Nightmare Before Christmas’. I want to look back at ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ and ‘Through the Looking Glass’. The theme of being lost and confused follows on throughout most of my project so I want to look back at some of the research that I did for my Mad Hatter’s tea party that I filmed at the beginning of the year. I could also look at research from my Video game project.

Mr Benn

Mr Benn is a cartoon series from the 1970s that involved a man who would visit a costume shop and travel through different scenarios based on which costume he was wearing. In one of the episodes I watched he put on a space man costume and went into outer space, he went from planet to planet trying to find the perfect planet but in the end he just wanted to return home.

In my project I want to end where I began and this show does exactly that. It starts at Mr Benn’s house but it also ends there. This is what I’ve taken from this TV show.
From looking at Mr Benn I have seen away that I can film the door opening with out the background showing up to much.

Reflection 09/04/15

Ok so I have started to look for doors and frames that I can use a lot of them are quite expencive 50 pounds or more and that doesn’t include the frame, handles or the Hingis. I will be using my student bursary to pay for this so I’m hoping I have enough to pay for everything.

 http://www.wickes.co.uk/Products/Doors+Windows/Internal-Doors/Internal-Softwood-Doors/c/1000655

Through the looking glass & Alice’s adventures in Wonderland

Through the Looking Glass is a tale about a journey through the mind. The main protagonist of the story is a young girl named Alice who is 7 years old and six months, her age is pointed out on multiple occasions during this story. I think it’s quite important as this is an age that she is considered young and innocent, full of wonder. I think this is what Lewis Carroll was trying to get out when he was talking about her age and over and over again telling us that this is a young girl and these are her imaginings.

The way that I think this will influence my idea, looking at this story, is how I present the transitions with Alice. They’re all very sudden; she’s in one place and then she’s in another, she questions this and that’s what I want my character to do as well. He goes through the door and he is suddenly in a new place and he doesn’t know how he’s got there.

Another thing this story does very well is set up its characters and how they work. It is all very jumbled and it can be hard to make sense of their world when you’re reading, you have Tweedledum and Tweedledee and they’re “noway nohow” and you have the Red Queen saying “you cannot cut someone who you’ve been introduced to” about a leg of mutton.

If we look at other versions of the story and how it developed from ‘Through the Looking Glass’ to ‘Alice’s adventures in Wonderland’, the Red Queen becomes much more of an antagonist instead of just a mischievous companion who set Alice on her path to becoming a Queen. The White Queen on the other hand is mostly written out of the story in ‘Alice’s adventures in Wonderland’; she became such a minor part of the story that people didn’t really remember who she was after the book and the film. In ‘Through the Looking Glass’ she is very meek but at the same time she always aids Alice along her path in one way or another.

Other characters that also changed between the books are the Mad Hatter, the March Hare and the dormouse. The dormouse isn’t actually a character in ‘Through the Looking Glass’, it is mentioned that they should put mice in the tea and this has got translated into a sleepy mouse who lives in the tea-pot in ‘Alice’s adventures in Wonderland’. The March hare is not actually a hare his name is just ‘Haigha’ pronounced so that it rhymes with ‘mayor’ and the Mad Hatter is just a child call ‘Hatta’  and they were the White King’s messengers. They were both Anglo-Saxons or that is what we are led to believe, as the White King states “He is an Anglo-Saxon messenger and those are Anglo-Saxon attitudes” when Alice points out Haigha’s odd behaviour when he is coming down the road.

Nightmare before Christmas

In the Nightmare before Christmas we have Jack Skeleton, the pumpkin king of Halloween town, who is discontent and stressed with his current way of life so he goes through a door in a tree and he comes back inspired. I can relate my character to Jack quite a lot as he’s also stressed and goes through doors to find inspiration.

So what I take from this film is the idea that someone needs to get away from their usual environment to be able to work there and appreciate it.

Reflection 28/02/15

I was looking back at the stories and thought about again which scenes I could use from them. I looked at the part where it says,

 “she glanced and saw the turn signal on — the car was going to pass — when suddenly it swerved back behind her, pulled up dangerously close to her tailgate and the brights flashed.”

I was thinking that I could animate this scene over her phone when it lights up and buzzes.
The project isn’t moving as smoothly as I would have liked and I still haven’t finished the script yet.

Urban legends research

I like urban legends, a short story to share at a party or around a campfire but they are also cautionary tales, don’t go in to the woods at night, always check your back seat and make sure you lock your car doors and never leave children unattended.  I wanted to do something connected to my previous work in my FMP so I looked at animating urban legends onto the live action footage like in my video game project which was also based on a form of urban legend.

In my research I looked at four urban legends in particular; The Hanging tree, The killer in the back of the car, Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the lights and The phone call from inside of the house.

The Hanging tree

This story is about a young couple who drive out in to the woods at night, the boy gets out of the car. the girl waits for him to come back and is about to get out to look for him when a man shows up at the car window and starts to tap an knife against it. She starts the car and starts to drive away but she feels resistance so she thinks that he has tied the car to the tree. She puts more gas on until she hears a strangled scream. when she looks she sees that the rope tied to the back of the car was slung over a branch and wrapped around her boyfriend’s neck.
What I can draw from this is that fear drove her in to a panic and therefore she accidentally killed her boyfriend.  I don’t think this will work for the project that I have planned as it is quite far fetched and I don’t think I can animate it well enough.

Car Killer

This urban legend is a bit more believable then the last as its about a young girl who gets out at a gas station to buy some fuel. After she gets it she begins to drive home. On her way home there’s another car behind her who looks like it is about to turn but suddenly swerves back around and follows her, flashing it’s lights. The girl gets home with the intention of running inside when the driver of the other car gets out and shouts, “Go inside, lock the door and call the police!” it turns out that the man had seen the silhouette of someone in the back seat with a knife!

Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the light?

This story is also far fetched but I think it would be easier to do then the hanging tree. It takes place at a college campus usually and it’s about a girl who goes back to her room to grab some things before going to the library to study, but when she gets back to the room the lights are off. She thinks she has walked in on her roommate and her boyfriend as she can hear heavy breathing and moans. She apologises and stumbles around in the dark collecting the things that she needs before she leaves and decides to stay at her own boyfriend’s that night. She goes back the room the next day to find the police outside it and they ask if she lives there. She tells them that she does and they take her inside. On the wall over her roommate’s bed and body is something written on the wall in blood and it said ‘Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the light, because while you were gathering your things your roommate was being murdered’. While it’s a bit out there this is one of my favorite urban legends and I want to use it for my project.

The Wolf, The Ship and The Little Green Bag

look at this documentary for FMP inspiration and talk about how  I discovered this film and what  I would take from this.What is it that inspires me about this film?

Even though the production quality is low I love the concept of this film, it is a collection of coming of age stories from three elderly women. and when one of them starts to tell their story it becomes animated on the screen. This is something I looked in to early on in this course and its something I want to try doing again.

How would I translate this?

I want to translate this in to my own sort of theme. I will be working with urban legends on this project ones like; the hanging tree, the ax man and aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the lights.

Fiction?

This will be a fictional film as I am basically telling ghost stories and fiction film making and dram a is what I’m applying to do at my first and second choice.

Is it feasible?

I believe it is feasible though it will be hard work it is work I am willing to do as  I enjoy animation and film making. the live action shots will be simple enough to pull off and intend to shoot in the evening but while it is still light.

Locations?

The location would be a residential area, a back garden.

Actors?

I would need three to four actors, late teens to early twenty’s. I have some people in mind but I’m not sure yet.

Other Ideas?

I have another drama idea but it would be more difficult despite less cast, it would require some experienced actors and I have looked into getting n touch with a few via ‘northwest actors’

Three act structure. can it work in that?

I think that it will once I write out a treatment and finish my research

Length?

I think that this film will end up at around five minutes max.