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Mastery Journal Business of Film

Over the last year and the process of earning my Master’s degree I think my goals have changed significantly. Whereas at the beginning of the year I carried a very simple idea of how filmmaking worked, something based in years of making films myself with my friends and very little money or resources, I now understand filmmaking to be a vast and complicated process. This doesn’t discourage me from approaching the world of film, but it does force me to consider the strings attached to above the line positions that I never thought about before. Those who hold the purse control all things about the film. Although this idea makes sense, it doesn’t appeal to me very much as a person who enjoys directing and producing with more control over the things I create. 

At the beginning of this year I wanted to leave school with the ability to make a film, and I believe that I have. I have a sold grasp of cinematic concepts that prior to this I had never taken seriously- lighting, visual storytelling, even sound editing! Now it’s easy to look at a film script and get a ballpark idea of just how much time and money has to go into it to make it quality. 

I am proud of the growth of my leadership skills during the times that I got to helm projects this year. I learned how to work with large groups and manage the shifting sand of a film set. Even though I studied almost entirely above the line concepts, I feel that if I worked a job on a regular Hollywood film set I would not be totally lost. I would be able to manage the work I output and it would reach the same level of quality that I hope to push in the student films I’ve worked on, and learn how to improve with time and practice. 

Overall, studying at Full Sail has been an excellent experience, and I’m very glad to have my Master’s.

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Mastery Journal Post Production

Throughout the post production class goal setting process I knew that more than anything else, I wanted to learn what made an edit good. I wanted to understand the motivations behind editing and how to take things I had created and felt unfulfilled or unsatisfied with and turn them into something beautiful. Post production helped me understand what sets apart an editor from an amateur, what makes a film seem to have quality editing and what shows other films to have poor structure.

Prior to this class, I had never heard of motivating an edit within the story. From watching youtube tutorials and movies I understood that I usually wanted to see the person talking on screen, but I didn't realize the power behind cuts that drove the story itself. Having someone look up to then cut to what they see, using reaction shots to build audience anticipation towards a particular moment, and even pushing the timing of something to match correctly with music are all tools that help the story come across as more meaningful and important.

I also knew that during this post production class I wanted to better familiarize myself with editing software. Although I did not end up becoming very fluent in AVID, I did work very hard to make sure that I understood all the basic and more complicated functions of Adobe Premier. Perhaps even more importantly, I learned the value of thinking outside the box and searching for answers I did not already know. From youtube tutorials to forums for the various different softwares, I learned how to understand the problems enough to find solutions. As such I was able to try all kinds of new things and use features of the programs I hadn't previously known.

Overall I learned a lot in this class. I believe I will apply what I learned in every aspect of creation- writing, directing, and of course the editing.

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Mastery Journal - Production

When I began the program, I was sure that the production class was going to be the most difficult for me. I wanted to make sure that I was going to work hard and not be distracted by myself, so that I could learn the most in the time I had. The goals I set at the beginning of the program were focused both on what I thought I could do and the time that I spent talking to others. Students from previous classes reminded me to make the most out of the time that was focused on me, so I set goals restricting my distractions, pushing myself to focus on my work.

I also knew that trusting my team was going to be vital to the operation. This wasn’t just my idea- it came from the mouths of other directors, such as Sam Mendes who put, “Always choose good collaborators.” (Rose, 2014)  right at the top of his list of ways to be a better director. My goals before beginning this class related to my teammates were to ‘focus on teamwork, keep a running dialogue open, and to be open-minded to others ideas.’ At the time I set them I did not know that I was going to be the director of my project, but I did know that I wanted to be the director and that it was going to be extremely important for me to display excellent teamwork skills. I feel that my experiences on set were improved by my ability to be a team player, something commented on by other students around me as well as through my own eyes.

My final goal for this class was personal organization. I kept a daytimer carefully and assisted in any way that I could, going to production meetings even when my personal responsibilities for that task were low so that I could help others stay on track. I also organized my time so that I could spend more of it watching films that were relevant to my project- a good director should constantly be a student of their craft, and have a love of the material they work with that drives them to create (The Hollywood Reporter, 2014). To bring my best self to the project, I needed to be organized and time efficient so I could meet my goals and make an excellent film.

References

Rose, C. (2014). Sam Mendes: 25 Ways to Be a Better Director | Charlie Rose. Retrieved March 31, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkqhXbrwP3M

The Hollywood Reporter. (2014). Angelina Jolie, Christopher Nolan and more Directors on THR's Roundtable | Oscars 2015. Retrieved March 31, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xkh982zFm8

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Mastery Journal Preproduction

The film I reviewed for this Mastery Journal was Liminal (2018) directed by Collin Davis and Matt Litwiller. The premise of the film, the logline if it were, is that after achieving a new scientific height, a haunted scientist explains to an optimistic coworker how everything has gone horribly wrong. The theme of the film is scientific exploration versus the spark of humanity, the genre is science fiction and the tone is all tension.

The basic dramatic structure of the film is actually quite simple, and powerful in its own way. The film opens on a female scientist, smoking alone. The inciting incident is the arrival of another scientist, the first offers to lead but the second assures her it’s fine if she stays. He chats with her and she reveals that she works in mysterious building 5. He jokes that they “don’t let you out much” and asks her some questions about what she’s working on, when she reveals that today they teleported a man to the outer reaches of space and back in two thirds of a second. We have arrived at plot point one. The man is startled and the two begin to discuss more deeply, she admits that she was not supposed to reveal this information and he promises to use discretion. At the midpoint, they’re together at the bannister of the building looking out at the futuristic city. Plot point two is when he asks her why she’s so down, shouldn’t she be happy? And she admits that something went wrong, that he came back physically fine but his humanity had vanished. At the climax of the story we cut into a different visual, a blurry man stumbling down a hallway and then being shot. We hear the shots fired on the roof, and the optimistic scientist tells the other to run as sirens begin to blare. In the resolution however, she stares ahead in horror as she realizes what has happened while red lights flash.

The production design was simple but poignant. A shared carton of cigarettes. Lab coats and glasses. An industrial facility roof. The only two times we cut away from the roof were to blurry hallway shots with very little production design addition. The cinematography was where this film shone. The entire seven minute conversation was a single long take, and what’s more, it was lit naturally by the setting sun and took place over the course of the sunset into darkness, implying that they could only have done such a take one time a day. There were no external lights other than the flashing red sirens at the end of the film. All of the camera movement was staged to flow with the actors, transfering from wide to medium to close and back to wide as the scene progressed. It was handheld and shaky, but it added a sense of raw authenticity to the performance.

There was a soft, natural and comfortable soundtrack through the film, the use of industrial and city noises built out the soundscape with some futuristic additions to show the progression of the city. There was little to no editing as the film had no cuts aside from the first and last shot, those hallway caps. However, the backdrop of the natural city had been augmented with visual effects to create impossibly tall buildings, extra aircrafts and other subtle sci-fi additions.

I am interested in applying a long take to my thesis film, though I will be working with inexperienced actors and have decided to make it a simple ¾ page scene. Other formal choices being made include the use of color theory (bright and dark colors) and set design to enhance the story. The most practical challenge for the film is working with the young, inexperienced actors who do not have the focus to move quickly from scene to scene. The solution to this problem is to hire someone to watch the kids when on set.

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Mastery Essay for Visual Storytelling

This month was a whirlwind. When I was in Mastery, I was told to make a list of the goals I wanted to cover in Visual Storytelling. I had no idea what to expect, but from the catalogue blurb I assumed it had something to do with the visual aspect of film and how it contributed to story. As a writer and a lover of subtext, this aspect has always interested me but I never fully understood it. I hoped that Visual Storytelling would go hand in hand with my undergraduate degree in Psychology and allow me to learn more about how to properly manipulate the emotional experience of the audience.

This leads me into mentioning my first VST goal- refreshing my knowledge of Psychology for this class. I had intended to spend a good bit of time re-reading my undergrad notes and seeing how they fit into the material of the lecture. This is not a goal I ended up meeting, and honestly, I’m not sure it’s one that I needed to be worried about. Storytelling through the visual medium does use psychology- for color, light, arrangement, and many other aspects of emotional guidance- but not the same kind that I learned as a bachelor. There’s very little conditioning an audience in a film, unless you’re trying to teach them to expect certain things from you as a director!

My second goal for VST was to learn about film aesthetics, and not only did I meet this one, I feel that I smashed it out of the park. I learned so much more than I expected about framing, production design choices, color, light, and every other aspect of the visual art of film than I had ever expected. I learned about the significance of camera movement and how it enhances the story, and how the overall look of a piece can be affected by even the smallest parts of the visual elements. I had no idea how deeply I was connecting with the visual parts of the media I was consuming, and this class entirely changed the way I looked at the aesthetics of film. This is something I can apply to every part of my professional life, especially in wanting to be a director. The visuals I craft can be enhanced by the tools I’ve learned, so that I can add more meaning into my work.

My third goal for VST was to learn about the audience’s emotional response to things, which I feel that I already covered pretty heartily. Though every audience member reacts differently, I have definitely learned some tools that work for almost everyone. In that vein though, I have now begun to watch how other people watch films. I hope that in learning about the emotional responses of the people around me, I can better understand what works and what doesn’t in movies.

I learned a phenomenal amount in this class. My craft improved dramatically, I can see a huge difference between the projects I shot during my first months and the ones I made most recently. I also have started watching way more movies- who knew I needed a kick in that direction? I am very thankful for what I learned over the last month, and plan to apply it over the next several months as I prepare to direct thesis.

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Mastery Vlog for Experimental Filmmaking 

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ANNIHILATION (2018) dir. Alex Garland Cinematography by Rob Hardy

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Mastery Essay - Annihilation 2018

The film Annihilation (2018) is about a group of female soldier-scientists who volunteer for a suicide mission entering a strange alien phenomenon called “The Shimmer.” The movie blends excellent use of tone, directorial POV, an unexpectedly moral suturing, to create a work of organized chaos. Throughout the just shy of two hour runtime, the film builds the audience's connection to the five characters before it slowly strips them away one by one through the predators of the Shimmer, their own psychological loss, and ultimately the breaking down of the self.

This film is a sci-fi adventure with psychological horror elements. I identified this film first as science fiction because of the enhanced and fictional scientific elements blended with reality. Its second sub-genre is adventure because it revolves around the conquests and explorations of the protagonist as she travels through the wasteland of the Shimmer. Finally, it is a psychological horror because it portrays fear overlapped with mental degradation in order to evoke terror of the unknown in the audience. Throughout the movie, there is an air of curiosity, mixed with the understanding that the answers to the questions asked will be unpleasant at best, and life-threatening at worst. Over the course of the film, my knowledge of the genre changed by allowing me to observe a sci-fi thoroughly grounded in reality without excessive fantastical elements. As a film in an uncommon genre, Annihilation takes steps towards defining a new niche for itself.

The place where Annihilation really shines is its tone. Through excellent use of color, music, lighting, and performance, the film manages to convey a total breakdown of the human psyche. The colors in the film change throughout. In the beginning, they are primarily drab with lots of olive tones, greens, browns, and greys. This represents the characters’ struggle through the land and the down to earth nature of their motivations. They wear primarily military fatigues and are portrayed as dirty and fearful. As the movie progresses and they plunge further into the Shimmer, their fear gives way to insanity and the world explodes into color. Starting at first with jewel-toned flowers, the color slowly grows to include prismatic sunsets, massive magical fires, and lots of vibrant blood. As the opalescent colors become more and more vibrant, the characters’ grip on themselves fades away, until there is little left of the original people who started the journey. The music of Annihilation is primarily acoustic strings and country, once again to reflect the simplicity of the characters in the face of such chaotic danger. As the end of the movie approaches, the movie blends strings with electronic sounds to create a weird and futuristic vibe. The lighting is a great mix of beautiful natural daytime shots and dramatic nighttime visuals. The shots of the sun and often of the air include a prismatic rainbow intended to demonstrate the refraction of light within the shimmer and to provide an otherworldly atmosphere to the areas within the Shimmer. The performance of the actresses conveyed both their strength as soldiers and their scientific knowledge while also showing them to be the type of broken individuals who would volunteer for a suicide mission. This matched the tone of mental breakdown, as their identities became warped by the unknown forces of the Shimmer. Altogether, the use of tone lended itself well to the genre and created a lot of feelings of discomfort and concern in the audience.

Another way that Annihilation guided the emotional journey of the viewer was through directorial point-of-view. The camera-work is all very steady with little to no handheld that is not diegetic. It feels cool and impersonal meant non distracting, and keep the audience fully immersed in the performances. However, there were several clever instances of foreshadowing through camera direction including refracting the characters’ images through a water-glass early in the film. This reflects the way that the characters were refracted body and mind later in the film. As the characters trek through the forest, the camerawork is kept close and tight, but by the end of the film, has shifted to the wide landscape-shots of a fantasy. Throughout the film these camera choices lead to a feeling in the audience that they are not being betrayed in their own minds the way the characters are. What they see is actual reality from beginning to end, despite the apparent fiction of it.

It was the film’s unexpected use of moral suturing in an adventure genre film that really caught my attention. Moral suturing uses a universal set of conflicting values to engage the audience at a deeper level of empathy for the characters and story. Part-way into the film, the characters have a conversation regarding how each is broken in their own way. This window into the trauma of these characters causes the audience to think of them in deeper and more complex ways. As the movie progresses, the Shimmer refracts these characters and changes them based on their traumas. The refractions differ for each character, with some of them drastically altering their entire perspective, and others becoming hyper fixated on a single personality trait of theirs, twisting them into exaggerated parodies of themselves by the end of their experience.

I struggled to identify the scenic metaphor expressed in Annihilation. I liken it the most to the psychological surrealism of intense dissociation. I do not know if I believe that the director was successful with the scenic metaphor because it was unclear. The film successfully evokes strong feelings of shook in the audience and impacted my emotional journey through the film despite its lack of clarity.

In conclusion, Annihilation successfully creates a chaotic, emotional film through tone, directorial point of view, and moral suturing. The film makes a deep and lasting impact on a thoughtful and introspective audience, asking deep questions of personal identity, and what it even means to perceive the world, while also being an enjoyable science fiction experience. I would recommend this film to anyone looking to engage in a unique perspective on the nature of selfhood.

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Mastery Journal Directing Talent

I really enjoyed the directing talent class. Although I didn't meet every single one of my original goals, ​I did learn a lot of information that I hope will be really useful going forwards. My first goal was to refresh my acting roots. I was very engaged in the theater as a child, I did classes and starred in several plays. Acting, in it's many different forms, has always been very important to me even though I no longer particularly enjoy being in front of the camera. Getting to be an actor quite a few times during this class really helped me reconnect with that love of being on stage, as well as relive those times I'd enjoyed directing short scenes and plays in the past. My second goal for directing talent was to direct. Tada! I loved doing directing scenes one, two and three. It was super helpful for me to be able to learn from my mistakes or areas I could have improved on previous scenes, and build those into my next attempt. I felt like I was able to create a vision and execute it, as well as to really form a connection between myself and the actors that was strong enough to show what I was going for. My final goal for directing talent was to learn more about the relationship between cinematography and acting. Since I wrote this in Mastery before ever really getting into what cinematography is, I meant framing. I now understand that cinematography is more about the creation and shaping of light, rather than the position of actors and objects in the scene. Regarding framing though, I loved learning about creating lines and shapes on screen, and the way that actors can draw the eye to certain places with their own eyelines, physical placement on screen or movement throughout a shot. I look forward to applying more of these framing ideas to my future work. 

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BALLiSTIC review, Mastery Journey

This essay will discuss the film BALLiSTIC (2018), a short movie written and directed by Full Sail graduate and independent filmmaker Ryan Connolly. The film’s logline is “in a post-apocalyptic world, a young woman fights for survival as she recalls traumatic events from her childhood.” Delivering non-stop action in a practical effects style as well as an emotional subplot that packs a punch, BALLiSTIC was a fascinating watch.

The theme of BALLiSTIC seemed to be the struggle for survival against oppressive odds. For half the film, a single partly armed girl fights off a small army of gunmen coming after her. In the other half of the film, a child and her mother struggle to escape into a cellar to wait out oncoming nuclear fallout. The genre of the film is undeniably action, pushing for a gritty and violent tone very similar to Mad Max (2015).

The inciting incident of the film occurs almost instantly, a car pulls into the frame and the driver is shot. Afterwards, the protagonist kicks the trunk open and attempts to escape. The action amps up towards the midpoint as she is confronted by two SUV’s filled with armed thugs, who pin her down behind an abandoned car. While trapped, she begins to recall a similar time she was trapped with her mother in their home the night the world-ending bombs went off. The first plot point hits when the protagonist realizes she has a bag of explosives stolen from her kidnapper’s car and starts to use them on her enemies. The second plot point is in the secondary plot running alongside and intercut with the first, when the younger protagonist fails to shoot a home invader resulting in her mother being fatally injured. The midpoint comes after she is pinned down again but manages to kill off all but the lead enemy, who she engages in single combat. The film actually had two climaxes, one for each story. In the main plotline she manages to defeat the leader of the bad guys after he had nearly taken her down. In the secondary plotline, her fatally injured mother bargains for her daughter to be accepted into a neighbor’s fallout shelter and remains outside to die while her daughter is taken. Interestingly this film has no denouement, as the protagonist is immediately kidnapped by another party right before the credits roll.

The production design for BALLiSTIC was really interesting. In an interview video attached to the short film, the director Connolly said that he wanted the location of the main shoot to be a “graveyard of cars” (Connolly, 2018). Shot in a desert junkyard outside Los Angeles, the location easily managed to capture that wasteland feeling. The other half of the film, her protagonist’s childhood, was shot inside an old colonial style home. Both locations were well selected. The props were all setting appropriate, everything plain and regular during the flashbacks and then enhanced with elements of sci-fi in the main plot (tiny bombs, thinner smartphones, holographic tattoos.) Hair and makeup did a great job of keeping everyone looking filthy and injured for the entire film.

The director of photography for BALLiSTIC did a great job keeping the film well-lit on a surprisingly low budget. With tons of nighttime scenes, he managed to place small lights in strategic places to create excellent tone and depth. During the main plot, the director specifically wrote the script to be shot in daylight so that they could make use of the natural lighting from the California sun. The visual content of the shots was varied and interesting, with a mix of dolly, stabilized and handheld depending on the type of action being showed on screen. The rule of thirds was well observed.

The short film had its own original action soundtrack as well as complicated layers of sound effects and natural sound. It also had ADR audio both of the actor’s dialogue and the mother’s whispering voice to be used for flashbacks. The dialogue was crisp even though the set was windy thanks to the use of a dead cat wrapped around the mic.

           The editing was everything that could be wanted in an action movie. Quick, sharp cuts with nothing held too long and good continuity of motion. There were no montages, but all of the transitions were clean and effective.

           While the film BALLiSTIC had a budget, it was still shot low-budget for the ambition of the effects the production wanted to pull off. One of the ways that they made formal choices that supported their theme was by translating the emotions into camera movement. For action and claustrophobic close up shots they used quick and unsteady handheld movement. For smoother and larger scale shots that had a more clinical air the used dollies. They even had one large scene, a full chase, that was shot from the back of a bike driven camera rig. Although most of these aren’t accessible to someone making a low budget film, putting effort into the camera movement choices can make a big difference in the production. There was also a very pleasing use of lights shining in the eyes of characters who were speaking to show more emotion that was done very simply with a can light. It would be simple and easy to recreate and adds a lot of depth.

           Practical challenges can almost always be overcome by creative solutions. Sometimes while coming up with solutions the filmmaker must be willing to bend away from their original decisions, choosing to instead to take a more practical and doable path towards their vision. Sometimes the script must be selected within the means of the creator. Sometimes grandeur and fancy shots must be replaced with clever, do-able material. In the end, however, there is almost always a way to achieve some version of what is desired. BALLiSTIC did an excellent job of overcoming challenges like minimal shooting time and low budget in order to create something unique.

Resources:

Connolly, R. [Film Riot]. (2018). [Video File]. ​How we made BALLiSTIC. ​Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTd3jyKMQkQ

Connolly, R. [Film Riot]. (2018). [Video File].​ ​​BALLiSTIC - a short film by Ryan Connolly. ​Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm-K8uQchMQ​

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Coppola, F. (1992). Bram Stoker’s Dracula. [Motion Picture]. United States: Columbia Pictures. Retrieved from www.twirld.tumblr.com 

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

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Rudin, S. & Garland, A. (2018). Annihilation [Motion Picture]. United States: Paramount Pictures. Retrieved from www.halle-berry.tumblr.com

Was I you? Were you me?

Annihilation (2018) dir. Alex Garland