jbradshawidentity2019

[jbradshawidentity2019]

When making this film a big struggle of mine was organization, my lack of time management effected my work from quality to getting the content I needed. At the beginning of the project I did make a plan that spread across the seven weeks; however I did not stick to this which could have been helpful if I had. The first problem I ran into, due to lack of organisation, was that I had not charged the camera batteries the night before filming. Because of this I lost a lot of filming time as that day was the only day my actors were free. I also lost filming time due to picking up the wrong fish eye lens, It did not have the same black cropping around the edges as the lens used for my other footage. Many scenes were also roughly planned, this made some of my images look sloppy as I hadn't taken into account lighting and white balance. Next time I will make a thorough shoot plan for each scene so filming goes more smoothly.

I am very pleased with how the music intertwines with my images harmoniously to create my intended effect on the audience. I think without one the my message isn't portrayed, by focussing on the images timing to the music I was able to mock the characters in the film and the footage.

In the future I would like to work on my technical skill. I am a little disappointed in the colouring of my film, I didn't really take white balance into consideration. I also tried to film in slow-motion however I didn't manage to do that, because of this I had to add it on when editing. I would like to take a camera out and experiment with the camera settings, so for the next project I will be more confident in using aperture, shutter speed, white balance and slow-motion. A technical issue I came across was I filmed some of my scenes horizontal, and some vertical. This became a major problem because of the fish eye, when horizontal it crops the side and when vertical it crops the top. I didn't have enough time to re-film so I had to solve the problem when editing. On post production I flipped the horizontal images and put an opacity mask which mimicked the cropping on the lens. The only problem with this is that I had to zoom into the image to do this which has lessened the quality.

If I was to do this project again I would like to exaggerate the poshness of the characters and the things they do more. In my film it isn't obvious, the greed and the need for status. I found it hard to find overly posh clothes or places to film, I would have loved to go completely over the top however I had limited resources. It is a shame as it is the main theme in my film, however I just had to represent this in a smaller scale such as including a fur coat, makeup, posh wine and money.  

[jbradshawidentity2019]

Final piece 

[jbradshawidentity2019]

When trying to colour my scenes I wanted to roughly mimic the colour used in Mary Poppins, Its a sickly saturated colouring which works well with the my themes of gluttony, arrogance,delusion,selfishness. Started by doing colour correction on all my images as the white balances where all of. I then hightened the saturation and brought out the reds, as that is what can be seen in that still of Mary Poppins. In the end I did tone some of my colour editing down a bit because it looked over edited. Because Mary Poppins would have been filmed on a film camera it is hard to re-create the same colouring when filming digital. 

[jbradshawidentity2019]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hk23s4hh8M8 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNHRXNvFmZ8

The film Mary Poppins has inspired my film quite a bit, I love the contrast of liberation and confinements of society. I love this film because there is a constant uprising against this capitalist world, and in return trying to replace it with this charmingly silly world. You can see the progression of the father being this very serious capitalist banker into a caring laid back family man. The first links shows the kind of capitalist serious world the film is against, and the second link is where the film shows the silliness it tries to replace it with. This film has been in the back of my head when making my film, my film is also against this type of grey structed world that forces us to behave with certain etiquettes. Theres this goal for status, respect and a need to be “proper,” however to me these are all man made concepts that are unecceary and actually makes the world a worser place. I wanted to incorporate this alternative   way of living that can be seen in Mary Poppins. My film is mocking these man made concepts because underneath all of that we are just animals that shouldn't take ourselves to seriously. 

[jbradshawidentity2019]

This is a basic example of the progression I will put in my film. There are three pauses or places where the music slows down. Each time there is one of these the character become more and more monkey like. Before the first pause the characters act very respectable and posh, creating a juxtaposition with their monkey mask. The first photo is the characters drinking wine, later on after the second pause they are drinking wine, still doing human things, however they are performing this action in a animalistic behaviour, they are spitting out all the wine out. After the last pause the character are completely behaving like monkeys they are eating echoers fleas, hanging of lampposts, fighting echover; the true identity is revealed. 

[jbradshawidentity2019]

The use of music is very important within my film, I have timed my images to it in order to enhance the ridiculousness. The music and my footage creates a juxtaposition because without the music the footages are actually quite unsettling. An example of linking my footage and music together is this video, there is a pause within the music where I have put a close up of an actor looking around, and looking all monkeyish. I have added in grunts of a gorilla this use of timing again is a mocking of the viewers, to make them laugh at themselves. 

[jbradshawidentity2019]

This is the first edited scene of my work.  I will be having a progression within my work from human behaviour to animal behaviour, This first clip is a kind of short summary of the concept and the video before it starts; this forboads whats to come. I have the actors with their false identity as respectable humans (with the monkey noises as a little shadow of their true identity,) when the masks are put on the music starts, everything is in slow-mo, they start acting in an animal behaviour and their true identities are revealed. Once this happens the film starts with the actors still masked but behaving all posh, until the end when they will act like monkeys.

[jbradshawidentity2019]

When researching on the human condition Jeremy Griffith highlights traits and attributes we suffer from, being competitive, aggressive, selfish, arrogant, greedy, egocentric, deluded. I believe all of these things have consequently shaped our world; and not for the good. We compete against others, we buy more and more things, we boast, we do all this to make ourselves feel elite and better then anyone else. The human need to have status or wealth results in us needing to be selfish, arrogant and all those things. I want my video to show now matter how many society made signifiers of status you cover yourself in, from wearing fancy clothes to owning a multi million business, when left completely naked of all of that we are just simple minded mammals part of the animal kingdom; we are not our own category. By thinking that we are, has given us permission to do all the bad that we have done to the world. I want my film to make us look ridiculous to the opposite of status, which is to make people respect you and take you serious. I want my film to completely strip all of us from our self made status from me to the viewers until we laugh at ourselves; because I believe it is only until we no longer take ourselves seriously   it is then we can start to cure ourselves of the human condition. 

[jbradshawidentity2019]

I filmed two videos, one of the two actors dancing and this one, of them fighting on the floor. I am not to happy with the quality of filming as you can see my feet in the shot and its all a bit messy. Instead of doing one clip within in my film like if... where the seen croshendos, I want there to be a croshendo thought out my whole film. I will use the dancing and bowing scene at the beginning of my film, and the fighting on the floor scene at the end; when everything becomes ugly and animal like. I like this idea because at the beginning it can show the characters hiding their identity by acting posh and well mannered. however as the film progresses the way they act becomes uglier, and the more they try to cover up their identity with money, makeup and clothes the more uglier it seems, until they are just completely animalistic and showing their true identity. within Lindsay Anderson film If... he shows the millantent approach that a post world war England has adopted, it can be seen even in the romance sceane when the boy and girl first meet. This use of animalistic behaviour shows a resemblance to our violence as humans. I would like to use anamilisitc behaviour within my video as well as human behaviour to show a parallel between us and animals. 

[jbradshawidentity2019]

When thinking of things my characters could do that involve fickle tradition, splender and glutonny, I thought my two characters could do a waltz. I want it to start of posh and well mannered but progress into this animalistic dance like in this clip in If...   

[jbradshawidentity2019]

I love the acting within this scene, I would like to incorporate this within my film. The human has transferred his deminor to that of a monkey yet not his physical attributes which I find interesting but still just as effect. He's not crouching down trying to be the size of a monkey, nor is he swinging like one isntead he mixes his human and monkey side to create a weird creature. I would like to experiment with this in my film, i might scrap my actors crouching to be the size of a monkey rather focus on their behaviour.

[jbradshawidentity2019]

Difficulties

 The first problem I encounted was I had borrowed a fisheye lens that needed a adaptor when fixed on the camera. Because of this it cropped out the image making the fish eye lens effect disappear. To solve this problem I went back the next day and got a camera that had a bigger sense so I could put the fisheye lens on without and adaptor, meaning to cutting of the image. 

Another mistake I have done is I have filmed some videos horizontal and some vertical, even if I could crop the vertical videos to be horizontal it could potentially cut out the black ring around the fish eye; I will have to re-shoot.

I need to include some juxtaposition within my film, I either need posh peoples acting like monkeys, or people looking like monkeys acting very posh in order to get my point across. I will reshoot this Sunday. 

[jbradshawidentity2019]

The actor is eating the other actors fleas just like a monkey would. Again I might have to re-shoot I have filmed this vertical not Horizontal 

[jbradshawidentity2019]

This actors in this clip are mimicking monkeys from the clip I posted earlier. This is when one monkey slaps the over monkey from behind; I have changed it to hair pulling. The angle of the shot was inspired by Olaf Marten’s low down angles of animals.  I might have to re-shoot this as I have filmed it vertical and other clips are horizontal 

[jbradshawidentity2019]

I want my film to follow with the rhythm of the music to enhance humor, in the song there is a pause and I would like for this clip to be inserted; I will add monkey grunts to fill the silence and create a kind of funny awkwardness. 

[jbradshawidentity2019]

Shoot plan 

when: Sunday

Equipment: camera, tripod, fish eye lens

Where: street, victors house, my house 

scenes:

Wardrobe scene: house 

window scene: house 

scooping water tap: house 

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walking pulling hair: street

Boro hair shake: street 

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Eating fleas: victors house 

Eating + stealing : victors house 

Pause scene: victors house 

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fighting: park 

hanging: park

lipstiick + jumping scene 

[jbradshawidentity2019]

The photographer of these images is called Olaf Martens. I was drawn to the photos when researching for my project because of the angle shot at, The camera has been placed on the floor which brings you into the animals world; it gives the monkey and the dog a voice over the human. Since in my project people are behaving like monkeys, I would like to enhance the monkey deminour by in some scenes placing the camera on the floor to give a different perspective from an animals height.