MANIFESTO

INTENTIONS (dice task) :

BLACK – RISK –  ‘the possibility of something bad happening. Risk involves uncertainty about the effects/implications of an activity with respect to something that humans value, often focusing on negative, undesirable consequences’

WHITE – COLLAGE – ‘a piece of art made by sticking various different materials such as photographs and pieces of paper or fabric on to a backing.’

RED – PLAY – ‘engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose.’

VISUAL:

• playing with gender, makeup, clothing, male and female etc – links to risk and play
• using different clips to form layers of the video, making a collage (make some layers translucent, linking to collages make during the dada movement) – links to collage
• the video could maybe in complete black and white, maybe some stop motion too.
• aisle wanted to add rundown clips of objects and places to add sway away from the normal idea of a film, rebelling against the norm, unexpected.

SOUND:

• music/clips from the time the Dada movement began and even into the surrealist movement, linking to that theme of rebellion and identity. This is music from 1910 to 1920 onwards
• some bits could be silent depending on what part of the video they are.

FILM SPECIFICATION

IDEAS AND INSPIRATIONS:

My theme for this short film is rebellion, gender and art, mainly focussing on how individuals express themselves in society through their gender and art styles. Gender has always been a very political subject through history, and only now in 2020 are we really starting to accept peoples identities and feelings. People in modern day society have the ability to present themselves however they like, through clothes, makeup, hobbies, body, actions etc, when is past decades, this was merely impossible due to social norms.

I am very inspired by the Dada and Surrealist movements (collectively from 1916 to 1966) as they where the first people to explore radical things like Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, and Expressionism and formed a revolution against the constraints of the rational mind; and by extension, the rules of a society they saw as oppressive. These two movements have intrigued me and I would like to incorporate some of their ideologies, artwork styles and views in my film. One main artist that I have been influenced over the past couple years is Claude Cahun as she has Cahun illustrated the various possibilities of genders and of the body. Here is a blog post that I have created while researching Cahun, explaining her intentions and ideas.

SURREALIST AND DADA ARTWORK INSPIRATION:

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SOUND: I would like to incorporate many different aspects of audio and vocals into my film, to create a scene of randomness and to make every second unexpected, linking to the risk factor, some of my ideas that I would like have in my audio include:

• Ambient noise; which refers to the background noise present at a certain scene or location, including noises such as rain, traffic, crickets, birds, etc. My man idea is the radio playing/echoing in a supermarket, or maybe the radio while at home, like channel 103 or radio 1. Rain would be a great sound to have in the background as it is a relaxing and soft sound.
• News interviews, and political interviews that would be on Tv daily. I would like to make sure these clips are related to news about gender right, and other identity related topics, to link to the idea of my film.
• news articles include: “Government considers reforming gender identity rules” and California to house transgender inmates based on gender identity which I will record and put into my film.
• Silence. I would like there to be no noise in many parts of my film, depending on what clip is being watched. I think that having some parts of the film without audio will create an interesting contrast to the other audios played. Maybe I could include subtitles on the screen like a silent film would. This would add diversity to my film.
• Tristan Tzara sings The Song of a Dadaist (1920)

After Deciding on possible Titles for our 90-second film I decided to create front cover designs that could be included at the start or throughout the film

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Names:

Tom Peat, Micah De Gruchy, Olly Flavell

Intentions:

We rolled three dice to get three words which we will include in a manifesto’s to inspire a film we will produce, film and edit. The words we got from the dice were ‘Irrational’, ‘Spontaneity’ and ‘Collaboration’. We have the idea to compare the collaboration and coming together of community from WW2 and the 2020 pandemic as well as show the irrational aspects of the pandemic such as not wearing a mask, thinking it’s a hoax and various conflicts against the government including riots. Covid-19 was spontaneous in the sense that it suddenly came in and affected everyone’s lives.

Visual:

We will include archival footage from the war on the frontline and the home front as modern day news footage from the start to beginning of the pandemic including Boris Johnson. we will collect close up footage of people wearing mask and try to show damages to peoples lives and the new spontaneous precautions.

Sound:

We will have audio recordings of Churchills speech “we shall fight on the beaches” with sounds of guns and manufacturing and compare to to modern day with a lack of sound as it is an invisible war. We will include the speech where borris says we go into lockdown and compare it. we will show before and afters such as football stadiums showing it packed and now empty.

3 WORDS

Irrational

Everyday

Collaboration

Intentions:

Our idea is to create a film which explores the impact of coronavirus and lockdown on teenagers. The film is going to show the impact on all teenagers and their mental health. It is not going to follow one character/ protagonist in particular as it will act as a way to show the impact on all people in our age group. The film will be based on our experiences and that of our peers.

We are presenting the theme of rebellion through the use of anger we are going to portray in the film, showing the overall wanting to rebel and ignore the seemingly pointless government rules. Frustration and irrationality our some of our main themes in the film.

As the film progresses we show the change in society through the eyes of teenagers. Jake and myself both want to tackle this theme as it is a very personal topic to us both as it greatly impacted how we lived our lives this year and still does to this day.

Sound will be extremely important in our film as we plan to have much of the pace, emotion and setting reliant on the atmosphere we create with the audio. We are going to do lots of sound scaping and layering.

Story Board

Start:

The pandemic starts – Film loads of news sources from different peoples perspectives (off of phone, tv, laptop etc) – Stitching loads of news articles together (overlaying sound)

End segment with quote from Prime Minister: “The Nation is going into lockdown” – quick into to black (thud)

Part 2:

Record empty and messy streets/ roads (dystopian theme)

Record peoples heads watching TV (no faces)

Person doing push ups in corner of room (bored idea, dark lighting)

Amazon package arrives … unboxing

Making coffee and biscuits

News quote: “restrictions being eased” – again from TV or phone

(SLOW DOWN PACE HERE) opening front door, zoom into person seeing chest relax (one shot – follow them getting into the car, zoom into dash then drive off as zooming out.

Part 3:

Film people socialising

People hugging

Pubs, people drinking again

Busy streets in town (timelapse)

Cars + bikes driving on the roads (The Audi, fancy while driving shots – make sure not to have too long of a clip of driving)

Ending:

Film someone looking at their phone watching cases go up on the rise again…. fade to black.

Editing

Visual:

The majority of the video will have a grey, dull atheistic to it, giving the overall film an impactful and negative effect. The video will be used to show the impact of the pandemic on teenagers using a lot of Jake’s and my own experiences. The shots will be taken on darker days with a naturally grey tone or at night. The dark colours act as a metaphor for the negativity the pandemic has brought.

The film we be shot, mostly free hand on a Nikon DLSR camera. We are shooting the film free hand as we want to capture a natural and more relatable documentary style film. However some shots will be taken on a tri pod, perhaps even a gimble, using props like skate boards to get straight panning shots if necessary.

The shots will be moving images not still images.

None of our models/subjects in our film will show their face. We want the film to appear anonymous and able to relate to anyone. A large focus will be on the behaviour of a person, their hands and their actions.

The film will be cut scenes, flashing through one another, possibly only having screen time for a seconds rather than one continuous shot.

The narrative is a cyclical narrative, as in it starts how it ends: Someone looking at their phone watching the news – the cases going up.

Sound:

Sound is going to play a very important role in the film with much of the pace, emotion and setting relying on the audio. We are planning to use lots of sound techniques and lots of audio layering. This is because by doing this will be able to create atmosphere in the film, such as on an empty street with just the sound of the wind or the sound of laughter and chatter in a pub or resturant.

The sound is also going to be used to portray some of the most impactful events over the past year and we will be using audio clips from new reports, radio broadcasts and other media in our film, (such as the lockdown announcement on the news). The sound will provide the most change and contrast in the film and will impact the visual element the most, making the film much more impactful and personal on the viewer.

We will not be using music in this film, unless it fits the environment but even then it will simply sit in the background and not the main focus of the scene.

It is likely we will be using audio from the website ‘freesound.org’, from the clips but mostly, specifically recorded sounds to add into the video. This will make the video seem much more professional than just using audio from the clips. This also gives us the opportunity to remove wind noise. For example clips such as the empty street clip we plan to capture will have no audio from the original video as that part of the film will be silent.

Title Ideas

The New Normal

Changed

A Teenage view of the Pandemic

Guidelines

Lockdown

Roles

Producer: Thomas Le Maistre and Jake Dupre

Photographer/Videographer: Thomas Le Maistre and Jake Dupre

Editor: Thomas Le Maistre and Jake Dupre

This film is a collaboration of roles and effort.

THEME of film: Rebelling against the societal expectations towards women.

SUBJECT of film: Focusing mainly on personal identity as well as incorporating politics in the sense of how the capitalistic government controls what we are influenced by. 

INTENTIONS of film: In groups, we carried out a dice roll task. We were given three die and asked to roll them all at once. Each dice was linked to a set of words which corresponded with the number on the die. After the dice were rolled, we were left with the following three words: RISK, CHANCE and ABSURD. These were to be incorporated into our manifesto.

VISUALS of the film: Inspiration from O’Donnell on her process of ‘performing’ for the camera. Additionally, our group was inspired by how the portrayed the conflict between her and her personal identity.

SOUND within the film: A reading of the poem ‘The Jabberwocky’ by Lewis Carroll. Although not from the Dada era, it can be considered as a nonsense poem. The subject within the poem is shown to have rebelled against the advice and warnings about the creature from his father and is later praised for this rebellion. We felt as though it would successfully tie in with our theme as the subject of our film is planning to rebel against the norms of society. We were hoping that the Jabberwocky would be a metaphor for society and the lack of control people have over their identity due to this.

TITLE ideas: Opening the third eye, The art of unlearning, Reconditioning the mind,

‘An open third eye allows you to take in light and details that you would otherwise miss, and this can be intense or overwhelming at first. Feeling like you are changing on a fundamental level, even if you struggle to put it into words.’

What is a manifesto?

In art: a manifesto is a public declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of an artist or artistic movement.

Additionally, we were looking to incorporate the idea of ‘Breaking the rules of reality’. This is present in our manifesto below.

TITLE: Silent Noise

THEME: Rebellion

INTENTIONS: To put emphasis on rebellious people during the pandemic.

SUBJECT: Corona/isolation/togetherness/art/Identity/politics/authority/propagada

RULES: We have to incorporate the 3 words in our 90 second film

WORDS: Risk – Everyday – Failure

TECHNIQUES: Tripods, personal perspective, collaging

VISUALS: Young people at parties or people in crowds in comparison to people at home alone.

SOUND: People talking/singing (at the party or in the crowd) and an eerie noise gradually getting louder to represent the silence that surrounds the people at home alone.

INSPIRATION: The life everybody currently lives in.

The Silence

There are two parts two our film; one part being people isolating themselves to keep themselves safe as well as other and abiding by the governments rules. This part of the project could link to people’s mental health through lockdown and how people rebel against the people risking others lives and rebelling against the virus itself by staying home and keeping their distance from others.

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The Noise

The other part of the film is the people who don’t abide by he rules and rebel against the government. There are many reasons why people would break the rules; wanting see family or friends, some people think corona is a just a lie in order to help the environment, or some people just want to rebel.

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Sounds (Piano throughout)	Visuals (first person for all but lockdown segment)
Birds	Scenery on a walk Title overlayed(5-10 secs)
Cars (traffic)Talking	Normal life before lockdown:Lessons, Canteen, Rush hour, People in town,TV in the background (news)(1-5 secs each (15-25 secs total)) Timelapse of everyday life(7-10 secs)
Muffled sounds (everyday life) cuts toBoris J on the news	Black screen(3-5 secs)
Boris J on the newsBLMAmbulance sirenTicking clockKettle noise	Timelapse of lockdown life (repeated routine)Ticking clockKettle(20-25 secs)
Boris J relaxing lockdownConversation audio	Meeting one person(5-10 secs)
Birds	Scenery on a walk(5-10 secs)

SHANNON O’DONNELL

Shannon O’Donnell is an emerging photographer, focusing on ideas like gender, men and women roles in society, manhood and all sorts of other identity related concepts. She has recently graduated documentary photography at the university of South Wales, and completed media photography and history as subjects for her A-Levels.

Her inspirations include Claude Cahun and she calls her ‘rebellious’ for being one of the pioneers of identity photography. Another inspiration Shannon mentioned to us was the Casa Susanna project where all types of people would gather in the 1960’s, and celebrate what we would call now, LGBTQ. Walter Pfeiffer and Adi Nes (a jewish Israeli who works mainly on work related to masculinity, being a male, manhood stages, masculine roles and war), were also some people whose work interests her.

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”By Your Bedside (2018) is a series of images that I created to compliment my short film, Susan’s Sleep. The images are quite, to reflect my own experience during the time my mother was in a coma. I went mute during this time, isolated myself and kept my emotions inside. The only time that I felt able to express myself was when I was sat by my mother’s bedside. These images convey the surreal movie-like experience I felt while waiting for my mum to wake up.” – Shannon O’Donnell

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Susan’s Sleep is a very personal piece by Shannon made in the last year or two. O’Donnell describes the film she made as a type of personal therapy to help her process a tough part of her life, when her mother was put into a coma. It consists of a series of photos and clips made into a short film. This video she has made includes lots of sounds from the hospital, places behind clips taken by a phone, GoPro and camera, as well as footage from her family archives.The film depicts a scary and very personal experience of not knowing what will happen, and also the experience of living in intensive care. Through this harsh time she recorded audio and film, and now her mother is doing much better after 6 months rehabilitation to help her walk regain good mental health. I personally think it represents a lot of what society is facing today with the ongoing pandemic and how we have to stay strong.