Initial ideas: I created this film to visualise the teenage experience of many during recent isolation and pandemic situations, contrasting the difficulties of online learning in isolation with the freedom of summer and missing times with friends. It became a great creative outlet for me just producing a product that really highlighted how the last year has felt , but i am also happy with my final film from its technical aspects. My first ideas came from a few different amateur student films i had found online about quarantine experiences such as ‘Numb’ by Liv McNeil and ‘Quarantine Perspective’ by Myles Dean. From these i chose a few specific camera shots i wanted to reflect in my footage, as well as the time-lapse idea from ‘Numb’. Through the initial ideas i developed them during the editing process to add my own style, deciding to create the isolation time-lapse, but layering it over chosen videos from summer to show the extreme contrasts in a single shot sequence – which overall i think created a really impactful ending to my film.
Filming: Overall i thoroughly enjoyed the filming process for my project. My film was split into three different sections, where before each shoot i had fully planned each individual shot to make the filming process easier and precise. The first section is all based in my bedroom, focusing on the struggles of online learning. I kept this section basic, using simple shots and minimal audio as i wanted it to allow the space for a build up throughout the rest of the film, and slowly introduce the main themes of the film. I used a quick and simple time-lapse sequence to show the unproductive passing of time felt during quarantine which would then link to the dramatic ending sequence in the film, and introduced a few short archived videos from summer to initially show the feelings of missing times of freedom. The second section was the most enjoyable and fun to film. I was very lucky when it came to the day of filming, catching a beautiful sunset which made all of the shots look stunning naturally. I had a friend help film this, using a high tech stabiliser for a phone, directing them through what angles i was looking for, and discovered that if you held the stabiliser up high, it created an aerial, drone looking point of view which i thought was a really unique angle (inspired by shots from Myles Deans short film). I combined different shots of me walking through fields with a few skating shots for some diversity, switching between third and first person perspectives, with the overall aim to create a general visualisation of ‘freedom’. The final section of my film was about creating a lasting, impactful message that encapsulated my whole idea of contrasting the stagnation of isolation to the feelings of freedom and missing the fun times during summer. At first i was planning on filming each section of the time-lapse everyday after a few weeks and filming later in each day to capture the slow decline with light, but instead realised it would be much easier to film it all at once, ensuring my tripod wouldn’t be knocked out of place and the composition of the camera would be the exact same. So between each shot i changed clothes, moved a few objects around my bed, and once i was halfway through, used my blinds to slowly control how dark the scene looked. This allowed the editing process to be much easier and i could choose which background archived videos would match up with the footages lighting.
Editing: The editing process for this film was quite long as i had many specific sequences and transitions i wanted to include, as well as a very clear idea of the way i wanted the film to flow throughout. I have multiple blog posts on the detailed editing process of the three sections, but there were some key points i think came out well. With the filming process as well, i knew i wanted to have certain footage that would act as transitions themselves and lead into the next scene, so i made sure especially between the field and time-lapse section, i had a a separate clip of me physically leaning into the time-lapse to clearly link those parts well. I made a fair few changes from my idea of the time-lapse to the final product when editing, as once i started i saw lots of areas for improvement. I changed the length of each clip from one second to just less than half a second as found the sequence to be too short, and then actually used the other half of it and added it somewhere else to make the time-lapse longer to have time to fit in more archived videos. Last minute i also decided to edit the time-lapse video to grow every few clips to take over the screen until at the end it had fully covered over the background videos, which i thought added some dramatism to the sequence. This grew with the background music, which i had slowly brought in during the second sequence, however edited the audio of all the field and background videos during the time-lapse to varying levels so it seemed as though the dramatic music grew even more throughout the film than it originally had. I also used lots of gradual and continuous fade transitions throughout the film, mostly to transition between archived videos. I was most proud of one gradual fade that i used at the end of the freedom section, to switch from ‘live’ filming of the field to the video playing on a laptop screen and slowly moving back to a wider view. I think this turned out really well and was effective in creating a hybrid of both the main themes in one shot.
Final thoughts: Overall i felt my short film was successful and i am very happy with how it turned out. I think this project really helped develop my technical skills needed for editing on Adobe Premier Pro, as well as structuring a short film in an effective way to tell a narrative. After uploading my film to YouTube i received lots of positive feedback from viewers, with the video now having over a hundred views, which i think really helped solidify my confidence in the outcome of this project. The inclusion of different filming styles such as the time-lapse sequence and experimenting with different filming technology for the drone-like footage allowed me to explore styles i don’t normally use and i think brought a unique aspect to my film. If i were to change anything about my project i think i would expand my research of a few more artists and bring in their styles to my own, to help experiment with a few more underlying themes and develop my narrative skills. To conclude, i’m very happy with the outcome of this project and put in a lot of effort to try and reflect the shared experiences of the past year in a way that allows many people to identify with, as well as express my own perspective in a rewarding and creative way.
How is reality represented within surrealism and dreams?
“We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experience is a narrowing of the imagination.” ― David Lynch
Dreams are something that make our minds wonder, leaving us on the edge of our seats; whether it’s because we want to know what was about to happen next or whether it’s because we want to know the meaning of what they dreamt of. Our life within reality which influences what we dream about is what interests me; how do we know what’s reality and what is just a dream? When we are dreaming, we’re not usually aware of it because it seems so real which leads me to think, maybe the line between dreams and reality isn’t so clear. “We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experience is a narrowing of the imagination.” David Lynch, a film director who revolves his work around surrealism and abstract forms of reality, is known to be “the first popular Surrealist” and has developed his own unique was of creating cinematic masterpieces by trying to expand the audience’s imagination to have their own understanding of what they are seeing within his film, his style has been dubbed as “Lynchian”; characterised as meticulous sound design and dream-like imagery. He tries to make his films as surreal as possible and the way they are interpreted differs from each viewer as they have their own perception of realism. One of his films called Lost Highway inflicts a lot of intriguing questions about reality, “I like to remember things my own way…How I remember them. Not necessarily the way they happened” Fred, Lost Highway (1997). Throughout the film the protagonist finds himself to be in unrealistic situations but with a pattern – Renee/Alice creating a sense of normality, therefore showing reality with a dream or vice versa. Inception was the other film that is a good example of dreams being represented within reality, “Dreams feel real while we’re in them. It’s only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange.” Cobb, the protagonist from the film Inception, said this which Christopher Nolan deliberately wrote in the script to make the audience think about the truth of the statement. This links into my hypothesis very well as to why we may not know how to separate reality from dreams as sometimes reality can be surreal at times. Although the film Inception is quite complex as it goes into detail about dreams within a dream and going into limbo; apparent lack of limitations, limbo is described as a dimension that can allow a dreamer to manifest their deepest desires, but also unwittingly trap themselves in a world where they lose their awareness that the world created is not reality. Therefore, suggesting that you can get trapped within your thoughts and some have described the film to be similar to how a coma would be; an ongoing dream that feels like reality. In an attempt to answer the question, “How is reality represented within surrealism and dreams?” I will be delving into the history of surrealism, realism, dadaism and how the film producers David Lynch and Chris Nolan express dreams as a different reality.
The artistic movement known as Surrealism helped to allow artists to express their imaginative thoughts more thoroughly. Surrealism as an artistic movement began as early as 1917, heavily inspired by the captivating paintings of Giorgio de Chirico for having such a hallucinatory quality to them such as The Song of Love. Closely following behind Chirico was the Dadaist writer André Breton’s 1924 Surrealist manifesto, just as the Dada movement ended in 1923, “The imaginary is what tends to become real.” is how he observed the new movement as, creating the most obscure imaginary things into something in the physical world. For the poets and artists of the surrealist movement, dreams stood for all aspects of the world repressed by rationalism and convention. The ‘revolution of the mind’ sought by surrealism drew upon the uncensored creative impulses of the unconscious. This ensured that it never became a style as everyone’s view on surrealism was different. The movement of Surrealism created new opportunities for unique and unappreciated artists to emerge and make their mark on attitudes towards the abstract world. For the first time people had the chance to show how they look at life and express their feelings through unrealistic and obscure paintings and photographs, to turn the world into a different reality in order to open up people’s minds to the unimaginable. “Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.” Salvador Dali once said this to convey his thoughts on what he believed to be the true meaning of Surrealism; an art allowing us to do limitless stretches of the imagination in order to proceed forward in the artist world. One Dali’s famous artworks is “The Persistence of Memory” from 1931, inspiring a lot of other Surrealist artists around the globe. The artwork consists of melting clocks which seem to be in a dry desert like landscape. A lot of paintings were famous in the surrealist movement before many photographs because at the time many photographs were discarded as just a copy of the real world and it wasn’t considered a talent of any type of artist, whereas paintings and drawings were seen as well thought out art as well as individual to each artist. This movement helped to create other movements that have more abstract qualities to them.
Giorgio de Chirico, The Song of Love
The Persistence of Memory, 1931,Salvador Dalí
“Black has depth.. you can go into it.. And you start seeing what you’re afraid of. You start seeing what you love, and it becomes like a dream.”
― David Lynch,
The first relation to the question, “How is reality represented within surrealism and dreams?” is the famous film maker David Lynch. He first was first enrolled at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, as he initially wanted to become a painter but then he later moved on to studying at the Pennsylvania Acadamy of Fine Arts from 1965 to 1969. This is where the 60 second film called Six Men Getting Sick in 1967, which was his first animated film. He eventually carried on in film making and created his first film Eraserhead, in 1977, at American Film Institute’s Center for Advanced Film Studies where his strange and obscure way of looking at reality and dreams stood out, baffling anyone who watched the film. Other famous films that Lynch is well known for are, Blue Velvet, Lost Highway, Wild at Heart, Elephant Man and the Series Twin Peaks, many of which he Has been nominated for best director for his outrageously weird and creative way of viewing the surrealistic world. By allowing his films to be portrayed as strange and to make the audience watch something they’ve never seen before it forces the viewer to think about what the film could possibly be about and how it could possibly relate to the real world as well as what the message is behind the film. David Lynch believes that not everything in the world has to have a clear explanation or meaning, “I don’t think that people accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable.” although there have been many thoughts and investigations on the meanings of his films, he prefers for people to have their own interpretation, to not just be told what to think and believe what you believe to be the true meaning. The way I see it is, why only believe everything you see in reality when realistically a lot of the imaginative thoughts and dreams people have can be put into the real world?
Lost Highway, made in 1997, is one of the films that I have watched that has a very strange meaning behind it when it comes to my own view on the film. In the film there are two main characters Fred Maddison/Pete Dayton and Renee/Alice. The film starts off with Fred and Renee receiving video tapes of what seems like a stalker watching them outside their house. Eventually Fred bumps into this ghost-like man at a party, the man came across as freakish and creates an unsettling feeling for Fred and the viewer as he claims to have already met Fred before. Later on, the couple get another video tape of Fred murdering Renee when originally when the tape was filmed the couple would’ve been alive, but this is made to confuse the viewer to think whether what they saw before the tape was real or just an illusion or vice versa. Fred is shown to be having a mental breakdown in prison and then turns into Pete Dayton, who is then released as he isn’t seen to be the same person that they put into prison for committing murder. Dazed and confused, Pete goes home to find a girl who looks exactly same as Renee but is called Alice, who now has blonde hair. This creates and unsettling and ominous feeling as us as viewers know that she is dead which can only mean she is part of the reason why all the madness is occurring. Pete ends up having an affair with Alice to find out that she is meant to be dating a wealthy and powerful man that Pete knows as somewhat a father figure. Alice and him plan to runaway together, leading to Pete finding Alice in another man’s house who he ends up accidently killing and finding a photo of Alice and Renee in the same photo together, making the audience baffled that they are twins. Towards the end Pete turns back into Fred and meets the ghost-like man again who is filming him and interrogating him. An odd turn of events eventually leads to Fred and him killing the wealthy man who was meant to be with Alice. The story line leads me to think that Fred possibly had a personality disorder such as schizophrenia, he may be transitioning from one alter ego to another, and the ghost-like man is his devilish sub conscious persuading him to do unimaginable things such as murder which he doesn’t remember due to his illness. I think Lynch was trying to put across that Fred imagined the world differently to others and that he didn’t want to see reality and physically seeing things as the only possibility, “I like to remember things my own way…How I remember them. Not necessarily the way they happened” this quote again demonstrates the meaning he is trying to put across which was mention during the beginning of the film – foreshadowing the future events. Other viewers may see it as all a nightmarish dream as it leads back to the house at the beginning leading back to the main question of, “How is reality represented within surrealism and dreams?” this starts to make me think that David Lynch wanted to represent reality as something that isn’t set in place; something that can be tarnished and manoeuvred to be whatever you want it to be.
Six Men Get Sick (first film in 1967) (animated)
Lost Highway 1997
“I’d written Inception as sort of a clever-clever heist movie. And heist movies tend to be deliberately superficial and glamorous. I needed him to bring the thing together, open it up to the audience and make it a human story, and he’s done that extraordinarily well.” – Chris Nolan (Director)
Christopher Nolan is the other relation to the question, “How is reality represented within surrealism and dreams?” with his film Inception made in 2010. The film Inception is about creating another world where everything feels like reality but it’s actually a dream. The goal is to plant an idea into someone’s head by heading into the depth of each dream without going into limbo where the character will not know the difference between a dream and reality which leads to fatality within the storyline. The protagonist played by Leonardo Dicaprio ends up getting stuck in limbo in his past before his next mission and him and his wife eventually manage to get out, but his wife thinks they’re still in a dream so commits suicide to “get out of the dream”. Surrealistic events occur throughout the entire film but the characters that demonstrate that they are limbo are completely unaware of this which links into my question nicely. Reality is represented as something that is desired within the film for the people who have already seen incredible and dream-like scenarios but for the people who are stuck and have no way to extend possibilities dreams and surrealism are desired greatly. This can represent the real world and how the audience members may feel whilst watching the film; a way to escape reality due to their emotions and feelings being so intertwined with the characters and the motions of the film. Most people in life wish to achieve their wildest dreams but, of course, within reality – in the real world. How much can people achieve with a closed mindset? Christopher Nolan has tried to open people’s mind to the most abstract possibilities, we all know that a film is just a prolonged moving image, but the film can be inspiring; encouraging the viewers to make their life more spontaneous and unbelievable. In other words, reality seems to be represented as a word that discourages people to push the limits of their dreams and not make the thoughts of the unconscious mind into a reality. Making the movement of surrealism occur with our reality rather than just being an art form is possible depending on how much people limit what we can do within reality and how fine the line is between the real world and our imagination. In the film inception Ariadne (played by Elliot Page) is told to join the mission to plant something into someone’s mind, as she was an architect student who seemed to have a view of the world that seemed endless; moved buildings, mirror the world that they stood on to appear above the etc. This demonstrated the endless possibilities that someone could achieve by having a different mindset and being open minded, which was the reason Cobb chose her (Leonardo Dicaprio). Nolan said what his intentions were when creating the film, “I’d written Inception as sort of a clever-clever heist movie. And heist movies tend to be deliberately superficial and glamorous. I needed him to bring the thing together, open it up to the audience and make it a human story, and he’s done that extraordinarily well.” in my mind I think when he says, “make it a human story” that is implying that he wanted the audience to feel like it wasn’t all just completely outrageous with what they were viewing; something that could actually be created. The was the dreams were created could be created one day if we gathered enough intelligence is what I think he means but maybe even the storyline behind it of how much Cobb compresses his emotions due to going too far with his imagination to the point where the real world wasn’t enough. Overall, I think that Christopher Nolan was trying to make the film an emotionally raw but thrilling at the same time; inspiring but as well as showing the limitations of dreams and reality.
When comparing these film director’s films with my own film I think there some clear similarities as well as some differences in order to really define how I think reality is represented within surrealism and dreams. The snap shots from my film below is partly showing how I was trying to represent the world we live and how easily it can be represented as something else with metaphorical meaning. I edited on of the photos as a montage as it was much easier to edit a photo rather than a whole clip the way I wanted to. In the first row of photos, I was representing reality as modifiable and adjustable to the way we want to see them, whether that’s hallucinatory or us physically editing reality through a screen. By making the film more horrific I thought it represent how people fear what they aren’t used to seeing in the real world. I also thought the part of the body you could see on the left side of the shot was ominous looking as in both examples you can be sure if the girl is looking at what she truly looks like or if it’s what the mirror has changed her to appear as. I also added a lot of faces with the opacity a lot lower so they’re barely visible just to add some more unsettling factors to the image without being completely noticeable until pointed out. As for the other row of photos, this was me showing the transition from reality to the dream/film the girl at the start was watching from the beginning. The idea of this was to make the viewer aware that they were watching a film within a film again as they were probably so submerged within the film that they forgot and then this is meant to replicate the viewer themselves being the viewer already shown in the film. The transition from the colour to black and white was meant to represent the girl coming back into the real world. In this sense this relates the film inception when Cobb is stuck in limbo and doesn’t realise that he’s in a dream. Dreams can be so realistic that it is very rare that we’ll realise that we’re dreaming whilst we’re in the dream; this is what I wanted to portray in my film whilst linking it nicely to inception. As for the disturbing factor in my film, David Lynch’s film link to this as his films are wildly abstract as well as this, I wanted my audience to interpret the film in their own way just like Lynch does. I wanted to display the ‘revolution of the mind’ sought by surrealism drew upon the uncensored creative impulses of the unconscious as well to link it to the history of the art form.
Overall, I think the answer to my hypothesis isn’t simple, as the definition of what it could mean is different to every individual person. In my eyes I see reality the simple and basic life everyone sees but within dreams I think it’s much more complex; reality is something that tangible and it can be desired as well as unwanted. With surrealism in the mix, I think that reality is merely a blank canvas to be destroyed, build upon or modified. The movement of surrealism allowed reality to be morphed within people’s imagination as well as in front of their very eyes. I think David Lynch helped to make the surrealism movement move on further especially in the film industry and develop people’s minds to explore their imagination more. As for Inception I think Nolan widened the minds of the viewers of what is possible in the cinematic universe and possibly in the real world also. Reality is just preventing people from exploring their imagination and exploring creative thinking from my point of view.
I started by getting all my editing images into folders so I could create and select gifs in order to create moving images. I then further separated each folder into subfolders for each gif I would make per person (around 6 gifs made per person)
Examples of gifs made:
Premier Pro
After making all my gifs I brought all my footage into Premier Pro and clicked “Render In and Out” to make sure they wouldn’t lag whilst working with them.
I then began to separate the visuals by people as I thought this would be the best way structurally-wise to do so.
After separating out the visuals I thought the best way to create a storyline would be through the audios as I could put them in a certain order and then place my visuals to complement them. For the beginning I wanted to create overlapping audios so that they would almost fade into each other.
I then began to listen to all audio clips again and thought that the best way to help break down and sort through all the audios would be colour co-ordinating. I did this through 3 colours: tan-beginning of film, yellow-middle, purple-end, brown-unwanted audios
After sorting them out by colour I then organised the colour clips in which order I wanted the audios to be heard. ( I put the brown clips at the end of the film incase I wanted to use them later on)
To avoid awkward gaps I slightly overlapped the audios. I also added in my video clips when I thought necessary.
This is what my audios looked like when I finished placing them in the correct place. ( I removed audios as I went along which are shown in purple which i then deleted later on)
When all audios where finished, I went back to my visuals and started to place them in sections that would work with the audio which required a lot of experimenting and moving around.
I experimented with effects such as adding cross dissolves and additive dissolves as I thought this helped to make the film look more clean and professional. Note I also added small gaps during my visuals as I sometimes wanted a phrase of the audio to stand out or wait until the clips could align with the audio again as if I didn’t the clips would look messy.
How I edited my images:
when I selected the images I wanted to use I started off by using the polygonal lasso tool and tracing around the childhood photo
I then copied and pasted to create another layer
When Clicking on only the background layer, I customised the Black and white filter to best suit my image.
Then when I revealed both layers this 3D effect was created.
For this picture in particular I thought that I needed more flame as sue to the windy environment it was hard to get large flames. Here I decided to copy a flame from another image and paste it onto this image. To do this I again used the Polygonal lasso tool and traced around the flame. I again copied and pasted to create a new layer and then added this to the image I wanted to use.
I then went back and forth with the blur and eraser tool until I was happy with the outcome.
When going through my film I decided to take picture of certain points where I thought the composition and the lighting was good and what I thought would be seen as a good photograph. Of course after I edited these photos individually and cropped them they would most likely look even better. Due to the film never usually having still shots I found it difficult to take a photo where I wasn’t moving in order for the photo to be in complete focus. I will most likely use a lot of these in my newspaper spreads after editing them and cropping them to look less like screenshots. I will definitely have to sharpen the image a lot more and possibly take some more photos of when I had the film in colour rather than in black in white as some of the shots looked a lot better in colour but due to the storyline fitting the black and white theme better I decided to change it from colour to black and white.
Depicting which photos looked better in colour compared to black and white. I found that when the lighting was hitting certain points of why face due to it being the golden hour and the lighting coming from the window sometimes the photo seemed to look better in colour as it was easier to see that the light was sunlight and was purposely done to highlight portions of my face. On the other hand, when the photo was put back into black and white the eyes seemed to look more disturbing and lifeless which contributes a lot to the kind of them of dreams/horror in my story.
Film Makers and Photographers Inspiration
I was mostly inspired by Chris Nolan’s film Inception and David Lynch’s film Lost Highway but I was also inspired by some photographers.
Kevin Corrado – his photography walks the line between lyricism and surrealism, never straying too far from either. He usually uses himself as the subject in his figurative works. His compositions are simple and elegant and the imagery could best be described as quiet and peaceful; at times seeming to transcend the boundaries of the image. Hid most known works consists of woodland photoshoots where humans appear from mysterious picture frames as if they were coming from another world. His work clearly revolves around the idea of dreams and how the world works. He has made this illusion buy using photoshop or another editing software where he has removed the rest of the persons body and made it look as if the person is floating .
Tommy Ingberg – a self-taught photographer and visual artist, born 1980 in Sweden. He works with photography and digital image editing, creating minimalistic and self-reflecting surreal photo montages dealing with human nature, feelings and thoughts. Tommy leaves the interpretation of his work up to the viewer but says:
“For me, surrealism is about trying to explain something abstract like a feeling or a thought, expressing the subconscious with a picture. The Reality Rearranged series is my first try at describing reality trough surrealism. During the two and a half years I have worked on the series I have used my own inner life, thoughts and feelings as seeds to my pictures. In that sense the work is very personal, almost like a visual diary. Despite this subjectiveness in the process I hope that the work can engage the viewer in her or his own terms. I want the viewers to produce their own questions and answers when looking at the pictures, my own interpretations are really irrelevant in this context.”
David Lynch – Gripping the audiences imagination is one of Lynch’s true talents when it comes to the film industry. Although he started off as an artist, his artistic skills contribute to his films and they start to make more sense when you remember where he started. Most of his film have very little dialogue and if they do it’s because its used more as poetry and each line has a purpose and specific meaning. Similar to how he frames each scene; each one is framed a certain way and creates a particular feeling with the viewers and often it leaves them mildly disturbed. Being one the biggest contributors to surrealist film industry, you would think that Lynch’s work would be fairly mainstream although it is quite the opposite. Although he is mostly a film maker now he felt as if he wanted to be known more as an artist, who typically won’t be as well known as a film maker. His most famous film (his debut film), Eraserhead, still stands as a benchmark in surrealist horror, and Lynch would go on to define surrealism in film through his later works Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire. But what gives Lynch’s strange masterworks their strange ominous feeling upon his fans and longevity is his keen artistic eye; his fascination with the light and dark of American life, and his brilliant command of unique character and melodrama. It’s a powerful and heady combination of strange and amazing; a combination that has earned David Lynch a legion of devoted fans and earned him a place as one of the greatest filmmakers in history.
“We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experience is a narrowing of the imagination.”
Chris Nolan – Inception – This Sci-Fi/Action film has inspired me along with photographers due to my idea being about surrealism, dreams and nihilism. The film itself is an interesting concept and has many plot twists that leave the audience shocked and wanting to know more. My own film consists of a similar concept of a dream within reality and my goal is to ensure that the viewer is so emerged within the film that they forget that they are watching the protagonists dream and not their real life. The plot twists are what makes a good film in my opinion hence why I picked inception as the movie that I want to base my project on with influences from other things also. Mental health also links into the film as Dom (the protagonist)is dealing with his own mental issues which impacts on the main plot of the movie and can cause a huge disaster of going into limbo. His poor mental health is caused by his late wife passing away due to the unbearable thought of not knowing what’s real life and what is just a dream, her death take a dramatic toll on his mental well-being as well as her being nihilistic which links into my film and the fact that my film is about what is real and what is just in our imagination.
The way the film was played out also helped me to realise that I needed to have a beginning, middle and end:
The Beginning: Cobb is dragged to a table with Saito and Saito says something along the lines of “are you here to kill me? I know what this is. I’ve seen one before, many years ago. It belonged to a man from a half remembered dream.” (I think talking about his totem). The Middle: Dominic Cobb is the foremost practitioner of the artistic science of extraction, inserting himself into a subject’s dreams to obtain hidden information without the subject knowing, a concept taught to him by his professor father-in-law, Dr. Stephen Miles. Dom’s associates are Miles’ former students, who Dom requires as he has given up being the dream architect for reasons he won’t disclose. Dom’s primary associate, Arthur, believes it has something to do with Dom’s deceased wife, Mal, who often figures prominently and violently in those dreams, or Dom’s want to “go home” (get back to his own reality, which includes two young children). Dom’s work is generally in corporate espionage. As the subjects don’t want the information to get into the wrong hands, the clients have zero tolerance for failure. Dom is also a wanted man, as many of his past subjects have learned what Dom has done to them. One of those subjects, Mr. Saito, offers Dom a job he can’t refuse: to take the concept one step further into inception, namely planting thoughts into the subject’s dreams without them knowing. Inception can fundamentally alter that person as a being. Saito’s target is Robert Michael Fischer, the heir to an energy business empire, which has the potential to rule the world if continued on the current trajectory. Beyond the complex logistics of the dream architecture of the case and some unknowns concerning Fischer, the biggest obstacles in success for the team become worrying about one aspect of inception which Cobb fails to disclose to the other team members prior to the job, and Cobb’s newest associate Ariadne’s belief that Cobb’s own subconscious, especially as it relates to Mal, may be taking over what happens in the dreams. TheEnd: Saito and Cobb sitting together at the table again. Same kind of setup, but this time Saito says, “have you come to kill me? I’m waiting for someone..” and Cobb finishes his sentence by saying “someone from a half remembered dream.” Cobb essentially tells him they’re in limbo and they presumably kill themselves to wake up to reality. Although the ending leaves the viewer wondering if Cobb is back in reality or if he is still trapped in a dream, he can tell due his totem. Dom Cobb’s totem is a spinning tractricoid top that originally belonged to Mal (his wife). Should he spin the top and it topples over, he is awake; if it continues to spin, then he is still dreaming.
Whilst editing the colour of the footage I decided to make the majority of the film in black and white. Due to the clips being in mostly different lighting every time a shot I had to turn down the saturation, tint and temperatures to the lowest possible setting in order for most of the clips to look similar when it came to shadows and highlights. I also made sure to change the curve to make sure the clips looked exactly how I wanted them to look. I also had to individually edit each and every clip so it took a lot longer than I anticipated due to there being over 200 snippets. After editing so many of the individual clips I had to render the film many times to make sure it ran smoothly and didn’t glitch. By going to transitions I found that I could dip to black which I used in some parts if my film; mostly at the ending and the beginning and when I was showing the progression to the next day.
When I was cutting up the footage I made sure to use the razor clip mostly everything and then the shortening tool for big amounts of footage. Between the glitching parts of my film I put in graphics from a tv with static to show damage and change. I also matched the audio of Alan Watts speaking to the glitching to have the full effect of disruption. I would cut up the same scene with different camera angles to intrigue the viewers and make the film more complexed. Matching the two different camera angles was difficult because I would have to match up the movements I made exactly for the transitions to look smooth. I would cut up and copy and paste the same clip to make the glitching more dramatic especially towards the ending to really freak out the observer.
My film was being based off of mental health and how it rebells against your love for others. The main focus would be anxiety and how this mental illness can cause people to dissociate themselves from life itself. Dissociation being a big part of the narrative, I am looking to create a film/zine where a lifestyle in reality can turn into something quite dream-like and somehow showing a glimpse of what it may be like for someone who has anxiety or a disorder where it causes them to dissociate or even become nihilistic. The way I’m going to shoot this project will be in first person and having self portraiture intertwined within my film/zine. I am planning on representing these dream-like scenarios by cutting out parts of the world and scenery are myself and possibly cutting out the people around me as well to act as the dissociation. I’ve done a lot of research as to why dissociation happens and what mental illnesses can cause this; illnesses such as; anxiety, depression, PTSD, bipolar, schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder. I chose to base my project off of anxiety as I have experienced a lot of anxiety throughout my life as many people have and I feel like I can portray the feelings towards life from someone who has experienced anxiety better than any of the other illnesses listed. I moved it more towards dreams and surrealism because I thought it fitted better with the films IO was linking it to. The way I linked this to the film was by editing the film and the way I wanted it to be perceived was heavily inspired by David Lynch’s film “Lost Highway” and Chris Nolan’s film “Inception”. Both have dream-like concepts and are made to leave the viewer on the edge of their seat, wanting to know more as well as disturbed by the ending. The idea of being inside a different reality is a key point of my film and the other two films and mu ending of showing me sitting in my lounge again is meant to make the viewer feel somewhat dissociated by making them forget that they were watching a film within a film just like Christopher Nolan’s film Inception having dreams within dreams and not knowing what reality is and David Lynch’s film Lost Highway making you unsure what the real story is, sure to the protagonist being show in so many different story lines.
Before
After
STEP BY STEP:
The Reality:
Filming me sitting on the sofa
Filming the tv and putting on creepy 50’s tv shows on the tv
Flipping back and forth from the shots
Show glitching on the tv and start to add UP music to the scene to transition into the first day.
First Day:
My Room – Filming waking up from two different angles and flip between them making sure to get good lighting – around Golden hour.
Film daily routine of getting dressed, doing make up and brushing teeth.
Leaving the house – filmed from different angles, and then walking into school with a friend.
School- looking in the mirror and washing hands and sitting with friends also filmed from different angles.
Going home- walking out of school with a friend and then walking back to my house.
Second Day:
My Room – Filming waking up from two different angles and flip between them making sure to get good lighting – around Golden hour.
Film daily routine of getting dressed, doing make up but taking out brushing teeth to make the day slightly shorter but overall showing the same thing but a different day.
Leaving the house – filmed from different angles, and then walking into school with a friend BUT starting to show a sense of there being something wrong by adding glitching graphics and filming me walking by myself then editing the two scene together to make it look as if my friend is disappearing.
School- looking in the mirror and washing hands and sitting with friends also filmed from different angles but do the same glitching as last time as well as myself disappearing to make a pattern of something going wrong. As well as making thew audio glitch to have the full effect.
Going home- walking out of school with a friend with the glitching again and cutting out walking home to shorten the day.
Third Day:
My Room – Filming waking up from two different angles and flip between them making sure to get good lighting – around Golden hour.
Film daily routine of getting dressed, doing make up but taking out brushing teeth to make the day slightly shorter but overall showing the same thing but a different day. As well as starting add glitches within my house and cutting out scenes to make the day shorter.
Leaving the house – filmed from different angles, and then walking into school with a friend and adding glitching graphics and filming me walking by myself then editing the two scene together to make it look as if my friend is disappearing again but again making the day shorter.
School- looking in the mirror and washing hands and sitting with friends also filmed from different angles but do the same glitching as last time as well as myself disappearing to make a pattern of something going wrong. As well as making thew audio glitch to have the full effect.
Going home- walking out of school with a friend and then walking back to my house but filming from different angles and standing in different places to edit me glitching into different places.
Final Part:
My Room – Filming waking up from two different angles and flip between them making sure to get good lighting – around Golden hour but adding glitches right from the start to show that nothings right.
Starting my daily routine but adding glitching and other shots of me wearing white contacts and looking possessed and staring to add colour to the black and white movie to show reality come back into place. As well as adding demonic sounds to make the viewer feel more disturbed.
Adding the shot of me having white eyes with a lighter and then glitching back into reality.
Back to The Reality:
Transitioning out of the glitching screen
Filming me sitting on the sofa and then fading into the title screen – WAKE UP
Editing The Audio
I used many different audios in my film to make the viewer feel as comfortable as possible. By making the audio glitch at the same time as the footage I thought it would make the glitching more dramatic. I had to cut up snippets of the audio and copy and paste them lots of times to make it sound like it was glitching. I also faded in and out audios and music to either cha the scenes or make room for other audios as I ran out of audio slots. When it came to editing the “plot twist” of the film I overlapped many different audios and made them gradually get louder to build suspense. I made sure to make the heart beat a main sound that the viewer could hear so that the scene would become more intense and hopefully make their heart race in the process. I made it one of the last sounds you could hear to make the film be suspenseful even until the end when the title screen comes on. I also had to cut ups a lot of repeated audio to use for the glitching parts if the film and had to make sure they were all at the same volume and I did this by making sure they were all on the same track and turning the whole track up instead of putting upon the individual bars on the audio.
In the polishing up of the film I realised that I needed a suitable title and design that would work for the film. I worked with the following websites:
I really liked this design however I could not get it to the correct resolution; therefore I found a similar font and made a logo on word. I thought that a deeper black would work better because in some frames of the film where I don’t add visuals (in order for the audience to focus on the audio) the frame is a deep black so I needed something to compliment that. I also noticed my typo so I fixed that with the final cover.
