BlogPost#9: Production Record

Initial Reflections:

• What have you learned from the task?

The two most important things for me are time management and team working- communication.

During the pre-production stage, we scheduled each part of the production that should be done, such as the storyline, shooting, and editing.

However, we always spend more time than we expected. During the first time of shooting, we are not familiar with how to shoot, so we were not very efficient.

As the production goes through, I found these two things are really necessary.

Moreover, I also learned how to use camera and editing applications, as well as a pre-production tool on studio binder. I created a collaboration module so our team could establish storyboard, moldboard, shortlist and script all together, which made our task more organized and clean.

• What equipment have you used?

The Olympus camera we used

We used Olympus em1 mark II for the entire film opening, and this is another skill I’ve learned. I haven’t used a professional camera before studying media studies. My teacher taught me how to use the camera with a gimbal, change ISO and focus, etc.

Because I’m acting the character Lily, so I only help with directing the camera movement with shots that I’m acting and taking parts in those shots that do not involve (the detective). One example is the female detective watching the board, the idea behind this is from the movie "The Silence of the Lamb", in the beginning, Claris is looking at the clue board in her boss’s office. And the slow zoom-in was inspired by that.

• What skills did you utilize (and develop)?

As I mentioned in my previous blogs, I’ve always wanted to do lighting. Im impressed by the lighting in Euphoria, the lighting director of Euphoria said once that lighting is not based on realism, they called it 'emotional realism', that’s more based on the characters' emotions and not how the world surrounding them looks. To exemplify this, I applied red in the bathroom scene since the color red could perfectly express the character’s emotions and personalities: Danger, Evilly as well as passion. The red light also appears in the dead body scene, in this case, the color red represents death, alarm, and danger.

For the bathroom scene, the location is in my bathroom and it’s relatively a small space, and I want the light to be evenly distributed to all angles so that the color in the footage could be good. I used two glowing sticks, one is located at the door and one is behind the camera,

so the color in the camera is evenly distributed on my face and the surroundings. I’ve tried to put one of the glowing stick on the left-hand side of me and it has a better effect, however, then the stick would be framed in the camera. Moreover, I also put an additional glowing stick outside the bathroom but near the one at the door, since I didn’t turn on the light in the bathroom, only two red lights from the glowing stick, which will make the image a bit of blurry, so the cold white light helps the image to become clearer.

As well as the dead body scene, I was thinking use smaller glowing sticks and putting them overhead of Lily. However, the lighting would be so much and it would be exposed in the camera. So I changed back to the big glowing stick far behind my head, only leaving some of the red light, but it is enough to establish the atmosphere of death and danger. I also add a white light box on the right-hand side to make the image clearer.

The skill I utilized is the costume, so I’ve found a necklace and dress that is suitable for the character Lily, the dress was originally without the fabric flower. The idea was inspired by a quote from Macbeth by Shakespeare: "Look like th’innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t." The setting of Lily is that she appears to be innocent and pure in front of others, like a victim, but when she’s alone, all the evil ideas and bad intentions come out, presenting her as a dark, evil person. So the flower act as a symbolic code that the audience could convey the deeper meaning behind it. Nevertheless, The butterfly necklace. I wanted to add some elements to Lily to make her death more complex, and the butterfly in Chinese culture means Born of fire, she may encounter something that makes her become a person like this, leaving an enigma code for audiences.

The make-up for Lily is also done by myself, I want to present Lily as a mysterious person, and one make-up that could imply her two-side personality, so I used pinkish eyeshadow but dark red lipstick, but with the lighting, the make-up is not visible.

The make-up under red lights

The make-up under room lights

Nevertheless, I also designed the tattoo on Lily’s arm, the mandala flower’s flower language is rebirth, unpredictable death, and love. The moon represent a life of woman and the semicolon indicates a pause in a sentence and it implies that sometimes it seems like you may have stopped, but you choose to continue on. All the explicit messages from tattoo contribute to the character's profile. It seems like Lily's death is the end, however, it might just a pause, something will happen later on.

But I still need to explore and experience more about lighting and color palettes so I could have a more sophisticated skill and deeper understanding.

• What difficulties did you encounter and how did you overcome them?

1. Because it’s really hard to gather many people who know how to act, so the party scene did not meet my expectation.

We deleted the party scene in the film opening, although the party scene could make the opening more shocking and a more chaotic atmosphere could be created. However, changing to the female detective to have a relatively calmer opening could establish a thrilling feeling that would be more effective and the tension could also be built. -opportunity cost

2. Time conflict. We are a three people group and our shooting plan is during the spring break, one of our teammates was not in Beijing during the break, and he was the only one who had expertise in filming.

So my partner Dina who is responsible for the storyboard and second camera is now in charge of the camera, and for those parts I did not involve in acting, I also helped with shooting.

But two of us is not enough for shooting, I invited my friends and my sister to help with the lighting as well as the application of the lighting stand.

3. Because one of the partners was not in Beijing and due to the Time conflict we don’t have the chance to have a meeting together to discuss the changes we need to make, so he does not familiar with the storyline and the sound we want to apply. Unfortunately, the partner who was responsible for editing, his laptop was having a technical problem just before the rough cut, so all the sound files and some of the footage have lost.

I edited a rough cut for him to let him use as a model to guide him, how the story is going, and what should be added at a different point because his laptop was broken, so I and the other partner Dina edited a version so that we could have a video for our rough cut.

4. I only did acting when I was in Year 9, and I don’t know how to act. So when I was acting, I was a little bit shy and nervous. My sister was with us for the bathroom scene for helping with the lighting, she knows how to act she taught me some tricks and played music for me to help me feel relaxed.

Next Steps:

• What needs to be done now?

We would like to ask our teacher to play the role of female detective, because we expect to have a female figure who is powerful and decisive, so our classmate may not be suitable for this character. The teacher we found I think is very suitable for this character and we would like to use her voice to record the Voiceover for the female detective.

• What problems have you noticed in your footage?

In our footage, some of the shoots have lots of noise that we do not expect to be in diegetic sounds, such as people talking. Also, the lighting, because we need the light not to be too vertical, someone needs to hold the light for a second, so in some of the footage, the light was shaking so we can’t use that footage. Moreover, the close-up of tattoo was hard to see at the beginning, so we need to reshoot that part later.