RIP Mitch Hedberg.
Here are the two short films we made in MDIA203. We weren’t allowed to use synchronous audio, anything better than a camera that shot 720p, camera movements, depth of field, or anything that an arrogant video production major like myself would love to be using. Well our groups ended up with two films as a result:
The first one where we took the 20’s silent film approach:
And the second one where we took a regular, nothing-special short film approach just with separately recorded audio:
The two are obviously extremely different in so many different ways I could quadruple the amount of required words for this assignment and still have things to talk about. Which is usually what I do anyway, so we’ll see how that goes. For the silent video we purposely incorporated a lot of subconscious lines, rhythms, and shapes by using precise lighting and art direction. Whereas in the second film, we didn’t really consider half as many lines and shapes, but concentrated more on space and movement within the frame. Within the very first frame of the silent film you may notice a mass amount of lines with a very staccato-oriented rhythm. Immediately your attention is quickly directed towards the main character through the diagonal lines within the woodwork of the bar, pointing directly at his head. Also within the same frame you may notice that a light was placed exactly where his head was, making this very bright and vibrant halo around his head, directing your attention towards him even further. I do realize that the light looks very dumb without a lampshade and it actually blows out that area of the screen due to the ISO settings of the camera, however it gets the point across. The very close, horizontal lines that the innumerable amount of liquor bottles display create a lot of rhythm enhancing the sped-up feel of an old silent film, as well as created many harsh dividing lines between the circular and hunched over protagonist and his straight-line hair, square shaped target that is nowhere near his reach, as if there is a giant wall between them. Not only do the contrast between their body and head shapes and all of these lines separate them, the line of the bar and the balance and symmetry of the frame tell the audience that they have something in common with each other; despite all of these subliminal dividers, perhaps they are on the exact same playing field. Really, the rest of the film barely concentrates on line and shape other than the establishment shot, other than perhaps the style of the clothes that the characters seamlessly change in and out of. When the protagonist imagines himself as a more confident self, he also seems to imagine his female accomplice as more attractive and in different clothes. The clothes she wears turns her into a round shaped person: well at least her hair, face, and accessories become more round-shaped. She is now the vulnerable one, and his clothing is more “geometric” I guess. It has more shape to it, it isn’t exactly square, but there are hard, rigid lines in triangles, pentagons, and squares throughout his vest and neck-tie garments. In his imagination he stands up taller and his body shape is much straighter and “square-er,” causing the viewer to understand even further that he wants to be this confident man, and that he wants to picture this lady as a timid, shy, and vulnerable female.
All of this that I just said highly contrasts with what we did within the second film where shapes and lines are barely intentionally acknowledged. We were geared more towards using movement and space within the frame. Throughout this entire film, we show the two characters on complete opposite sides of the screen (within reason regarding the rule of thirds). He was generally on the left, as she was on the right. At one point when he is eyeing her across from the coffee shop you see him lean out of the screen, accidentally too far out of the OTS shot, which I’ll turn into something valuable and say that he is so far away from her when he thinks about hitting on her that he is out of his mind, he is no where close to having any chance with this girl. At this point the viewer has subconsciously didactically accepted the fact that there is no way this guy is going to have a chance with this girl. The walking patterns that the two characters follow are very diagonal, creating virtual lines within the frame that subconsciously cause viewer tension, as if something is going to happen. I’ve heard and said multiple times within this blog that diagonal lines cause tension and strange feelings within the human mind subconsciously, it is the most action-oriented line. They weren’t very harsh lines, however if they were that would create more tension, which would be unnecessary. After this tension is built up, it is released with the girl throwing her book down with much faster movement than that of the rest of the film, which quickly allows the viewer to calm back down from this built up tension.
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