Bowie - Final Media Artefact

Bowie

https://youtu.be/B5XoxnTSn3o

This is our final edit of BOWIE - a tribute to David Bowie.

We chose the poem "Welcome Your Confusion As A Guest" by Ellen Reiss.

Shauna's Evaluation

My main intention for the short assignment was to push the boundaries and really put myself out of my comfortzone and experiment with different work within the project.

I am the director of this production team. As director I believe I make all the final decisions and keep order within the team. My personality naturally tries to make the best decision for eveyone without putting myself first. There are five people in total in our group so there were many times during filming and editing sessions where I would have to make the final decision due to a 50/50 split decision in the group.

I feel our strength as a group was the equal contribution from each team member. Everyone wished to experiment with each role and in some aspects we did. We really worked as a team on set and in the editing studio to create a really interesting product.

Our weakness as a group was most likely attendance. This weakness was mostly due to illness or confusion within the group, which is no excuse. As the director of the group I made the decision if someone could take the day off or leave early due to the reason behind the depature.

I feel that if all members of the group were present during all sessions we would have come across less issues than we did, because I think that the team working skill can influence every decision and problem. This is something I feel we could imporve on as a group, because at one point or another every member including myself has not attended a session, which I now see as unacceptable.

My Strenghs in this assignment were managing the group and making the final decisions during the editing sessions especially.

My weaknesses in this assignment were managing the pressure on myself as leader of the group and trying to control my perfectionist side and create a edit which looked visually impressive without focusing on the minor inperfections of the quality and content of the video.

I feel that I have learnt about myself a bit more during this assignment and personally I dont think I would like to become the director again. I would like to try being a camerawoman on my next assignment, because I would like to learn more camera techniques and get more comfortable using different technical equiptment with the help of other students who know how to use them well.

To conclude, I am very impressed with our short film tribute to David Bowie and I feel my group and I have took a unique path to completing this assignment by creating a short film to interpretate a poem.

Rough version of the story

Rough version of the story:

Title shows up

Scene opens in a room. A man is sitting on a sofa watching film (Labyrinth), being completely immersed into it. Everything is quiet. Except....Tick..Tock. A clock on the wall is ticking. He either catches the ticking, or the clack starts ringing (alarm). He looks at the time and registers that he is late to work. He quickly gets up, leaving in a hurry. The sound of the clock ticking seazes, we can hear the door shutting. Otherwise everything is quiet. We see him get his headphones out and onto his head. The muffled sound of David Bowie’s music starts playing (Only mashed bits). Alternative is, that the man starts humming and quietly singing the songs. The narration starts here.

He walks down the streets, not interrested in anything. In this sequence the city is shown, the tall buildings, people and traffic never seazing it’s beat.

He gets to work and starts his day. Timelapse.

He is leaving work, again with the headphones on. He goes through the city, when he realizes it has stopped raining. He takes off his hood/hat and looks up. There he sees a big screen showing the news ‚David Bowie is dead‘. What follows is a burst of sound, people talking, laughing, dogs barking, cars honking, clock beating, ambulance horn. The same with vision, we can see snippets of the news, headlines, interviews. After it gets the loudest, everything suddenly stops. Narration ended.

Alternative: He takes the headphones off, and all the normal sound comes in, laughing, talking, etc. And then he notices the news. Everythingslows down, the sound of his surroundings quietens, but the news get highlighted in his mind.

It starts raining again and the man starts slowly walking home. The only sound here is the rain. The man is crying. He gets home, sits down and plays the movie again. The camera will then slowly back away and tilt to the dark sky.

Alternative: The film the man was watching in the morning was on tape and when he returned, the tape was broken.

Alternative 2: The end scene could end with the rain sound and the sound of the wall clock ticking.

End Credits.

All through the film, New York merchandise will be seen, to underline the poems roots in New York and at the same time show the place of death of David Bowie. 

Storyboard

Storyboard

Carrying on from the shooting schedule, this clear and detailed storyboard shows the final scenes of the film. There will be more shots than 19, but I chose these 6 shots to represent the full ending idea of our short film.

As well as images and shot details, this storyboard also includes details on audio that the viewer will hear. In this assignment, sound is very important, because we are not allowed to use one music track and we must keep dialogue at a minimum. We still intend to use a lot of sound in our piece. We will do this by creating a melody and a beat similar to David Bowies songs to resemble his music by using various sound effects, such as, tapping the floor or beating a desk. We also intend on using other lifelike sound effects to convey a natural environment e.g. Car horns, birds tweeting and clocks ticking.

Shooting Schedule

Shooting Schedule

This shooting schedule shows when we will be filming and what equipment we will need each day. It states the location to film in and what the idea for the shot is. This piece of pre-production assist us greatly whilst filming, because we know what we want to achieve so hopefully there is no messing around.

Ideas for Welcome Your Confusion As a Guest

Ideas for the poem Welcome Your Confusion As a Guest by Ellen Reiss

First of all I followed the same pattern as my first analysis, which was to think about different shots we could possibly use. Then, I had three very strong and powerful ideas or themes, one might say, which could convey an emotional story. This was our groups initial intention, because this poem made us all feel very emotional.

Ideas from New York at Night

Ideas from the poem New York at Noght by Amy Lowell

These are just some rough ideas made initially when thinking about various shots we could possibly use.

My Job Role - Director

Director

As the director of this production I feel my roles are in the management category. 

After compiling research from the Internet  the overall definition I have found is: a person who is in charge of an activity, department, ororganisation.

From this research I have decided that my role is to make the final decision on different aspects of the production, such as, shots, locations, plot, etc.

Also, I provide assistance to all the cast and crew members in my production.

Schedule

Schedule

Here is a schedule I made as the director to roughly follow to guide us smoothly through the completion of our project.

I have decided that the aim for the first week will be to secure a poem, idea and sort all the pre-production out ready to film in the next week.

The second week we will be filming and editing as we go in a minimum of two locations. Aspects of this schedule could change.

The final week will to review all our work, make sure the edit is complete to a high standard and quality that we all intend to achieve, and the post-productions and evaluations are completed on the blog ready to present our final pieces on the last Friday.

Shauna Richards

Our Group

Choosing Our Groups

Our group consists of Marketa Horackova, Scarlett Clarke, Shannon Bell and I, Shauna Richards.

We began by discussing what catagory we felt confident in individually and what we would like to improve during this project, e.g. I feel that I am good at coming up with new, fresh ideas and I enjoy doing paperwork, such as, running orders and anaylising pieces of work. However, I have never taken the responsibility of directing before so that is a skill that I would like to improve. From this task we then challenged ourselves and chose the roles, which we would like to improve therefore I am the director of this assignment. Shannon is the producer, Scarlett is the Camera woman and Marketa is the Editor. After these decisions we decided to take a look at each others previous assignments and review them to insure what our strenghs and weaknesses were. The physical evidence matched the mental thoughts, so these roles are going to stick throughout the whole production.

Shauna Richards

The Brief

Three Week Assignment - Visually and Aurally Interpretating a Poem

In groups of three or four, create a short film, which visually and aurally interpretates a poem. There will be a choice of five poems. You must choose ONE poem for this assignment. The short film must be two to three minutes long. Think about the poems mood. Record a narration of the poem and you can create a soundscape. You MUST NOT use a music soundtrack. Your artefact should have a beginning, middle and an end, so it should lead in and lead out. If the poem lasts longer than three minutes you may choose a segement of the poem. Your short film should be accompanied by an online group portfolio containing valuable documents and processes you went through during the production of this short film, such as, scripts, running orders, etc.

*When choosing your groups, aim to find individuals who specialise in being creative, directing/managing, camerawork and editing.

The Five Poems

1) "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg.

2) "Said The Shotgun To The Head" by Saul Williams.

3) "New York At Night" by Amy Lowell.

4) "Welcome Your Confusion As A Guest" by Ellen Reiss.

5) "Crowds" by Charles Baudelaire.

Shauna Richards