Rob West 21007328 Moving Image Production Narrative, Drama Semester Evaluation Throughout the course of this semester

r I have created two separate short films, my personal aims being to further my narrative writing skills and to fulfil my chosen role as director. These films, which I have been a part of realising differ in both style and approach, one being a two minute film portraying a woman fearfully preparing for her partner's arrival home, and the other being a ten minute thriller about an ancient, dark force residing in an old marketplace. The latter; titled Lily, follows a tired man trying to forget accusations in his past of sleeping with an under-aged girl. This man, named Adam, starts his job as the night-time security guard at an indoor market, attempting to escape from his demons. He learns through his supervisor, a shady man named John, that it was built on the ruins of an old medieval castle that once held prisoners suspected of paganism and vile forms of mysticism. Adam discovers a crumpled, old photograph of a woman in his locker after he learns of the previous night guard's death in the basement levels of the market. During his first shift he is apprehended by a dark figure and wakes to find himself in one of the caf stalls, here he meets Lily who tries to use his past to lure and toy with him, she is thirsts for him and can sense his latent emotions. He wakes up and confronts John about her, John reveals that she was a woman that disappeared in the 1960, only her clothes were discovered neatly folded on the floor of the market.. He shows Adam an article which pictures John's father at the scene as he 'found the clothes'. Bill, the old night guard believed she was killed and buried under the market, becoming obsessed with Lily. The next night Adam sees the clothes on the floor over the CCTV and begins to hear growing incantations and whispers which lead him to the basement. There he finds Lily with a dead man. Upon realising Bill's true fate, he tries to run to avoid Lily taking him too but is ultimately foiled and trapped. It is revealed that John had orchestrated the entire event as he needed another sacrifice in order to appease the evil that lurks in the foul, deep catacombs beneath the market. John does this to prolong his own existence, he has been doing it for years, ever since he buried Lily and unleashed the demon from below. I feel this movie is only partially successful, as I am quite disappointed with parts of it. Firstly, we filmed too much footage and were forced to chop scenes in order to make the ten minute cut. I should have reviewed the script more and tried to find a better compromise with the time. I am also not really satisfied with the ending and have since rewritten it on my blog. I am however, quite pleased with many aspects of this project, I enjoyed working with my group for the most part, and feel I made a valid and prominent contribution to the project as a whole. I do feel I could have done more but this has become a great learning experience for me. I have gained great skills in directing actors; trying to get the best performance from them and I enjoyed the challenge of

working with more skilled acting. I feel a strong point is the camera work which I worked closely with Henry and George to realise in every shot and I have learned a lot about scheduling and the producing side of the film during this project as I tried to engage myself in that work in order to better understand the process and to make things easier during the shoot, I think Id do quite a few things differently in the future as I feel I should have continued evaluating and evolving the script throughout the production as well as form real defined plans earlier on in the production in order to keep everybody involved up to speed. The two minute film shows a far more domestic setting. In the end we opted to use Katie as our actor and I think she portrayed the role well enough for our needs. It is quite an emotive piece as we use only minor dialogue to express the woman's feelings. The film is set in a house, the woman is alone and tidying up for her partner's return. We wanted to imply the idea that her actions are the result of her mundane daily routine which she both commits to with pride as well as anxiety and trepidation. She does not feel safe in her environment but is unwilling to leave, she is in a sense; trapped by her emotions. She seeks solace in her chores and does a good job as a way to escape her surroundings as much as please the man she loves. She is portrayed as a victim and I think that is a strength in our film. I would say we got the tone right but could have worked much better on the camera work and sound in the end. This is partly due to the locations we used, which in hindsight could have been better thought out. Also, I feel the sound was rushed because we didn't really give James enough time to properly finish. However, we all learnt from that and definitely did a better job during the production of Lily despite editing right up to the last minute. I feel like my idea was not fully realised as the argument that was intended to begin the film was not properly executed by myself and therefore didn't really hold up with the rest of the piece. I take responsibility for the poor recordings of the dialogue there but I am pleased with the minimal outcome we settled on. If I were to do this project again I would try find different locations or maybe play with an entirely surreal setting in order to juxtapose her emotions with her environment, as if it were a dream-like, moment of clarity type concept. An example of this would be using sounds and props as triggers for her flashbacks in somewhere a supermarket, such as a baby crying a tin of beans that reminds her of the tin she threw at him during the argument. We could then cut between reality and the memory of the argument in the house, allowing us to place the woman in various other locations such as a bus stop or a parking meter. Unravelling the argument in stages rather than at the beginning of the film. Integral to the success of a film project is teamwork. This collaboration has to exist from start to end of each project and must include everyone in the group. Looking back on the two projects this semester I'd say our group has done 'okay' at that. On one hand, we have completed

both projects without really arguing and have worked well as a team, particularly during the film shoots, whilst on the other we have all been a little lazy at times. As far as the shoot goes, I'd say that part of the production was mostly done by Henry, George and I as we were present every night of the film shoot and pretty much did all of the actually filming together. Katie did her part during the shoot and was present when she did not have to work which was a great help and actually allowed us to really get on as we could operate as a small unit. Bex has also done well with the edit on both projects and I am happy with her contribution as editor despite her not really participating in the shoots. I also understand James had some personal family business to attend to which was unfortunate, however, he put in the hours during the sound edit process and did a good job with some very hard material. It would have been nice to have him with us during the shoot but we managed just fine and were able to get some extra help from Aaron. As for my own role in all this, I found it very hard to stick just to my role as director, I naturally like to take part in all aspects of filmmaking, particularly when it is a script I've written myself. This was the case with both projects so I felt a great amount of responsibility to them. I would have liked to finalise the Lily storyboard and shot list with Henry and George before Easter as I knew I had to go home and work night shifts but unfortunately we couldn't finish them in time. This meant that those two were left to finish them off with my guidelines and I spoke to them every couple of days when I was home in order to keep them updated and myself involved. They did a good job without my direct input and were able to plan pretty much every shot, although the distance meant that some of my intentions were lost from script to screen, When I was back I was able to correct various things with them and we got along fine, personally I enjoyed seeing some of their original ideas as it is nice to see other people really engaging with a story you have written. To this end I think we actually came out with some stronger shots and I think Henry and George were glad they could have their own stamps on the film. When we were done shooting each project I began my work with Bex and James, although I was not present for every second of their edit, I made sure to regularly come and see what they were doing as well as keep in direct contact so that we could discuss things. I came to trust both Bex and James with the work and was confident they would continue to do good work without me sitting beside them. For all that I am glad. Whilst we did have our own share of difficulties along the way I do think we worked well as a group when we needed too, my only wish is that we had all been engaged all the time as that would have made the projects a breeze. A major influence on Lily was Kubrick's 'The Shining' in the sense that when I wrote the script I wanted the market to seen like it had it's own presence, mainly realised in the opening and closing sequence as something follows the men to the lift. Also the story takes great influence from The Shining and also much of Stephen King's horror as I wanted to create tension and elude to a

greater, dark power that is too sinister to really comprehend. The sound in The Shining lead me to y ideas of having incantations and whispers being brought in when Lily approaches, I even recorded myself reading from The Satanic Bible as well as H.P Lovecraft. I also took influence from the film Import/Export which is a harrowing portrayal of life in modern eastern Europe. The existential issue at work in this movie helped me craft my character of Adam, who is fighting his own crisis in the form of his past regrets. I don't feel this idea was fully realised in the final film, partly due to the cuts we made and also because our actor, David did not fully express that attitude. A final point, which I wish I had developed further was to use a similar style of filming to that of Hitchcock's Rope, which takes place seemingly in only a few separate shots. This kind of clever camera trickery would have been really fun to explore in parts of Lily and I feel would have worked really well during the climatic chase sequence. Overall I feel pleased with my work this semester, the errors I have made and the weaknesses of our films have only really taught me more about filmmaking and has given me a great boost in preparation for next year. One major thing I have decided is that I want to give myself as much time to plan a film as I need and so I will make sure to get on with planning my pitches for next year. This way I will hopefully put myself in a good position next year to fully realise my creative ideas.