The idea

I had little to no input in getting the idea at the start as I was ill for the first few sessions and then did not make myself heard during the creative process. If I could do it again I would have been a lot more vocal and given a lot more input into the creative side of this project because I feel I missed out on this element of the module.

The idea is for the protagonist to float out of his bed and then look to a book shelf, he knocks off a tiny version of himself from the shelf that is crushed under a big book. He then looks through the keyhole of his door and can see a strange figure in the corridor coming towards him and the walls are bleeding in the corridor. To make these things possible we have used the following techniques.

Floating off the bed: We shot this vertically and had the protagonist come forward from the bed using a camera track

Book bleeding: We put a syringe full of fake blood just out of shot and then fed a small clear plastic tube through the book so that once the camera was rolling we could squeeze out the fake blood and make it appear as if the book was bleeding.

Keyhole: We actually had a door attached to the set so we used it for the keyhole.

Corridor: We set up a wall four boards long and drilled holes into it to poke the syringes through and faced the wall at the green screen so somebody could be layered in later on. We set up the lighting to make the corridor look moody and interesting then started rolling. We then cued eight people behind the wall to start squeezing out the fake blood so it appeared that the wall was bleeding.

Filming

On the days that we got to do some filming I remained quite quiet and just stuck to doing my own tasks without getting in anybodies way. I did get a chance to help put the bleeding book together which was quite fun though especially as the shot in the end was really effective. I think my favourite shot from filming was the opening shot where Paul floats off his bed as the way it was achieved was really interesting and I think it looked really effective on camera. I would like to have taken a more active role in filming as I usually would do but the group is so big that everybody should have a chance to do something and certain louder members of the groups could easily take advantage of quieter members.

It was good to have a fairly decent amount of time to shoot as I remember on the Cinematography module when the Creative Project Realisation group came in we were incredibly pushed for time and struggled to get everything that the group needed for their film.

After Effects

We had the footage from our shoot at the workstation and needed to do a few things with it. I had missed the session on green-screen/chroma key but managed to catch up just before we all started on the work we were doing in that session. I did this by selecting a colour to remove (the green) and then modifying the settings such as the harshness of how much it would take out so that I could make the green completely disappear without leaving a glow around the person in the shot. I would now be able to put anything into the background and make it look like this character was there and not in front of a green wall.

In this session we wanted to take the footage of the bleeding wall and duplicate it on the other side of the shot so that we could create the illusion of a corridor. To do this we first cropped the shot and moved it to where it would be most suitable and got the bit in the timeline where the blood came out of the wall. We then used the "flop" tool to duplicate the footage but facing the opposite direction (only not upside down) Once re-aligned this footage looked just like a corridor with a little bit of cropping and tweaking.

We then used the tracking dots to attach some eyes to our character in the green screen shot. For this we first opened the shot and attached tracking points to prominent features on the characters face that would not move much or change during film so that the tracking points could latch onto them. We then opened a file to add an image of some eyes from a different shot and attached them to these tracking points just over the eyes of the character giving her some strange eyes that did not look right. The tracking worked quite well for a while but as soon as the character moved too much the tracking points were lost and left a pair of eyes floating in the middle of the screen. If the tracking point had a strong object to pin itself to like a big dot on the character then it may have stayed with the movement of the character.

We could also use after effects to improve the aesthetics of the blood rushing down the wall but the only things I managed to do this session were make it look more red and then do my own version of the blood in paint which did not work very well.

 

Photoshop:

We used photoshop to make mood boards of which I have posted to this blog earlier. The main things we had to learn was how to layer an image and using the lasso tool to cut out an image and delete the background allowing said image to blend better with other images to make a more coherent mood board. I also used to burn tool in order to blend in objects and create shadows to make everything look more realistic and 3D. This programme was good to find images or edit images to make them look how you want the film to look but I still find that I would prefer to just work on paper as I find it easier to express myself like that.

Good examples of CPR

I watched a film recently and found that a lot of the scenes contained over the top violence that was really well created and I could not help but appreciate it from the art direction point of view.

This film was Django Unchained by Quentin Tarantino. I thought that the violent scenes were so graphic and over the top but somehow believable that the art directors/special effects had done an amazing job.

I think that the blood effects in this film are very impressive while being quite over the top and we could use a similar style of effect in order to make the walls bleed in our group project and I could use that style of hyper-violence when the creature strikes out at the protagonist in my personal project film.

Things that have influenced me

Here is a list of films or aspects of films that have influenced my personal project proposal.

First of all the Alien from the Alien/Aliens films has heavily influenced the creature that stalks the protagonist in my film:

As you can see in the picture above the creature has very dark skin and is baring very large and intimidating teeth, this is partly the basis for what I want the creature in my film to look like although I want it to have eyes as I find that done in the right way you can make eyes look really intimidating. 

The second thing that has influenced the appearance of this creature is the Dementaurs from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

The smoky effect around the figure is something I would like to use so that the antagonist almost looks as if it is a shadow as this will add to the effect of what I am trying to create. 

Treatment

Treatment - personal proposal (uncanny)

Log Line: A man walks down the stairs of a tall building with very claustrophobic surroundings and as he gets further down the doors on each floor begin to open and creatures pour out of them attempting to harm him.  

The protagonist (Chris) is walking slowly down a repetitive staircase with plain but haggard walls on each side, he is aware of how closed in he is and every door looks exactly the same. Chris becomes agitated as his eyes dart around looking for a clue as to what floor he is on and the surroundings are clearly causing discomfort. The lights begin to flicker erratically and Chris picks up the pace. At this point the doors begin to bang violently as he scurries past them until they are now bursting open just as he passes them. Breathless Chris begins to sprint down the stairs as the banging gets louder and the doors swing open wider and wider. The pace of the banging and flickering catches up with Chris and a grotesque clawed arm grips at Chris tearing a huge chunk out of his shoulder, he screams in pain but manages to contort his body and evade the assault. Gripping his arm he sprints as fast as he can stumble down the stairs being clawed at on every floor but too scared to look at what is attacking him. The light is getting darker as Chris' eyes begin to get heavy but he pushes through and adrenaline takes over. He now has no choice but to look at the creature that is attacking him, a hideous amalgamation of dark oily liquid with huge teeth, claws and glowing fiery eyes. Chris curses as he sees each creature in fear running as close to the inner wall as he can, ducking around and under the claws until finally the floor levels out and a doorway can be seen. Chris manages to conjure a final burst of speed and throws himself head on through the oily creature and the front doors of the building crash open with Chris finally safe he turns back to look at the completely normal and unassuming building and touches his shoulder that no longer has a scratch on in.

 

The idea I have creates comes from walking through the stairways of large blocks of flats, specifically large communist buildings in Eastern Europe and finding it hard to distinguish one room or floor from another. It is a seemingly normal everyday thing but has a slightly mysterious nature to it. The fear of the unknown not knowing what is behind each door and the fact that the protagonist has no idea where he is in the film should convey this fear. The effects that would be on the day would be the injury and the doors banging/lights flickering and making the stairwell for Chris to run down. In the edit the creatures could be added and the illusion of a huge repetitive stairwell would be achieved by tricking the audience within the edit.