For my every day activity I wanted to try something slightly different, by using an activity we all do on a daily basis. But what if that activity was more sinister than normal? what if that activity was interrupted by our own thoughts?
These thoughts along with my passion for horror and psychological film led me to want to create something which taps into our own subconscious thoughts and the human innate reflex and ability to see things and make connections, this phenomena is known as Pareidolia. This innate reflex causes the mind to see patterns where there is none, for example "The Man in the Moon" or seeing shapes in clouds or figures in shadows.
This led me to research urban legends and "Shadow Men". This urban legend in turn led me to want to create an everyday activity combining both psychology, horror and film making.
Ideas and Influences
To ascertain the best angles to use, and how to make sleeping/dreaming entertaining to watch, I started to research, films where sleep played a role in the movie, such as "A Nightmare on Elm Street" a classic horror based on sleeping and nightmares, which blurred the lines between dreaming and reality. While researching I found a well known artist by the name of Sam Taylor Johnson, who filmed a sequence of David Beckham sleeping for the National Portrait Gallery. The 1 hour long video shows David while sleeping, and this film helped to guide me.
The clip below, shows how a famous artist can create something people will watch, a simple act of sleeping.
Shadows and how to create them.
So with my filming idea set, the next stage is was to work out how to create shadows, in a dark room. I spoke to a 3rd year Caps student called Ella Sayce who I had been told was good with lighting, to ask for assistance while making the film to enable me to make shadows work. Ella then created a simple effect using a cardboard box, a standing lamp and tin foil, which directed the light to be able to create shadows. However after trial and error, the idea to show shadows in a dark room, did not work, so I had to adapt my film to make it work.
The trial and error led me to change from a dark room to cast the shadows, to when in the film a light was switched on the the reverse would happen, instead of the shadow disappearing the like a normal shadow, the shadow in my film would be more prominent. This reversal would then add to the overall strangeness around the film.
Everyday activity outline.
The film will start, in a dark bedroom, with the actress (Harriet Chafer) in bed sleeping. While asleep she will start to stir and slowly wake up. She will see on the wall a hand reaching out to her, thinking its just her imagination she will go back to sleep. Once asleep again the shadow hand will be more forceful and domineering, this will cause her to again wake up, this time a little more frightened, again she will shrug it off and return to sleep. The last section of the film we will see a full bodied shadow reach out and wake Harriet, who wakes up terrified. After convincing her self that its not real she returns to sleep, only to wake up one last time realizing that it was all just a dream, or was it?
My short film
Evaluation
For my film I wanted to create an atmosphere of forboding, and uncertainty. As this was my first ever attempt to make a film, there were many things I needed to learn to be able to create my film.
Although the film worked well, and the desired effect was created, there were a few issues while filming that needed to be addressed.
Lighting. As the film was set at night this presented the first challenge for me, I did not want artificial lighting, but at the very least very minimal lighting, This was acheived by using the hallway light and offered a more natural lighting effect, where the scene wasnt too lit but it did show up on screen that it was still quite dark, this meant i would have to correct this in editing by lightening the overall film. The next issue was with the shadow, normally when a light comes on a shadow disapears, however without lighting the room unnaturally no shadows were present, which was not ideal, this meant a change of direction was needed. Mid filming I had to change how a shadow would appear I would have to using lighting to show the shadow against a white wall. If I were to recreate this film I would have done a few test shoots with shadows and darkness to be able to create shadows from very little light, as the light used I feel took away from the overall athestics as the shadow was well lit but the rest was very dark.
Editing.
For me the hardest part of the whole film making experience so far was the editing, Having never seen, used or heard of the majority of the terms or programs I felt overwhelmed and totally out of my element trying to edit this film together. This was hindered by the fact that i lost the film edit 3 times due to not understanding the programme, and having very little time left to edit. In the future, I would allow myself additional time to edit the film once completed, as I still am unsure of some aspects of editing, for example, how to insert a title screen, or credits.
Overall I felt the making of the film went quite smoothly for a beginner, and most scenes only took once take, due to having a talented actress who was able to interpret my vision and make it a reality. Additionally, I had contacts in the third year who also assisted the making of the film and in doing so gave me great confidence that I would be able to get it right. However for future projects I think I need to be more organised and produce a mood board, as well as a shot list, rather than relying on the view and plan I had in my head, this would enable me to be more productive as well as share my vision in a tangable format.