William Henry Fox Talbot

Project 1 - the instrument - exercise 1

Alec Soth

assignment 1

To do the assignment of the square mile I have chosen my parents neighbourhood. I moved into this area of Madrid when I was eleven years old. I was coming from an area of Madrid, which is the one I consider as the place I grew up, in the outskirts of the city. In this new neighbourhood I went to school one year, and to high school four more years. It is in this area also where the swimming pool in which I have spent most of my adolescence (I was a synchronise swimmer and practised for three hours every day) is located, so I chose this as the place to re-explore and photograph in this assignment.

I moved from my parents’ home in 2005, and then I moved from Madrid to Cardiff in 2011. It was only a couple of months ago then I came back, so found the opportunity to photograph some of my memories really enthralling.

The photographers I have looked for inspiration were Stephen Shore and Eggleston. Their images of the conventional daily life and the colour of their film photographs is engrossing. Also influenced by them I have researched Alec Soth. I particularly like the façades in his Niagara series.

I also enjoyed Keith Arnett's series of his neighbours, and how captivating are Tom Hunter and Venetia Darden's portraits. However, I found difficult to approach people and asking them for a picture. Also there were not many people in the city as it was a bank holiday this weekend.

While taking the images for the Square Mile I had the photographers mentioned above in mind. In some aspects a couple of the photos taken would have a reminiscence of their work.

I'm not completely sure if the project works as a whole. For me it does, as I recognise the buildings and the area. The images are also edited with a film filter in Lightroom software (VSCO cam package) so the feel and colour is similar to Eggleston's colour images. This gives them some consistency and continuity. But if I look at the images from the perspective of an outsider, it could be that they don't belong together.

 

With regards to assessment criteria, I have taken a first stab at an analysis below:

Demonstration of technical and visual skills – The images have in general a good composition. Location of subjects in relation with each other makes sense and is balanced. Style is somewhat mixed (angled and simplistic images with more vernacular photos).

Quality of outcome – as mentioned above, the project perhaps does not work as a whole.

Demonstration of creativity – Honestly here I would have liked to get closer to people. I find this terribly difficult.

Context – I have done a couple of days of research before taking the photos. I am satisfied with the result in this sense, though I had probably a predetermined idea of what I wanted to show and have stick to that, keeping the influence from the research (hopefully) in control.  

dfp formal submission - List of contents

Please find in this section (Assignments DFP), in inverse chronological order, the assignments submitted for Digital Film Production and my tutor's reports.

Also links to assignments can be found here:

Assignment 1 - a five shots sequence
Assignment 2 - creating atmosphere
Assignment 3 - creating meaning
Assignment 4 - constructing a narrative


Many thanks,

Maria

inspiration

stephen shore

y filltir sgwar (the square mile)

new course! expressing your vision

assignment 4 - feedback and reflection

I have received feedback from my tutor about El Rastro documentary:

Overall Comments
This ‘day in the life’ of El Rastro market is a fairly convincing documentary. You’ve covered the day with it’s significant events and people fairly well. You’ve also managed to capture the changing atmosphere of the place. The editing is quite fast and jumpy, but suits the filming well and although I find the camera too distant most of the time, you do pick some lovely shots of people and location.
There are a few issues here that you could look at again to sharpen the movie up. 

The issues commented by Robert are mainly about feeding the narrative. I do agree that the sequence of morning, noon, evening does not work just by itself to narrate the day in El Rastro. It would be more complete with further, deeper stories, this is why I tried to shoot the lady, the man going back home, etc. 
My tutor would have expected some interviews, and I think that would have been quite interesting, but believe me when I say that would have been very, very difficult. Most of the people were telling me not to film them at all, giving me suspicious looks. I should have tried, but due to some TV programmes in Spain that make a show of people in the street, many people is reluctant to be filmed/interviewed. 
I am not trying to justify myself, I agree the documentary would be much more interesting with some protagonists, and I should have tried to get them, even if not interviewing them, getting closer as Robert suggests. I was too wary.

Robert mentions that the use of J and L cuts can help to smooth the mix between ambient sound and music. I agree that not using them in this video makes the images quite jumpy, the change in sound is quite obvious between shots. 
"In a J-cut, the sound of the next scene precedes the picture, and in an L-cut, the picture changes but the audio continues" from https://vimeo.com/blog/post/j-cuts-l-cuts

While editing (and even when I was filming) I realised I was taking more "moving photographs" than anything else. I had some very nice shots, but where was the narrative in there? This has been obviously picked up by my tutor:

There are some nice visual moments in the movie but they are random candid market scenes which won’t provide narrative continuity. The kid with Edward Scissorhands, the pigeons, and the bouncing toys. By the time we get to 3 minutes it begins to feel like it isn’t getting any- where and isn’t about anything. It feels shapeless. 

That’s not to say there are not some rough sequences here: the armour and the old lady selling paintings for example. But I don’t think these have a strong enough narrative quality to stand out. 

Finally, I also agree with Robert that my research was quite poor. I merely went through the last chapter of the course as the time I had to finish the course was coming to its end! I'll endeavour to be more organised and constant in my next course, Expressing your Vision, which I begin right away.

As suggested reading and viewing, my tutor suggests David Campany’s Whitechapel books “Cinematic” and “Photography & Cinema” may be pertinent to you if your focus is mostly on photography but you have a fascination with moving image. The first of these is probably the most difficult.

Edit 29/11/15 to attach copy of my tutor's report:

assignment 4 - constructing a narrative

For this assignment you'll gather documentary footage and use it to create a short documentary sequence representing a portrait of a place. You should try to capture the spirit and feel of the place as well as representing what happens there. 

Preparation

The place I've chosen for the documentary was El Rastro, in Madrid. This is a street market with many years of history that is set up every Sunday morning in Madrid city centre. 
I had two other places as possible subjects; the park close to Calderon Stadium - I was walking one day after a match along there, and it was beautiful to see all the Atletico supporters flooding the place with their football outfits, I thought it would be a nice ending for the documentary about the life in the park through the day - and the square in El Matadero, an arts centre where activities are organized all week, with different ranges of acitvity. 
Finally I thought El Rastro would give me more narrative opportunities, as I think it happened in the end. 
For El Rastro, the timescale that should be approached is obviously one day. So the documentary is not so much about El Rastro but about the area where the market is set up, as I would gather images of the market in the early morning and how the market evolves and finally ends through the day, leaving a quiet neighborhood.
Below is the first sketch of the narrative, with the essential shoots I should have tried to film. 

I recorded, despite the recommendation, too much footage. Editing and discarding images to "clean" and clarify the narrative has been quite difficult, and I've begun with a documentary of 9min that has been sequentially reduced to 5.40 min.
The edited previous sketch, with the key little stories that I have captured through the day and I want to include, is below.

Documentary

Music:La llave de mi corazón, Hechos Contra el Decoro
Hora de la Re Minor, Marian Badoi

Evaluation

Act 1

For act one I've filmed El Rastro in the early morning. All merchants are setting up their stalls and there is still not too many people. For the sequences of people mounting their stalls I've chosen a rhythmical music with gipsy reminiscences, combined with a rapid sequence of shots.

I think this introduction succeeds in presenting what will be a busy day for the people who works in the market. We can also appreciate how usually these business are family business and how young kids would help their parents in preparing for the day. 

The impression given is that everyone is in a good and calm mood, for instance when we see in the last scene of the act the policemen walking down the street in the background, at a leisurely pace.

Act 2

The act is open quite nicely with the man smoking the cigar and walking in front of the camera, which momentarily follow him. It was casual that he walked by, but the result has been very good in my opinion. The music has stopped and changed to a more tranquil rhythm.

In this act we see mid shots to demonstrate how the number of people is building up and the sellers shout out their goods.

Among these images, we see the street of the birds. This is one of the very typical areas in El Rastro that was within the planned shots. It is typically not very busy, this is why I have placed it early in act two. A close up of a bird and the ambient noise show that it must be a thematic area.

Down the street I found this old lady selling paintings, patiently placing them for viewers in a rope on the wall. To show that some time passes from the first image of the lady to the next, where we see her selling a painting to a couple, I've placed another shot in between (there are actually a couple of hours in between sequences).

With the next sequence I want to show how time has passed, how we are moving to a time in the day (noon) where the market is very busy.

• We see an armour sitting on a trunk,
• We see the armour in the same position and location from behind,
• Fade to black and music stops, finally
• We see the armour sitting on a chair, with a cane.

I'm not sure how successful is this sequence to achieve its purpose, as I showed the documentary to my partner and had to explain it. There would be more obvious ways of showing this time passing. We recently watched an old episode from Seinfeld, which is filmed backwards. Humorously, they show Kramer eating a huge caramel in different scenes, and the sweet grows bigger and bigger to show what has happened before and what happened after.

I think my scene is too subtle, as the shots are wider and more things are going on in the frame, the armour missing our attention.

Then we see a couple of scenes that just show how the market gets busier and busier. Edward Scissorhands is the first scene where we have loads of people. Then we move to the  people walking in the main street, the camera moving along with the crowd from a subject point of view.

Back in the square I have chosen to introduce another very typical area of El Rastro - the area where you can trade cards - using a close stall that was playing the music of Sinatra.

• The scene begins, we see the peculiar owner of the stall sorting out his goods. The camera begins to rotate to the left,
• Then I change to shots of the children and parents trading cards,
• Then we go back to the stall to end the camera movement. The scene ends with a man sitting on a chair.

I think that for this sequence, though images and ambient music are nice, it is not clear that the trading cards are close to the stall, nor that the first and second shots of the stall correspond to same place. If the merchant was probably in both sequences, that would have made the trick. Also I should have tried to pick up an angle where you could see the card traders.

The continuous music helps to understand that the activities are happening simultaneously.

Next sequence is a time lapse. Again, I'm not sure that the transition between images achieve the intended objective: time has passed and we are now in the late afternoon.  We see the camera tips from the sky to the ground and fades to black. The next scene is the same square, emptier.

The problem is that the camera angle is not the same in both scenes, and it is not obvious that we are in the same place. Also the opposite camera movement would have been more efficient, i.e. camera tips from ground to sky, then fade to black and then back from sky to no stall. Unfortunately I did not thought of using this images for a time lapse…

The next scenes are my favourite from the whole day. And old man is breaking down his stall, and carrying it back home.

I was quick on getting the sequence filmed from different angles, which has resulted quite nicely.

A couple of - possibly too long - scenes show the cleaning force taking care of all the mess left behind by the market.

Finally we move to scenes of the people having lung (it is approximately three in the afternoon) and the streets going back to normal, kids playing, sun going down.

Act 3

To move between acts I was lucky enough to get this shot of a pizza delivery man, and later at night this couple walking their dog up the street.

This is followed by another shot of a quiet square, a woman walking by, and the documentary is closed with a shot of three men sitting on a bench watching a police car pass by. Life is back to normal in the neighbourhood.

Editing was quite difficult because, despite the recommendation in the notes, I filmed loads of sequences.

To sum up I think I have achieved creating a narrative, though I thought it would not be easy with the images filmed. I have been able to place within the little film some stories that show the character of the place. 

project 17 - time

Choose a non-linear narrative and try to devise a diagram of the narrative structure. 

I have watched Reservoir Dogs, and the graph below shows real time vs movie time:

The narrative moves between the events pre and post the robbery. We don't get to see the actual moment when they get the diamonds. First scene is just before the crime, then we move back and forth to events before and after that moment.
It is done in a way that makes it easy to follow, nicely signalised mainly by the places where the events take place. Most of the scene After the robbery are filmed in a warehouse, them dressed in black suits. Before the crime both the clothing and the scenarios change.

Examples of time contracted and expanded.  

Expanded time example
Amelie finds out who is the mysterious man that collects rejected photos. Tension builds up as he approaches the photo cabin, and we can see how time slows down and the noise of the steps is audible everywhere.




The plastic bag scene in American Beauty lasts 3min approximately. We can see a plastic bag dancing with the wind. The music is a huge part of it, making this rather simple scene be emotive and beautiful.


Also in American Beauty the scene where Mena Suvari is cheer leading and Kevin Spacey imagines her dancing for him only, we can see how everything slows down and then speeds up back to reality.

Contracted time example
Forest Gump runs for three years, and we are told in a sequence of a bit less of 7 minutes. The link between the scenes is the voice over and the images of him running, his beard and hair growing.





THE example of time contraction would be Boyhood. Richard Linklater recorded this movie for twelve years, where we can see Mason's life. When I went to the cinema to watch it I did not have a clue about this, and it did amaze me. Not that I think the movie is anything particular aside this, as nothing really happens in the narrative, but as some friend told me... life happens.




Write a script that links two different parts of the same day. 

The family (dad, mum and two kids, 10 an 12 years old) get through the gates of the theme park. The kids go running ahead and the camera moves up to the sky. We see the sunset and the camera moves down to the ground again, we see mum and dad getting into the car, the kids are knackered in the car back seat.

project 16 - other narratives

Documentaries can be divided in two types, those which have a story to tell and those which are observational.

Titicut Follies, Frederick Wiseman 1967

Titicut Follies is an example of observational documentary. The director and a camera man got invited to film the mental institution in the 1960s and edited a marvellous and appalling movie. Not recommended for sensitive minds.

The narrative can be summarised as below:

Intro: we see a show. We can see it is a bit awkward, the performers do not show fully comfortable and the show is somewhat childish.  
1st part: Shortly we see this must be some mental institution or penitentiary. We see how the inmates are ordered to strip out. The documentary continues as we see the different protagonists, the psychiatric of the institution, who is very unprofessional and judgemental, the guards, who frequently verbally abuse and bully the inmates.  
Break: A short break shows more images of the show, where the policeman also act.  
2nd part: In the second part the stories continue. Particularly shocking is one of the last stories, when the doctor force feeds a man who has not been eating. We can see how the doctor intubates him, smoking, with the but of the cigarrette almost falling. The shot is cut with scenes of a man being shaved - this is very weird in a first instance, why this shot so suddenly? - then the force feeding continues, being cut by the shots of the other man cleaning and preparing the other man. Then you realize the other man is dead! it's being prepared for his funeral... and you also realize it is the same man tha is being force feeded. 
The documentary ends with the end of the show .  

Searching for Sugar Man, Malik Bendjelloul, 2012

The documentary is built up around the amazing story of Sixto Rodriguez, a singer in the 1970s. 

The director must have heard about the story and wants to tell us, unfolding the information carefully and misleading us to assumptions, to then surprise the audience at the end (or rather second half of the movie). 

INTRO - We see a man in a car, driving by a cliff, music is on and he's singing. He is in Cape Town and says that song was important for him in his youth as he was nicknamed Sugar after that song. He says the song is from a singer in the 1960s that dramatically killed himself on stage.  
BACKGROUND USA - The image changes to Detroit, and then immediately they place you in the past and you hear the story about Rodriguez. How he was discovered, how talented he was.  
His history is told with a mix of his songs. 
Decadence, then first record,really good, but he never got success in the USA. 
BACKGROUND SOUTH AFRICA- They move you back to South Africa, they tell you how they think the Lp arrived there, how successful and important for the young and revolution their songs were "anthem for a revolution". The man for them was a mistery. They show how he was censored by some radios. 
INVESTIGATION - Back in present Sugar begins to be curious about who he was, where he was from, how he died (legend says he shoot himself, or he burnt himself on stage). They begin an investigation. How was publishing his songs in Africa, where was the money coming? 
Following the labels they end up calling people who knew him in 1997. 
They find out he was alive!!  
AFTERMATH - So they begin to tell the story of him nowadays, we meet his daughters, they end up paying a flight for him to South Africa, make a concert, we meet Rodriguez, he goes to TV shows and gives interviews… 

END - The story ends up saying how things have not changed much economically for Rodriguez, as he has seen little of the money of the previously sold records in Africa, and has shared the money he has make visiting SA. Very happy / sour story. 

project 15 traditional narrative - viewing

I've seen two older Hollywood classics to analyse the three act narrative:
Act 1, beginning that establishes the background and introduces the characters. It is in equilibrium and the intention is informative.
Act 2, where climax builds up and events unfold. Act 2 usually brings threads together and generates more complex plots.
Act 3, the end, the final resolution plays out and everything returns to an equilibrium.

CASABLANCA

Casablanca is a very good example of the three act approach to narrative. The narrative is broken by a flash back in the middle of Act 2, but aside from that, the pattern is mostly followed. 

THE BIG SLEEP

As opposed to Casablanca, The Big Sleep has a quite complicated plot. I had actually to read out the wikipedia storyline before finalising the exercise. The three acts are somewhat followed, and we can easily identify a first act, until the action (and the music) rump up. There is a "false" act 3, where detective Philip Marlow gets paid for his services and apparently the film is coming to an end, but then the plot complicates even more until the very end, where we find a very short and not quite closed act 3. 

assignment 3 - creating meaning

For this assignment you will create a short sequence that tells a basic story and conveys implied meaning. 

From the suggested stories I've chosen Somebody makes a cup of tea - They are suicidal. 

Story board

1 

You'll see a close up of a tap, the tube is full and overflowing. Some red water appears into the frame.
Soundtrack - diegetic sound.

2

Then we suddenly change the scene, we can see a living room and the phone is ringing. A girl appears in scene and picks up the phone. She listens and seems shocked with the news.
Soundtrack -  diegetic sound. When it is obvious that she has received some bad news we'll begin to hear the noise of a TV with no signal.

3

Then we see what might be the image of whatever the news are... I want this to be quite abstract. We'll see first the close up of the sun (she is oblivious of what is happening) and then hear a crash, she turns her head and runs.
Soundtrack - still the no signal TV noise plus the crash noise

4

Running, camera is moving. Abstract, feeling of anxiety.       

Soundtrack - no signal TV noise

5

She makes a cup of tea. She is visibly sad. She has not much interest in the tea... it's like she is just preparing the tea cause she finds nothing else to do.
You see the kitchen, which is white. The kitchen light is fluorescent type, very white and dull. Camera pans from the kettle to her.
Sountrack - sad music.

6

You see the phone, not properly hanged. Semi-close up. 

Soundtrack - sad music.

7

You see the kettle, she didn't make the tea.  Close up traveling. 

Soundtrack - sad music.

Filming

Music by Alex Mackie, No Easy Way.

Evaluation

The aim of this assignment and section of the course was very interesting. Creating meaning with the images, with the sequences, what you show and you don’t. The specific subject I have chosen was not my cup of tea – someone suicidal – but roughly I think I have conveyed some sadness and anguish. Lets analyse scene by scene.

Scene 1

We see the shower open from above. I moved away slightly from the script, cause I’m back in Spain and water is very valuable, so I did not fill the tub.

Framing and composition - The camera is tilted and gives a sense of unbalance and instability.

Lighting - The light is artificial which suits the scene.

Sound - You hear the noise of the water running and suddenly the noise of a phone ringing comes in.

Meaning – in the shower you cannot see anybody (well, you can if you look at the reflection in the tap, but that is a beginners error), you only see the red water trickling into the frame, which is quite an obvious signal of somebody committing suicide.  But why? The intention of this scene right at the beginning is to give sense to the rest of the short sequence.

Next we see is a title frame indicating that what we have just seen has happened in the future, and the phone was ringing in the past. “…earlier that day…”

Scene 2

We see a woman picking up the phone and being shocked for whatever she listens in the other end.

Framing and composition – The frame is wide so you see the whole living room. There is no need, but this gives her a nice location in the frame (one of the thirds to call your attention), and we can see her movements clearly.

Lighting – Natural light comes from the background window and silhouettes her out.

Sound – Sound is diegetic sound, but when you see that she is shocked by the news, you begin to hear a beeeeep, like the one from an old analogue TV with no signal.

Meaning – most of the meaning in this scene is coming from the acting and non-diegetic sound., which gives a very strong sense of uneasiness. 

Scene 3

We see a close up of the sun, and then the camera changes and the viewer (subjective PoV) is running and falls.

Framing and composition – Framing and composition is not critical for me in this scene, as I try to convey a subjective PoV. The only important thing was that the sun needed to be isolated and quite in close up. Then the camera zooms out to show how the viewer is running.

Lighting – the light comes from the dazzling sun, which was quite high in the sky in a very clear and bright day..

Sound – TV with no signal to link this with the previous scene (see meaning). The plan was to include the sound of a car crash, which would have given a bit more sense to the scene, but I tested this and didn’t help much to the meaning of the scene and the result was a bit odd.

Meaning – This was a quite risky and abstract scene. The idea was to show how she was kind of oblivious (dazzled by the sun) to what was happening and then she wants to run away, literally, in anguish and frustration. I expected that the sound would help to give this meaning, this sense of being “inside” her head.

Scene 4

We see a close up of the kettle being set for a tea, then the camera moves and we see the woman seated, looking sad, playing around with the cup and the tea bag.  Then she stands up and leaves, not making the cup of tea.

Framing and composition – The close up works nicely and well in this scene. It allows you to see just what you need, you guess from the context she is in the kitchen.

Lighting – I planed I would use the artificial and bright, white light of my kitchen. When tested, I liked it better with the dim natural light coming from the terrace. She is in the shadows, the light does not lit her directly but rather from behind. It gives a nice look of sadness to the shot.

Sound – The beep ends and a sad music begins. Music is by Alex Mackie, No Easy Way.

Meaning – The music is sad and it gives sense to the scene. The acting, framing and light help to convey meaning. She is sad, she is helpless, she leaves.

Scene 5

We see the phone, nobody has bothered to hang it up. Then we see a picture of the woman and a man.

Framing and composition – The frame is a close up, the camera set at the height of the subject.

Lighting – Natural light.

Sound – sad music.

Meaning – A travelling moves from the close up of the phone to the close up of the picture. It does mean something, the two images are linked, something has ended, something is wrong.

Conclusion

I had the idea of ending with the cup of tea, again unfinished, but thought that was then two closures and didn’t include it.

The camera movements and framing I think work well. The subjective PoV of the abstract scene achieves the uneasiness I was looking for, and the travelling in the last scene works quite nicely in my opinion (although the travelling equipment can do with some improvement so the image does not jump).

On the other hand, the narrative is quite confusing, as I have tested with some friends. They don’t get the idea; they think somebody else has committed suicide, not the girl. The abstract scene (scene 3) is not understood within the sequence unless I explain it… but they do get a feeling of sadness. Fairly enough, next chapter is about narrative; let’s see what I can learn there.


Edit 29/11/15 to attach copy of my tutor's report: