New Wave - Design Brief

As a part of my coursework research on New Waves in cinema, I have been primarily studying the American New Wave between the mid 60's to the early 80's. Through the analysis and research on Martin Scorsese's historic first mainstream film Taxi Driver, I learned just how much you can engage an audience via the on-screen exploration of man dealing with feelings we all go through. This then made the youthful audience at the time have a connection to the man they were seeing on screen, only for them to witness the shock of the horrific acts he commits towards the end. I find this inner connection to an audience to be something that I could explore in my film. Another thing I learned from watching a documentary on this new wave, is how sometimes certain camera movements and techniques were employed just because they felt 'right' during shooting. For example the slow, almost unnoticeable movement of a camera towards a subject can have a subliminal effect on the audiences view of the characters and their situation.

Therefore, I would like to see what different kinds of reactions I could evoke using this adaptable style of filmmaking to the environment. Perhaps if I juxtaposed certain comedic iconography with horror-genre camera techniques such as dutch tilts, I could achieve a mixed feeling in the audience towards the piece. An important aspect of what is considered to be New wave of cinema, is the rejection of traditional or common place camera and lighting techniques, and therefore to try and utilise those of the American new wave now into my own film, would not be very new wave by todays cinema as the industry has since incorporated these elements. Popular editing techniques of the American new wave included jump cuts, montage and temporal discontinuity. With my New Wave film production, I intend to not follow a few of the traditional rules of editing and camera techniques. For example, instead of using a fade video transition to indicate a change of time and setting, as per cinematic tradition, I intend to use such techniques in a single timeframe.