New Wave - Video Evaluation

Introduction

After having studied the new wave for a few months, the most essential aspect of the movement which I had picked up, was the idea of creative freedom of personal expression in mainstream filmmaking. When it came to creating my own film, I decided to do little planning in terms of what kind of a narrative I wanted to tell: I wanted to explore the challenges and surprises of the on-the-fly filming technique which was utilised by many of the directors that defined the era of American filmmaking. I believed it would be best to go into the process with the conventions of the movement in mind. With intuition, I could incorporate them as the subject and I explored our surroundings. I had only a couple of college restraints; the length of my video and that it must have reflected my chosen new wave.

Pre-production

Prior to creating my own New Wave film inspired video, I had viewed various films upon which my chosen new wave of cinema; the American new wave, was founded. In particular I spent a lot of time viewing and analysing such films as Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver and Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde. Unlike these filmmakers, on this project, I had no desire to include violence as I felt as though I had nothing particular to say about it that hasn't already been said extensively. From my experience of violence, it has primarily been the result of people unleashing their anger over their own insecurities and issues, unto others and objects. A form of bullying.

Similar to new wave films, I chose a location of which I have a personal connection to.
I wanted an establishing shot of the skate park and Namco parking lot (where most of the film takes place) along with hand-held camera imagery for ease of use and to reflect that which was heavily utilised in new wave cinema. Similarly to the new wave, I also incorporated numerous instances of going in and out of focus on objects. This camera technique indicates a reactionnary response by the camera operator to the sequence of events. It hence breaks the fourth wall and gives the audience a sense of realism to the scene, as if real events were taking place. This technique was also picked up from watching the mocumentary television series The Office; of which draws heavily from this new wave. The lens flares in my video are intended to be a nod to the ultimate youth couture rebellious film, Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider (1969). To add a twist to the conventional urban location setting of a lot of new wave films, I decided to shoot this urban location at its emptiest time of day.

Production

More consciously, I took visual inspiration from Taxi Driver by channelling opening moving images of blurred street lights from within a moving vehicle; a metaphor of a vision of world from a disconnected perspective. I felt that the apparent emptiness of the setting further emphasised this disconnection.

Lighting:
From prior experience of shooting test imagery at night, I had learned that it can be particularly hard to tell if a scene is well lit due to viewing imagery on a small LCD screen - whereby the blacks are lit up. This gives an initial sense that a scene is perhaps more exposed than it truly is. I used the metering system in the camera as a starting point as I knew that this was meant for daylight photography. I used the digital zoom feature to see if much digital grain was present. If so, I knew I had to perhaps increase the shutter speed. In order to achieve a sense of realism, I didn't use any lighting set-ups. I only used the artificial lighting already at the location. At times, a lack of enough exposure meant that I had to shoot aspects of other locations and later place them between shots of another. Without any acknowledgment of doing such a thing, along with a continuous tone of lighting, it misleads the audience that these shots were of the same location. This was necessary in particular to achieve some shots of graffiti.

Realism:
At times, the character or subject breaks the fourth wall by looking directly at the camera. Shots of graffiti were included as this is something which goes against the law - prior to the american new wave of cinema, films followed the 'Hayes' code. This included the rule of "law should not be ridiculed". By showing graffiti, I am also showing an "incorrect" standard of life/behaviour. The character does not criticise or condemn the graffiti; an opposition to the Hayes moral standard of "no sympathy to crime and sin". Graffiti is a perfect demonstration/example of youth rebellion and counter-culture. The character sees the images as something to laugh about and not take too seriously, despite being classed as damage to public property. The continuous tracking shots give a sense of observing someone - Indicating the presence of the camera operator, myself - this too, I believe, adds to the sense of realism.

Post-production

Editing:
Upon finishing the editing process, in various ways, I came to realise the unconscious affects these films had on my approach to editing. Both from a direct impression and an indirect, secondary impression of having viewed various media that had been influenced by these films. In particular for example: the way in which the clips are edited to the music at points, seemed reminiscent of the robbery getaway scene at the beginning of Bonnie and Clyde. Jump cuts were utilised to distort the sense of time in the viewers mind; to achieve timelessness. At times the editing is choppy, and certain shots appear out of place and to last too long.

Music:
the choice of music was also made as this is a fairly known song by popular artist Skrillex - as opposed to a more traditional "Old Hollywood" soundtrack. Edm is the new folk-rock music of todays generation of youth.
sudden shifts of tone: the break into diegetic dialogue and the lack of background music.
from editing a music video -clips edited to the sound of music, i learned how to do such a thing. I learned from the first time from editing my film from a2 film to music.
the music is calming - visceral.

Conclusion



Notes:

Things that were good:
the shoots spontinaity
the handheld camera shots evoking a new wave style
capturing the emptiness - sense of freedom from society.
capturing visceral imagery
the successful combination of the imagery with ambient, mood-enhancing music
lens flare - staple of
diegetic audio
Smudge motion affect added -similar to taxi driver opening scene
variety of shots
editing techniques; time-lapse, jump cuts, fade transitions,

What I learnt from this:
A better ability to edit visuals to audio. How to adapt to the unexpected elements of the setting; such as a sudden change in lighting and how to incorporate them.

Things I could've done in retrospect:
Hire out multiple cameras so that I could've shot two or more angles of the same occurance (to edit together a temporal overlapse).
Thought more beforehand about symbolic imagery.
Showed a representation of violence and nudity - The graffiti in the film shows a woman'f fear of an  extra-terestrial threat. - This isn't particularly clear. Her fear in particular would seem to have been mocked by the subject, this was not the case. Instead it was the expression that is mocked.