Fiction Adaptation: Montage Workshop (Filming + Edit)

On Tuesday we carried out the filming for the Montage workshop. Initially, the day got off to a bad start as we had misinterpreted the brief. We had come up with a character and a narrative for the film in order to convey the emotion we had chosen. However, after talking to Helen and Mike, we were told to focus more on the emotion itself and the imagery we could capture to convey it. We brainstormed some possibilities as a group, thinking about how we could use every day objects and scenarios to convey feelings of despair. We came up with a few simple ideas such as a bin spilled over or someone standing in the woods alone. We experimented with the camera, looking at focussing and framing to put emphasis on the material. We also decided to use the track for a few shots, as this is something we had looked into for the previous camera workshop.  Today, we edited the footage we had shot on Tuesday. We each had to create our own edit for this workshop to allow everyone in the group to interpret the footage in their own way. At first I found it very difficult to edit without thinking about sequencing. It felt quite strange to think about cutting two completely unrelated clips next to each other, with no context. However, I kept the theme of despair in mind and tried to use clips that I felt emphasised this. In terms of colouring, I decided to make the footage black and white. When I think of despair, I think of a loss of colour and liveliness therefore I thought that making it greyscale would drain it of this. In terms of sound design, I used a few sounds effects such as a dripping tap to make the diegetic sounds more prominent. I also found a simple piano track to lay over the top to bring the piece together and further emphasise the mood. Below is the final film.