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Summary, Reflection & Evaluation

Summary My final piece is a film inspired by the poem 'Insomniac’ by Sylvia Plath. I chose this poem as I was inspired by the imagery and feeling conjured by Plath and I could relate to the subject matter of a restless night. The poem describes the night time from the perspective of an unknown protagonist, the insomniac, as well as the experience of not being able to sleep and where the mind wanders to. In my film, I wanted to draw on the poem but not rely on it too much as I saw it as more of a starting point and a source of inspiration. 

The film begins with the sounds of the night before showing us a shot of the moon to set the scene and tell the audience that this film is about the night. For a film without any actors I wanted to use the moon as a recurring motif throughout particularly as Plath personifies the stars and the moon, ‘under the eyes of the stars and the moon’s rictus’, as if they are watching and mocking the invisible protagonist. The film then cuts to two shots showing simultaneously on the screen, one of a bedroom window with the light on and another of a bed in darkness. In this film I experimented a lot with incorporating more than one piece of footage onscreen at the same time, this was partially due to the time limitation of the brief but also as a way of experimenting with the medium of moving image. Meanwhile sounds of the night, such as sirens and the wind continue in the background now muffled. Then we cut to a shot of bedsheets, situating the viewer underneath the covers of the bed. I chose to slowly move the camera forward during this shot to draw the viewer into the sheets, as well as the film. I think this successfully draws the viewer in and also makes them feel small, as if the world of the bedsheets is much bigger than themselves. This is all we can see for approximately 2 seconds before more footage appears onscreen, that of a cat and a beach. By doing this I wanted to create the impression that the insomniac is being plagued by memories as he tries to sleep, rethinking his past and other events in his life: ‘over and over the old, granular movie / Exposes embarrassments’, ‘Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars’. However, after showing other people my film and listening to their feedback some people have commented that this footage reminds them of a sort of lucid state between awake and sleep which is also interesting. I chose to use stock footage of super 8mm film to get the feeling of ‘old, granular movie’ and memories as super 8mm film has a nostalgic, home video feel. I also chose to use the ‘static’ transition in Final Cut Pro as this made the inclusion of this footage look more intentional and also was reminiscent of ‘old, granular movie’[s]. In addition to this, I edited the super 8mm footage to look jumpy, repeat itself and play over itself in an unnatural way by overlaying clips, cutting them and speeding parts up or reversing parts to capture this idea of memories repeating themselves in the mind. This is followed by another  shot of bed sheets with more super 8mm footage playing over the top, however, this time I also included out of focus footage of the moon to make the shot more dynamic, add interest and to create the impression that maybe the insomniac is perhaps looking out of the window, looking at the moon, checking there is still time to get some sleep or that the moon is still watching in the mocking way described by Plath. Following this I used a shot of a bed as the background to two shots: one of the insomniac taking sleeping tablets and the other of the insomniac drinking water to  wash down the tablets. I made these shots comparatively blurry to the rest of the film to create the illusion of the insomniac being bleary eyed and the pills causing them to feel lethargic. During this sequence I also included an underwater sound effect to match the shot of the protagonist drinking water and I also felt it enhanced this ‘drugged’ feeling created by the blurry footage. Next is another shot of bedsheets, this time overlaid with footage of the moon and other lights, intended to look a bit like stars. I used bokeh when filming the moon and lights to create an abstract, dreamlike appearance of the moon, and also overlaid the shots to create more moons and abstract white dots on the footage. The fact that the footage was shaky here and the editing of the moon footage is slightly jumpy creates the illusion of time passing. At this point I also chose to fade in some bird noises and traffic sounds to make the audience feel like the morning is approaching. I wanted to replicate the feeling when haven’t had much sleep and you can hear the birds and the sounds of the morning, but you don’t want the morning to come. In the next shot, the bed sheets are significantly more exposed to create the feeling that morning is again drawing closer. I placed the super 8 footage so that it covered more of the frame, as if the insomniac is finally falling into a dream, however, the sounds of  traffic and the morning are louder now to signal that it will soon be time to start the day. Throughout the film I used audio of breathing to create the feeling of someone trying to fall asleep but at the end of this shot, the final breath is louder than previous almost as if it is a sigh. I did this to add a finality to the film before moving on to the next shot: as highly exposed shot of an empty pillow in the morning light in the middle of a light grey background. I did this to symbolise the morning and the insomniac either having to give up on sleep to go about the responsibilities of his day. I chose to colour grade this shot as more white and grey than blue (as the other shots are) to allude to the changing of time to the harsh morning and to reflect two lines from the poem: ‘Already he can feel daylight, his white disease, / Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions’. In the poem the darkness and the nighttime is portrayed as being safe and familiar whereas the light and daytime is portrayed as death, disease and as being menacing so it was important to me I portrayed light and dark this way in my film. However, I wanted the light/morning to seem like a sudden occurrence, as if the curtains have been opened to reveal the morning rather than ‘creeping up’ slowly as this was easier to achieve under the time constraint of the brief and felt more appropriate for my film.

Reflection & Evaluation

Overall, I am really happy with the way my film turned out. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown there were more challenges and obstacles to overcome than usual, despite this I feel I created a film film which linked well to my chosen poem. During the process of planning and creating my film I feel I improved and developed my filmmaking skills as well as my ability to think creatively and experiment.  At first I had a very clear idea of what I wanted to do and create, I think this was a great start but as I began working and experimenting I realised that sticking to a fixed plan is not always the best idea. My original idea was quite different from the final product due to moving back to my parent’s house during the lockdown, and this limited the type of footage I could get and I had to be resourceful and creative in order to get footage, find locations, and create a film which had obvious connections to ‘Insomniac’.  I think one of the main strengths of my film was the colour grading of the footage. Prior to this project I did not know much about colour grading, or how to create the illusion that footage was shot at night when in actual fact it was shot in the day. Without the colour grading, the footage would have looked inconsistent and less pleasing to the eye. I also used colour grading as a method of storytelling in this work as it allowed me to implicitly tell the viewer whether it was night, dawn or morning through colour and exposure. Colour grading also allowed me to make found footage fit in with my own footage, so it did not stand out as being filmed on a different day, by a different camera or even in a different country.  Through making this film I also learnt more about sound design in film. The sound effects I used really tie the piece together, helping to set the tone and feel. I think the most important lesson in sound was that it has to be quite subtle, I didn’t want the viewer to be distracted by it but rather use it subtly to set the scene and mood. I included sound effects from Final Cut Pro such as a siren, a church bell, a dog barking etc. From the very first inclusion of a memory onscreen (the super 8 footage) I included an electricity sound effect which sounded a bit like really old film being played on a projector, this gave the super 8mm an authentic feel, in my opinion. I also included the sound of a person breathing to create this feeling of the quiet of night and the deep breathing of falling asleep. I think my use of sound was really effective in creating tone and also as a way of creating a narrative within a very short piece of film. I decided to have no sound at all in the final scene to contrast and set it apart from the other footage. I feel this also left the ending ambiguous and open to interpretation.  I also think that my composition has improved greatly throughout the course of making this film. When I was shooting I kept composition in mind and aimed to make each shot dynamic or interesting in some way. In addition to this, I really thought about composition when arranging the super 8 footage in the frame, on top of the original footage. For example, I thought about the lines within the super 8 footage and how these reflected the lines created by the bedsheets in my own footage and arranged them accordingly. I did this to make the film look pleasing to the eye but also to draw the eye to the super 8 footage and emphasise it. This also made the super 8 footage look like it was supposed to be there.  One of the main aspects that I would like to improve in this film would be the quality of the lighting in some shots. Had I had access to the university equipment at the AV Store I would have been able to borrow lighting equipment and therefore control the lighting in my shots and get footage with less noise (the footage of the bed, for example, is quite noisy which made it hard to edit and made it seem less professional). If I did have proper lighting I would have been able to film more outside at night which would have also allowed me to get a greater variety of footage.   In addition to this, if there had not been a lockdown on I would have been able to get a lot more footage/audio myself and rely less on stock footage/sound effects.  Also I would have liked to make a longer film had the brief allowed it as I could have included more footage, included more from the source material and spent longer showing the insomniac swallowing pills/drinking the water etc. 

Through the process of making this film I have developed my ability to experiment with my work and use trial and error to come to a final piece. I have learnt to adapt and change due to external factors, but also through trying things that did not end up working and finding ways to overcome this. Overall, I am really happy with the way my film came out. Considering the circumstances and limitations I am proud I could still make a polished and interesting film. I also feel that I learnt a lot from the process of making my film and that my skills as a filmmaker, as well as an artist, have improved. 

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FINAL PIECE

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This was my setup for getting footage of the bedsheets. Initially I just went under the sheets and filmed however, this resulted in very dark footage and it was difficult to manufacture the scene to my liking. Using a fitted bed sheet wrapped around a stool and a duvet I was able to fold and move the sheets to my liking. I placed the stool on my bed, which is in front of a window, in order to get an optimal amount of light through the sheets. It is usually better to get lighter, well lit footage as it is easier to darken footage in post production than it is to lighten it (using the methods I have previously researched). This method allowed me to easily move the camera through the sheets and resulted in some really good footage. Had there not been a lockdown, I would have done this in a photo studio at uni and would have been able to use equipment such as studio lighting and would have had a larger space to work. However, I was surprised by how easy this was to accomplish at home and the subsequent footage still looks somewhat professional.

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I will mainly be filming during the golden hour, the blue hour and the nighttime so I decided to do some research into filming during these times as well as editing day time footage to appear as though it was shot at night.  The scan above, taken from The Digital Filmmaking Handbook, suggests incorporating a source of light into the story of the film in order to naturally light dark scenes. This is a really effective way of incorporating light into a dark scene, however, the darkness of the scene is really important to my film so I might not be able to do this. I could use candles to add lighting to the scene but this may distract attention from the bed, garden and overall composition depending on how they’re used. Alternatively, I could shine a torch (or other light source) onto a light reflector to subtly bounce light onto the subject. I don’t own a light reflector but could easily make one using a white sheet.  In both The Digital Filmmaking Handbook and the video on day into night editing, they mention noise. Too much noise on my footage will be distracting to the viewer and make the film look poor quality and amateur, however, a good amount of noise will make the shot look more dynamic, realistic and will add movement/interest to the shot. Similarily, film grain will give the footage an interesting, more dynamic feel and look more ‘artsy’. 

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Due to a family member falling ill, I have had to leave my flat in Manchester and move back home with my parents. This has affected my workflow significantly as my location has changed and I had planned my film around my location and the flat I lived in. I also had to leave a lot of my things, including equipment, in Manchester.  The main issue is that my room at my parent’s house is a lot smaller than in my flat so I decided to change my film idea. My new idea focuses a lot more on the second stanza of the poem which includes imagery of flowers, gardens, nature and the outdoors: ‘Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful, A garden of buggy rose that made him cry. His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.’. So now I am going to film a bed (and pillows and bedding) in my garden to reflect these ideas of the night being a restless time and when (it feels like) you’re the only person awake and the alienation that comes with this. I also feel that this imagery is really interesting and unique and will be fun to edit. In addition to this, I will focus more on the shots of bed sheets, my editing techniques, manipulating the footage, and nighttime footage. Above is a scan of a revised storyboard with new shot ideas and compositional ideas.    

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In my film I will be using stock footage from ‘Life on Super 8′. I decided to include stock footage because I wanted to include footage that felt authentically ‘old’ for the footage of memories in my film and I do not have access to an old, film camera or any way of converting film footage to digital. Therefore, I decided to use super 8 footage in my film from ‘Life on Super 8′ as it is the style of footage is recognisable and has a nostalgic feel. This is also very convenient as the UK is currently in lockdown due to Covid19 and therefore I cannot really leave my house, or travel far, to get footage therefore stock footage is a great way to add more to my film without breaking the lockdown and also use a type of footage I could not get ahold of otherwise. 

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Notes to remind myself to think about what’s in frame when I’m filming and to think about my composition.

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From the start of his career, Warhol used his intimate personal relationships with people to create new ways of looking at the world. His first serious art film was Sleep, made over several nights in summer and autumn 1963 with a 16mm camera. The film shows 22 close-ups of the poet John Giorno, who was briefly Warhol’s lover, as he sleeps in the nude. Warhol was fascinated by the ability of his friends to stay up for days on end while using drugs and wondered whether sleep would soon become obsolete.

Warhol shot around 50 reels of film for Sleep, each one lasting only three minutes. He edited them with Sarah Dalton, who recalled, ‘he asked me to edit it, taking out bits where John moved too much – he wanted the movie to be without movement. I protested that I hadn’t a clue how to edit, but he fished out an old moviola editing machine, showed me how it operated and so to work I went.’ The final version repeats many scenes and lasts over five hours. It is projected in slow motion, giving a dream-like feel.

By documenting a single action with no dramatic narrative, Warhol turned film into something that could be treated like a painting hanging on the wall. John Giorno said that Warhol got round the homophobia of the art world ‘by making the movie Sleep into an abstract painting: the body of a man as a field of light and shadow.’

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The similarities between the folds of bedsheets and the lines, shapes, shadows of mountainous landscapes were pointed out to me in recent feedback from my tutor. I could use these similarities to create a sense of endlessness or vastness in shots of bedsheets in my short film. 

The first way I could do this is by simply arranging the sheets in a way that mimics the shapes and lines of mountains in landscape photography. I could fold and mould the sheets to create the mountainous effect, even use some sort of structure underneath to hold them in place. As suggested by my tutor, I could also use coloured lighting to further this illusion. 

Another way I could create this look is by overlaying images or footage of mountains/landscapes over the top of my own footage. This would require me to find photos/footage I like in advance of filming that I would then roughly recreate using the sheets so that my own footage and the mountain footage matched up. This could be interesting, perhaps there is a way I can gradually decrease the opacity of the mountain photos/footage so that by the end of the film the sheets resemble them more than at the start, or this could be a way to introduce sunrise in an interesting way (rather than showing light coming in through the curtains, which could potentially be quite a boring shot, I could overlay found footage of a sunrise over my own footage to create the illusion that the sunrise is happening in the bed).  

Thirdly, I can move the camera through the sheets in order to create the illusion of moving through a landscape and thus a sense of endlessness. 

Finally, the other way I could create this illusion is by ‘cutting’ up different footage into mountain shapes and then combining the footage to look like a mountainous landscape. However, I am not sure how competent my technical abilities would have to be in order to do this.

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I recently watched the documentary Tell Me Who I am and immediately fell in love with the use of dark, gloomy night time shots.Throughout the film the director, Ed Perkins, returns to these shots of the boys’ bedroom, the window in their bedroom and the exterior shot of the house. These shots are slightly different each time, as the plot builds. 

As you can see above, one of the shots of the boys’ bedroom window shows the whole wall of the room, its dark but the room has a bluey-grey atmosphere (I wonder if the director used film fade here, or artificial fog to create this kind of faded blue light in the room) and the next time we see the same window, the shot is closer on the window and the room is dark - almost black - and we can see rain on the window. In the context of the plot, Perkins uses this repetition of shots to darken the tone of the film and match the narration of the footage. The film tells the story of Marcus and Alex, twins that have a special relationship due to the fact that Alex lost his memory at the age of 18 in a motorcycle accident and Marcus (being the only person Alex remembers, as they are identical twins) has to help Alex understand the mystery of his own life, but Marcus hides from him the fact that both were sexually abused as children. The film follows Alex and Marcus as they talk about their life, and in the final act of the film, Alex discovers the full extent of the sexual abuse their mother committed against them. The dark, moody shots reflect Alex’s mindset, at the start of the film he knows he was sexually abused as a child but not to what extent, he is ‘in the dark’ about his past and so Perkins uses these dark, muted shots (after Alex and Marcus speak about their past together and hug at the end of the film, we see similar shots of the window, the beds and the house however, these shots were filmed in the day, possibly at golden hour as they have an orangey, glowey quality). I think that Perkins uses the visual motif of the window as a symbol of the truth, and we are slowly getting closer throughout the duration of the film. We later find out that, after his final episode of abuse Marcus runs away from one of his abusers and returns to Alex, he knocks on the bedroom window and Alex opens the window to let him in. And so the window has multiple meanings in the story; it could also be interpreted that the window is a metaphor for the brothers reuniting (physically when they were separated by their abuser, and emotionally when Marcus tells Alex what happened during their childhood and they both feel connected as twins once again). 

Aesthetically, I love Perkins use of light, dark and shadows. A recurring motif in this film are the shots of light coming in through windows, casting shapes along the beds or the walls. The way in which the light moves, creates shapes and adds colour to quite dark shots, adds movement and interest. They work perfectly in this film, adding points of quiet for the viewer to reflect on information, or adding a backdrop to the narration/interviews which regularly face sensitive topics. 

In my own film I want to use these techniques: repeating (similar) shots to communicate meaning, and using natural light and shadow to create dynamic and interesting compositions. 

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Storyboarding my ideas in this way is really helpful to conceptualising my shots, especially as I am under strict limitations due to the Coronavirus outbreak. Those limitations include not being able to travel to different locations to shoot footage, I am unable to access university equipment, due to social distancing I can only be around people I live with so I cannot include actors in my film. I’ve decided to use stock or found footage in some parts of my film as there are some shots which would be impossible to attain myself currently: shots of ‘childhood memories’ and shots that require me to be at a location other than my house/my street. However, I’m excited about the film despite the limitations; I think that the limitations will add a greater challenge to the filmmaking process and they will force me to focus on the quality of my film rather than the quantity of shots. These limitations will also force me to think in creative ways, for example rather than looking for locations to shoot my locations have already been decided so the challenge comes in dressing these locations in a way that is relevant to the film and its meaning as well as the aesthetic.

Unintentionally I picked a poem that has themes of isolation, in a time when everyone is experiencing isolation. I think this will help me to better understand the poem and translate it into a different medium. Due to my own feelings of isolation at this time, perhaps feelings of isolation will take a greater president than they did in the source material. 

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Nighthawks (1942) and Night Windows (1928) by Edward Hopper

These two oil paintings by Edward Hopper were inspiring to me due to the way in which Hopper presents the nighttime and the way in which windows are used as a part of the composition. Obviously, there are many differences between film and paintings, for one, paintings may be completely realistic or they may be entirely created in the paintings imagination or they may be the result of both real life and fiction. However, what is similar is that they both involve setting a tone and a mood. Through techniques such as colour grading, I can create a tone for my film in the way that Hopper creates a tone within his works. These two paintings stand out to me due to the use of greens and yellows (and blues in Nighthawks) which draw the eye to certain areas, and away from others. I think that it is important to remember that colour and lighting can be used to draw the viewer’s attention to what is important in the scene or frame. In my own film I need to consider what is important in the shot and how I can use lighting and colour to draw the viewer’s attention and implicitly tell them what is important and what is less so. Hopper is also a master of composition, his composition also draws the eye to certain areas/subjects and away from others. In my film I must bear in mind composition in order to show the viewer what is important but also to keep the film interesting and my shots dynamic. 

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Whilst researching this poem, I found that a few other people have created videos based on Sylvia Plath’s Insomniac. Watching other people’s interpretations was very helpful to me, I was quickly able to identify which subject matter might be cliché or overused and what I want to avoid.

Firstly, I noticed that sound is really important. Some people chose to include a narration/voiceover of the poem, this is something I have already established that I do not want to include in my film. Some also chose to include a soundtrack, I noticed that music is very hard to incorporate because (1) sometimes people feel differently in response to a poem and music could match the emotions of one viewer but not of another, thus music should be used very carefully, (2) if the music does not exactly fit the tone of the poem it could detriment the entire film and (3) if the music does not bring anything to the film as a whole, i.e. meaning or emotion, it becomes redundant and, again, could be detrimental to the whole film. 

The second thing that I noticed was that, almost, every video I watched included a shot of someone tossing and turning in a bed restlessly (often the actor in the bed would also be tossing at a rate too quick or aggressive to the tone of the film/poem). I think any shots of a bed or figure tossing in a bed should be done with caution and should be very stylised in order to avoid cliche.

Thirdly, I noticed a lot of out-of-place stock/found footage. By this, I mean footage that looks too high quality to appear in a short, art film or companion video to a poem. There is no reason an art film or companion video to a poem shouldn’t be high quality, however it can be distracting to see one clip clearly filmed on a low budget besides an amazing, time-lapsed shot of the night sky as stars fly by.

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Insomniac Mood Board

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Slow Wave by Andrew Kennedy

“The idea for Slow Wave began while I was living in a very noisy apartment in Brooklyn. The bass from my downstairs neighbors had a very disruptive effect on my life and work. I wanted to visualize how sound can change the experience of being in a space. I also have night terrors on a regular basis, often times based on irregularities in light or sound. I wanted to capture the visceral and abstract nature of both these experiences and weave them together into a single film.” - Andrew Kennedy

Slow Wave is a 3-minute experimental animation, it addresses the affect sleep disturbances on the mind and body. I think it would be wrong to describe this animation simply as a ‘film’, Kennedy offers the viewer a sensory experience. This experience is largely achieved through Kennedy’s use of sound, which pans as if we are stood within his animation and hearing the sounds of the city move around us, or as if we are hearing different things coming from different sides of the apartment. In a way, sound becomes a character (perhaps antagonist) in and of itself. Movement is also important to the experience Kennedy provides, the apartment itself moves in a variety of different ways that tell us how to feel. 

I was drawn to this short film due to the colour palette: the film begins with a monochromatic blue colour palette, we are very quickly introduced to the yellowy light of the car headlights and later, as the action rises, Kennedy introduces a bright red. Both instances of colours being introduced are of lights, infiltrating the apartment from the outside world. I think that keeping a limited colour palette was important to this film, the colours used hold significance to the narrative and meaning and the limitation of colours in use cause there to be a juxtaposition between the night-time blues and the stark red. In my own film, I also want to utilize a limited colour palette as I think that this will heighten the significance of the colours I do use. Interestingly, Kennedy has chosen to employ a highly noticeable level of film grain in this piece, this gives a more realistic feel to the animated footage (as if it isn’t actually animated, but instead filmed) and gives the animation a night-time feel as if noise has been created due to the lack of light entering a camera. 

Whilst I am not aiming to create an animation during this project, and my animation skills are far inferior to those of Andrew Kennedy, I have learnt a lot from Kennedy’s filmmaking skills and his film has inspired me. His use of a limited, sometimes monochromatic, colour palette, in particular, would suit my film due to the themes of Plath’s ‘Insomniac’ as well as the fact that this film will have no budget and this is an easy way to make my shots aesthetically pleasing in a meaningful way. Also his use of noticeable film grain; to create movement, give a ‘real film’ look and give the film a night-time look. The use of sound, as well, is purposeful, inventive and experimental in this film and I feel very influenced by this sound design style. However, Kennedy’s film centres around ideas of sleep disturbance and also his own experience with night terrors, whereas my film will be focused on insomnia - this difference may lead to different choices in terms of sound design.

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