Thomas Russell's RMIT Blog

In today’s tute, we showed Paul, Robin (just realised these are the names of my aunty and uncle. Weird) and the rest of the class the rough cut we’ve put together so far.

The feedback regarding what needed work was as I expected it. That bloody first scene. It is simply too boring and we’ve done ourselves a disservice with coverage. Paul highlighted that while an outside first AD was advantageous in that their primary concern was to keep the ball rolling in terms of the schedule, they’re not perhaps quite as attached as an RMIT student first AD might be (who would put more emphasis on ensuring all coverage had been taken care of).

How do we solve this problem? Paul and Robin agreed that if the film was made even more overtly dark and whacky, cutaways of a creepy house exterior would intercut well with Petunia’s monologue. The pair think this is achievable, particularly given the odd nature of the story complete with police assault and corpse concealing.

Shifting the film’s tone to one of surrealism and expressionism can be achieved with a few editing techniques with colour balance being the most obvious choice. Making this transition will also remedy another perceived flaw of Paul and Robin’s: the lack of context surrounding Sarah’s actions. For them, Sarah’s motive is unclear but they feel that by integrating elements of the avant-garde into our film, the need for such expository will no longer exist.

Sounds like we’ve got a bit of work to do but I feel heaps more confident today after receiving some clear steps to take in the next week. The class also complimented us on our shot design and casting amongst other facets of the film.

Last night, I finally got around to seeing The Avengers and lawdy, it didn’t disappoint! This was a film that didn’t take its superhero/action genre too seriously which allowed for a comedic license uncommon in films of the same nature (ruptures of laughter arrived when nemesis, Loki, had his malevolent speech interrupted by the Hulk, who proceeded to throw him around like a ragdoll).

As always, I anticipated and wasn’t disappointed by the obligatory post-credits scene that has become integral to Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) films. It got me thinking about the scene in relation to my film group’s post-credits scene. What’s attractive about these scenes in the MCU context? There’s the promise of a sequel and a hint at its content – a certain privilege granted to the movie-goer that feels private to a degree (at least to me anyway).

But what about the context of our film? I guess the way it has been constructed, the scene ties off thematic and character elements of our short (tones of dark comedy and a re-emphasis of Petunia’s love for Norman are what come to mind upon viewing the scene).

I think the development of the post-credits scene, while a small one, is one we can be proud of as having devised in this modern cinematic era. You’d be foolish to think audiences these days would be willing to sit through an opening sequence that credits the entire cast and crew (as was the case in classics many decades ago. Though I guess crews were much smaller then considering the absence of special effects teams, stunt teams, etc.). Post-credits scenes entice the audience to sit through the credits and hence offer their attention to people who deserve it. Watching a five minute reel of credits seems a small price to pay for a cinematic Easter egg.

Today marked the first day our team got to sit down and mull over converted footage in FCP. Christine popped in to offer some advice – some that required footage we did not film on the day. Why didn’t we get this coverage? Essentially, our shot list didn’t incorporate some of the suggested shots Christine mentioned today. It’s no biggie: we’ve all come to realise that there’s ways of getting around holes in the story. Establishing the link between Petunia and Sarah, for instance, will come about through using a static shot of Sarah before she throws a scone at Randall even though it was shot as part of the sequence following the scone throw.

If there’s anything I can take from this, it’s probably to be more wary of different ways of approaching storytelling during pre-production. Sure, we could’ve filmed alternate ways of telling the film’s story and decided which looks best in post-production, but if you’ve got a knack for seeing the bigger picture, you should be able to discern the best way to convey the story from a cinematographic viewpoint before the camera’s even rolling.

The big scary production phase is over! How did we go?

In my opinion, the day went better than I initially expected. Despite trying to talk down my fears, I had been feeling small apprehensions going into the shoot but I needn’t have worried! Here’s a gallery to attest to our productivity and fun times:

Getting the ball rolling was a little rough: we started shooting almost half an hour after we were scheduled to. Problems associated with this were lighting and Petunia’s (Sylvie) movement through the space as well as her delivery of lines. By lunchtime, we were back on schedule again having completed the kitchen scene and all outside scenes with almost no obstacles whatsoever.

During the break, the crew played back some of the footage on Sacha’s laptop and found some of the clips were underexposed (alarmingly so). I then played it back in VLC instead of the program we had been using for playback (MPEG Streamclip) and found these clips were considerably more lit. Phew!

Despite our break, I feel our crew, definitely including myself, may have felt on a high or a little too relaxed following the morning’s proceedings and we struggled through the shoot in the living room with Petunia and Norman (Ray). Problems here concerned shot angles, whether to do the scene in one long take (which we ended up doing) and the handling of the camera (Jax brought along an easy-to-use Wally Dolly but we had to tilt and track simultaneously).

After shooting the living room scene, we found we were still well on schedule and had ample time to record the post-credits sequence along with additional bits of Petunia’s movements around the house and cutaways. The crew wrapped a little before 5:00 (our designated wrap time) and the day was considered a great success!

Now for editing…