Wednesday 20 February 2008
Life style Choices and our Statement
Our video touches upon the student life style and the choices we make. Students and other teenagers today are being swept up in worrying fads and lifestyle choices. Drug use is at its highest, bring drinking is happening all over the country and thousands of teenage girls are becoming obsessed with the dangerous size zero fad.
Our video aims to make and an ambiguous statement on these lifestyle choices, as we ourselves are hypocrites, we go out and drink but also at the same time realise how dangerous binge drinking is.
We have used fun shots put to a fast upbeat track, which to some viewers , such as another student, may look to promote the life style. Where as to another viewer, such as a parent or some one who does not 'go out' the video may act as a something to highlight how bad this is. As well as starting the video with a fun and upbeat feel, the film ends abruptly as the footage gets quicker and less steady. The film ends with the subject walking down an alley to be sick. We used the same camera angle as the shower scene at the beginning to highlight the juxtaposition between the sobriety at the beginning of the night and the reckless and dangerous intoxication at the end of the night.
The 'binge drinking' that this country is riddled with has been reported to cost this country £20 billion pound a year. The following statements have been taken from a BBC news report.
Our video aims to make and an ambiguous statement on these lifestyle choices, as we ourselves are hypocrites, we go out and drink but also at the same time realise how dangerous binge drinking is.
We have used fun shots put to a fast upbeat track, which to some viewers , such as another student, may look to promote the life style. Where as to another viewer, such as a parent or some one who does not 'go out' the video may act as a something to highlight how bad this is. As well as starting the video with a fun and upbeat feel, the film ends abruptly as the footage gets quicker and less steady. The film ends with the subject walking down an alley to be sick. We used the same camera angle as the shower scene at the beginning to highlight the juxtaposition between the sobriety at the beginning of the night and the reckless and dangerous intoxication at the end of the night.
The 'binge drinking' that this country is riddled with has been reported to cost this country £20 billion pound a year. The following statements have been taken from a BBC news report.
-The study by the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit shows 17 million working days are lost to hangovers and drink-related illness each year.
-The annual cost to employers is estimated to be £6.4 billion while the cost to the NHS is in the region of £1.7bn.
-Billions more are spent clearing up alcohol-related crime and social problems.
-In addition, alcohol-related problems are responsible for 22,000 premature deaths each year.
-They found that there are 1.2 million incidents of alcohol-related violence a year.
-Around 40% of A&E admissions are alcohol-related. Between midnight and 5am that figure rises to 70%.
-Alcohol-related accidents and illnesses land around 150,000 people in hospital each year.
-Up to 1.3 million children are affected by parents with drink problems, the report said.
Areas of video practice that complement other areas of study.
Whilst studying photography i have learnt how to communicate visually my thoughts and ideas. I have also learnt how to clearly present objects and situations, framing them in order to add interest and depth. All this helped me shoot the film and present each scene in a way that captures what is happening whilst retaining the viewers attention.
Filming Techniques
The shot of the customers getting served at a bar is also ambiguously filmed, it is unsure whether the subject is watching them get served and waiting for service herself, or if the camera is simply documenting what is happening in the bar. This level of ambiguity is to reflect upon the confusion induced by drinking alcohol.
We also played around with less normal camera angles. For example when we filmed the shower scene we filmed from inside a clear plastic box as to protect the camera but to allow the water to seemingly fall on the camera. This is a lot more effective than shooting the shower from the side. It also suggests that the film is shot from the subjects point of view, which is something we purposefully played around with through out the film, we didn’t want to stick to filming from one perspective.
We used different techniques to film each scene choosing what suited the particular scene best. For example when the subject is putting on her make up we chose a very tight close up shot, this was to pin point the viewers attention and reflect the subjects concentration. Because the film is made up of lots of quick cuts and edits, we could not risk wide shots as the viewer may miss what is important to see in each shot.
Treatment + Story Board.
STORY BOARD
TREATMENT
The main theme/central message we hope to portray and document throughout our five minute video is to take the audience through the journey of one night as a young person/possibly student on a typical binge drinking 'night out'. A typical 'night out' is full of energy, chaos and intoxication so therefore, to portray this intense experience we aim to base our film on a visual, quite abstract theme, using colour, repetition and an upbeat tune acting as a soundtrack.
To ensure that this process of a 'night out' is fully experienced and to illustrate the change in physical and mental state of minds due to drinking, we are going to split the film into three sections, like that of 'Requiem for a Dream'. In the beginning, the film will demonstrate the beginning of the night, including a sense of sobriety, yet lots of intense excitement, gained through the choice of music used. This journey will be experienced in terms of viewing the character and also from the character's perspective. The second chapter or emotion felt through the film will act as a climax to the ending scene and finally the third and final section will portray intoxication.
Throughout the filming, we hope to use close-ups and tight cropping, to create and interesting composition. The majority of the footage will be close-up shots, to enable us to add a sense of mystery as the entire clip of what we are documenting will remain unrevealed. However, in order to illustrate the three set sections/states of mind, we will use some motion, such as zoom in/out or staggering the camera illustrating the change in state from sobriety to intoxication.
The beginning of the plot/storyline will illustrate a person eager to get out. This will show them preparing to go out and their journey out. We will document short clips/scenes of the duration of the night ending with their return home to where the film began. We hope to create a juxtaposing scene from the opening to ending scene as in the beginning it will be quite epic, however ending in drama. To create a sense of anxiety, we will not reveal the final state of the main character, to leave the audience questioning what has happened?
Our underlying message of our film is to demonstrate the choices in life people make and our rapid adaption to modern-day society. Like in 'Trainspotting' the audience is left wondering whether Renton chose life or a final hit, in our case we want the audience to question why we choose certain things in life?
Some may take our film as exciting, intense and a basic journey of a night out, yet others will then question why we live like this? Consequently our film is aimed at a broad audience as we all experience life. It is more so directed towards the younger generation as they can relate more so to this choice in lifestyle as it is today.
We feel our main purpose and desired outcome of the video is to on one hand push and test ourselves in areas of video skills as this storyline provides much scope to investigate and experiment with technical and conceptual aspects but even more so, we want the audience to reflect and think about our lives today and the choices and decision we have.
Our final video may be seen in two lights, on the one hand a documentary but also due to the way in which we hope to film it along with the music, it may act as a trailer for a film (like Skins) due the tightly cropped clips acting as previews and the rapid change between scenes, possibly only revealing sections of a greater storyline (if it was to act as a film trailer).
In respect to our scheduling and timing, we must finish the film by the 20th February so therefore we have initially planned out our schedule and delegated the tasks to each member of the team. (see production diary).
TREATMENTThe main theme/central message we hope to portray and document throughout our five minute video is to take the audience through the journey of one night as a young person/possibly student on a typical binge drinking 'night out'. A typical 'night out' is full of energy, chaos and intoxication so therefore, to portray this intense experience we aim to base our film on a visual, quite abstract theme, using colour, repetition and an upbeat tune acting as a soundtrack.
To ensure that this process of a 'night out' is fully experienced and to illustrate the change in physical and mental state of minds due to drinking, we are going to split the film into three sections, like that of 'Requiem for a Dream'. In the beginning, the film will demonstrate the beginning of the night, including a sense of sobriety, yet lots of intense excitement, gained through the choice of music used. This journey will be experienced in terms of viewing the character and also from the character's perspective. The second chapter or emotion felt through the film will act as a climax to the ending scene and finally the third and final section will portray intoxication.
Throughout the filming, we hope to use close-ups and tight cropping, to create and interesting composition. The majority of the footage will be close-up shots, to enable us to add a sense of mystery as the entire clip of what we are documenting will remain unrevealed. However, in order to illustrate the three set sections/states of mind, we will use some motion, such as zoom in/out or staggering the camera illustrating the change in state from sobriety to intoxication.
The beginning of the plot/storyline will illustrate a person eager to get out. This will show them preparing to go out and their journey out. We will document short clips/scenes of the duration of the night ending with their return home to where the film began. We hope to create a juxtaposing scene from the opening to ending scene as in the beginning it will be quite epic, however ending in drama. To create a sense of anxiety, we will not reveal the final state of the main character, to leave the audience questioning what has happened?
Our underlying message of our film is to demonstrate the choices in life people make and our rapid adaption to modern-day society. Like in 'Trainspotting' the audience is left wondering whether Renton chose life or a final hit, in our case we want the audience to question why we choose certain things in life?
Some may take our film as exciting, intense and a basic journey of a night out, yet others will then question why we live like this? Consequently our film is aimed at a broad audience as we all experience life. It is more so directed towards the younger generation as they can relate more so to this choice in lifestyle as it is today.
We feel our main purpose and desired outcome of the video is to on one hand push and test ourselves in areas of video skills as this storyline provides much scope to investigate and experiment with technical and conceptual aspects but even more so, we want the audience to reflect and think about our lives today and the choices and decision we have.
Our final video may be seen in two lights, on the one hand a documentary but also due to the way in which we hope to film it along with the music, it may act as a trailer for a film (like Skins) due the tightly cropped clips acting as previews and the rapid change between scenes, possibly only revealing sections of a greater storyline (if it was to act as a film trailer).
In respect to our scheduling and timing, we must finish the film by the 20th February so therefore we have initially planned out our schedule and delegated the tasks to each member of the team. (see production diary).
Hand outs and Ideas
At the beginning of the project we outlined jobs for each of us to do considering out time and skills.
Shown here are various hand outs and notes made in tutoirals and work shops. The hand out on various camera angles helped us decided how to film our scenes.
For further notes we made and ideas see our production diary.
Practice Video
In a tutorial workshop where Mike Flower was teaching us how to use final cut, I made this short video using clips giving to us to experiment with. I played around with de-saturating the beginning sequence and adding a fish eye filter in order to create an interesting intro. All the techniques learnt in this session greatly helped me produce the final film.
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