For the module Creative Project Realisation I have gained
many new skills that I enjoy and believe will help me in the future as I would
like to take some of these skills into a career. The module has helped me
develop a liking for set design and set dressing which was something new I had
never experienced before but always liked the idea of doing since I believe
that good art direction and set dressing etc. really helps show a deeper
narrative within a film or television programme. I also really liked the uncanny
theme we had to work around as I found it was something different to anything I
have ever had to create for the other modules on the course. One of the first
sessions was a workshop for Adobe Photoshop which I has never had any
experience using before and found it to be quite a tricky programme to get my
head around at first. However I found it helpful that Susannah went through the
basics of what we would need to do when creating our mood boards, which I done
in the session for my own proposal idea called ‘Never Ending Nightmare’. Since
there wasn’t many sessions on using Photoshop I decided to carry out my own
research on how to further develop my skills on the software. I started to
watch a Youtube channel called ‘KingTutPro’ who has many video with
step-by-step tutorials which I found really helpful as I took notes and you
could pause the video and re watch to get the notes correct so that when it
would come to creating a mood board in the future or using the program in
general I would have a source of information to help.
I worked with Hannah Grencis, Carrie Marples, Billy Jackson,
Ryan Wroe and TS for this film and overall I think we worked quite well as a
team. For the development of our film at the beginning of the semester we sat
down as a group and threw together some thoughts of what we each though would
be a good idea for creating something that is uncanny. What we originally came
up with was the use of shadows projecting onto a sheet, which in the set would
look like a tent in the middle of the woods with some creepy shadows being
projected onto the sheet. However after trying to consider the main aspects we
had to consider while creating and filming our set which were; the use of
wallpaper and paint, materials, a special effect and a visual effect, we
decided that our original idea wouldn’t come out with the best result. This was
mainly to do with the size of the sets after we visited workstation 102 and it
might be difficult or time consuming to think of a green screen idea for the
film, think of a VFX to add in in post and also how we would actually achieve
the shadows in the time slot we had to film the shots. Instead Carrie and Hannah and I decided to stick
with the outdoor theme of the film but change the whole idea of it. We wanted
to create the set like it was the inside of a wooden hut in the middle of the
woods, where a strange figure would climb through the window into a really
creepy and strange looking interior, full of taxidermy and little trinkets. We
had all of the aspects covered from the brief as we needed just a plain white
wallpaper, brown paint to cover the walls and red pain to create hand marks and
splash across the walls. For our material we covered the ground in multiple
blankets and old curtains and Hannah and I collected a huge amount of sticks
and twigs that covered all three walls. The SFX aspect came from the blood
splats created from red paint, that we see being splattered onto the photo in
one of the shots, and then the green screen where we had an image of a wooded
area and some leaves falling down. Finally for the VFX we put some logs in a
pile during filming so that in the edit a fire could be created as the creature
danced around it.
One of the strengths I’d say myself and my group had during
this module was our communication with each other, as we have a CPR facebook
group where we exchanged ideas, worked out who could go into the studio to work
on the set at what time so that there was at least two of us in there working on
the set every day for a few days before it came to filming. The set build
process is another strength I’d say we had as we all just got on with it
although none of us had really done any DIY stuff in the past, Hannah, Billy,
Ryan and myself managed to get it all wallpapered and painted in a couple of
days ready for Hannah and I to start gluing the sticks to the wall. This part
of the set build was personally the trickiest but also the most enjoyable in a
way. An issue we had with the sticks is that we assumed they would stick on the
wall and stay there by using pva glue, which resulted in myself and Hannah sat
for three hours holding each stick we stuck on the wall for a few minutes
before letting go, which didn’t always work either as a full line wasn’t even
finished by the end of these few hours because of the majority of the sticks
dropping off. After emailing Susannah about this problem I learned that there
were glue guns we could have used all along and they saved us a lot of time
which is something I will remember if I need to for future films.
A change we made to the film was the figure that was going
to be climbing through the window as we originally just wanted him to be
wearing all black and to have a hood up so his face would be hidden to add to
the mysteriousness of the film. However Billy brought in a pig mask to one of
the set build days because he thought it might have been an interesting thing
to add to the film which I agreed with and really liked the idea of as it could
be seen as something uncanny since it would be a human with a pig head. Ryan
was our actor for this film and I decided that to add to the creepiness even
more he should keep eye contact with the camera at all times. There is one shot
that I think works really well along with the theme where he walks up to the
camera as it tracks in at the same time and he just stops and stares into the
lens which on the edit worked really well and looked very creepy. What we
originally intended for Ryan to do was to make up a sort of tribal dance for
him to be doing next to the fire to add to the strange dream like tone of the
film, however I think he was quite nervous about it and we didn’t actually get
any good shots that didn’t look too funny to be able to include the dance in
the edit which was a shame. So I think if I was to create this film again I
would let Ryan know of this idea more in advance so that it would look smoother
and less humorous so that it could be reversed in post-production to create an
unnatural look to his movements. One other thing that I would do differently if
we could would be to put a marker down where the fire would be placed in the
edit as it became very difficult for TS and Billy to get the fire to stay still
over the logs while the camera moved. However I do think that managed to get
the fire to look really good in the final film so I was happy with how the VFX
turned out in the end.
