Visual Language: Week Five - Cinematography

Oct 24th-28th - Cinematography:
Moodboards and short movie

For my final week in the Visual Language unit, I created a short movie with my peers to experiment with Cinematography: starting with creating moodboards to develop an initial idea, to finding a suitable location and capturing footage using a variety of shot types and camera angles, to editing the footage into one full piece.

moodboard one

In creating my first moodboard, I focused on the colours, lighting, and shot types I would like to achieve in my short film. To embrace the shorter length of the film, I was more inspired by long-held wide-shots that created a sense of strong emotion in a scene with practically no physical movement. These scenes conjured feelings of awkwardness, loneliness, isolation, and melancholy - due to the slow progression of the shots, as well as the setting encompassing most of the scene and the main subject only taking up one small area of the frame.

moodboard two

In my second moodboard I instead focused on a more general aesthetic for the film, based on my own urban influences. I chose images that I felt conveyed a mix of individuality, loneliness, and claustrophobia in slum, urban environments that emphasise the variety of personalities of its inhabitants.

When we came to capturing footage, we chose Greenwich train station as our key filming location, as It encapsulated the aesthetics reflected in my moodboards - It was both overbearing in size, substantially devoid of people (furthering the isolated mood), and intimately confined (substantiated by being underground). We captured a variety of shots experimenting with different shot types and angles. For a narrative I chose a simple yet emotionally fuelled story following two people destined to never meet but always cross paths in passing. This further allowed me to experiment with the themes of isolation and melancholy when it came to shooting and editing.

In my edit, I chose to use Clair De Lune (Debussy) as a soundtrack to the short movie, with it's d-flat major key and delicate use of rests in its composition helping to reinforce the isolated aesthetic of the piece. I also added a light leak filter, adjusted the colour grading to a lower luminance, and added a vinyl crackle sound effect to create a nostalgic feel and to convey a more personal atmosphere.

If I were to repeat this process, I would plan out my shots using storyboards and animatics to better plan the day of shooting and achieve all of the originally desired scenes. I would also further experiment with filming and editing techniques such as focus pulls and eye catches to create a more cinematic final result.