Production

Here is where you'll find my find my reflections; they were ongoing during the production process and I've made notes of anything that went well or didn't.

Shooting day 1: Saturday 2nd April, scenes 7 and 1o

Today we shot all of the scenes where both Ji-an and Hiro are present. We filmed in the dai pai dong, which was quite an... interesting experience.

Nobody asked us to leave, not even the owners, but the local diners did find the fact that we were shooting very interesting, and so we discovered we had a few peace signs and waves in some of footage, which was a bit disappointing.

All in all, we thought the shoot went quite well. The tracking shots in the market were very easthetically pleasing and "Hong-Kong style" and looked great with the 50mm. Overall, in fact, cinematography went quite well. The only idea we had previously wanted that we had to drop was the sort of "foreground obstructing elements" idea, simply because the space wasn't laid out in such a way. We did our best, though, and we still have a few examples where we tried to create that kind of depth and field and atmosphere. The shoulder mount also served us very well, giving us some very smooth, dynamic movement shots.

This was our first shoot, so I was interested to see my actors act for the first time and to see how they interacted on camera. Chris was great, he adopted a very WKW-type cool guy persona on camera, which was great to see as it really was a contrast alongside Flora's childlike innocence and stillness. Flora was great, especially when it came to the expressiveness of her face and eyes. In the final scene of the entire film, which we filmed today (evidently quite important) she looked up at Chris in such a controlled and powerful way, we thought it was pure magic.

I worry a bit about the scenes where Chris discovers the "magic" paper crane, and that as director, if the way this part of the story is told is awkward, doesn't fit in tone-wise with the rest of the film, or confusing, or simply laughably fake, it'll detract from the entire film since it's at the end, and it'll be a flat ending. It's really important that this doesn't happen, but once we have a rough cut, we'll show our teacher, get his feedback, and follow it, adjusting it and adjusting it and doing as many retakes as necessary in order to make it perfect and get exactly the reaction we wanted out of anyone who sees that scene. Chris' acting in those few shots might not work, as well, because I recall that he found it quite awkward and difficult to look surprised and to get into the mood of the character having discovered something magic.

An example of depth of field, canted angle, immersion by placing the camera "inside" the story and near important objects, and of communication emotions through looks without dialogue.

What I mean when I say that Flora has very expressive eyes. An example of good acting with the two characters together.

Shooting day 2: Monday the 4th, scenes 6, 9, 8, 1 and 5

An example of the "tightness" that some of our shots lack, but when we have it, really immerses the viewer and is visually focused, tight and interesting.

Today we filmed all of the scenes in the apartment, from afternoon to evening, after having set up the day before.

This shoot went well, however we did run into a few problems. Our cinematography seemed quite white and flat in some places, and at night time, we had a choice between some very limited yellow lamps to film with, that could have made our footage dangerously grainy, or a harsh white light that really didn't suit the atmosphere and barely portrayed that it was night time at all. This was because we had a light reflector but no light. Our fault on our booking of the equipment.

Using the shoulder mount was challenging, especially with certain scenes. Scene 9 was shot all in one take, with Flora doing a complicated array of actions and Ashwin needing to follow her every move, tracking the most interesting parts of her movement. To hep with this, I almost "choreographed" her actions, planning out exactly which crane to take in what order, and having Ashwin practice following her several times before we took the shot. I think the effort was worth it as the length and movement of the shot is quite interesting and powerful.

We had a few issues with space, because the 50mm lens is naturally very zoomed in, and the room was very small, so some of the longer shots were less effective than we planned.

In terms of storytelling and actors as the director, Flora was very expressive and needed little direction except in perhaps bringing out some more emotion in some scenes, and in terms of having more natural movement and speaking. I found continuity quite difficult in many scenes, because of the room's space, it was difficult to have more general mid-long shots that could simply be used for some context and perspective. There was also a lot of complicated phsyical movement, as our piece is not very dialogue-y at all, and so getting Flora from her bed to the door, then to hesitate, and go into the bathroom using the shoulder mount was already quite difficult.

I really adored some of the moodier shots that we took at night to use in the very beginning of our film. The lower lighting, the colourful fairy lights and the unreal atmosphere of the scene is very powerful, and the scenes of Flora brushing her toy and sleeping are extremely, extremely emotive, in my opinion. Once more, we'll focus on getting a rough cut and seeing where improvements need to be made.

Another example of acting that I'm happy with.

Our title scene - muted lighting, atmospheric, whimsical.

Recording the voiceovers

Portraying loneliness through cinematography and posture.

Moments of pure colour, texture and sound.

Making the character endearing and relatable through props, vulnerability and acting.

Using a high angle to try and make her seem more fragile. However, example of light that is far too bright and doesn't promote the mood - because we didn't know to bring adequate lighting equipment.

Today I went to record the voiceovers in a quiet place with the two actors. I think it went quite well, if we compare how they did today to their screen tests. We repeated the lines sometimes up to four times before recording, and we recorded in small chunks so each line would be perfect. I worked on intonation and rhythm with them, and each time made sure the mood of what they were saying sounded right. Here are some examples of when we did it again and again to get it perfect.

There will be there voiceovers in the rough cut, so to see how this went, please watch the rough cut!

Shooting day 3: Friday the 15th, scenes 2, 3 and 4

Today we filmed all of the shots that take place outside the apartment with Ji-an, at night. This filming went quite well, as were happy with the location and how we used it. The store was extremely bright and colourful, which we thought worked well with the fact that Flora's character was wearing bunny ears, and how everything in her life is bright and colourful except her depression and suicidal thoughts.

Flora was very confident with acting during this shoot as she had spent a lot of time shooting with us already before, and I thought this showed in the direction - she felt very natural and expressive when filming, and I often didn't need to give any input for it to be how we had imagined it.

We actually forgot to bring a shoulder mount, but all of our tracking shots turned out extremely smooth - smoother even than many of the ones we took with the mount! Ashwin had very steady arms. The lighting was very bright and artifical, but that suited our scenes.

Being inventine with cinematography to immerse the viewer; a shot with a nice view of the expressive facial acting. Perhaps too long and needs to broken up with a cut away.

Using props for humourous effect. Continuity of use of tracking - very steady even without shoulder mount!

Depth of field and open form to communicate sadness.

Rough cut 1

Our very first rough cut!

Below are screenshots of my teacher's first impressions and criticisms, and the "game plan" we made to make our improvements.

You'll notice that the sound is barely touched, with the original sound still there (of me, for example, saying "cut." The cinematographer is nice and creative in some places, but bland in others, especially due to lighting. This cut is also 4 minutes over the length it needs to be.

We therefore started to storyboard: we went through the entire film with a fine-toothed comb and we decided to retake any unsatisfactory shots with better lighting or in a more creative and interesting way. Some shots, such as the seaweed low angle one, were simply too long and therefore quite dull: we decided to retake these with cutaways. Because we didn't have very good lighting, for the indoor night scenes, we had to choose between a bright, antiseptic-looking light, or very fuzzy, grain-inducing darkness. We decided to retake these scenes completely with better lighting. Furthermore, we had a shoulder mount that we used liberally because we were trying to emulate realism by having a lot of tracking, however, these shots became quite long and repetitive in places so we considered cutting them down in our next cuts. Below are scans of the storyboards we made to the end of improving the pace and cinematography. We also made a graph of sorts where we plotted "energy levels/pace" against "importance of scene for narrative/meaning."

We did three retake shoots, one at each location (apartment, dai pai dong, and shop).

Storyboard of retakes we took on the street, in the supermarket shop, or in the dai pai dong

Storyboard of retakes in the apartment (we completely retook some scenes, like scene 1, because we didn't like the lighting/structure in the original one, or the shot composition

Here is the graph that we made. It was really useful when it came to cutting down scenes later to make sure our film wasn't overtime, because we could cut down on less meaningful scenes, eg. the mirror scene went from almost 2 minutes to less than 1 minute because although it was important, it was not crucial and could be condensed. The graph also helped us by letting us know how we wanted tone to flow throughout: in more energetic dai pai dong scenes, we had louder sounds and faster shots with more movement. In the reasonably relaxed indoor scenes, we had music and slower, more still, and fewer shots to convey the mood we wanted.

Retakes at shop/street

Creative but unsuccessful attempts examples:

We loved escalator shots used in WKW's "fallen angels," however, it didn't really fit with our narrative

We wanted to portray that she felt smaller, less noticeable, less glamourous, less visible, etc., but we found that this shot would have been more suitable for a film about body image or media

Successful retakes examples:

Instead of two poorly composed shots conveying the transition from apartment to street, we have one, more concise shot, that is tighter and well-composed, with nice shallow focus and colours. We also used a blue light and kept it static in one place, so that as she walked past it, it moved dynamically on her face as if she was walking past a neon sign, a visual effect that we liked

We thought this was a much more playful and nicely composed way to convey that she was spying on the cashier, instead of a rather dull shot of her holding listerine, looking at the cashier, head facing away from camera

We added some cutaways to our seaweed "trunk" shot to add interest. We thought that this bright close-up with the cute cartoon figure that portrays the girl's personality and shallow focus was exactly what we wanted

Retakes at apartment

Creative but unsuccesful attempts examples:

We wanted to recreate one of our earlier shift focuses, with longer on the crane, but we decided that the angle looked strange and that it was aesthetically pleasing, but not very original or necessary to the narrative

We tried to recreate our earlier seaweed trunk shot with this calendar shot, however, it was just quite strange, hard to understand, and unecessary to the narrative

Succesful retakes examples:

I made a mirror prop. We had to all three of the crew stand under the blanket with the cinematographer at the tripod, while my editor and I held each side of the blanket down to the mirror prop. The actor then had to stand in a very specific way to achieve the effect that the camera was inside the mirror!

We thought that this shot, with the camera placed inside the refridgerator and a nice, softly lit close-up of Flora was very immersive and atmospheric.

We liked this shadow effect and moody lighting that we achieved when we retook all of scene one because of our composition and lighting. An example of a more visually interesting retake than previous shots we had.

Symmetry and reflection are some of the notable things that Wong Kar Wai uses sparingly and to great effect, and we tried to recreate that here, and thought we were successful as we adored this shot.

Retakes at dai pai dong

Creative but unsuccesful attempts examples:

We tried to do an "introductory" Chris Wong Kar wai shot, but the atmosphere didn't quite look right, and having the entire dai pai dong of people like that didn't fit in with our intimate cinematography. Furthermore, we thought that if we rearranged our narrative, Chris' introduction would be earlier, not in this scene

Filming at this table and from this angle resulted in overexposure, and we thought that the angle didn't really contribute to any tension or anticipation between the characters

Succesful retakes examples:

Tight and close, shallow focus, colourful, and symbolic, we were much happier with this hands shot than our previous one.

We much preferred having both characters in the shot front on in a two shot, much closer, in more detail, and closer together. The lighting was also quite perfect, very gentle, but bright and fresh.

Rough cut 2

This rough cut is far, far superior, due mostly to a consistent, higher quality of cinematography, and a more concise narrative, due to our retakes, which made a huge difference (we completely retook scene one, five, six, and ten!). We did many retakes so that the cinematography quality was higher, with a larger variety and number of shots, which contributed also to the pace and narrative of the film. We were generally far more careful with the composition and creativity of our shots - we tried to make everything more poetic and interesting. For example, I made the mirror prop, so that it looked like the camera was inside the mirror, for more verisimilitude. I searched around from some talented musicians, and worked with one to record a key riff, inspired by the music in amores perros so that the audio would not sound so one-dimensional and flat. The sound still evidently needs work, and we were considering changing the order so that the film became a non-linear narrative, which I love and which Wong Kar Wai often used in his films.

Rough cut 3

We focused here on the editing, getting the rhythm how we wanted it to be, and making our film under the time limit.

Rough cut 3 with colour correction comparison

After having done our retakes, we thought that the quality of the cinematography was quite high already, and we were reasonably pleased with it. However, once our teacher had demonstrated to us the incredible difference that colour correction on Premiere Pro could make, we worked together on sorting out some common RGB and other technical values that we wanted to use reasonably consistently throughout. We decided on a high contrast look, with darker blacks and warmer oranges, to go for an atmospheric, whimsical, yet dark "wong kar wai" look. In some scenes, such as the mirror one, we went for a more blue, cold approach, because this suited the tone and look of the scene. In the night apartment scenes, we had to be careful to make the shots more warm than contrasted so as not to cause graininess or make the shot too dark to be properly visible. Our editor then got cracking!

It was amazing, the difference colour correction made, and how much more artistic, moody, and professional our film looked with it! It even managed to make our colour scheme more uniform in most shots, giving the cinematography and atmosphere a nice cohesiveness that is definitely a plus when you are the director.

First final cut

Here is our first final cut, with colour correction and finally with the diegetic sound sorted out. We also took some advice from our teacher on rhythm, stabilising some shots, and rearranging the plot into a non-linear narrative!

We did that so that scenes 1-5, the first half, were introducing Flora's character, allowing us to see her typical evening, and getting to know her mind a little bit. We then placed Chris' part of scene 7 right afterwards. This was great in two ways: firstly, the langurous mood of Flora's scene was broken up by Chris' energetic introduction, which kept the film's tone fresh for viewers. Secondly, having a non-linear narrative like this allowed more tension: we're not sure Chris is watching Flora, and this provides some more narrative interest. Non-linear narratives generally keep viewers more on their toes, engaged, and thinking, which is always what I would want to aim for, not passive viewing.

Final final cut

Viola, our final, final cut, the film that we officially submitted for marking. We fixed some sound levels that were jerky or too sudden, and we included the musician's credit, which we had accidentally left out before. Yay!

PAPER CRANES.