Production Schedule

Wk 13- Complete initial found footage locating and determine where to position the self-generated material. Complete full storyboard and clip-chain structure.

Wk14- Begin editing the footage into the structure of the film, using storyboards to fill the gaps left by footage still to be shot. Shoot initial viewer scenes- 1 actor required, fig rig, tripod, handi and standard cams.

Wk15- Shoot fake Edward Deaux documentary scene- 1 cameraman required. Location to be determined, probably either just outside St Matts or other exterior location.

Wk16- Edit in viewer scenes to complete basic structure, finish scripting the last segments to shoot & organise the Cop Show segment on Frenchay.

Wk 17- Shoot Cop Show segment- 2 actors required, plus flat location on Frenchay Campus. Will require standard camera & tripod.

Wk 18- Edit in Cop Show segment, plan internet reviewer segment, location likely to be on campus in St Matts, with sheet as background and visible screen.

Wk 19- Shoot internet reviewer segment- 1 actor required, tripod, cam & lighting kit, edit in reviewer segment.

Wk 21- Editing. Total structure of film should be in place by this point, no additional material required.

Wk 22- Polish, add credits & final editing

Wk 23- Finish

Proposal

My project explores the nature and uses of television, both from a creative and consumer standpoint. The film itself starts with someone viewing television, and then from there we move into the people he's watching also watching TV and so on. Through the course of the film we reach dead ends where there are no screens to use as portals to move onto the next show, returning us to the initial viewer where the process restarts with new shows and material, both found footage and material shot for their piece.  As we start to move through more and more screens the pace increases, until eventually we create a complete loop back around to viewing the film of the original viewer displayed on vimeo or youtube.

I want to examine how in spite of our engagement with media that engagement primarily still exists as something used for pleasure. Does it matter if we are passive or active viewers when the primary aim of television is to produce people who watch irrespective of their personal level of engagement?

I'm also aiming to establish an example of how television has become a medium chiefly used to examine and reference itself, providing entertainment to its viewers but building almost entirely on it's own ideas and forms creating what Baudrillard refers to as Hyperreality. By layering shows and films together and joining them through the act of watching we establish a tree of influences and screen media as a self-consuming industry, propagating the act of watching as a cultural norm and enforcing ways and methods of constructing reality both on and off the screen.

Pilot

Pilot

Blog 7

Just completed my final edit of my film, clocking in at around 3 minutes and 30 seconds including credits. I know it's only a pilot but I figure the suggestions from first year still apply regarding acknowledging the university on web-available material, since we used UWE equipment. Plus I wanted to provide a complete list of clips and additions.

In a shift from my original idea I ditched the voiceover last night both because it felt lazy and pretentious. The original text was some variation of the following-

"Watching for something. For an escape. For Ideas. Am I passive or active? Do I engage or am I absorbed? Am I copying others or building something of my own? Am I looking for inspiration or oblivion?"

When creating these sorts of projects I always think about how the concept will play at the end of year show and frankly, even though the exploration of ideas with traditionally low-cultural value material is my aim, the distance for the audience between high-minded preaching and the down and dirty of the concept was too much. I'm also mindful of the 'show don't tell' principle, and with a VO I'm just explaining the idea instead of letting people explore it. Instead I assembled a series of audio clips from various shows to establish the theme of blankly watching without seeming to react. I took shows that represent a variety of material and edited it in as though channel-surfing, and in that way Hot Fuzz is just another thing stage in the theme. One important aspect in choosing the extra shows was how they reference other TV. The SNL segment is a fake live news report, Larry Sanders is a show about a TV chat show etc. There's other aspects mixed in for flavour, like Japanese anime (that culture is an aspect we'll revisit in B&BH) and Homeland, a show that uses a mix of real and produced audio and footage in it's opening titles. Black Mirror is a sci-fi drama about a talent show, so I took a segment of the performance from that to both represent and have an implied critique of the talent genre for those that spot the reference. UFC added a live sports production and How I Met Your Mother traditional sitcom, just to try and generate an even sample and realistic variation of material (any montage of modern television would represent those genres somewhere).

In the end I feel my pilot represents a great deal of thought and ideas but perhaps has an issue  emphasizing it's point with it's short running time and perhaps choices I made in the media. The recognition of the characters used tends to override any point I'm trying to make so far, it may be beneficial to use a wider range of less iconic characters in the final result, perhaps finding clips to do the exposition for me indirectly.

Blog 6

Finished my editing process bar adding a shot voiceover monologue over the opening footage. I've gone back and forth over whether it's something that needs doing but incorporating the 50 second still shot of me lit only by static is something I really want to do. However whilst the flickering light and the attempts by the camera to compensate make the image interesting it does need a little exposition just to explain what it is I'm trying to do. I've written and recorded the voiceover and plan to add it on monday.

In sifting through my own footage I decided to use the advice of my tutors and ditch the drug and scientific experiment motif. The theme and editing should be strong enough for this project to stand on. I initially chose the drug as a plot device, similar to the drugs and machines in Inception, a requirement but not to be focussed upon. However now I feel that incorporating that element into such a motionless opening would only complicate the ideas I'm trying to convey with a clumsy metaphor of TV as drugs.

 Inception Dream Machine

Expanding on my last blog- In the end after toying with editing footage of three films in I settled on two, Hot Fuzz and Beavis and Butthead. The third film, True Romance, has a great deal of potential and will be a part of my final project but including a third film might have overcomplicated the idea for the pilot. An initial edited version with it included still exists and I plan to use this as a starting point for my actual film.

 True Romance's lead characters meet in the cinema

I've also completed rough drafts of the 6 parts of my research report. There's some extraneous or duplicated material I might excise before submission but I think it works as a mission statement for my work so far. Only my Proposal and Production Schedule remain. The majority of my early schedule over Christmas will consist of organising a timeline and storyboard for my scenes and doing initial editing on those sections. Once those are prepared I'll shoot my own short 30 second contributions of connecting material. The production requirements for my own shooting are relatively low, perhaps a couple of hours a day for two or three days at most so I've no issue delaying those until I feel my films' overall structure starting to take shape.

Research Report- 6. Bibliography & Mediography

Bibliography

Brunsdon, Charlotte (Spring 2008) Is Television Studies History?, Cinema Journal 47 No 3, pp 127-137 available through: Project Muse (accessed 01/12/11)

Dawson, Mike (2008) The First Ten Minutes of Serenity, available at http://www.leftfieldcinema.com/analysis-the-first-ten-minutes-of-serenity (accessed 01/12/11)

Denzin, Norman K (1995) The Cinematic Society: The Voyeurs Gaze, London, Sage

Manlove, Clifford T (Spring 2007) Visual Drive & Cinematic narrative in Lacan, Hitchcock & Mulvey, Cinema Journal 46, no 3 available through: Project Muse (accessed 14/11/11)

Mulvey, Laura (Spring & Fall 2009) Some Reflections on the Cinephilia Question, Framework: The Journal of Cinema & Media, Vol 5 No's 1 & 2

Mulvey, Laura (2009) Visual and Other Pleasures (2nd edition), Hampshire, Palgrave Macmillan




Mediography


Beavis & Butthead Do America (1996) DVD, Directed by Mike Judge, US, Paramount Pictures

Black Mirror (2011) TV, Created by Charlie Brooker, UK, Endemol

Bleach (2004- present) TV, Directed by Noriyuki Abe, Japan, Studio Perriot

Community (2009- present) TV, Created by Dan Harmon, US, Sony Pictures Television

Gazorra (2009) TNG Episode 16 - Picart, (Video Online) available online at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7jbP1_H9sA&feature=channel_video_title (accessed 15/11/11)

Homeland (2011) TV, Developed by Howard Gordon & Alex Ransa, US, Showtime Original Productions

Hot Fuzz (2007) DVD, Directed by Edgar Wright, UK, Universal Pictures

How I Met Your Mother (2005- present) TV, created by Carter Bays & Craig Thomas, US, 20th Century Fox Television

The Larry Sanders show (1992-1998) TV, Created by Garry Shandling, US, Sony Pictures Television

Pbonanno (2011) George C Scott watches the Jack & Jill trailer, (Video Online) available at-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKSAvNOIaNo (accessed 15/11/11)

Saturday Night Live (1975- present) TV, Created by Lorne Michaels, US, NBC & SNL Studios

UFC 140 (2011) PPV TV, Produced by Dana White & Lorenzo Fertitta, US, Zuffa Inc

Research Report- 5. Production Planning

Required materials- Fig Rig, Tripod, Camera & handicam. Apple laptop, University Apple, home PC & 2 storage drives both 500gb.

Software- Goldwave audio editing software (I own a copy), WinX DVD ripper Platinum (trial version sufficient) & Final Cut (university).

Cast- at least 5, culled from classmates and willing volunteers. I want to recast the viewer since I'm looking to incorporate the Edward Deaux character I used in my film last year as part of my chain (as a heavily media-influenced character he fits the theme) and since that's me I wish to avoid confusion. At the moment I'm looking at creating a 3 person rudimentary cop show (two cops, one perpetrator) and an internet-style movie review show in addition to a fake documentary segment with Edward.

Locations-
Cop Show- Frenchay Campus halls. (Cast Toby & other campus residents)
Viewer location- My flat
Review show- Converted st matts classroom with drapes background, chair & desk.
Fake Documentary- Street location with Edward working on his film on a mac in his car, most likely directly outside of St Matts.

Additional footage- So far I've assembled clips from the following films and shows- Community, Friends, Black Books, Scream, 500 Days of Summer, True Romance, Star Trek TNG, The West Wing, The Wire, Beavis & Butthead Do America, Hot Fuzz, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Simpsons. Additional footage may be required but these are the raw materials with which I plan to work.

Research Report- 4. Pilot

My pilot aims to explore the self-referential nature and addictive voyeurism of television and other screen media. In the beginning we see for the first and only time the perspective of the television watching the viewer, the gaze that is impossible to actually return. By adding the convention of static to the image I reduced the viewer to just another aspect of the medium, immediately it is implied that there may be no clear level of reality we are supposed to identify with. As we move between the films we see one influencing the other but doing so in ways that heavily reference other material. At the end we see there is no further screen to move through, disrupting the center of those characters lives. The act of watching has become habitual, even addictive.


For the full production I need to perhaps establish both more elaborate ways of moving through the levels. By the end I want to be moving so fast that we shoot through maybe ten clips in a minute. I'll need to elaborate on the effects and editing I've already managed in order to make the final product work as a finished piece. I also need to establish and place my own segments within the sequence, once I've picked out which films and shows best fit my theme and can be placed within it I can create segments that bind together those segments, designing them around the existing text and making the transitions more cohesive.

Research Report- 3. Research

My research for this project began with an analysis of my own practices and uses of television, tying in with observations about the self-referential nature of screen culture.  In order to further explore this I watched and made notes on other explicitly pop-culture influenced works, such as the work of director Edgar Wright or Mike Judge, as well as TV shows like Community which commentate on the influences and production methods of modern creators.

I also looked to explore a potential addictive element to viewing as a pleasurable exercise. Laury Mulvey expands on Freud to explore both the libido-driven Scopophilic and ego orientated identification with characters and narrative. Both aspects are a crucial part of the way she believes we derive pleasure from looking, particularly in cinema. Norman K Denzin offers a far more diverse picture of the voyeuristic nature of film. In addition like Denzin my hypothesis is that screen media, contrary to offering a scientific eye through which reality may be clearly captured and examined instead is only understandable through textual constructions, by reducing the images to familiar forms and ways of looking. By using this constructed way of looking we derive pleasure which is why we return again and again spending hours each day watching similar material. There is no fundamental difference between what we absorb and what the creators do and as a result what we are fed has no better connection with reality, instead the result is what Baudrillard referred to as Hyperreality. I plan to further explore this idea as well as the implications of voyeurism to improve my project.

Research Report- 2. Similar Work

I'm deliberately looking at almost any film or TV show that explicitly endorses or promotes the act of watching a screen. Is it that screens are so ubiquitous that films are bound to reflect that or is it that the sort of people who are likely to make films are more likely to prioritise films and TV shows as a significant cultural influence? At first my initial influences on the practical side were youtube videos, taking footage from films and TV and recontextualising it. The practice is so widespread that I started thinking about creative works that directly use or are explicitly influenced by other films or TV. I’m also looking at works that explore narrative loops, most particularly the work of Charlie Kaufman in Adaptation and Synecdoche, New York. 

 Synecdoche's Caden oversees the actor playing himself

Synecdoche in particular creates a loop where the real lead is recreating his own life using actor in performance art and thus because his entire life is creating this work that’s what it becomes, a repetitive loop. However the difference is that whilst in the film the mimics find ways to be different the shows I'm looking at will try to be different but still be limited by the habits of the medium. Structurally it mimics something like Inception with TV shows replacing dreams. I’m in effect trying to create a theoretical tree of influence, altering footage to make it visually practical and explicit. If in Hot Fuzz Simon Pegg and Nick Frost were originally watching Point Break it’s hard to illustrate through that film what the influences of Point Break were. If I switch it to Beavis and Butthead I can demonstrate the idea of the chain of media influences more clearly.  It’s like being able to show consumption as an essential influence in creation, but also a restrictive one since replication of ideas is less creative that something that is original in and of itself.

Research Report- 1. Theoretical context

With my project I'm examining the ways people use television and other potentially passive screen media. I don't mean to make cinema wholly distinct but for the purposes of my project any screen media in mass home and personal consumption I'm basically classifying under television. Cinema is defined not just by what you watch but how and where you see it, it's an active process to go out and see it. This idea doesn't extend to interactive media such as use of the internet and games either, purely for media where there's an already existing line of thought surrounding our passive or engaged status as an audiance. There is of course a existing perspective of what screen media can do, Alfred Hitchcock said "Watching a well-made film we don't sit by as spectators, we participate".

To explore this I turned to the use of the gaze and Laura Mulvey's exploration of Freud's ideas around Scopophilia. Mulvey's focus is on both the temporary loss of ego as watching the screen causes the viewer to forget themselves, as well as the pleasure derived from watching others. I'm looking to examine how on screen viewers also lose themselves in the act of watching and gain pleasure from it.  The act of losing yourself both embeds you as active in relation to the narratives presented and also potentially removes you from active critical judgment, it removes your distance from what you are watching by substituting pleasure. Is the active/passive debate as simple as we think?

As time has passed we've seen the benefits of this participation, as films and television play an important part in inspiring their own evolution, but in doing so build on each other instead of reality. References to classic cinema aren't just small in-jokes like a Charleton Heston movie playing in the background of 2011's Planet of the Apes, they're inherent to the way modern film and television occur. Even cutting edge television like Community or Black Mirror makes use of references both explicitly in the script and through aspects such as casting choices or style. Modern screen culture is essentially almost entirely self-referential, and the result is what Baudrillard referred to as hyperreality.

Blog 5

The experimental shooting yielded some interesting results, the camera doesn't work so well reflecting widespread light from the static screen in the room but in close-ups I was able to get some interesting illumination. In addition the shots of the static itself can be used to frame the idea as a product of the screen itself.

At the moment my editing on the pilot is progressing nicely, I've decided to restrict the idea to the initial shots off myself in the room and two films. This is due to the extended length and continuity issues that including three films would result in, this would be fine for the complete film but for a short illustrative pilot it's not required. The themes and ideas I need to demonstrate are evident just from the two. For this pilot I've picked out two prime examples of how modern screen culture is self-consuming, Hot Fuzz and Beavis & Butthead.

Hot Fuzz of course makes regular and explicit use of film references, the act of watching Point Break and Bad Boys 2 influences the entire second half of the film.

Beavis and Butthead's entire lives revolve around watching, commentating on and imitating television. With the chain idea of me watching Hot Fuzz and them watching Beavis and Butthead and Beavis and Butthead looking to TV for direction we get an explicit theme of watching not just casually but as a way of thinking.

Blog 4

Starting my own principle photography/experimental shooting this weekend. The main objective of this is to produce footage for editing to discover what is feasible and what isn't, but also to create material for my pilot/trailer. Initial equipment includes the Panasonic HMD HC and S10 HD video cameras, a tripod and a figrig. The main objectives are to experiment with how a TV lights a room as the sole source of illumination. I also aim to explore how the figrig allows me to use the space, possibly experimenting with zooming into the screen itself. These questions of feasibility are key, since they determine whether my  project is viable in it's current form, both from a plot and practical standpoint.

In examining TV for self-referential-ism I found plenty of examples to use. For instance the show Community interested me, it's built around a TV-friendly mix of characters from diverse ethnic and social backgrounds. One of the characters, Abed, is an active filmmaker with an undiagnosed form of Asbergers. He consumes vast amounts of TV and reproduces it both in his own works and in day to day life, understanding everyday life through the framework of television, to the point where he often considers himself a viewer instead of a participant, a substitute for the audience. This perspective on the creator/consumer character as a mimic to an absurd degree for comedic effect is an interesting commentary both on the creators both of this show and indeed of television at large.

Blog 3.5- Ideas and examples

With recontextualisation of footage potentially being key to my project I thought I'd include some examples of materials where this is done well. They're mostly short internet videos and comedy-orientated but still relevant I think-

I've made progress in ripping DVD's in a high def format, which can now be used for more conceptual editing attempts.. I've also reduced the audio tracks from 4-6 to just normal stereo.

I also took ideas from Mike Dawson's analysis of the first 10 minutes of the 2005 film Serenity, in which an expositionary video is revealed as a classroom which is in turn a dream, which is a security recording. It sounds convoluted but until you actually think about the structure it seems natural and reveals a great deal of the overall backstory for the film in a short period. Whilst I'm probably not using it as an overall plot there is thematic significance that I can reveal by my choices at each stage.

http://www.leftfieldcinema.com/analysis-the-first-ten-minutes-of-serenity

Blog 3

I've started using DivX DVD ripper Platinum trial version to start compiling my found footage directly into MOV format. This program allows me to rip a greater range of DVD's in high quality but only 5 minutes at a time. Fortunately that's all I require in this case.

I've yet to find a suitable solution to my problem of choosing a structure for my piece. For future reference I'll call them Idea A and Idea B. To recap.

A explores the potential rabbit-hole nature of screen media, following the gaze of TV characters and exploring their own media. The aim is to create a chain of people watching people watching people, structured as a scientific experiment (two attempts and one successful loop back on onto the experimenter themselves who is videoing their attempt). I like the structure of using the initial subject as someone attempting to explore this environment, the main issue is attempting to expand this into something that will engage the audience. I've thought about using a voice over diary, maybe the subject takes a pill and this triggers the experiences, and we use the gps between trips into the screen to explore his thoughts on the idea. A pill is useful, the reason the science is neglected in a film like Inception is that whilst it needs to be acknowledged all the audience really needs is an excuse to buy to concept. That's what I'm after. The main test of this idea at the moment is testing footage to see if it will coherently edit together. This is what I'm attempting to do in the next couple of days.

B examines interaction through screen media and shared cultural uses. So using shared films to link people in different locations but then following other links like facebook on smartphones, online use of games, twitter, TV shows etc to create a loop back to the originator. This project could contrast relationships with the same media between different users. This would use much less found footage and could cinematically be quite interesting creating contrasting environments but making them look like a part of the same film. The mechanic of zooming in on each screen and then zooming out to reveal the new location could be very interesting as well, but requires some tests. Of course some distortion of the screen as it's zoomed in on could be useful, illustrating difference from person to person even in the nature of the screen itself. Again, I need to find some narrative through-line that engages the actual audience.

My research so far has been focused on Norman K Denzin's The Cinematic Society. The principle's I'm hoping to explore are the types of gaze screen media creates and the nature of the audiences gaze. Firstly, the three gazes- The audience at the screen, the camera at the subjects and the characters at each other. I'm unsure about the gaze between characters, but linking and differentiating the gaze of the audience and camera is inherent to both my prospective ideas. The other aspect Denzin highlights is the nature of the gaze, violent, political, sexual and personal. The complexity of these ideas may be an aspect I can link in since I'm essentially watching people watching.

Blog 2

Action plan going forward-

-Storyboard plan going forward
-Sound test (picture within show)
-Post production image test
-Identify timecodes for ripping/editing
-ID ripping method & confirm working practice
-Research Theoretical context

I'm currently examining the potential narratives going forward with a view to creating my initial storyboards, or at least some samples for the test video. Currently my idea is moving towards examining shared screen cultures, both within fictional characters and in the actual audience, so we might see persons from a TV show and an actual audience watching the same material and understanding the same references. So this might be less about a direct linear loop and more about people's interactions around TV shows, comparing and contrasting and seeing how different people explore these shows. My framing device is still likely to be a youtube video of someone videoing themselves watching TV, but now I'm thinking of exploring shared cultures looping out from this person, show someone else watching the same show in a different place and then maybe have them typing and responding to each other and others through message boards and texts. If I can develop a storyboard even examining the first few minutes it would be ideal. It might be about the framing character becoming more than just that, being the epicentre of us exploring this concept as we see potential emotional consequences or positives of living only through screen culture. It's a diverse world to explore, perhaps more so than many people realize but in terms of real world interaction it does create limits. There is also the question of how to make text on screen interesting, perhaps using text noises and then close-up responses of the phone as messages are read and responses are generated. I'd also aim to utilize a more complex depiction of that aspect, so inclusive of facebook and twitter as well. The aim is to get the audience to recognize from their own experience how diverse our everyday use of these technologies is.

The intermingling of fictional and factual shows, news reports, sport, video games, internet, mobiles provides a wide base for exploration beyond just TV shows, I could explore people for instance responding as though playing a beat-em-up game on a console and using controllers but the actual footage they're watching is from a sitcom and their responses, usually to punches or wins, would instead be to verbal interactions.

Perhaps those additional layers will be the way this interaction is dictated, instead of screens within screens and recontextualising footage I could create narratives around these different players as long as I can create dynamic ways of representing each screen format. I plan to create some storyboard ideas surrounding both potential approaches, that way if the screen format issues of using multiple additional programs in conjunction with each other I have an idea with a similar basis to fall back on.

Blog 1

Welcome to the first blog entry for my 3rd year project.

My initial idea has somewhat changed in the last few weeks for a variety of reasons. Here is the text of my original proposal-

My video project idea revolves around a protagonist and his growing obsession with a TV show with the result that he talks to the characters on the screen. Eventually the dynamic differences between our ‘real’ protagonist’s downbeat environment and the highly produced TV show start to blur, and he becomes a walking talking part of the show itself, beyond just being an actor but actually existing in the world of the show. This reality is just as un-involving as his original in the end, so he once again sits down in that world to watch TV and escape.
 
The idea is that our relationship with screen media is a form of escape, a way to lose yourself and ignore reality. Once this voyeuristic aspect is lost and that world has actually become his he loses all interest because it’s the medium and not the object that he is addicted to. I hope to create two distinct filming styles that slowly merge together, one dark, miserable and near documentary in style and one filled with soft focus, bright well-lit environments and TV style editing and camerawork. It will be interesting to examine all the little ways in which these worlds can be both differentiated and merged.

Since then my focus has been on my capability regarding recreating a well-lit TV studio environment. Whilst it may be possible on a small scale I am not confident I could achieve it to the standard I feel would be needed to fill out roughly half this film. I began looking at alternative options and at the moment my favourite is using re-contextualized existing TV footage as the counter-point, reducing the character's story to that of a spectator. The following is my readjusted project proposal-

My project idea explores the constant presence of screen media and how television cultures reinforce their own dominance over behaviour. To begin our initial character is watching TV, a genuine TV show like the Simpsons. He is watching them as they watch TV. Then we see what they are watching, perhaps the Wire. The characters in The Wire are using a screen for surveillance, but thanks to re contextualizing the footage we see them watching something else and so on, creating layers upon layers where the chief action is just watching. I aim to work other mediums like cinema, video games, even phone screens into the concept as well. I also plan to shoot my own linking segments in the style of different genres in order to explore yet more. The plan is to link all the way back around to the beginning, where we see someone watching the start of this clip via youtube. I plan to explore the ways these different characters can interact with what they're watching and by choosing the show therefore change the meaning of their reactions.


The main purpose of this idea is to demonstrate screen the dominance of screen culture by layering it together, creating a repeating motif where the viewer is always looking for the next screen in the sequence. In this way we see how these cultures reinforce their own importance through repetition and demonstration of behaviour.

 I've already started exploring potential clip ideas and structure for this piece. My main aim at the moment is to find examples from as many genres as possible, cartoons, sitcoms, sci-fi, drama, film, documentary, News, video games, game shows etc. Hopefully it creates a channel-surfing feel for the viewer that uses all the areas of screen media to create an overall impression of the message of the piece. I might even have the second to last segment be a fake documentary about someone observing university media work. I've compiled a list of 15 potential clips I could use, my initial aim now is to begin ripping the parts I need and attempting to edit them together into a structured video.