3 Basic Ideas and Feedback On 'The Land That Time Forgot'

Initial Ideas

1)      A girl being chased through her dreams by the villain of her favourite film/story/book/show/whatevs

2)      Sleep paralysis that never ends- explore the hallucinations and their possibilities

3)      Being in a dream and finder out someone’s monitoring it (mirrors concealing cameras or something) “We have eyes”

4)      Basic Idea: A world where dreams are bought and sold and they start killing people in their sleep.

Genre:

Elaboration:

Dreams are bought and sold like as a pill, as a form of leisure and a way to relax, you can also buy nightmares but this is for the people who actively seek scares like horror lovers; but there is also a lot of back alley selling and trading to make dreams more intense, or more explicit/violent/scary/ whatever effect someone desires. But at some point they start noticing that these back alley dreams have started killing people, they either die in their sleep (sleep apnoea, choking on their own vomit after a seizure, blood clots leading to brain or heart failure, sleep paralysis that paralyses the heart or lungs), or the dreams lead them to kill themselves (by either the nature of the dream being too personal or even aimed at certain people to drive them into depression, or when they wake up they experience a form of sleep paralysis where the hallucinations never end and they are pushed to kill themselves). And we meet the protagonist, a psychology/technology double major who believes he can stop this when the authorities don’t believe there’s a problem and his journey to solving this and ending the drug ring involved.

Feedback on the teaser trailer

I should have used the glitch effects more for the initial shots, and I should have used boring music for the classroom shot. Otherwise, the sound design was very good and it was a good concept.

 

Final Idea Proposal

Working Title:  Chimera Narcotic

Genre:  Fantasy/Sci Fi

The premise is that dreams are bought and sold as a pill, as a form of relaxation, you can also buy nightmares but this is for the people who actively seek scares like horror lovers; but there is also a lot of back alley selling and trading to make dreams more intense, or more explicit/violent/scary/ whatever effect someone desires. But at some point they start noticing that these back alley dreams have started killing people, they either die in their sleep (sleep apnoea, choking on their own vomit after a seizure, blood clots leading to brain or heart failure, sleep paralysis that paralyses the heart or lungs), or the dreams lead them to kill themselves (by either the nature of the dream being too personal or even aimed at certain people to drive them into depression, or when they wake up they experience a form of sleep paralysis where the hallucinations never end and they are pushed to kill themselves). And we meet the protagonist, a psychology/technology double major who believes he can stop this when the authorities don’t believe there’s a problem and his journey to solving this and ending the drug ring involved.

This was influenced considerably by the film Paprika, and the video game Assassins Creed; this is because they are great examples of the positive and negative side effects of technology when applied to the human psyche, especially when it gets into the wrong hands. Because of these strong influences, the idea didn’t vary greatly through time; the basic concept remained the same.

This would probably end up being a TV film, or a feature film, if I could realise it to its full potential. 

Obviously that’s extremely impractical as a student project but these are its ideal requirements, and not its realistic solutions. I would obviously need it to have a generous budget too to allow the effects to be at a professional level, and to get the costumes/ props I would want. As a student film, I want it to be about 15 minutes long, and I reckon that I could muster up the props, costumes, and sets I would need with a budget of around £200.  I would use a canon DLSR camera, and a standard tripod; I would shoot both on green screen and on location and then edit it on Sony Vegas Pro 13. For the time it would take to plan/shoot/edit, I estimate it will take 4/2/2 weeks respectively.

Final Evaluation

Initial Ideas

This brief was a very expansive one, as such coming up with an initial idea wasn't very difficult; but it held so many potential ideas that it did consume quite a bit of time to narrow it down.

The moodboard

To begin, I made a moodboard of classic and contemporary examples of murder mystery stories. I got pictures of styles, films, tv shows, video games, and comic books to get a wide range of stories, characters, clichés, and tropes. This helped me find out which stories were better known for shaking up the genre, and which cemented the genre. I also looked back to my initial research to refresh myself on techniques and styles other artists use.

From this I was able to create 2 initial ideas.

The first idea was one that would correlate more with classic murder mystery stories. I would photograph an 1920s styled office with a paper model of a Jonah Felker in a sketchy style and his story of finding a close friend dead in his office, and how he comes to work out the killer is his boss. It would be in greyscale, and any drawn elements would look messy and very sketchy to contrast with the background. I also wanted to use a lot of depth of field in the photography to make everything sync up and work better together visually.

First Ideas initial character design

The second idea would be about baby Jonah Felker (8 years old) and how he got into detective work when he found a baby deer dead in the woods and followed the clue to his killer, who he defeats with a slingshot. He would be drawn in over photos, this is so I can make the style of it much cuter and use better effects to integrate the drawings with the background.

At first I didn't know which idea I preferred more so to help me decide I started designing and planning both films to realise their potential better. In the end, I preferred the second idea more as it conforms to the brief better and it differs from my comfort zone of doing darker, more serious pieces.



The character planning sheet and an initial pose design for young Jonah.

After the initial designs I drew up a storyboard for the final film. This helped me when I began shooting the locations as I knew what sorts of shots I wanted and even though I couldn't draw them successfully as a storyboard, I could easily shoot them which helped my final film look better.



The Final Storyboard

After I shot the backgrounds outside, I imported the photos into photoshop I did key animation frames for each one, using the storyboard as reference for dialogue and movements. When imported, I would generally add a full layer of white and reduce its opacity to help the keyframe animation stand out. After each keyframe was created, I exported them as a gif and imported the gifs into Sony Vegas 13 to edit together as a film.

Freesounds.org

Incomptech.org music site

With the initial cut sorted, I recorded sounds for my piece. I had to do it in this order because I would need to know the rough pacing I would need for each sound effect. Recording sounds was easy enough, especially to get background garden noises, and walking; but for the sounds I couldn't get (such as the gun cocking) I went to the sound site, Freesounds.org because each sound is uploaded by users and its royalty free. I also had to download a soundtrack as I'm not capable of making myself one in this short time, or a even good one with infinite time. This was also a good option because again, its royalty free, but it allows people to search songs by feeling (like uplifting, bright, and aggressive) which definitely helped my film as I knew the music I was using transmitted the emotions I wanted the audience to feel properly.

Editing in Vegas.

Finally this was then edited into the film in Sony Vegas. This was actually a bit irritating as to get the sounds to intergrate properly, I had to put a lot of them on separate layers which slowed the process down as I had to scroll up and down violently to make sure sounds were placed right on each separate timeline.


To edit the sounds in, generally I put them into the trimmer window to get the section I wanted, then I dragged and dropped the section into the timeline and synced it up with the action. I would occasionally use marker to highlight the action where a sound was required, this helped me to keep track of sounds I needed to place, but hadn't, or sounds that required multiple overlaid clips. But this hassle I think was worth it  in the end.

Here is the final film:

I'm actually really happy with the final film, because although I didn't have the time to fully animate it, I think it holds good potential for a final film and I want to finish it off properly in my own time. I'm quite proud of my sound editing as well as I haven't had to flesh a world in sound in a very long time, but I think I pulled off the effects I want and added enough sounds to make it realistic without butchering the effect, or over filling a scene with sounds and making it too busy. Using image manipulation as a technique was a very interesting experience as well because I have never used it before; It allowed a much better visual idea for my film as combining a separate image with a background is pretty difficult but the challenge and the constraints of the medium really spurs more creative thinking. But if I could do it again, I would spend more time on the storyboard, and do a script for it first so I can improve the dialogue as well as the story. I didn't like how simple the clues were and it would have been better if I could make it smarter. But it was a good brief and I like where I took the ideas to conform to the brief properly.





Historical research of Image Manipulation

Image manipulation is the practice of taking an original image and editing it, either digitally or traditionally. It has been used for years because its an incredibly simple practice; paintings just require the artist to paint the change, film photos would be airbrushed or carefully manipulated in the darkroom, and digital images would be edited through a PC using programs such as Photoshop.

During the beginning of image manipulation, aside from occasional artistic pieces, was for political reasons instead. Here are some examples to demonstrate:

When Monarchs got their portrait painted, it was a popular option to have any blemishes (such as warts) painted out; they also changed peoples figures, face shapes, and hair/eye colours to look more appealing. Queen Elizabeth I was best known for this as she was famously covered in warts, and had bad teeth, and a strange nose. These were edited for both her own self esteem, and to boost the affection her subjects showed her.

Another famous example was used among dictators, especially Stalin. Because of the sensitive nature of dictatorship, it was important for them no to be associated with anyone that could be considered bad, or evil. This was mainly people who may have began on their side but were either discovered to be something the dictator doesn't like, or would disagree with the dictator and end up hated. A great example of this is the erasure of Nikolai Yezhov.



Nikolai as water commissar with Stalin (Before)

Once People's commissar for Internal Affairs, Nikolai was actually a valuable part of Stalins plans, he executed hundreds of thousands of people in Stalins name, and help to grow Stalins power incredibly during his career. However as soon as Stalin suspected him of disloyalty and he fell out of his favour, Stalin had him arrested, executed, and then censored from every image he was present in with Stalin.



The final picture after Nikolais execution (After)

To censor a film image in the past, they would be painted or airbrushed to help erase or correct the unwanted parts.



Historical image manipulation artists

 

To get a better grasp of true historical image manipulation, I have chosen 2 artists whose work I will be looking into to get a better grasp on techniques and styles of their time.

 

Grete Stern

Grete Stern was born in 1904 but her work was at the peak of its fame during the 1940s and 50s.

 



"Home"

Dream no 1: "Electrical appliances of the home"

Generally her photos come off as very surreal but also comment on real issues. Her pieces "Home" and "Dream No 1: "Electrical Appliances of the Home"" show women in a very superficial  light; with one being in a glass bottle, and the other being portrayed as everyday purchasable object made to look pretty. Her technique was also incredible for her time as it does look real; most other pieces of her time looked a lot faker, mostly due to them being cutouts stuck onto existing photos, but hers look much more realistic. This is due to, at least in part, the technique of developing she used which was the Gelatin Silver Print process which involved gelatin and silver salt particles being transposed onto glass or paper, its also generally made up of 4 layers to complete it.

 

 Jann Haworth

 

Jann Haworths work is probably the best known of the list because one of her pieces won her an award in the 1960s. Her work on the Beatles album "Sergeant Peppers Lonely Heart Club Band" is probably the most famous example of image manipulation as well. This piece was created by assembling a room full of cardboard cut outs of celebrities of the time, and then placing the real Beatles in the centre. I like the style of this work as well because its bright, simple, and very memorable. Its also the easiest to reproduce as the method does require a lot of planning and preparation but its easy to set up and quick to shoot.

 

Looking into the historic arts is a great way to see how it began and the bases that formed modern image manipulation and their artists, especially as the digital age would shake it up so much and unlock new possibilities over every style and method. So here's two more artists, from after the 60s, who I think show the strengths of image manipulation the best.

 

Christophe Gilbert

 

 

 Christophe is actually another very well known artist. He's done a lot of work for large car companies like Mercedes, and Toyota, but he's also worked for LG and PlayStation as well. But its his personal work that shines the best because he has a stunning skill for manipulating and warping liquids to his will. He uses them so perfectly and they look touchable, like you could run your hand through them which is really relaxing to view. His work is created by combining photos together in photoshop as well as digital painting and creating effects himself, which is impressive as they look stunningly realistic. His work would be fun to try reproduce, but it would take so much time that any attempt to use it in a film is pure idiocy, especially in this time frame. But apart from that, he's definitely a favourite of mine.

 

Garrigosa Studios

 

Although technically not a singular artist, Garrigosa Studios, from Spain, has won many awards for the image manipulation works it has done for famous brands like 7up, Honda, Nike and Audi. I personally adore their work because its bizarre and funny and very convincing. It's also very plain to see how its done which is very encouraging for an artists because it spurs further creativity and ideas. Their works are generally created through photoshop using photos they shoot themselves or 3d created figures which are imported and integrated with the rest on the shots in photoshop. This work is also not very realistic to use in a film, again for the realism involved, but its base techniques are simple enough and can be good inspiration for fuller pieces.

 

Looking into artists is always a good help for projects, but with one like this its crucial otherwise I would have so few techniques at my disposal, and it simply wouldn't convey the effect I would need to make a strong manipulated piece. It's also good to see the serious side of it because it is known for being goofy, but seeing its ties into politics brings a whole new element to it; the darkness of which works spectacularly with the brief of a Murder Mystery and opens a whole new world of ideas, concepts and styles to exploit, or at least explore, while planning and producing my final film.