For this project, we were given the task to make a short film, from a select portion of sonnets and poems. We were also given the challenge to try not to use the poem for exposition i.e. to tell the story of the poem. This was a challenge because when I was coming up with ideas for the short film I came up with the exact same idea as what the poem was about. However, I overcame this hurdle quite quickly and came up with an amazing idea, which is very personal to my own story with my anxiety and intrusive thoughts.
When it came to casting, there was a few problems with casting the main character Lucy as an adult and casting Hope, Lucy's positive voice, with some of the cast pulling out to do paid jobs and some not showing any interest at all with being a part of this project. Luckily, I made sure to have two backup actresses that I knew were available to play Lucy. However, when it came to casting Hope, no one had applied to be her, so I decided to play the voice of Hope to save me the added stress of asking around and getting rejected. When it came to the day before my filming day, my original actress for teen Lucy had just recently gotten the booster vaccine for COVID-19 so she said she was feeling too ill to be on the shoot the next day. This definitely was an added stress for me, but I adapted to the change and asked around to see if anyone would be available last minute to act in my short film, and luckily in about half an hour, I had another person to play teen Lucy.
When it came to the actual filming day, there was a couple problems that occurred. One of them being that at some points it started raining outside when filming the majority of the scenes, but the rain was not constant, this meant that some shots had rain, and some didn't. Another problem was that the actress that was playing Lisa, Lucy's therapist in the flashback, was only available after three o'clock, this meant that for the therapist scene it was a lot darker than initially planned. However, I dealt with these with the upmost professionalism, making sure that the camera was covered from the rain with an umbrella to prevent any damages happening to the camera, and I had to deal with the change of the time for the therapist's scene as I knew that filming the therapist scene also at noon was going to be tricky as I had to consider the cast's schedules and availability.
When it came to editing the final product, I was really happy with the quality of acting that my main actress portrayed when being adult Lucy as it made the whole story a lot more believable. I was also happy with the idea of the overlay of the fire after Jax, Lucy's negative voice, shouted in Lucy's head "and make your life a living hell" as I thought it added the connotation that Jax was associated with a demon, fire connoting hell and the underworld. I also liked the idea that I had with one of my teammates who suggested to do high angles and have adult Lucy look straight down to the floor to connote hell when Lucy was listening or addressing Jax and the low angle shots with Lucy looking up when she was listening or addressing Hope as the looking up connoted that the good voice came from her head but was from heaven. I also enjoyed colour grading the clips red and dark contrasts when Jax's voiceovers were happening and colour grading the clips yellow and warm contrasts when Hope's voiceovers were happening.
On the contrary, when recording the voiceovers for Jax and Hope, there was a noticeable difference between the two voices, that was because the Jax's lines were recorded at my home, in my cabin, with the actor speaking into a professional microphone and Hope's lines were recorded in a professional sound recording booth that is provided at the studios. Before this happened, I had planned for the actor to do the voiceovers at the studios with myself as Hope that way the sound matches. However, he was busy on the day that I booked the sound studio, so I decided to just use the sound studio to record Hope's lines and level the two voiceovers, sound wise, in post-production. In addition to this, I enjoyed playing around with the voiceovers, using the audio effect 'Analog Delay' to make Jax's and Hope's voice sound more mysterious and sound like voices in someone's head. I also liked the idea I had with having red and white lights flash on the screen to signify that Jax and Hope are fighting, I made the last white flash deliberately longer to show that Hope was triumphant in defeating Jax.
The things that I have learnt from this project was that you have to plan your time solely on the cast and crew and to be more patient with them and open-minded when suggestions for shots are suggested by cast and crew. I also learnt that not everything has to be perfect, and nothing always goes according to plan when filming is taking place, as long as you adapt to the change of plan and show your passion for the film and filmmaking in general then that is all that matters.
If I had more time to develop this project, I would carry out more research on this project and look further into mental health in general, I would try and send the casting call on mandy.com a bit earlier than I did to allow for time for people to respond to the post. I would also consider adding an optional ending that we decided to film on the filming day including teen and adult Lucy together, if we didn't have one of the requirements be that the film has to be a maximum of five minutes long including titles and credits. If I didn't have this restriction of this timeframe, I would have added the additional optional ending that me and my crew filmed. Overall, I am very happy with how well this unit has gone and I am very proud of how my final edit came out and can't wait to see how my imagination flows into my future projects on this course.
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