For this assignment, I chose the action ‘Somebody makes a cup of tea’ with the implied meaning that ‘They are suicidal’.

Since the preceding projects have been about diegetic/non-diegetic sound, camera movement and on-screen/off-screen space I tried to include these aspects into the assignment.

Most of the films that I watched that had strong implied meanings seemed to me to need to have a clear and identifiable context built up within which to situate what is being implied. For my scenario I decided to create an easily recognizable context that the viewer would relate to very quickly. The scene is a group of university students who have just received their final results and are celebrating, except that one of the students, Ahad, does not join in with the celebrating. Although it is never directly mentioned that Ahad has failed, I believe most people will conclude that his unhappiness is about his marks and the fear of having to break the news to his father. To imply that this fear could make him suicidal I used a number of signifiers:

1. Whilst everyone is drinking alcohol and encouraging Ahad to join them, he decides to make tea instead (i.e. he’s not in the party mood).
2. He wears grey clothing while all his friends are in light or bright colours.
3. He uses a very sharp knife to cut a lemon when talking about his father.
4. The knife connects with the cutting board and make a loud noise just before Ahad takes about his future (emphasizing that this is an important statement).
5. He sucks on a lemon and shows the bitterness when talking about his father.
6. The tea that infuses into the hot water looks like blood.

Dialogue and music help to emphasis the implied meaning. In writing the dialogue, I must admit that I already had the three main characters in mind and adjusted the story and interactions knowing their personalities and what they were likely to be capable of in terms of performance since none of them are actors (and I think they did a great job of the acting!).

One of the hardest decisions was about the colour of the video. I decided to make most of the scene bright and cheery to match the mood of the majority of the students who are celebrating. The kitchen where I was filming has a lot of orange and yellow and so it also made it easier to create a bright and happy atmosphere. It is only toward the end of the scene when the situation has become more grim for Ahad that I dropped the exposure and filmed the last two shots with much darker light.

Below is the storyboard:

Opening title: While the ‘Assignment 3’ title is showing the students can be heard talking about the exams and it is clear that they have passed.

Shot 1: Shot opens on a group of students talking. The camera pulls back away from them. As the camera passes the student leaning against the fridge, she looks over her shoulder. As she does this, Ahad should be coming into view standing in the foreground. She offers his a beer and alludes to him feeling better if he has one. Ahad refuses and says he will have tea instead. He is sad and closed in on himself.

Shot 2: CU of water being poured into the pot. Include background chatter sounds.

Shot 3: OTS of Ahad as Isra approaches and asks if he is OK. He just shrugs. She asks him if he has ‘told his dad yet’ – although there is no mention about told him what exactly. This shot must be set up intentionally to break the 180 degree rule – so as to create the sense that there is something not quite right with this discussion between Isra and Ahad.

Shot 4: WS to allow Ahad, Isra and Joe into the frame. Isra is speaking with Ahad when Joe turns up and blames the tea for Ahad’s sadness. Joe has had a bit too much to drink and manages his attempt to cheer Ahad up with the characteristically hyped behavior of a student who is going to wake up with a headache the next day. Nonetheless, Joe must come across as a likeable, joyful chap. During this shot, Ahad implies that he is afraid to tell his dad about his ‘glorious future’. Isra encourages him to get it over with and assures Ahad that it will be OK. Ahad is not so sure. At this point, Ahad sucks on a lemon to show the bitterness of the phone call he needs to make.

Shot 5: CU of tea infusing into water. Use Cornwall tea because it look very red! One of the students can be heard saying that it is time for more champagne. Isra asks Ahad to join. He says he will but just needs to go do something first.

Shot 6: The shot opens on the students pouring champagne and making a lot of noise. The camera tracks through the crowd (they must move aside as the camera gets nearer). One student must block the kitchen window by standing in front of it.

Shot 7: (This is really a continuation of shot 6 but needs to be explained as it is a critical part of the shot.) As the camera gets closer, the student moves away from the window to reveal Ahad outside in the garden on the phone. Music starts. Exposure is darker. Voices of the students in the kitchen fade. Ahad finishes telephone call with his back to the camera. He goes to the stones, picks up his tea and sits down – depressed, with his head down. This shot is based on something I had done in the abstract sound exercise earlier – which worked so well.

Shot 8: This shot pans left to right. Students are still celebrating. Isra stands to one side and as the camera reaches her she looks out the window. The music is still playing and the voices of the students can still be heard but as if they are distant voices.

Shot 9: Over-turned tea mug with tea running down the stones. Could look a bit like blood.

Evaluation:

Did the implied meaning come across? I believe it did, if the scenario is watched from beginning to end. The last shot (tipped over mug), can only be understood in light of the earlier conversation and links with the tea, knife, lemon and dialogue in the first part of the scenario where Isra and Joe are speaking with Ahad. The music definitely helps to signify that something has gone wrong during the telephone call Ahad has made.

Technical aspects:

Camera movements: The camera movements are improving and are more steady than previous attempts. The most difficult manouevre of the entire scenario was pushing the camera forward through the crowd in shot 6, keeping it steady, not knocking into anyone and at the same time changing the exposure from inside the kitchen to outside in the garden. Very happy with this result.

Framing, composition and on-screen/off-screen space: I experimented with an unusual way for a character to enter/exit a frame by getting Joe (slightly drunk student) to enter/exit the frame as if sliding in/out from left. Instead of leaving Joe in the frame when Isra spoke, I think it ended up being quite comical when he re-enters the frame for a second time with the beers and helps to lighten what could have become a melodramatic shot.

The only time that I used off-screen space was at a critical moment – when Isra looks out the window and the next shot is of what she is seeing. It is a close-up of the tipped over tea mug on the stones. From the previous shot of Ahad outside, the viewer knows exactly where this close-up is in the garden.

Lighting, colour and exposure: Two major difficulties were encountered; the first was when exposing for the interior kitchen shots, the window to the garden was over-exposed and unfortunately was in quite a prominent place in the frame. At the same time I was needing to keep the interior scene light enough to make my main character’s facial expressions visible. I had studio lights which I originally set up as soft boxes but it didn’t give enough light – so changes to spotlight. This lit the main actor well but caused reflections on his glasses which in close-up was visible.

The second difficult was with the reverse shot of Isra when she was talking to Ahad. If I had left the window shutters up (as had been the case for the shot of Ahad and the kitchen behind him), then the shot would have been completely over-exposed. If I dropped the exposure, my actors face would be in darkness. The solution I chose was to drop the shutters and increase the exposure. The result is a noticeable difference in the light between the two reverse shots.

On the positive side, I was very happy with the bright, yellow/orange colour of the kitchen – it was warm, bright and cheery which matched the setting very well.

Sound: Moderately successful. Very pleased with the sound quality for individual shots but there is some variability from shot to shot that I could not quite fix in post, especially the OTS shot of Isra. Very pleased with the solution I found for the background noise of the students while the dialogue scenes were taking place. Initially I was going to use a stock ‘party’ ambient sound but when I listened to the students talking together, I realized that they have very distinct voices and a stock ambient background would definitely not work. From some of the footage, I found about 12 seconds of them just chatting and used this to overlay on the scenario. To make sure that it didn’t sound looped, I cut the 12 seconds of audio up into smaller pieces and removed distinctive words, then I duplicated the smaller segments and stitched them together in a repeating but random order.

Major changes for the storyboard

The biggest change was with shot 4 as this shot was too static. I added a close up of Ahad cutting the lemon to focus the viewer on the knife and the thud of finality. I also reshot from a low angle of Ahad and used the low angle at end of this dialogue to indicate that something had changed for Ahad.

Summary

Overall, I am reasonably happy with the end product. The story works well and the implied meaning appears to be conveyed. Technically there are areas for improvement but since the assignment brief did state that I shouldn’t be too excessively worried about the quality of the image, I have accepted the problems with the over-exposed windows and lighting issues.