21/02/24 - shoot working towards Assessment

This shoot did not go entirely to plan, however, I am treating it at a test shoot for the scene I want to film.

I am taking a different approach this semester with my work. I realise that last semester I was:

1. Being too literal in my 'myth retelling with a focus on climate change'

2. Using archive footage to display climate change, just did not work with the style I am going for.

3. Not focusing enough on the horror!

I was tying myself in knots because of all this. I have to accept that sometimes this is how my brain works, despite not wanting it to, but it's good to have a starting point. Therefore, this semester I have moved away from this self-imposed limitation and am now exploring my themes more broadly. Rather than a retelling of Pandora's Box, a concept I found limiting, I have decided to broaden my horizons to mythology as a whole to see what ideas stick and then will focus again once the film has firmed up in my mind.

With that said, this scene is an exploration of the femme body, the word body being imperative, in relation to the landscape around. I think the trap I fell into last semester was focusing on the faces of my friends (who are conventionally attractive, not my fault that I have pretty friends but I appreciate that this is not exactly interesting acting). This time around, I want to focus on the body and movement, rather than aesthetics and performance.

I think, in my film, it's important for the body to be a focale point, as essentially I am now wanting to explore the climate emergency through pollution happening to the body in a form of body horror. This is yet to be tested, but I think having this focus on the body will inspire greater anxiety and fear in the viewer. I am still working through this though.

The shoot:

So the shoot suffered from various mishaps, of the person I initially asked cancelling on me, and then weather being too cold to shoot safely. Then spoke to Kirsten about this and she told me to just keep my ideas and find someone else, because I was panicking about logistics and coming. up with a new scene. I'm glad I listened to her, because this was again, classic me overthinking a situation and also not thinking outside the box because of panic.

Managed to find a day to shoot with Eliza, but classic Edinburgh, the weather was changing every five minutes. It was scheduled to be cloudy, which is what I wanted, but then it proceeded to rain and then was ridiculously sunny and windy. Needless to say, it did not start very well. Because of the rain, the ground was very slippy and I fell over a few times. Grand start. Luckily, had done my risk assessment form and also my talent (Eliza) was absolutely fine.

We got to shooting, and I managed to get shots that I was happy with, with micro shots of Eliza's face, the grass etc. The wind, however, turned out to be a boon, enabling me to explore fabric movement and this idea of being stifled and drowning symbolically.

My camera battery died about an hour and a half in, and I also brought my broken tripod so could not film any wides. So yeah, did not go to plan, but I gained new ideas from it and a new perspective going forward.