FINAL VIDEO
Password: call
EXPLANATION
I explored the two running timelines from Memento and utilized their concept of color for ‘present’ sequence and against black and white for the ‘past’ sequence.
Cinematographic Elements
I utilized the idea of match cutting to show the audience how every part of the car (or just quick passing moments) he seem to remember his past relationship in a sort of mnemonic device way. The match cut also in a way connects their lives together and connects the present to the past. Emphasising on the overarching theme of connection.
Action by Action
We see how the boyfriend reaches a tipping point after tension reaches its climax in the carpark. We do not see the boyfriend, however his hands show his state of mind and emotion. The blurriness of the shots show the dynamism and action of the moment, how his grip and slap is jarring, and the blurriness in the hand is the only thing the girlfriend sees before she is slapped. It also shows the state of mind of the boyfriend as unsound and blurry.
Moment by Moment
In this moment by moment sequence, we feel as though the argument seems to get stretched out over a long period of time – this puts us in the mind of the girlfriend, and we start to notice various elements in the scene – the upset and annoyed looking girlfriend behind, and how the boyfriend progressively becomes more exasperated with her in the foreground. We also start to notice the body language more as she is seated uncomfortably and almost seem to make herself look smaller and guarded. The way the light goes from light to dark through the sequence gives the audience the idea of passing streetlights while also symbolic of the character slowly spiralling into a darker mind.
Recurring Motifs
I felt the phone in modern day connects and sometimes reconnect lives, and there is a constant visual and audio element of phones. We see the phones in frame used in different ways – to remember, to reconnect, to report and to inform. There is also audio elements of texting at the start juxtaposed against the calling at the end, the phone ringing, locking, beeping and vibrating in various points of the film, the progressively louder and more frequent beeps as the tension rises. Phones and their associated sounds play a huge part in this sequence.
Distance
There is also an element of distance in the sequence – from the start we see the two characters phyiscally close, then they appear in the same frame but physically apart, then they appear in the same sequence without being in the same frame, and finally we see the main character alone in the world. This was a subtle play in the relationship between the two characters throughout the sequence as we see how they are slowly torn apart.
Audible Elements
It was a challenge working with sound as I’ve always taken a point that audio should build a scene and bad sound is always abruptly noticeable. It is a complex in-between of logical and unorthodox sounds that build a scene. I built emphasis on certain moments of the films to let the audience figure out the moment by cutting to black and playing just the audio, such as in the reporting scene and the ending call. It gave a different vibe as compared to the moments with images and we can see the clear contrast it gave in those moments.
Recording Audio
It was a bit of a difficulty to source for a sound of the couple’s voice – they either were too westernized or looked generally odd coming from their mouths. So we opted to do it in the old fashioned voice over. We sat in an unused classroom and recorded their argument and the ‘999 what’s your emergency‘ line. The argument had more gaps of silence between them, and considering the timeframe I had to increase the tension of the argument I layered various parts of their argument into the scene. Such as Joel’s ‘seriously’ and ‘I’m so done with your lies’ were shifted around a lot to give a vibe of them talking over each other, typical couple argument moments from experience, I suppose :’)
Diegetic Sounds
There is an abundance of layered diegetic sounds, from the birds in the background, to the creak of the chairs, to the hum of the car on the expressway, and to the little sighs of the girlfriend. It was interesting to be really sensitive to the sound around me to the extent that I sat in a carpark and my dad’s car to document the little sounds I hear in them.
Non-Diegetic Sounds
This was a challenge as the non-diegetic sounds have to be dramatic and not too unorthodox. I found that non-diegetic sounds was most effective in highly dramatic and tense moments so I opted to maximise the potential of non-diegetic sounds in the slap scene. The increasing in volume and frequency beeps of the phone heightens tensions, builds on the recurring motifs of phones and evoke the idea that perhaps the girlfriend has been avoiding his calls that caused him to reach his tipping point.
Soundtrack
Throughout the short, there is a soundtrack in the background. The music fades out at two points – after the slap and towards the end of the film. Both are used to create emphasis on the audio at that moment in time.
The ending was a little of back and forth as I couldn’t decide what ending to put so I played around with either Joel or Felicia’s voice. But I mixed with both as it gave a proper closure.
Various endings
REFLECTION
This was a different experience from making short films as the images are static and the audio elements added narrative parts into the film without images. It was interesting having a non-dialogue driven film and this experience allowed me to be a bit more sensitive to sound around me. It was also interesting to explore various way to distort sound such as the volume and using low and high pass filters to make the voice sound muffled, over the phone or to create a sense of space.
Charissa’s Edit
Felicia’s Edit
Joel‘s Edit
To see my process, click here.