Samantha Peng – Page 2

IDEATION

Some people’s jobs are to look forward and to create the future for us layman, setting the stage of what’s to come. These people are our politicians, scientists, technological developers. A common theme that they share in their development is their desire to prolong life or to expand it one way or another. Plans to challenge climate change, medical advances and games that include open world concepts and the ability to respawn where you left off. Not that any of this is bad. But in my eyes, immortality is at the centre of all these ideas. So what if they did come together to create something that can imitate life in a way that it places us in an immortal state, giving us “new life”? How would that affect our lives and our relationships? How would a person react or use this technology? These are the themes that I wanted to explore in this film.

The initial plot was a middle-aged man, Cheng, with a time bomb who is too afraid to die uses this tech to relive his life in his old memories and in there, finds his will to live through his mother. The plot was developed and written as a (admittedly subpar) script. But it was later changed to be about a middle-aged man who used this technology to visit his mother, something he didn’t do when she was alive, and is given a second chance at life with his son.

REFERENCES

Two references I had throughout the process were

A friend’s FYP film

Butterwork’s Short Film

In my friend’s film, his group depicted the relationship between a father and son with futuristic technology being the mediator. Though the technology played a big part in how the story progresses, it did not steal the spotlight from the human connection/relationship between father and son which is what I wanted to capture in my film as well.

In “I Hate My Life”, I took from it the technical aspects like how to pace the more intense moments of the story, how to carry out the tonal shift from deadness to redemption. Though I had adopted some technical parts of the film, there were more elements which I wanted to explore but didn’t have the luxury of time to, including colour grading, a more fleshed out storyline, how to light the set etc.

PRODUCTION

First off, I am SOOOOOO blessed to have convincible family members who also happened to be actors under Mediacorp (at some point of their lives at least). It took major convincing and some trades before they agreed but bottom line, they agreed. So yay.

For the older voice of Cheng, I asked my friend who had experience voice acting to be the part. I was really happy with the results because he was able to capture the emotions that it needed, like the sadness of seeing your happy moments with your ex-wife, navigating a new technology etc. Thanks Cav.

As aforementioned, after writing the script, Yue Han gave the suggestion to flesh out the main character a little more to find his motivations for his actions. While doing so, I bounced off some ideas with my brother (who played Cheng). I ended up with a very, VERY different story from before and we ended up improvising a lot. The lines were simplified but not to the extent that no information was getting through. Throughout this “pre-prod” process, my biggest worry was that the audience would not be able to pick up the plot points of the story or understand the “but why?”s. Also, side note: what once was supposed to be ang ku kueh became my brother’s uneaten dinner. Much winging it, very wow.

Anyways, moving on. Production itself was pretty smooth sailing as the shots I had to take were very similar to the ones I had planned so my shot list was still relevant. What was not very smooth sailing was my actors telling me every two seconds “Don’t you need to take this shot? Or that shot?” That was SO frustrating. Like let me follow my shot list PLEASE. My shots were taken according location but they were thinking in accordance to what would be shown in the video/what was in the script which was very annoying. But after getting over that hurdle and their fussiness about my directing, it became very normal. Not much enjoyable. But normal. Tiring and my brain was mush, and the shots got increasingly harder to take. At some point, I was balancing my camera on my oven for the wide shots and it was really hard to focus my shots.

Another issue I faced was sound. Of course, I did my “location scout” and since I didn’t have much of a choice but to use my home, sound became an issue. The biggest issue of using my house for production, including the first assignment, is the bloody fish tank (over this weekend, my grandpa got another fish tank so I really can’t use my house for future projects). The sound of the water running contributed to the room tone and disrupted much of my sound. I couldn’t turn it off, less the fishes die. So, I tried using the noise reduction tools from Audition and Premiere but the end result was metallic voices. Legible but not the best. In hindsight, I probably should have rented a boom and the zoom h4 or DIY-ed one with my Rode shotgun.

There were high points, when my mom stopped slurring her Ls and Rs. When my brother got his tears out (for a while then eye drops to the rescue). And when we wrapped.

As for editing, my favourite part of every production, I thoroughly enjoyed the process of piecing the film together. It was SO FUN researching on UI from Black Mirror or Pinterest and editing it. When it came together to become something that felt coherent and right, everything else fell into place. After not editing for awhile, there were some things that I could improve on like my pacing, framing, fixing continuity and cutting in action or my grading (colour grading kills me sometimes). In order to fit into the 3:30 limit, there were some lines which I had to omit. This only made me more anxious about the storytelling aspect of it. Will the audience get it? While trying to watch it with fresh eyes, there were parts that I felt would be potentially confusing. But at that point, I can only explain so much.

CRIT

The main feedback from the crit I got was about thinking deeper into the theme. How might the future affect our human relationships? Does it change anything? An additional question I had for myself was: how could I have implied the implications of technology on human relationships beyond my two characters? I looked at the movie “Her”. I think it did a great job at looking past the two main characters into the world. The “future” didn’t cause an isolated event but a worldwide phenomenon. Other people were forging relationships with IOs. From the interactions between the two main characters, we see that the nature of IOs [the embodiment of future] cause them to never forge the same human connections as humans which not only impacts the relationship between our two characters but the world…and so on.

REFLECTION

I look forward to a day when my reflections would not contain regrets about sound. As I said before, better sound was possible. Make it happen next time round.

I could have also explored more about the future and how it would affect human relationships as I was rather stumbled by that question during the crit.

At the end of the day, I was quite happy with the results of the film. And I was REALLY happy that we were finally doing film. FINALLY. But now that’s over. It’s okay, more to look forward to. 🙂

ENTERING NEW LIFE

LANE OF BARELY LOCALS

REFERENCES:

older student works

this guy

and this guy

J. Krygier (June 22 2009) Making Psychogeography Maps. MakingMaps.net

BOMBAS PARA DESAYUNAR. (15 April 2015) No todos los que vagan están perdidos – ¡¡¡CONVOCATORIA!!!

^^ yo no hablo español but it’s okay, there’s english below.

PRODUCTION:

PRE

Trying to understand Dérive a bit more, I read the readings sent to the Telegram group, did my own research and watched some YouTube videos of people taking part in their own dérive. Did it help? Yes. Was I still confused? Very. Why was I confused? I honestly don’t know. But I thought I gathered enough information for me to do this assignment so I went.

Having the prerequisite that Haji Lane is full of c o o l, hipster stuff, I wanted to let these people and the fun architecture guide me in this drifting exercise some way or another. Some challenges going in was the fear of being led by too much, or being overstimulated which would cause me to be confused by where I should go next and not pay attention to submerging myself in the environment I was in. Well…

PROD

Thingamajigs used: Canon 80D, Rode Mic

Overstimulated. Upon being overwhelmed within the first two seconds of this activity, I took a step back and looked at the other people and decided to be led by those who seem out of place within this row of “traditional” shophouses, the Instagrammers. Wherever they took a photo, I would go. I was also led by the sights and sounds which called out to me. Like a jerking thumb or loud Himalayan music. Even when it rained, I was still being drawn by the living things in the area, particularly the birds (for some reason, they all decided to seek shelter at this ONE shop…strange).

One thing I noticed about the place was that majority of the shops I went to, were specifically themed of different parts of the world. For example, Britain or the Himalayas. The people who owned these shops were as peculiar as their surroundings.

The visuals I captured were of the places I went to, the sights which honestly baffled me, and the icons that defined each place in my mind. I also gathered some really interesting soundbites from owners of these shophouses. The audio I gathered was also a form of guide to the things that I felt or were stimulated by. The sounds which controlled my thoughts, experience and perception of the space.

POST

The map. Initially, I wanted the map to look like an old map with roads and funky illustrations of the place. Riding on that thought, the journey was defined not by the chronological route but by the significant points of which my senses were heightened as well as the things that led me there.

Again, I used colour to differentiate the elements in the map. The roads, soundbites and leads were all of the same colour because they were the things I had interacted with specifically in the place while the pictures itself represented the place itself. The lines and the routes represented my experience as well. When the road felt long and winding and uncomfortable, even though I could just be standing in the same spot irl, it would be illustrated by long and winding lines. If it was short and quick, the shorter lines. If I felt meh, dotted. If I felt overstimulated, bold. I didn’t include the legend because it meant many different things and could be seen many different ways to me.

For the audio, most of it was recorded audio. But OMG, I accidentally set the input volume to 6db instead of 0db like an idiot and didn’t realise it until the audio was wrangled. Noise reduction and DeHum was my best friend. Murphy’s Law. The final audio file is mostly diegetic and true to what I was hearing then. The only non-diegetic sounds were the mood music for between the locations to evoke the emotions I was experiencing so that my audience would not be confused by their own perception and emotions of the sounds in that space. Selfish, I know. I used the YouTube audio library for those.

CRIT:

For the audio, some caught the intention of the elements within the audio while for others, it missed the mark. A classmate commented on the continuity of the audio, suggesting the use of constant bpm or style to highlight the unity of the places I went to. Although the purpose of the music was not to highlight the unity of the places, I understood the importance of tying the mood music together so that it is better differentiated from the diegetic music. Maybe by using the same instruments, key, but not bpm though. Having it all have the same bpm would defeat the purpose of evoking different emotions.

The use of my lines. A few classmates commented on the use of the lines or “routes” I took. Why were some dotted and others thick and bold? They suggested the use of the legend to make things clearer for the audience. Which in hindsight, I should have used.

Some other comments were on the use of the unclear edges of the pictures, the furriness of the lines as well as the size of the dog.

REFLECTION

The assignment allowed me to dive into my senses a little bit more than usual however, I was often still worried about the assignment more than I was enjoying the process. Which is unfortunate. Some things I would change would be to make my map a little less literal, using something else other than roads and lines. Maybe shapes or colours instead. Also, CHECK AUDIO LEVELS. Don’t trust the output. Throughout the process, I only checked if the input was the correct mic, not the audio level. Also, listening to the audio again, it ended abruptly too ;-; Would’ve sectioned it out and have the pace slow down a little earlier.