D R E A M S
Dream from Wong Yi Ting on Vimeo.
CREDITS
Ragamama
Music: http://www.purple-planet.com
RESEARCH
For the topic ‘Dreams’, I wanted to try to do something that was not narrative driven. Something that was slightly more abstract and subtle, but still retained the unrealness that dreams have.
‘Western Spaghetti’ – PESFilm
After dwelling on youtube, I remembered PESFilm‘s quirky strange stopmotion concepts of cooking inanimate objects and knew I wanted to do something similar to his concept. So instead of using stopmotion, I relied on props and editing to express the surreality.
For colours and aesthetics, I went for a more clinical but saturated hue palette. The contrasting aspects make it even more puzzling yet intriguing. I also decided on an old-timey VHS type wave warping to just push the effects more.
STORYBOARD
Storyboarding for this short film was interesting as I had to incorporate a variety of shots for a film that has no full human figure or any models, just objects and a pair of hands. The storyboard above just depicts a general outline of how the film would be, with the shots as a rough guideline since while shooting there were way more shots taken than shown in the storyboard.
EDITING
Since I was not able to shoot this film in a controlled environment such as a studio, the original lighting and colours were quite off through out the shots. I managed to balance the look and colours through editing the lighting, hues and levels in Premiere Pro, going for a saturated, bright, pop look. There was the additional 3D looking edit to just exaggerate the strangeness even more. I wanted to add a ink drip overlay but with the time constraints I didn’t manage to.
The film was made to look like a short cooking segment, accompanied by a chirpy, lively tune. The tune’s melody and tempo made it more capturing when the shots matched up to the beats.
AFTERTHOUGHTS
Working on this made me realise the capabilities of Premiere Pro, and it’s not actually too hard to learn, it’s just that there’s simply so much going on that it’ll take a while to learn everything you could do with it. I’m actually quite glad with what I’ve learnt so far and I wish to continue learning more and use it for future projects! As I’m new to film in general, I realised the restrictions of shooting at home without any proper equipment – unable to control lighting, stabilising shots, etc. I had to rely on my Samsung S8plus camera, yes it has decent quality but it’s just not the same compared to an actual camera and its equipment.
