Reflective Analysis;

For my A2 Film project I chose to make a short film between 4-5 minutes in length instead of a sequence that would be a part of a film.  I chose to work individually so I could have full control over planning, directing and editing my project. I kept track of all planning and updates on a digital blog; adamcelfshadowadamcelflight.blogspot.com. I decided to make a film that fit into the genre of drama as it portrays the largest range of emotions and gives more flexibility into possible narratives. The title of my film is ‘A Dance of Shadow/A Dance of Light’ as my narrative is about a young ballet dancer. I found my inspiration for the title from a book on the famous video game ‘Final Fantasy 12’. I had already decided upon my story line before hand but the title inspired me to have the plot set in a dream world and reality.

I wanted to instil the emotions of sadness, empathy and shock within my audience so I decided to make my protagonist (Tam) a deaf, aspiring ballet dancer. I understand that Deafness is not something many people could empathise with but I planned to make up that emotion through the idea of her struggling to achieve her dream but never giving up. I wanted to create an alignment between Tam and the audience despite that the majority of my audience would have no personal emotional link with her disability. I wanted my film to be as realistic as was possible so I kept the entirety of the Mise-en-scene fitting to ‘kitchen sink Mise-en-scene’ and keep Tam as low key as possible to emphasise how there is nothing immediately striking about her as a character. The majority of my film which was filmed for the ‘reality world’ scenes were filmed at my friend’s house and already had all of the props and set design that was required. The scenes for the ‘dream world’ were then filmed at my college’s theatre with the addition of a ballet bar from the dance department to reinforce the idea that Tam wanted to be a professional ballerina.

‘My aim is to create an emotional response of sadness within my audience using key dramatic stylistics within editing, cinematography, sound and Mise-en-scene. I want to create a feeling of empathy between the audience and the protagonist and for the audience to relate to the character in terms of her loneliness. As my character is unconventional to the usual style of protagonist (happy, successful etc.) and has an unknown disability, I will use a lot of establishing shots and close-ups for emphasis on emotional response.’ – This is a copy of my original and final aims.

I chose to make Tam a ballet dancer as I gained a lot of inspiration from the film ‘Black Swan’ (Natalie Portman, dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2010). Portman’s character struggles with a lot of mental difficulties due to her strive for perfection within her work but as mental difficulties are not a physically visible issue, the director emphasises it through the use of editing and close-ups on Portman. I took advantage of some of these ideas as Tam’s disability although it being physical is not visible to the audience. For example, in the scene where Tam is putting the kettle on in the kitchen, I included close-ups of the kettle and the water pouring from the tap so when in editing, I could alter the sound of the clip and fade out the volume at different points to indict that something was not being heard.  Also in the opening scene where Tam wakes up, I included the close up of her eyes to emphasise her senses being focused upon one specific aspect – sight. Throughout the dream (theatre) scene I alternated the volume of the backing track on certain shots to show the flux between what Tam was hearing and what she aspired to hear.

The name of my character also bears a lot of significance to my narrative as the name ‘Tam’ means twin in ancient Hebrew (an ironic coincidence as my actress is Jewish as is Natalie Portman). During the pre-production stage I struggled to find the right name that fitted my character and the name Tam was suggest when researching the name Tamara (a personal choice) and I saw that the name meant twin. The name fitted perfectly with my narrative as Tam has two versions of her, both of which are exactly the same, bar from one is real and one is only her imagination.

Another hidden feature of my film was the use of the mug which Tam goes to fill up. The mug  is decorated with characters from Tim Burton's 'The Nightmare Before Christmas'. I chose to use this mug as I wanted it to reflect the theme of difference in realities and symbolise that Tam is stuck in a nightmare before something major. The major moment symbolising her accident and death.

I also chose to analyse scenes from ‘Black Swan’ as not only did it help with showing me how to portray disability, it inspired me on how to film dance scene as I have had no prior experience with Ballet dancing or dance footage. The sequences analysed showed a lot of close arm and facial close-ups to show her body posture and emotion. I copied this feature in my film where Tam is in the theatre.

I wanted to show continuity between both locations of dream and reality so I used footage which caused confusion on the camera such as when Tam is spinning her skirt and her feet. I tried to juxtapose the scenes from both locations to reinforce her dreaming and desires.

As the context of my narrative is fairly complex and touches upon issues that may be viewed as sensitive, I decided that the target audience for my film would be mainly Cross over (25+) but the rating of my short film would be a 12A as I believe it fits best to the criteria set out by the BBFC; ‘The ‘12A’ category exists only for cinema films. No one younger than 12 may see a ‘12A’ film in a cinema unless accompanied by an adult and films classified ‘12A’ are not recommended for a child below 12. An adult may take a younger child if, in their judgement, the film is suitable for that particular child. In such circumstances, responsibility for allowing a child under 12 to view lies with the accompanying adult.’

I wanted to have a soundtrack that reflected the mood of the film, I looked through a number of classical pieces and ballet specific pieces but none of them had the correct feel that I was looking for. I heard a song whilst playing on Gears of War and felt the instruments on it fitted to the mood of the narrative. I found the version of 'Can't Say Goodbye to Yesterday' without the vocals and decided it fit best with my scenes. During the editing process I found that footage fit almost perfectly with the beat changes of the song already so this proved to be very helpful with time allowance.

I did however have trouble when trying to edit the sound to have the correct amount of fluctuence in volume. This was mainly due to misjudgement of time and misunderstanding of the program. I had to do a very basic version of what I wanted which was a very abrupt volume drop when switching to reality.

When my video was complete I exported it to YouTube and imported it onto my blog. I asked fellow college students and friends through social media sites such as Facebook and Tumblr if they could watch my video and give me feedback to include in my evaluation. The overall response I received was positive however I do not feel I achieved my aim of emotional response to the best of my ability.

The audience response shall be drawn up into a graph on my blog with its own evaluation on the results.