Codes and Conventions - expanded, improved, grown

Throughout the course of the film, as a media consumer and now media producer, I have gradually built, explored, and applied my repertoire of real media texts and inspiration of media sources to the creative process and construction of the film. What could be said as our film's strength for standing out, but also a weakness in terms of audiences involvement due to understanding, is the film's abstract and fictional narrative and plot of events. Also, the audience is largely ambiguous to the mainstream, and not specifying into any target audience or demographic. This makes the film more open to subjective interpretation and the confusing narrative of the fly's social commentary and various visual metaphors. Therefore, to create a sense of comfort and equilibrium for the audiences, many film references and conventions are employed to piece the familiarity with the surrealism together.

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Tailoring the film together, I had referenced many films for ideas of scene, such as Saturday Night Fever (1977) where the protagonist makes his way into school happily with a pan up, as well as Face Off (1997)'s Nicholas Cage waltzing his way in with Handel's "Hallelujah", where in this case a direct parody was made to illustrate his elation. Other basis of inspiration also came from Mean Girls (2004), The Hangover II (2011), and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966). 

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Eventually, over the course of the film making process, I came to realize the power of using conventions, where it isn't just a tribute to popular culture and real media texts to bear relevance to the modern film era, but can be used as a tool that is arguably more powerful than micro-elements and dialogue. Getting the audience to feel more comfortable, familiar, and understand the plot better with one aspect of reference is beyond belief. I came to appreciate the use of film references for the sake of maintaining the convention of Todorov's equilibrium to give them a sense of comfortability paired with steady editing and smooth cinematography, the influential dolly zoom from Jaws (1975) to accentuate the revelation of discovery in recognition, but the employment of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)'s cowboy shoot out questions the stage of repair and makes it unconventional. Therefore, using media text references carefully, and pairing with application of Todorov's Narrative theory which we mostly give in to conventions, the storyline becomes clearer and strengthens the structure of the film.

 

Another convention I touched upon is the code of the genre; comedy-drama. Researching into the main aspects of comedy, I had decided to apply the two conventional aspects of pregnant pause and comic timing to highlight big moments of the first disruption by the fly (comic timing), and the dolly zoom moment of the boy's revelation (pregnant pause). Not using slapstick was a choice carefully considered, as excessive violence would be hard to execute and edit. The implied and hinted sense of threat and vulnerability is what we were aiming for to undermine the fly's presence as the dangerous society that seeps through unpredictability. So, rejecting a conventional form of comedy genre not only makes out film majorly comedy (2 of 3), but also expands more fields into character development of the antagonist and meaning.

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Reflecting on last year's AS coursework, the intention of conventions were only limited to film references, and nothing beyond that to create meaning, improve audience interactions, and improve storyline and character development. However, this year I have grown to a higher level of awareness and understanding of conventions and codes which is touched on the genre, the narrative, and the films have been used to created a more interactive and audience-friendly experience.

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Planning and Organisation - strict, concise, strategic

Having major multi-roles in all stages of production; head writer and story boarder in the pre; director and actor in production; folly artist, composer, audio mixer and executive producer in post: I have to compile between large amounts of paperwork, negotiations of shoot times with other crews' priorities, booking and emailing for props and additional requirements for instance.

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Last year in AS, we had a 'thought book' that barely managed to fit in all the compressed and unordered paperwork and files, which made reference of specific pages difficult and time consuming. This year, I decided to find a sustainable, accessible, and non practical way to store files in large quantities through online platforms. Google drive's "Team Drive" allowed for a team collaboration on documents anywhere; changes of location or script dialogue the morning before, during shooting, and corrections in post. This shift to online has improved management and organisation of files, which massively aided communications between me as the director and the cinematographer.

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Speaking of which, initially we were going with Facebook messenger as a way to communicate production times and transfer files, however I had suggested the swap to LINE software to uphold image quality for professional and accurate uploads which proved to be an effective decision.

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The challenges of early mornings, late afternoons, and frequent location changes of each scene has taught me to become more strict, reliable and honest with my planning. Every day before a shoot, I would create a hand-drawn list or sketch of a story board, and digitally distribute it through the online chat groups (LINE and Facebook Messenger) to the crew. This ensured everyone knew what was happening where and when. I had also developed my email etiquette and learnt some skills on the Outlook Application to send polite emails to book equipment, but also to digitally schedule events, and even marked some emails as "Highly Important".

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Cinematography - aware, sensitive, understadning

Although I am not the cinematographer, I have had my fair share of camera experience from being a photographer on set, as well as the director in which my vision should correlate to what is shown, portrayed by the camera. My awareness of camera angles to use has increased from research of unique camera angles from films and information sheets. As the film is a fictional and surrealistic one, cinematography was an important aspect I focused on to capture meaning, tailor the narrative, and imply character development and style from their portrayal. This is in contrast to my days in AS Media, in which the cinematography was not seen by me as bearing much importance except keeping the 180 degree rule, using conventional and predictable canted angles, and the sense of using them to keep interest from a single boring shot. Therefore, my higher level of awareness in cinematography has allowed me to become more sensitive in my approach as director to use cinematography as a tool for meaning and the 'glue' of the narrative.

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Also, now having been more experienced with cameras and having the chance to use a 760D, I became an active learner and opened up to techniques and tips from Ryu on using the camera, manual and auto focus, ISO basics, and the lighting manipulation available from scrolling. This would come to aid my personal preferences of blocking the composition of a scene.

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Editing

Editing was never my forte since AS Media. However, between then and GRATIFLY, I have had the chance to edit many sorts of projects (vlogs, fun videos, official professionals for the school, comedy skits, and a music video). This rare opportunity has taught me an incredible amount of knowledge and detail of using premiere, as well as improving my originally unclear understanding and liking of the editing process. Learning techniques of key framing, layering, colour grading (something I have never touched or cared for, but had to learn for a disco video I was editing- which made me appreciate the power of colour and its tone meaning, alike the micro elements, to the whole film), and the underrated but sublime warp stabiliser. Recently, I had learnt through the web on how to create a "shaking" or "earthquake motion" manually in post on premiere, using the directional blur aspect which I did not know was possible, but was elated to find.

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From last year onwards, I have been very fortunate to have had many roles and leadership positions related to media and editing projects of many genres, allowing me to explore the techniques I know of, and seeing what works well with which type. In addition, I am now inseparable from the key framing of scale and position technique; it is now my signature must-have in all videos I edit. So, editing has not only grown my knowledge of techniques to use, but also shaped me as a media producer of the editing role.

 

Relating to Gratifly, this proliferation of experience has allowed communications and my explanation of desired sequences to the cinematographer easier and more accurate, as we can both understand the same language and envision accurately with specific mentions to key terms that I would have ignored, dismissed or simply accept to avoid time consumption of the conversation in last year's coursework production. Now being able to grasp editing's techniques, able to apply them in real media projects, and appreciate the job of the editor, it is safe to say that my editing skills and awareness have equally improved to higher extents and are beneficial to production stages of storyboarding, cue sheets and discussion that require editing visions or terms.