FMP evaluation

Lewis Johnson

FMP Evaluation

Person ID: 32886

Learner registration number: 42994

Centre number: 47107

The start of my FMP project was, admittedly a false one, I began the project with the mind to create a dark drama in the vein of Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror and a number of Christopher Nolan movies, mainly Memento however. Black Mirror is a show that twists viewer perception by making audiences think they’re watching a true blue drama, whereas what you’re really seeing is a dark commentary on the current state of TV and technology, mainly pertaining to reality TV formats, I found that this was an interesting concept so I decided to try and adapt it for a short drama. The main concept for the script I produced was of an individual with split personalities, however we don’t know this yet, not until the end, my drama would mirror the techniques used in Black Mirror by suggesting things about the narrative, that are later turned completely upside down. Christopher Nolan uses these types of plot twist frequently as well, but this isn’t why I took him as inspiration, I was more inspired by the deeply psychological style of film making that Christopher Nolan has adopted, he even went so far as to put an interesting psychological slant on the Batman series.

I definitely wanted to try and emulate the way Christopher Nolan likes to present a full picture of his characters psychological issues and then craft an interesting plot twist around it. The whole storyline for my piece was, as mentioned before, an individual suffering from split personality disorder (unbeknownst to the audience) who then begins to receive letters from an anonymous sender, the letters pertain to the individual’s dead girlfriend, she was murdered however they never uncovered who it actually was. We slowly uncover clues to the individual’s mental state, little quirks such as spinning a coin and looking intently at his own reflection, as if perplexed by it, point to much deeper problems. At the end of the film we would discover that he was the one who murdered his wife and then the character would have a confrontation with himself in the mirror, which would lead to a certain degree of emotional closure and catharsis. The film would include a great deal of flashbacks which would feature the individual’s girlfriend and would shed extra light on past events involving the two, with a big focus on illustrating the situation leading up to her death. After completing the script I began looking for actors and locations, the actor I had in mind for the main character was Peter Quinn who has worked with a few students in our year in the past, I felt as if he could channel the dark and twisted undercurrent that I needed for the character.

lnitially I wanted my mother to play the part of the individual’s girlfriend, I thought this was idea as their ages essentially matched up perfectly; however I soon realised that this wasn’t at all plausible as she finds it difficult to exert herself and the part would require that she move around a lot. In future I need to plan ahead much better so as not to waste time in trying to use actors and actresses that aren’t available, or just aren’t a plausible choice for the part. Regardless, after meeting with Peter Quinn it was clear that he was very enthusiastic and excited about the project, this was highly encouraging, so I immediately began to look for suitable locations, I had a number of potential places I mind that were ideal, one of them being Lee Stewart’s house (a fellow student) as it was undergoing minor construction at the time, this meant it had a suitably gritty look to it that was perfect for the individuals home. I also planned to use my own house for the flashback section, I decided to use my house because it was a start contrast to Lee’s and represented a better time for these characters.  The script also called for locations such as graveyard for the scene wherein in the individual visits the grave of his dead girlfriend. After securing the locations I got to work on securing another actress for the girlfriend role, luckily Alex had already secured a suitable actress for his short drama, Heather-Ashton Rowell, a local artist who had in the past worked with multiple students, she was ideal and immediately agreed to play the part, I was extremely glad to have solved the issue and couldn’t wait to get started.

However I wasn’t in the clear yet, as I quickly faced some more issues, one of the locations fell through and time was quickly running out, I was adamant that I would continue with the film and complete it. However it was only after a meeting with Alex and a tutor that I realised I had to do something to solve this problem, as quickly as possible, we discussed the possibility of simply joining production groups in order to produce one short film, by using all of our collective efforts we realised we would be able save time and produce a better drama. This was ideal as we were already part of the same production company; the newly formed ‘Hoodlum Creations’. So it was decided that I would shelve my project and transfer over to Alex’s, this was fine by me as his film was very similar to mine in that it was a dark drama with a twist, I was immediately interested in the concept and was very enthusiastic about working on it. Jordan also had a similar problem and followed the same solution, I was a lot more comfortable with allowing myself more space for continuing my film in the summer, that said I was still admittedly rather disappointed in the fact that I allowed my schedule to slip and endanger the entire project, in future I need to make sure that I have all the required assets prepared as soon as possible and I need to make doubly sure that I don’t take gamble with casting like I did this time, it also took me quite a long time just to finalise the concept from the research I gathered, it took me a long time to become comfortable with how the story was planned out. This lack of confidence stemmed from the fact that I decided to go for a non-linear narrative, this often made it difficult to properly decide which pieces of the story needed to go where. I’m happy with the way it turned out though and it remains a project that I’m still committed to completing over the holidays.

Work began on Alex’s project, I was given the role of co-director and sound engineer, whilst also setting up most of the lighting, at first I was worried by the idea of moving onto a pre-existing project, I thought I wouldn’t get much work, but that wasn’t true as I found I instantly had much to do. The concept behind Alex’s film was of an apocalyptic drama that revolves around two brothers struggling to stay afloat in a world that has been devastated by an untold cataclysm; I thought this was a very interesting narrative which provided much scope for emotional concepts and scenes. The bulk of the film was to take place in a basement underneath the main characters’ house; this is where they take refuge and shelter from the disaster above. As such the first job was to set up lighting down there; we went with orange filters so as to simulate the effect of a gentle candle light, which the brothers were relying on after the power had been knocked out. I thought this was going to look perfect, however in my opinion in ended up looking far too orange on camera, we didn’t have any other filters that were suitable so we instead were forced to fix it in post-production. This was very surprisingly effective; we did eventually achieve the desired effect and made it look as if the whole basement was being lit via candle light.

Other issues cropped up such as a few continuity errors, the main one being during the scene in the corridor between Peter Quinn’s character and one of the brothers, during lunch someone put a bottle on a side table, which later showed up blatantly in the middle of the scene, this compromised continuity and we weren’t able to edit around it either. I learnt that you need to be much more vigilante when it comes objects around the set and consistency, there’s always a risk of the smallest objects cropping up and almost ruining a shot. We also had continuity issues with lighting from room to room, there’s a scene where the two brothers are fighting in a brightly lit, vibrant living room setting, afterwards we go to a corridor scene where the lighting is noticeably different and you can almost tell that we shot at different times in the day, we were also able to save this through editing but it’s something else to think about in future. In hindsight we probably could have brought the lighting equipment upstairs from the basement to improve the exposure on the characters, but in the interest of time we simply trucked on a shot the scene, we wanted to get it done quickly as the actors had started laughing frequently during the scene, which set us back quite markedly.

Overall, I think I could improve by not taking on too many projects at the same time; this is what led to me having to drop my own project and move onto one; however this wasn’t all bad as it still allowed me a large amount of creative freedom during production as I got to be co-director, this allowed me have my own input on the project and let me change things where I thought necessary. The final stage of the film is putting it in the exhibition; this will allow multiple members of the public to view it and it will give us a chance to generate a lot of feedback pertaining to how we did on the film. The only problem being that the film contains quite a lot of swearing and adult themes so it’s not possible for us to show the film on the cinema setup provided, instead the whole thing will be shown on a separate MAC station, hopefully this won’t compromise the amount of who watch the film.