Josh's Great Blog. You'll have so much fun.: 2009

For my project I decided I would do a music-driven production based on Bob Dylan’s song “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts”. My strong emphasises were on mise-en-scene and editing. I wanted it to be thrilling and hoped the strong, fast-paced narrative would help this.
To get what I wanted for mise-en-scene, I had to do hours of thinking about set design and trying out different things at the venue where I filmed. The bar scene where Big Jim and the Jack play cards took about an hour of trying things out to get a set I liked. We had brought lots of different colours of table-cloth to try and had three different tables to try too. In the end we settled for a maroon colour for the table because it had the feeling of darkness and mystery, and it had the connotations of blood. Also it wasn’t too bright and didn’t pull the audiences attention away from the action. Looking for places to film was quite hard. My main base was The Puppet Theatre Barge on which I had asked to film. This proved excellent, as it had an atmosphere of drama about it, being a theatre, and also had several different, good places for sets too. I used the foyer, backstage and the auditorium.

I also had to get hold of all the costumes by asking friends & family, and going around charity shops & costume shops. Make-up was also a big feature I had to work on make-up design for a long time and had to portray my creative vision to Anastasia Davis who did make-up for me. This was good except that every time I wanted to shoot even one odd shot somewhere, make-up had to be put on, and this could take up to 30 minutes.
Overall though, I felt that the mise-en-scene I worked so hard on actually paid off at the end.
Watching the film, the influences on mise-en-scene from Shelly Love's 'The Forgotten Circus' are clear. The Make-up i've used is very carnivalesque and many of the costumes reflect this theatrical theme. In the second verse especially, you can see these play a big role in creating a situation and setting for the film.

Filming was hard to organise. There were roughly fifteen people in the cast, and to organise them all was very difficult. The second verse was the one I needed the most people for, so I did that one all on one day. To organise that, I phoned all members of the cast a week before and then a day before too. Then I told them exactly how to get to the Puppet Theatre Barge and let most of them make their own way there. On set, controlling a group of people who were all my friends and who I would normally be messing about with was hard. I had to play a firm but pleasant role and tried to get them to do what I wanted without being aggressive or making them feel like I was ordering them about. I got better at this as the filming went on. I saw how these skills improved because the last scene I shot was the scene with the backstage manager character. The actor playing him was very reluctant to do anything exposing and I had to work hard to get him to act. I know that if I had shot his scene first, I wouldn’t have got out of him what I had once I had honed my directing skills.

Originally, I was going to use Bob Dylan’s version of the song, as it would have been easier. But then I decided I wanted the production to be mine and not a compliment to someone else’s work. So I decided to record the track myself. I did the guitar, organ, harmonica and vocal parts to the track leaving two music teachers doing the bass and drum parts. I recorded the backing first, and then the vocals. I had trouble with levels, and spent a good hour in the studio mixing the song and getting the different tracks to the right level. For instance, the drum track was much too loud and you couldn’t hear the harmonica at all to start with. Once this had been done I converted the track to an Mp3 file and imported it into Final Cut Pro. I then edited the film in time with the track. This took a long time and I encountered problems when speeding up and slowing down footage because when I did this all the video tracks would move slightly, placing them out of time with the track. This was very annoying but I solved the problem by editing the speed before placing it in the timeline. This worked fine.

Watching the film, I see parts of it which are exactly as I saw them in my imagination. The atmosphere created by the film is how I would have liked it. The desaturation I put on in, and the video noise and soft edges worked together to make an overall feel of mystery, ambiguousness and made the film feel old. This was what I wanted. Audience who watch it give me this feedback. One big decision I made half way through doing the editing was to change the saturation. Initially I had decided to do the film in black and white. I felt this made the film feel more old and reflected the old charlie chaplin films. However, when I discovered more uses to the desaturation tool, I realised I could desaturate 80% as opposed to 100%. This gave the film a hint of colour, which seemed much more mysterious than just plain black and white. It no longer looked like an old-style silent movie, but it had a new mystical air which reflected the plot and lyrics. I liked this a lot more and have kept to this.
I only discovered how to do the video noise about halfway through the project. I had wanted an effect like Jonathan Vardi's in 'Somedays' by Regina Spektor but not been able to achieve it either through lack of knowledge in Final Cut Pro or lack of effect in the standard program provided. So i decided to put a layer of semi-transparent video-noise over the top of everything. This gave it a grainy effect which wasn't quite what i'd seen in many of Jonathan Vardi's videos and wasn't perfect but it was all i could achieve and it ended up quite good seeing as it wasn't too intrusive.

I felt overall that my film was a success. It achieved my aims in telling a story and creating an atmosphere of ambiguity, mystery and old-style film and the audience reacted with the rapt and captivated air which I was hoping for.