Learnings from a Product Shoot

We filmed a product shoot! The idea behind the project was to make a 15-second spot which either sells a particular product or sells the idea and feeling that the product show represents. However, more than an exercise in learning how to advertise, it was an exercise in lighting and making an object look as great as we possibly could. Foolishly, the object that we chose to showcase, mostly at my insistence, was a snowglobe. If you don’t understand why this was a brave and foolish decision, then you are not alone, because neither did we. Or should I say neither did I, because, as the director of photography, the problems that we encountered were almost solely in my department of camera and lighting.

I honestly didn’t think that our TVC would take us as long as it did to shoot. I realised that some commercials take quite a long time to film, but I was under the impression that most were handily shot within a day, and were often much closer to a half day project. I failed to take into account how difficult making the light dynamic and interesting on a mostly still image would be, especially given that I’m not really amazing at creating interesting and dynamic lighting setups. I’m confident with designing basic lighting setups, and can set up lights, but designing complicated lighting setups is a bit beyond me, just because I don’t understand how it all works and fits together, and the effects that each light has on the image recorded, but this is something I’m working on improving. Based on this lack of understanding, I failed to realise just how difficult lighting a spherical glass object would be, even though I did some preliminary research into the topic. Furthermore, we did a test shoot a couple days before the actual shoot, and even in the space of a few hours of messing about with lighting the snow globe for camera for the first time, I learned a lot about how the globe reflects light and colour from every angle. Doing a test shoot was a massive assistance to me in making the actual setup much easier and run smoother, but even so, the actual shoot went much longer and was much more intricate than I had thought it would be. With the help of industry professionals who were there to help us make everything look amazing, we eventually got a lighting setup that we all agreed was good enough, given our alarming lack of time and therefore need to rush a bit towards the end of the day. However, this setup that we ended up with was very different to what I originally had planned to execute for the day.Better, certainly, but also very different, further highlighting my relative inexperience at creating these complex lighting setups.

 One of the images we used as our original inspiration. Closer to the original concept than what we ended up creating.

 

I’m choosing to look at this as a good thing, though. Now that I’m acutely aware of where I most need to improve, I can make sure to improve it. With specific regards to lighting and designing lighting setups, there are several different ways I can see to improve my practice. There is always the option of book learning, of study and research and learning technical specifications of lights and cameras and how these interact in different situations to create different effects. Which is totally viable, and a definite starting point, but it’s not really something that really gets me enthused to try it, which is probably just a personal bias against research. The other option I see which seems a lot more fun and interesting, and is something I think I would learn a lot from regardless of the actual outcome, is to actually go out with lights and try to create all sorts of different effects and aesthetics. This is what I enjoy doing anyway, messing about with different equipment setups just to see what would happen, more or less. The potential problem of this approach is not only that transporting the lights around is difficult and time-consuming (lights in cases take up quite a lot of room and can be quite heavy), and there’s no real guarantee that you are going to learn anything particularly useful after all the effort you put in. Despite this, it’s still the way I would prefer to go because I feel like anything that I do learn or discover will stay with me a lot better if I’m physically creating it, not just reading it off a page or website.

As a group, we made the choice to have the camera pan across the snow globe, once along the top of the globe and another along the base. We also elected for the pan to move one way along the base and opposite way along the globe, which we chose to increase interest and make the globe appear more dynamic and in motion. This choice is something that has been questioned by some of the people who have seen the finalised product but is a decision that I stand behind. Not just blindly as well, we did test out options in the editing room of both the two pans going opposite ways and the two pans going opposite ways, and as a group decided that the going opposite ways were more aesthetically appealing.

 Another reference image, still close to the original Winter Wonderland theme we envisioned before reconsidering.

 

We chose the overall green and red colour scheme of the spot to represent and intensify the feeling of Christmas that the globe enjoys. The surface that the globe sits on was decided to be snow to capture a sense of wonder and magic that seems inherent with a white Christmas, but included the presents and Christmas tree with baubles and fairy lights, in the foreground and background respectively, to keep the situation relevant to Australians like us, as we don’t experience white Christmases. The fairy lights provide more interest to the background and play well with the shining and sparkling baubles on the tree as well as all being situated around the snow globe in the frame, with only black curtain behind the globe in order to highlight the ‘snow’ falling in the globe, and not obfuscate it or lose details in an overly busy frame. Finally, in post we added 2 different layers of snow falling outside of the globe, with one layer placed ‘in front’ of the globe and one ‘behind’. The idea behind this was to add depth to the frame, add more movement to the shots, and to enhance the feeling of the ‘winter wonderland’ aesthetic that we were going for. I think that this is the part of the composition that works best, and really adds a great deal to the production value and the aesthetic of the shot, and I have to commend our editor for the work he put in to learn how to create that effect and in implementing it.

 Now we’re getting closer to the final product, but not Christmas related enough for us.

 

Honestly most of the problems we had stemmed from a lack of time, so if we could have secured a longer time period (like an additional ~2-3 hours) to complete the filming in, many of our problems could have been resolved to a higher standard. Another issue we ran into was the camera we chose to use did not have significant slow motion capability or high frame rate recording capability, so a limiting factor for us became the speed that the ‘snow’ in the globe settled,  which only took a couple of seconds each time it was disturbed. Also, even during our test shoot we didn’t test shooting with the macro lens, and so only discovered on the real shoot that those shots looked awful and so were unusable in our final result. A further thing we should have done during our test shoot was practiced, refined and improved the method we used to shake up the snow in the globe, and so not ended up with several takes which were unusable because the globe was facing a different direction to previous takes, or the snow in the globe was not disturbed or shaken up enough to create interest or effect. Mostly it came down to not treating our test shoot as exactly the same as our actual shoot because all the things we didn’t take into account for the test shoot showed up as problems for the real one. The final issue that caused us any major annoyance was we were really wishing all the way through the shoot that we had brought with us a single large enough piece of poly to create the white outline effect on the glass, instead of ramshackling together what poly we had, which gave an uneven and incomplete outline of sheen around the edge of the globe. The reason we didn’t is that this was not the way I had originally planned to light the globe, and so we were just unprepared when we were told that the single large piece of poly is the way it’s done.

 Now this, this is almost as close as we came via reference image. The main differences we aimed for was looking less busy inside the globe itself and more things populating the foreground.

 

Overall, this project is something that I am quite proud of and impressed with, because I think that we did a good job with what we chose to do, despite coming into the project without really knowing what we were getting into. The final product that we ended up with is definitely not perfect, but what we ended up releasing is something that I am definitely pretty happy with, particularly the framing, lighting and camerawork, the part I did. More than just ending up with a final product to show off, the whole experience was a very informative and I feel I learned a lot from it, particularly about lighting, but also about beauty shots in general. I’m glad that I took on this project and chose to highlight a difficult object to light because I think that is why I learned all that I did from the exercise. If it had been really easy and I could have done it all perfectly with no help, what would the point of the exercise have been? If this is something that interests you at all, I encourage you to give it a go and see what you learn through the process. I promise that it’s well worth the effort!

Experimental Filming – Full

Over the past week or so, I have been planning and also filming and editing a short, experimental film together in a group of four. From conceptualisation to screening, the entire process took place over the course of 7 days, which is a fast turnaround and doesn’t give a huge amount of flexibility in the ability to do pickups, nor leave a huge amount of time for post production. The film went from being nothing but a concept in my head to having a rough cut within a single day, taking about 7 hours in total. The day felt a lot longer than that up until the point were rushing through trying to get a finished project uploaded, where it felt like we hadn’t had any time at all. I loved every minute of it. A stressful day to be certain, but I wouldn’t want it any other way. This was my directorial debut, the first media to ever come out with me listed as the director, and was, as such, a project incomparable for me.

Before I get into a lot of behind the scene type talk and so you understand the context, watch the 2-minute film:

 

Being the director of this project and being in charge of the whole production was easily both at once my favourite and least favourite position on a film that I’ve ever held, and it’s all for the same reason: as director, it all ultimately falls to me. The director is in control of the production and the ultimate arbiter of taste, meaning the final product is an expression of the director’s. This is especially true for me in the case of this film because in addition to being the director and teller of the story, I also did all the cinematography and lighting as well as crafting the story of the film with help from the others in my crew. Despite all this responsibility, I loved it and greatly enjoyed directing, and will pursue directing again. The biggest trouble I have directing is that sometimes there is a translation issue from what’s in my head to what gets communicated to others. While I love the control and ability to tell the story my way that directing gives me, all the clear and yet concise communication required is something I think that I’m particularly adept at yet. I seem to struggle the most communicating specifics of my wants and wishes with others, but generalities are easy. Again, this problem could be more closely tied to this specific film than to my directing in general, as the entirety of this film is relating abstract concepts to specific objects, and I have no other directing experience of my own to compare to. The director needs to have the vision of the piece (which I did) and to guide the rest of the crew through the creation of this vision (which is where I fell down a little). Some of this is down to practice, certainly, but I also think that there are things I can do to try and improve outside of set as well.

Because this project was an experimental film, I got a glimpse behind the curtain of what the creative process for these less ‘standard’ films could be like. The conversations we were having about this project during its creation were totally different to the conversations I’ve had in any of my other projects. Creative conversations about more traditional narrative films revolve around the characters, their internal motivations and how to get this across on-screen, and around the beats of the story, the arcs involved. Every conversation is about “How does this help the story?” This is not a negative in any way, this is the way it has to be. But with this experimental film, where the story was told entirely symbolically, the conversations were all about “Does this show what we are trying to show?”, along with the ever present fearful “Does our meaning come across at all?” This is something I haven’t really appreciated before, as the projects I have been a part of before this one had fairly literal stories. The transfer from the question of “How can we best tell this story?” to “Can we tell this story?” is not an insignificant one, and I think one that will become more and more important to carefully consider as I work on more and more complicated stories and methods of telling them. Happily though, in this case, I firmly believe we succeeded in telling the story we set out to. Backing this up, all the feedback that we have received so far on this film has been overwhelmingly positive, and the meaning we were trying to express has been picked up by the audience without feeling forced or overbearing.

The main point that I picked up on from this process is that even when the style of film is changed, and the literal is ignored in favour of the symbolic, audiences are still capable of picking up on the meanings intrinsic to the film. That even though the style of the film may be fluid and unusual compared to what the audience is used to seeing, that doesn’t automatically make the film impossible to watch, enjoy or understand. Style is something that can be messed around with and does not have to be secondary to narrative in all respects. Narrative is not the be-all and end-all of all films. The other key point which I had driven home to me is that an audience is intelligent enough to understand symbolism within films and can be trusted to make an interpretation of what they have seen. Maybe this is just the cynic in me, but this was not something I took for granted, and so throughout the whole planning and filming process, I was worried that our meaning would be far too abstract for the audience to catch on. This project showed me that the things that are most important to a director (in this case the symbolism involved in the film and the metaphor itself) will shine through, as they are the things that most time and effort are put into.

There were quite a few films, both feature-length and short, that inspired me in the creation of this short film and influenced the ideas generated, but I’ll list some of the standouts. Primary amongst my inspirations was French new wave cinema (or my generalised understanding of it) especially the films of Jean Luc Godard, the filmmaker of that era whom I have seen the most work of, from which I took a lot of inspiration for the editing style,  pacing and tone, which in turn influenced how I believed the story should be told. ‘The Alphabet’ by David Lynch was another inspiration, from which I took the potential power of using pure symbolism in the film, and experiencing the hold that had. Despite the meaning wasn’t clear upon first viewing in Lynch’s short film did not in any way dissuade the viewer from the knowledge that there was meaning hidden within the piece, and that it was okay to have to decipher the film. The meaning didn’t have to be literal; a very freeing concept once embraced. Finally, Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, particularly the pre-man and post-Jupiter segments, the less narrative sections, which proved that meaning could be understandable upon first viewing without detracting from the quality of the work. That is, making something indecipherable was not automatically the same as making something worthwhile.

Some of these inspirations come across in simple ways: I think that the editing is reminiscent of the editing of French New Wave cinema, even if the style of film is vastly different. The film is entirely symbolic in order to get across a meaning without being blatantly obvious with the message. The lack of literal elements within the film makes the meaning less clear, but the meaning shines through clearly enough that the audiences we have shown the film to have grasped the meaning without an intense analysis or breakdown required. Additionally, I made the choice to use champagne as the liquid the objects are dropping into as champagne has the air of high class about it. By that, I mean that champagne is seen as a sophisticated drink which is consumed by the successful, who is the prime target of the meaning of the film.

However, despite all of this positive feedback and things I think we did well, it is far from a perfect film, and there are things I believe we could have done better. The objects which we dropped into the champagne could have been more specifically chosen rather than being whatever we had to hand, and so could have been used to add another layer to the story by creating a profile of the person that owned the objects. This is something we tried to take into consideration with the objects that we had, but unfortunately thought of this too late and had to make do with what was available to us, and so it seemed more like trying to shape what we had rather than an intentional element. Additionally, while I like the edit that was presented, I do think that is still some tightening that we could do to really enhance what we have and improve it in a minor way. Finally, while there was reasoning and consideration put into the choice of liquid used, the meaning of using champagne specifically didn’t really come across. While this didn’t stop the whole meaning from translating to the audience, it is a detail that could be pushed to add a further layer to the film as a whole.

Despite these possible improvements, I am very pleased with what we produced in this film, especially considering the limited timeframe involved. As an added bonus, I greatly enjoyed participating in this project and am going to try and use it as a springboard for future projects as well as a learning exercise to use to improve my practice overall, and my directing specifically. For something that seems so simple, it is amazing the amount of depth that could be incorporated into it, and I certainly learned a lot from it.

A curation of mine.

This week I’m sharing some of my inspiration – namely short films that I enjoy. But it’s not really just that simple, just a casual enjoyment. This list is specifically focussed on short films which use a particular storytelling technique: they all lack dialogue. This is something that greatly interests me, as it forces another level of ingenuity upon the filmmaker, and forces them to rely upon the visuals in this visual media they are creating.

It’s an interesting challenge, and not one that I think is limited to live action films, so some (most, in fact) of these films on this list are actually animations. That doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

I encourage you to watch at least some of these. Well, I encourage you to watch all of these, but give at least some a watch. I hope you enjoy them as much or even more than I do.

 

Wire Cutters (2014)

Wire Cutters is a student film created by Jack Anderson, and regards a solitary robot on a desolate plain in a search for green gems when it meets a different robot, mining for the same gems. The amount of emotion that can be attributed to two characters that can only move their eyes is staggering.

Or watch it on the creators website:

http://www.jackanders.com/wire-cutters/

 

What’s on your mind? (2014)

The only live action short film on this list, What’s on your mind? deals with our online presence, specifically on Facebook, and how things may not always be as they seem. Using Facebook text and picture posts instead of dialogue, this piece uses contradictory images to great storytelling effect.

 

The Maker (2011)

The most highly awarded short film on this list, The Maker certainly makes a strong case for itself as to why this is. Awesome visual, stunning score and a deeply engrossing story make watching this some of the best 5 1/2 minutes you could spend. Seriously. Watch it.

Or go visit the creator’s website:

http://www.themakerfilm.com/

 

Balance (1989)

Directed and produced by German brothers Christoph and Wolfgang Lauenstein, Balance is the story of 5 identical beings trapped on precarious platform which shifts as they move about it, and the day one discovers a musical box. This is the oldest short film on this list, but it is well worth watching for the simplicity as well as the effectiveness of the storytelling.

 

Johnny Express (2014)

Ending on a lighter note, Johnny Express manages to be funny without having any dialogue. Well, almost no dialogue. This one is pushing that boundary a little, with a spaceship which reads out alarms and an alien answering the phone in an indecipherable language. But the main character, a lazy interplanetary delivery man, never says a word. But his actions say a whole lot.

 

References:

Anderson, J. (2014). Wire Cutters. Retrieved from http://www.jackanders.com/wire-cutters/

Higton, S. (2014). What’s on your mind?. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxVZYiJKl1Y

Kezelos, C. (2011). The Maker. Retrieved from http://www.themakerfilm.com/

Lauenstein, C., & Lauenstein, W. (1989). Balance. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CTesYaduBA

Woo, K., & Kim, J. (2014). Johnny Express. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSGZyRBpMBE