Friday, 21 March 2014

It happened in a frame...




This is the outcome for the first collaborative project of Unit X.  The task was to produce a 90 second to 2 minute film following the life of a real or fictional character. The footage had to conform to the Dogme 95 Manifesto: using only real occurrences (no violence or murder), using only real sound, no props, no filters or lighting, and only simplistic editing. 
I was in one of the smaller teams, as I worked with Alex Davies to devise the narrative, settings and shooting, our friend Sam Whitham acting as"Edward". 

We considered several characters to film including the "homeless hipster" who searches the Northern Quarter for a higher class of rubbish to survive and a "Wild man" who decides to leave his life in normal society and run away to the woods. Eventually we decided to tell the story of Edward, an ex-student who sleeps rough and returns to his halls of residence each night to satisfy his strange fascination with the people who have replaced him. 

The story is quite bizarre and some of the scenes within the film are a little disturbing but it was incredibly fun and rewarding to make. It was the first time I have created a film like this and the project has inspired me to try it again. I think the Dogme 95 Manifesto, whilst restrictive, was a really useful method of making us carefully consider the use of sound and light in a true-to-life environment and resulted in a more interesting aesthetic. After watching the other groups videos I am unsure whether our film was what our tutors expected, but I for one am very pleased with the result.


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