Digital Media Arts ProjectPrototype

Name: Charles LwangaStudent Number: 2813691Course: Digital Media Arts

Creating a short Film.

Why create a short Film?

The reason I wanted to create a short film is because I have recently, become more passionate about video production. Seeing is believing, this is one of the aspects in today’s culture and society. Visual communication has to be one of the most powerful forms. Unless we don’t see an event hap-pen then we find it very difficult to believe what is said to us without any visuals. Are eyes are seen as one of the most useful and powerful sense we have and use, by seeing we generate ideas, and feelings towards different images we see.

“Our eyes are now seen as valuable targets for visual content—messages written in light that reach out to tickle our retinas and thus our minds—hoping to make an impression. Visu-al communication comes in many forms, many of which are designed to entertain us through moving images, such as film, television, and video games. Visual technologies such as these have become quite sophisticated......”

S.Few, P1.

Outline of Final Project

My final major project will be a short film, which should be approximately around three to five minutes long. The reason I have chosen to focus on developing a short film is because I want to understand the process of a simple idea can be transmit-ted and produced into a visual story. At this point I knew that I wanted to create a short film, but generating an idea somewhat very challenging and difficult.

I finally come up with an idea and concept to focus on my Final project. The idea was to create a short film based around a Parkour and Free running artist. This was watching a film District 13. District 13 is a French film based around two mean, which try to bring peace between five gangs and the government, after the corrupt government agents try to set them up.

Click box for district 13 trailer

My inspiration come from one of the actors called David belle who acts as Leito in the film. After doing some research about parkour and free run-ning I found out that, David Belle was in fact the person who establish the art of Parkour from the teachings he learned from his father.

Clickon image to find out more infromation about David Belle

David Belle

At this point I started I watched some of Da-vid Belle videos on youtube.com and other parkour and free running artists to understand a little more about the art. My understanding from my findings was being about to manoeu-vre from one point to another point by using all the space and surroundings around you.

Clickon image to to watch video of David Belle.

The form of film I want to create will be fast paced film, almost like an action film but without all the explosions and car crashes, but with the movement of the actor maneuvering through space and his sur-roundings. The narrative has not been 100% confirmed at this time because I am working closely with my actor or artist to generate ideas for a good story line, which is doable and compiling and exciting. But once the final idea is conformed then I will be able to effectively cre-ate a short film which I hope will visual communicated my message and idea, so that the audience is able to understand the message.

Provisional Idea

A idea that I have come up with at this moment is, I wanted to create a narrative whereby someone is chasing someone and they are trying to get away almost like some of the scenes in district 13, and when the chase is happening I would want to capture some different angles of filming such as close ups, long shots, first person view and many more to have different feel to the film. I would also want to make the film very fast passed at some points of the film.

Provisional scenesOne of the scenes that I would like to cap-ture the events is at the abandoned flats in elephant and caste, one of the reasons is because its more of less completely empty, also there are great parts of the old estate where you are able to film for example if the storage, on top of buildings, small bridg-es and more.

Another scene that I will like to film at is Blue Water shopping centre car park, one because its really big and the lighting is great, and also I would like to capture the actor running in and out cars as he is being chased.

Another scene I would like to capture is to film in zone 1, 2. Therefore we have a dif-ferent environment, from example a council estate such as the flats in elephant and cas-tle, but to more of a contemporary area or estate.

I would also like to get a scene whereby there is a lot of people in the area, for ex-ample a high street.

Another scence i would like to film would be an abandoned bulding of houes, if possable.

Elephant and castleflats

Jevgenij Goda (Jj Goda)

JJ Goda is the free running artist that i will be working with in my short film.

click image to view JJ Goda doing free running.

Prototype

click on image to view prototype.

http://vimeo.com/33656442

This is showing some parkour and free running that JJ Goda done, just to show you what he is able to do. The way he moves around and over objects is how I will like production to be.

click on image to view prototype.

http://vimeo.com/33656397

This is show how I would want JJ Goda to go through a door and come out of a new place.

To achieve the best quality work I know I have to choose the best possible locations to film the production. Also I have to make sure I plan ahead before going out to film so that I know exactly what I have to do, to make sure I stay on top of the production rather then just going out to film without any structure to the day.

My weakness would be having an advanced understanding, knowledge, skills and abilities within the video and motion graphics produc-tion, and also maybe having the confidence and knowledge to us the equipment to its best ability in terms on creating a short video. Another weakness Is knowing how to effectively use the software that comes with video production and motion graphics, to its full potential. Also knowing how to use a video camera to its full potential and also directing the production effectively. Therefore I have to improve my skills within the han-dling of a video camera, improve my directing skills, software skills and also time manage-ment.

The target audience for my short film will be young people between 14 and onwards. Because I am using a free runner for my production I am sure people that like and sup-port this time of art will also be interested in watching the production. My production will the purely visual I hope to create a fast moving or fast paced movie to keep the audience attention and fast moving shoots and angels. One another option I have been thinking about is creating a website for the production that will showcase the work.

Bibliography

Stephen Few2006. Visual Communication, [Online] http://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/Whitepapers/Visual_Communication.pdf ac-cessed [09 November 2011]