Chase Scene - HUMAN BE'ANS

HUMAN BE'ANS

Director's Reflection:

The attempted message I was trying to communicate with this film was that people’s actions and decisions are grey. Personal ethics and values can be interpreted in countless ways, and I wanted to show that in my film. To achieve this visually, I took out most of the color in this film, nearing black and white. It polarized the characters from their location and forced the audience to watch them closely (this also made it so the characters were literally grey). I think, however, that most of the cues for this theme came from the story itself, and character interaction. I don’t know if I can attribute much to the visual elements. The extreme wide angles, however, accomplished exactly what I wanted. It showed the character’s varying speeds and allowed the viewer to understand that a character would likely be caught.

When scheduling the shoot for this film, my location demanded a lot of natural light. The only real day that could work was Saturday, and my goodness, Saturday’s weather was abysmal. I very nearly cancelled the shoot for another day, but decided along with my actors and crew to go through with it anyway. As the film shows, the weather was miserably cold. To compensate for the cold, I constantly shuffled my actors and crew into the heated vehicles. I have to say, if my role on this shoot was strictly 1^st AD, I did incredibly well keeping a decent shooting schedule and shuffling people who had to be outside. But because of this, I didn’t allow much time for more than one take per shot. I think the biggest thing I learned through this shoot is that even though the weather may be atrocious and you’re trying to keep everyone comfortable, you need to still be the ubiquitous winged witness. There are a couple shot transitions that don’t work super well, and I don’t think I devoted enough (hardly any) direction to my actors.

I’m actually rather happy that we still did the shoot, regardless of miserable weather. The original film I was drawing inspiration from for this short was The Book Of Eli (2010), with isolating landscape shots. The weather gave it a kinship to the apocalypse of The Road (2009), and I really like how cold it actually ends up feeling while watching it. I took Brad Barber’s advice in TMA 185 to just shoot even if the weather is bad, and you’ll likely be happy with the result. I was! But I spent too much time worrying about how people felt while we were shooting and organizing the shots we did in what order than I did on directing my actors.

If I could remake this piece, I would craft a warmer wardrobe for my actors, change a few shots for continuity and order, and spend as much time directing as I do organizing the shoot. Also, I think I relied on dialogue to communicate the story more than action or shot style. And! After my actress drops her gun I don’t have a shot that shows her pulling out a knife, and the few people I’ve screened it to so far ask me what it was she was holding. I needed to have that shot, and I just didn’t.