Component 3 Production: Evaluative Analysis
My production is a script for the short film: Sunbird – a film with a narrative twist. My main intention in writing Sunbird is to provoke reactions from the audience through the main ‘twist’ in the film. I wanted to write a film which shows the audience something recognisable to the key elements of the spy film genre so that they make assumptions about the narrative. The film is a story about mystery, and I wanted to design for an aesthetic to act as a visual metaphor for this theme.
The short films I have studied for my production are High Maintenance (Van, Germany, 2006), Pitch Black Heist (Maclean, UK, 2012), Stutterer (Cleary, UK, 2015), Connect (Abrahams, UK, 2010), and Night Fishing (Park, South Korea, 2011). Whilst they are all very different films, they all do share some commonalities in structure and in character development. I am choosing to focus on three films in my analysis as they are all ‘films with a twist’ and as such lead the audience to believe the film is heading in a direction before suddenly switching and going another way.
The most obvious example of this is with The Gunfighter where it has all the expected conventions of the Western genre, including a narrator (in a nod to more modern westerns), and then subverts the genre by having the narrator narrate the thoughts of the characters. The film continues to break the fourth wall by having the characters interact with the disembodied narrator. Interestingly the twist in this film comes early in the narrative. I was impressed with the early twist and wanted to use something similar to surprise the audience, but at the end. That is why I designed the main characters to wear smart clothes to match the spy movie genre. The main character Blair also portrays characteristics of a spy as she travels in smart cars and embarks on some kind of mission, creating a sense of mystery to the audience. Furthermore, she goes to meet with a man at a bar, this is a typical scene in most spy films and so the audience assumes that he is relevant to the mission.
Pitch Black Heist, by contrast, has a more conventional placement of the twist – towards the end of the film, which is what inspired me to use this feature. This film uses the conventions of the Heist genre (though plays with them), this genre has lots of overlapping features with the Spy genre and so I was able to take a lot of inspiration from it. Most of the exposition comes from their interactions and through their dialogue (which itself uses the established and expected terms and expressions of the genre). There is a lean quality about the dialogue, and this emphasizes character development through framing and through performance. This was a standout quality that I wanted to incorporate into my own script, and I feel my central character ‘Blair’ has this lean quality about her dialogue. Similarly, I liked the use of tracking shots to follow the central characters, and I felt that this was a good technique in the narrative development, and that I could use that same technique to push my story along.
High Maintenance is a film of multiple twists where the audience is presented with a standard dinner scene focused on two characters. The first twist comes when the male character is switched off, revealing him as a robot. The second comes when his replacement effectively switches roles with the female character and begins voicing the lines she spoke earlier in the film. A third twist comes when the female character is switched off, revealing her as a robot, and in a final twist the male replacement (designed to be everything the woman wanted) reverts to a male stereotype of watching TV with his feet up – an unexpected result. Structurally I liked the idea of the unexpected result, which is why, at the end of my film, when the audience was anticipating the reveal of what parcel Blair had to pick up for Eleanor, I had a yellow book slam shut, with the costume and setting instantly changing revealing that Blair was just an ordinary girl picking up something for her sister, and she had imagined it as being a spy mission. Furthermore, it is revealed that her meeting was just a tinder date.
It is worth noting that there is a wider twist with all these films in that they are initially presented in one form (broadly serious) and then they turn towards comedy (admittedly black comedy in some instances). Each also offers some form of social commentary. My film follows these themes as there is a twist that changes the tone from serious to more comedic, and provides a commentary on how the audience, and society as a whole, always seeks to find deep explanations for everything and assumes things when often things are just simple.
I wanted to begin Sunbird with a high degree of colour in the mise-en-scene, and naturalism in the performance, along the lines of Kill Bill: Volume 1 (Tarantino, US, 2003). Blair is seen as precise, perhaps sassy, and smart, and I used the opening dinner shots from High Maintenance as a device to show this. The difference, of course, is that Blair is sitting a table on a dinner date and the audience is led to assume by the text messages from Eleanor that this interaction is important to the mission. This is similar to the connection made in Spectre (Mendes, UK, 2015), when James Bond meets Madeleine Swann on the train.
There is a clear element of Liam Cunningham’s character (from Pitch Black Heist) in Blair, particularly in his increasingly witty state and reaction to an increasingly tricky situation. Blair’s attitude is similar to that of Sandra Bullock’s character from Ocean’s Eight (Ross, US, 2008). I tried to shoot the final sequence in the same way as the sequence from Pitch Black Heist, focusing on Blairt, tightly framed, and with little dialogue. Equally I used the tight framing on the two-shots from Pitch Black Heist in the two-shots with Blair and her date.
A lot of sequences in the film are shot largely with an iPhone and I was inspired to do this from watching Night Fisher that uses this technique throughout the whole film. I wanted to use it to give a contrast between the raw tone of the footage, to the fictional feel of the film, from the spy movie genre.
The opening shot is a birds eye view of Prague, I used this as an establishing shot, after I saw it used in my spy films, such as Skyfall (Mendes, UK, 2012) I coupled this with adding text in post-production, after I watched the the film Bourne Supremacy (Greengrass, US, 2004) in order to make the location obvious to the audience and create a factual serious tone. I selected this particular found footage as it featured bright colours which fits with the mise-en-scene that I was hoping to achieve within my film.
I got the idea for the phone call screen when I watched Run Lola Run (Tykwer , Germany, 1998). Their phone call scene didn’t feature the spilt-scene technique that mine did, but it did cut between the two characters speaking which is something I took inspiration from
My main intention in making Sunbird was to provoke reactions from the audience through the ‘twists’ in the film, and I think I achieved this. As in High Maintenance, the set-up of the film offers the audience something conventional, something relatable. Again, as in High Maintenance, their expectations are cheated with a twist in the form of the story and character being much more normal than perceived. This serves to offer social commentary (similar to the way my three chosen short films do), as audiences and society in general are quick to make assumptions and are obsessed with everything having a reason for happening than just being a coincidence- this is scene in the rising interest society has in ‘conspiracy theories’.
I chose to show the multiple versions of this character world (shown by the change in costume and surroundings) to emphasise the contrast in her exciting re-imagination of the mundane tasks she performs, but also to draw on the device from The Gunfighter of conforming to conventions of a clear genre. The genre is emphasised through the linear narrative and serious tone (shown through the dialogue). This not only increases the fictional element of the film, but also develops Blair’s character as witty and smart. It is this that is the inciting incident for him to leave his house and head to the church.
The montage sequence of Blair walking to collect to parcel is intended to emphasise her independence , and isolation from everyone else due to what the audience assume is her serious field of work. It is shots to focus the audience on her, and close up shots to show her characterisation through her walk and her clothing. This is most notable when she is walking down the corridor with heels and a smirk on her face.
She collects the parcel and hopefully the audience will assume that it is something of great importance. It is small and has a fragile sticker on it to add to the effect that is influenced by the cinematography of some sequences from Pitch Black Heist. After this Blair goes back to the car which is the concluding moment where it is revealed through both the visuals and the sound (both diegetic and non-diegetic) that she was a normal girl creating a fantasy in her mind. The music switches off from the quickening beat used to create an increasing tension in the audience (I read about this technique being used in Jaws (Spielberg, US, 1975), and decided to include it in my film). When Blair phones her sister that’s when the reason behind the fantasy is revealed, as she says that she reads too many spy books. This was a real challenge to film and I had to use pre-recorded footage. This is the weakest shot in the film, but quick cuts hopefully hide that and prevent it from distracting the audience from their willing suspension of disbelief.
In terms of fulfilling the brief, I feel that the end of the film is successful in giving the audience one big twist. The audiences questions are all answered, leaving a satisfying ending. A single shot, pan and track shows Blair driving away in her normal car. The scene was particularly hard to film as I wanted the camera to be in the exact same position, but we changed location and costume. This, coupled with the fact that her date was unrelated to her ‘mission’, is unexpected and should surprise the audience (like at the end of High Maintenance) – a twist designed to make the film more memorable, and provide narrative pleasure.
My production is a script for the short film: Sunbird – a film with a narrative twist. My main intention in writing Sunbird is to provoke reactions from the audience through the main ‘twist’ in the film. I wanted to write a film which shows the audience something recognisable to the key elements of the spy film genre so that they make assumptions about the narrative. The film is a story about mystery, and I wanted to design for an aesthetic to act as a visual metaphor for this theme.
The short films I have studied for my production are High Maintenance (Van, Germany, 2006), Pitch Black Heist (Maclean, UK, 2012), Stutterer (Cleary, UK, 2015), Connect (Abrahams, UK, 2010), and Night Fishing (Park, South Korea, 2011). Whilst they are all very different films, they all do share some commonalities in structure and in character development. I am choosing to focus on three films in my analysis as they are all ‘films with a twist’ and as such lead the audience to believe the film is heading in a direction before suddenly switching and going another way.
The most obvious example of this is with The Gunfighter where it has all the expected conventions of the Western genre, including a narrator (in a nod to more modern westerns), and then subverts the genre by having the narrator narrate the thoughts of the characters. The film continues to break the fourth wall by having the characters interact with the disembodied narrator. Interestingly the twist in this film comes early in the narrative. I was impressed with the early twist and wanted to use something similar to surprise the audience, but at the end. That is why I designed the main characters to wear smart clothes to match the spy movie genre. The main character Blair also portrays characteristics of a spy as she travels in smart cars and embarks on some kind of mission, creating a sense of mystery to the audience. Furthermore, she goes to meet with a man at a bar, this is a typical scene in most spy films and so the audience assumes that he is relevant to the mission.
Pitch Black Heist, by contrast, has a more conventional placement of the twist – towards the end of the film, which is what inspired me to use this feature. This film uses the conventions of the Heist genre (though plays with them), this genre has lots of overlapping features with the Spy genre and so I was able to take a lot of inspiration from it. Most of the exposition comes from their interactions and through their dialogue (which itself uses the established and expected terms and expressions of the genre). There is a lean quality about the dialogue, and this emphasizes character development through framing and through performance. This was a standout quality that I wanted to incorporate into my own script, and I feel my central character ‘Blair’ has this lean quality about her dialogue. Similarly, I liked the use of tracking shots to follow the central characters, and I felt that this was a good technique in the narrative development, and that I could use that same technique to push my story along.
High Maintenance is a film of multiple twists where the audience is presented with a standard dinner scene focused on two characters. The first twist comes when the male character is switched off, revealing him as a robot. The second comes when his replacement effectively switches roles with the female character and begins voicing the lines she spoke earlier in the film. A third twist comes when the female character is switched off, revealing her as a robot, and in a final twist the male replacement (designed to be everything the woman wanted) reverts to a male stereotype of watching TV with his feet up – an unexpected result. Structurally I liked the idea of the unexpected result, which is why, at the end of my film, when the audience was anticipating the reveal of what parcel Blair had to pick up for Eleanor, I had a yellow book slam shut, with the costume and setting instantly changing revealing that Blair was just an ordinary girl picking up something for her sister, and she had imagined it as being a spy mission. Furthermore, it is revealed that her meeting was just a tinder date.
It is worth noting that there is a wider twist with all these films in that they are initially presented in one form (broadly serious) and then they turn towards comedy (admittedly black comedy in some instances). Each also offers some form of social commentary. My film follows these themes as there is a twist that changes the tone from serious to more comedic, and provides a commentary on how the audience, and society as a whole, always seeks to find deep explanations for everything and assumes things when often things are just simple.
I wanted to begin Sunbird with a high degree of colour in the mise-en-scene, and naturalism in the performance, along the lines of Kill Bill: Volume 1 (Tarantino, US, 2003). Blair is seen as precise, perhaps sassy, and smart, and I used the opening dinner shots from High Maintenance as a device to show this. The difference, of course, is that Blair is sitting a table on a dinner date and the audience is led to assume by the text messages from Eleanor that this interaction is important to the mission. This is similar to the connection made in Spectre (Mendes, UK, 2015), when James Bond meets Madeleine Swann on the train.
There is a clear element of Liam Cunningham’s character (from Pitch Black Heist) in Blair, particularly in his increasingly witty state and reaction to an increasingly tricky situation. Blair’s attitude is similar to that of Sandra Bullock’s character from Ocean’s Eight (Ross, US, 2008). I tried to shoot the final sequence in the same way as the sequence from Pitch Black Heist, focusing on Blairt, tightly framed, and with little dialogue. Equally I used the tight framing on the two-shots from Pitch Black Heist in the two-shots with Blair and her date.
A lot of sequences in the film are shot largely with an iPhone and I was inspired to do this from watching Night Fisher that uses this technique throughout the whole film. I wanted to use it to give a contrast between the raw tone of the footage, to the fictional feel of the film, from the spy movie genre.
The opening shot is a birds eye view of Prague, I used this as an establishing shot, after I saw it used in my spy films, such as Skyfall (Mendes, UK, 2012) I coupled this with adding text in post-production, after I watched the the film Bourne Supremacy (Greengrass, US, 2004) in order to make the location obvious to the audience and create a factual serious tone. I selected this particular found footage as it featured bright colours which fits with the mise-en-scene that I was hoping to achieve within my film.
I got the idea for the phone call screen when I watched Run Lola Run (Tykwer , Germany, 1998). Their phone call scene didn’t feature the spilt-scene technique that mine did, but it did cut between the two characters speaking which is something I took inspiration from
My main intention in making Sunbird was to provoke reactions from the audience through the ‘twists’ in the film, and I think I achieved this. As in High Maintenance, the set-up of the film offers the audience something conventional, something relatable. Again, as in High Maintenance, their expectations are cheated with a twist in the form of the story and character being much more normal than perceived. This serves to offer social commentary (similar to the way my three chosen short films do), as audiences and society in general are quick to make assumptions and are obsessed with everything having a reason for happening than just being a coincidence- this is scene in the rising interest society has in ‘conspiracy theories’.
I chose to show the multiple versions of this character world (shown by the change in costume and surroundings) to emphasise the contrast in her exciting re-imagination of the mundane tasks she performs, but also to draw on the device from The Gunfighter of conforming to conventions of a clear genre. The genre is emphasised through the linear narrative and serious tone (shown through the dialogue). This not only increases the fictional element of the film, but also develops Blair’s character as witty and smart. It is this that is the inciting incident for him to leave his house and head to the church.
The montage sequence of Blair walking to collect to parcel is intended to emphasise her independence , and isolation from everyone else due to what the audience assume is her serious field of work. It is shots to focus the audience on her, and close up shots to show her characterisation through her walk and her clothing. This is most notable when she is walking down the corridor with heels and a smirk on her face.
She collects the parcel and hopefully the audience will assume that it is something of great importance. It is small and has a fragile sticker on it to add to the effect that is influenced by the cinematography of some sequences from Pitch Black Heist. After this Blair goes back to the car which is the concluding moment where it is revealed through both the visuals and the sound (both diegetic and non-diegetic) that she was a normal girl creating a fantasy in her mind. The music switches off from the quickening beat used to create an increasing tension in the audience (I read about this technique being used in Jaws (Spielberg, US, 1975), and decided to include it in my film). When Blair phones her sister that’s when the reason behind the fantasy is revealed, as she says that she reads too many spy books. This was a real challenge to film and I had to use pre-recorded footage. This is the weakest shot in the film, but quick cuts hopefully hide that and prevent it from distracting the audience from their willing suspension of disbelief.
In terms of fulfilling the brief, I feel that the end of the film is successful in giving the audience one big twist. The audiences questions are all answered, leaving a satisfying ending. A single shot, pan and track shows Blair driving away in her normal car. The scene was particularly hard to film as I wanted the camera to be in the exact same position, but we changed location and costume. This, coupled with the fact that her date was unrelated to her ‘mission’, is unexpected and should surprise the audience (like at the end of High Maintenance) – a twist designed to make the film more memorable, and provide narrative pleasure.
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