director's reflection: evoking childhood

NAME: Brenna Empey

FILM: Evoking Childhood

DP: Hailey Davis

TMA 285 DIRECTOR’S REFLECTION

Overall response (2-3 paragraphs):

In 2-3 paragraphs, write an overall response to your film: Were you successful at achieving what you set out to achieve? What are you proud of? What would you do differently if you could remake this piece? What did you learn?

           As a third party spectator with no prior knowledge of the subject matter or metaphor being presented in this film, I’m not sure if I would have understood what was going on. The overall response to my film was positive – people seemed to like the feelings it evoked, and thought it was pretty, but not many viewers seemed to understand what it was about. Most of the confusion came from the fact that nobody knew who the characters were or what they were supposed to represent. A lot of people were thinking that it was a romantic piece, or that the two characters were siblings, which isn’t what I was going for.

            From a personal standpoint, I think the film ended up being what I wanted it to be. I got the basic metaphor across in the way I wanted to, which was by eliminating eyes from every frame to distance the viewer from the characters. My actors had great interactions, although I do think that my directing could’ve been better about making things less flirtatious and more father-daughter. I don’t know if this is the subjectivity of the viewer that made it seem like flirting, but I do think I could’ve added more narrative elements to suggest that the woman sitting at the table was in fact a child.

            I think the part of my film that worked best was the end, when we match-cut to the little girl coloring with crayons. Even if the viewers didn’t know the exact meaning behind that reveal, they thought it was cool and it got them thinking about the overall meaning of the film.

Briefly answer the following:

What, specifically, did you want to communicate? Were you successful? Why? Why not?

I wanted to communicate the idea that as a child, I felt like I had to act like an adult to fit in, since I was an only child for the bulk of my childhood. I was surrounded by adults, whether they were my parents or extended family. This also made me pretty emotionally disconnected from my peers and family members because I was trying to become something I wasn’t through imitation.

How, specifically, did you try to say this? What visual elements, techniques, etc. did you use?

The woman and the child in my film are the same person, but the woman is a physical metaphor for the mental state of the little girl as she interacts with her father. As I said before, because of my experience as a child, I was often emotionally distant from my peers and family members, which is why I deliberately excluded seeing eyes in my film – eyes are where emotions are expressed the strongest. To make this idea register more, I included the Teddy Grahams with all their heads broken off. The color temperature also changes when the little girl is revealed, in hopes that it would make it more obvious that the scenes with the woman were all metaphorical.

What did you learn about storytelling:

            I learned that I need to be more generous with narrative elements. I wanted the story to be overly simple because I didn’t have much time to tell it, so the only “childlike” things I had the woman do were to draw a picture and eat Teddy Grahams while interacting with her father. I think if I had added more childlike elements it would’ve sold better that she was a child the entire time.

Working with actors and getting performance:

            This was an interesting experiencing for me because I’ve never really identified myself as a director, and I don’t think I’m very good at working with actors. I tend to prefer working with actors that I already know, which is limiting in some ways but overall a better choice for me. In that respect, working with people I knew was fairly easy because I already knew how to talk to them. I also had an advantage with this film because there wasn’t much dialogue and pretty much everything the actors did was blocking-related. I was lucky that the actor who played the father was so good with kids – and I knew this from a previous film I’d casted him in – so when he was interacting with the little girl at the end it looked very natural.

Blocking — camera and actors:

            The hardest thing about blocking this film was making sure eyes never got into the frame. I really had to figure out how to make it clear that they were interacting and enjoying each other’s company without seeing their eyes. I think for the most part I achieved my goal except for when the woman eats the Teddy Graham and turns to the man. I think the framing ended up being weird on that one, because while it’s easy to see that eyes should not be visible in this shot, the framing feels awkward and forced. The film itself isn’t full of stylistically unique framing, so this shot feels like it’s from another film.

Visuals — composition, framing, visual elements:

            The intention of this film was to feel warm and familiar, but I think the deeply saturated warm coloring might have been overkill. It’s especially jarring when the little girl is revealed at the end, and the coloring seems a lot more natural. I was trying to make the scenes with the woman more stylized and unreal so that the audience would be able to identify its metaphorical nature, but I think it would’ve been better if I kept the coloring consistent. The extreme warms looked gimmicky to me. However, I love how the lighting turned out! We were imitating a sunset late into the night and we were lucky that our location had such high windows we could work with.

Design & Art Direction:

            I was lucky to end up with an actress who is also a production designer on this film, so I was able to communicate exactly what I wanted done with the props and such and she delivered every time. That was a pretty easy aspect of the art direction. One part that was hard, though, is that we had to make quick location and space changes to the script when we arrived at our shooting location. We were originally going to shoot a couple shots in a kitchen, but when we arrived, the homeowners had forgotten we were coming and were using the kitchen for the rest of the night. So I had to re-visualize how I wanted the scene to look in a different space, and thankfully I think it turned out all right.

The Production Process — collaboration with crew, the logistics of making this piece:

            I think the production process for this film was just another testament to the fact that in the film industry, it’s all about who you know. I didn’t have to post a public announcement online that I needed actors or a location or anything like that, because I’ve worked on enough productions that I had connections and knew exactly which locations and actors I wanted, so I contacted them directly and got everything confirmed early on. A situation with my original actress arose that I thought was going to hinder shooting, but it ended up working out – my original actress was stuck in traffic and wouldn’t be to Provo for an hour after call time, so I asked a friend to come act last-minute. My original actress, then, came and helped gaff and set dress when she finally arrived on set, and it worked out well because I wasn’t planning on having so much help.

                  

What was it like to watch your film with an audience? Did they understand it? Miss the point? Why did they respond the way they did?  

            Like I said before, I think the metaphorical meaning of this film was pretty lost on most of the audience. The few people to whom I’d explained it beforehand understood what was going on, but I’m sad that it ended up being that way – people only understand it if I explain it. However, the overall response to the film was positive even if they didn’t understand exactly what was going on. They enjoyed the visuals and the interactions between the actors, areas where I feel this film excels. Once I explained it to the audience they understood it pretty quickly, but I wish I could’ve made it more clear by using different narrative elements to more clearly state that the woman is a metaphor for a child with an adult’s mind.

Other observations:

            I think one thing that could’ve remedied the problems with color temperature and color correcting would have been to shoot the entire thing during the day. We began shooting at golden hour, and when the sun went down we had to start imitating the sunset with lights. I think that negatively affected our ability to keep things looking natural, even though we achieved the same light structure – the way the light was falling looked like a real sunset, but the color didn’t. It was also difficult to kep the lighting the same because to fill the room we reflected off the ceiling, which was yellow and messed up our lighting temperature as well.