VISUAL AESTHETICS, MOOD & TONE

The house that we our filming the entire short in is quite a white washed house and gives quite a cold appearance due to its high ceilings, large rooms, white walls and cold colour palette. Because of this the visual tone that will come across will also be quite cold and almost bland. This is similar to in the film Silver Linings Playbook, filmed in a normal American neighbourhood, a lot of the backgrounds are quite plain and and bland. This film is an example of how a film can have these kinds of locations yet not come across as a very cold and depressing film, and it does this through lighting. Here the lighting is made to look very natural by have quite yellow lights shining in from outside the windows as if it was sunlight streaming in.

In our film we would like to make it obvious that the child is autistic, however without actually mentioning it. This means that we need to show through miss-en-scene that this is not just a child getting angry and having a meltdown, this meltdown is actually due to a condition. Through location we can do this by making the scenes in which the child melts down extremely clinical, a film that does this so well that it looks surreal is Rupert Goold's Macbeth. In these scenes of the weird sisters Goold makes the locations look so clinical that it looks surreal with the white-wash walls, blue/white colour scheme and bright white lighting. This is far more extreme than the kind of clinical look we would want in our film however it is a perfect example of how this style can enhance the strangeness of a situation, an in this example to the point that is it bizarre.

An idea taken from Jacques Audiard's Rust and Bone is from the sequence where Marion Cotillard's character finally comes out of her house and the sun breaks through the clouds. The use of flares is very heavy meaning that the frame is filled with light, so much that is blinds the audience. This exaggerates the feeling that she has finally got out of the house and she's overcome by it all. This is an idea we could take for when Emma leaves the house towards the end of the film. She comes outside to take a break from it all and to enhance the difference between her life inside the house and outside it could work well to use flares as if her going outside is like a new beginning. This also helps make the audience believe that she may be walking out for good. This filming idea does require it to be sunny on one of the days that we film and since we have to film in October (or later in the year) it is quite possible this won't be the case. If is isn't sunny we will experiment with the exposure and other techniques to give a similar effect.

tb

UPDATE #2

Because we want to film during half term we have decided that we will do a recce this afternoon to finalise the different locations (areas of the house) and to practice how we will light them and our sound.

I will also screentest my brother as a potential actor for Jack as he has the right kind of look for the character, however he does not have much acting experience so it is worth screen-testing him to see.

This week we will also write a post about the mood and tone of the film so that we can clearly establish how we want the film to look. This will allow us to use the two weeks after this to make a shot list and storyboard.

tb

CHARACTER: BOY

This is a mood board of different autistic children in films including:

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

The Black Balloon

Autism: The Musical

Silent Fall

David' Mother

This mood board is simply to get a feel for the kind of look we want to go for in our character, the facial expressions are key, as shown in these photos, to defining the character and showing that they have a disability without actually saying it.

Jack is a child with a mild form of autism, he is around 13 years old but his condition means that the age he acts is far below that. However as is quite common in autistic children his intelligence is above average when it comes to problem solving, his main problem being that he struggles to communicate his ideas with other people.

 

He does understand that he is autistic and it is clear that he is very aware of his condition, occasionally wishing quietly that he didn't suffer from autism.

In terms of appearance he is a fairly normal looking child except that he is a little on the crazy side, such as crazy hair or wide eyes.

It is obvious that he does love his mother but since he himself struggles to interact with others, he doesn't particularly like it when she does. This is especially when it comes to work as he feels she sometimes puts work ahead of him and he likes to have her always watching over him even if she doesn't get involved in what he is doing.

He prefers his own company to the company of others as he finds it difficult to conform to social standards, because of this he doesn't really have many friends. This actually doesn't bother him much at all except on occasion, however it does really bother his mother.

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DEVELOPED NARRATIVE

1.Child (Jack) on stairs bumping down like young children do when learning to walk, at each step his clothes change, showing that this is a daily routine.

2.His mum (Emma) is setting up the kitchen table, aligning cereal boxes and neatly setting a place for Jack to sit at.

3.He is sitting at the Kitchen table surrounded by 7 very neatly organised cereal boxes, meticulously he picks a certain amount of grains per box and places them in his bowl. He then pours the bowl until it reaches exactly half full. He stirs twice clockwise with his spoon and thrice anti-clockwise then licks the spoon to check its ok. Then he begins eating.

4.All the time Emma has been moving around him doing her own morning activities. The scene is played at an increased speed but filmed in two motions, it will seem that the boy is eating at a normal speed but that Emma is moving far faster around him, appearing in and out of the shot. Wearing a dressing gown. This is to show how long it takes him to eat his cereal.

5.Now Jack is standing staring at something out of shot of the camera, the camera rotates 180* to show a large lego sculpture that the boy walks towards and begins to add more pieces, slowly picking the pieces from a colour coded box and adding them precisely, not forcing them on but placing them definitively in their correct location. 

6.Emma leaves the kitchen in background (out of focus) and goes upstairs, Jack is on the living room sofa, and pulls a Rubik's Cube out of the cabinet. There is a close up on his hands and the Rubik's cube is completed in 20 seconds. 

ACT2

1.Jack is sitting on the sofa watching TV, (discovery channel). Mum, Emma is in the office at the front of the house, busy taking a conference call. We see photos on the windowsill of her and jack, her at work and her with friends and just of jack. 

2.Jack sees the cube beside him on the sofa and smiles, he gets up and the camera follows him out of the kitchen and to the office. 

3.He tries to show Emma the cube but she pushes him away briefly, trying to focus on the call, she types whilst speaking. 

4.Jack starts to freak out and Emma realises, sighing she hurriedly to calm him but is busy talking.

5.The voice on the phone asks 'Sorry is this a bad time' She has to switch between Jack & conference call but can't handle both.

6.Jack pushes the phone out of her hand and it falls down the small stairs. She gives up and focuses on him to calm him down. She takes the cube and tells him how impressive it is. 

7.She puts the planet earth DVD in the DVD player and the TV rises out of the cabinet. She sits him in-front of the TV and makes sure everything is working.

8.She goes to her desk and looks over photos, chooses photo of her in her youth with friends and work colleagues. Picks it up and goes out to the front of the house. Leaves the front door on latch.

9.She lights a cigarette and leans by the front door,  just holds the photo to her chest. 

As she goes back into the house she picks up the milk bottles from outside the house and closes the door. 

This developed narrative allows us to focus as much on the mother as on the boy (act 1 mainly focuses on the boy, act 2 on the mother). This means we can worry less about the depth of the boy's character as we will only scratch the surface on his issues and the same with the mother, while we also link both of the characters' problems together.

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NARRATIVE AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

We spoke to some potential audience members, a 30yr old, female actress and a 34yr old, male, director.  We chose to speak to these two individuals because they are part of our target audience and obviously have experience in casting and acting. In the interview we asked them about our narrative.

They thought;

"I like the narrative, it's simple but effective which is imperative for a short film. I think you need to get clearer ideas and structure, at the moment it's a bit … hazy"

"if you make the motifs like the cereal or something clearer you'll have a better continuity"

"My favourite thing is the simplicity, I just think it's really sad, the poor mother, it makes you want to know what has happened and what happens next, it's great!"

From this we've taken that they liked the simplicity and that to make the narrative better the clarity of images and scenes needs to improve. We will make the 'motifs' like the Rubik's cube more obvious and symbolic.

HH

CHARACTER: MOTHER

Emma's background is slightly troubled, she grew up on a nice council estate in Kent, however it wasn't a privileged upbringing, certainly nothing compared to her wealth now. She worked hard and relentlessly through her late teens and twenties, now age 36 she holds a top position in a central London   management company. She's head of international communications and speaks several languages, this is how she initially got the job.

Aged 24 she became pregnant with a boy, Jack who is now 12. The pregnancy was an accident but as the baby grew she became very attached and couldn't abort or give up the baby, so decided to keep it with a lot of help from her parents. The father was an old work colleague who she didn't want the boy to see, he was to immature for the child's own good. 

Somehow Emma managed to continue working and evolving, thanks to the help of her parents with childcare. Aged 5, Jack was diagnosed with mild-high autism, a form that means he is highly intellectual in some areas but in others has a mind of someone several years younger than him.

Now they live together in a substantial suburban house in Greater London, the house is a large, typically middle class house. The house is modern, newly designed and a statement of Emma's wealth and success.

Jack attends a local school, getting Jack settled here was one of the hardest things Emma's had to do, she had to stay with him in the classroom well into the first few lessons, every morning for nearly 6 months.

Now Jack is relatively settled but cannot really be left alone, Emma often has to deal with fits or outbursts that he has. She struggles greatly trying to balance him and work now that he is older, her parents are frailer and less able to help with looking after him. She employs a nanny but Jack doesn't like her very much. There's little connection between them and she has a lot to learn about Jack's habits, likes and dislikes.

Outbursts and situations like the one we experience in our Short Film occur weekly and are testing Emma to her limit.

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ALTERNATIVE GRAPHICS

In the film Black Balloon graphics are used in the first few opening shots of the film for added affect, and to tie in with the credits. They seem to reflect the views and behaviour of an autistic child, seeing everything simply as it literally is. This is a common symptom of autism for example they often struggle to understand metaphors (e.g. its raining cats and dogs) as they tend to understand them literally.

These graphics are very subtle but add another dimension to the film and highlight the main topic of autism.

tb