How does your film conform to the conventions of the film movement?
My randomly chosen genre of film was German Expressionism and for influences I looked at films such as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari and Nosferatu. The plot of this short film was that a girl has been asleep for years, dreaming about herself finding this chest, so when she wakes up, that is her quest. Although she's unsuccessful, when she returns home, the chest is found on her bed where she was sleeping previously. I was mostly influenced by doctor Caligari because I liked the use of colour and the title slides really interested me and it was something I wanted to try and recreate. I downloaded a specific font for the title slides because I wanted to experiment and try to make my video as influenced by this genre as possible. I also designed the slide on power point with different shapes to again get it similar to the original.
Mine: Dr Caligari:
For the micro elements, my main focus was mise-en-scene. For setting, I used my garden, a shed and my bedroom. Despite being simple locations, I think they worked well because setting wasn't the key aspect of the story. Personally, I believe the most important elements were hair and make up, costume and character expression and movement because there is only two characters involved, played by the same actor so I wanted to show distinct differences between them. For the sleeping child who awoke, her hair was done in bunches and displayed out in a unique way. The make up was simple, I just used some black around her eyes, cheek bones and lips, making those features stand out and create a 'dead', skeleton look. For costume, I dressed her up in all black, adding to the 'gothic' aesthetic. As for the character expression and movement, I directed the actor to make her walk slowly and have a constant blank expression on her face. In contrast the other actor she played, the girl in her dream, had the same make up look but different hair, this time it was in plaits. I wanted to show that the girl in the dream in the same as the girl who has a mission to find the chest so just made slight adjustments. For the costume, she wore a black and purple 'Witch' dress, to create a sense of eeriness, which added to the creepy aesthetic. For this particular character, I wanted her expression and movement to be slightly different as well, so she acted more innocent yet creepy at the same time. As for lighting, I used natural light, but filmed quite late in the day so it was getting darker to again create that eerie look and only two props were used and that was a key and a chest, both very significant in the story line and other props were not necessary. For cinematography, I used a range of different camera angles, despite Dr. Caligari having very simple and basic shots. I used a high angle shot, aerial, medium, close up and wide shot. I think they work well because some of the close up and aerial shots made it feel as if you were either the character or there yourself. As for sound, it was mostly diegetic, ambient and soundtrack. No dialogue was used due to the title slides and no narration was used. The sound tracks I used were birds tweeting followed by a boom sound effect and the creepy piano music. I think the music chosen fits the film perfectly and adds to the German Expressionism reference. because I tried to incorporate music similar to what was used back then for this type of film. Finally with editing, I added some effects to add a modern touch to my film and make it unique and personal to me and not make it completely the same. I added a glitch transition that I believe works really well and was used appropriately. I also changed the RGB of all the clips, using colours such as blue, pink, orange, purple and green, similar to what was used in Dr Caligari and used different colours for different parts of the film to show the differences between the scenes, for example I used the same green filter for the whole of the 'dream' and when it cuts back to the girl sleeping, it's orange. I used match on action and shot reverse shots which I think look really aesthetic and clever. I also added a green screen of an old quality vcr camera line effect to make the film look dated.
To conclude I think my outcome was successful and I'm very happy with it. It shows my ability to experiment with the software and develop my premiere pro skills.
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