ELISHA FIZUL 0811912 A GIFT TREATMENT This is a 5-7 minute moving image piece. It is about a young male who has developed a very harsh and stubborn cancer and has only a few days to live. He is very educated and works as a stockbroker- a young man with what seems to be a promising future. As he knows he is dying, and has no immediate family to inherit his wealth, he decides to leave his inheritance to his chauffeur, who is an old man with a very big family and who is not as well off as himself. I have given it a very broad target audience as cancer is an illness which doesn’t care about the age, wealth, health or heart of a person, when you have it you have it. The role of the stockbroker character will be a young afro-Caribbean male in his late 20’s, but given the way he will be dressed (in smart suits ect), he will be able to pass for a 35 year old. The chauffeur’s character will be played by a 67 year old Asian man. He is very skinny, quite a fit looking 67 year old. This gives the essence of someone who has lived life to its fullest, not a lazy person. The reason the stockbroker will leave his inheritance to the cab driver is so that he can ensure his grandkids are able to afford a good education and live a good life. The bond exists between the two as the chauffeur has been working for him for years and is never late for him, he does his job very well given his old age. The film will address multiple issues. THE CANCER PLAGUE
Firstly, cancer as mentioned before. It is a non-contagious plague of an illness, which has no mercy for its victims. It doesn’t care it your black, white, Asian or green, if you are human or dog, if you are good or bad, rich or poor, it will take your life. THE HIERCARCHY OF CLASSIFICATION Secondly, it addresses issues of the hierarchy of class, the rich and the poor. With the constant battle of the economy, having those who are well off and those whose daily living costs equate to making ends meet, I have decided to bring two different people from two different backgrounds, maybe even two different worlds and bring them together.
THE CIRCLE OF LIFE. It has the essence of life going on in your memory for a long time even after your dead. The money he leaves out of good will to the chauffeur will be able to better his grandkids, and provide good education for them so they can educate their kids when they have them etc. I intend to show a clear bond between the two, so I will use continuity editing and linear story lines intertwined with each other as I edit in postproduction. INITIAL IDEAS, BEFORE I DECIDED ON MY TREATMENT
Research, Inspiration Seven Pounds, 2008, Gabrielle Muccino CLICK THE PICTURE BELOW FOR BLOG
Seven Pounds, starring Will Smith, directed by Gabrielle Muccino inspired me for this script. It is about a man who has accidentally killed 7 people in a car accident including his wife. He then makes it his mission to save 7lives, even if it means jepordising his own. It is a mind boggling film and I think the writer should be much more accredited for this film rather than the director. The messages given through the script and narrative are so magnificently complicated but go just fit together magically. It is probably one of the only films that has managed to make me cry about 50 times.
VICTIM, O. J SONUS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK-I80ERqH0 The above link is another huge inspiration for my film. It is a short film about a man who kills another man, however with the slow movement of the camera, ambient lighting, hardly no sound and slow consistent pan of the camera, it left me tense to see who this man was, what he was going to do or what had happened, and what was his motive.
Initial locations/DRAFT
My gift to you Synopsis A wealthy man has been diagnosed with cancer. With its harsh and stubborn nature, even with extensive treatment on it given his resources, he cannot get rid of it. He is given only a few more weeks to live. Given his wealth, he decides to leave his dividends and position to his secretary and his cab driver, a man and woman who have been there for him when he’s needed. He doesn’t have any direct family as both of his parents are dead, and his social life is non-existent. A story of morality, wealth, and the routines of the working life.
My Gift to You SCRIPT SCENE 1 INT: KITCHEN A dim lit kitchen. Shot of fine cut glass with a strong whiskey sitting next to it. Shot of detailed fork and knife wrapped in a napkin. Fine china plate with a knife inside. Egg holder and bread shot.
Boiling egg on stove in a gold handled pot. Black screen with title ‘presents…’. Camera pans all the items we have seen. Black screen with actual film title. Shortly after the camera pans out to a man sitting on the floor crying. He is dressed in a vest and long pyjama bottoms. He has a tissue in his hand and has been coughing out blood. He is sitting on the floor just outside of the kitchen and he doesn’t want to contaminate the food. SCENE 2 INT: BEDROOM/APARTMENT Birds eye shot of Kevin White sleeping in his bed. Close up shot of alarm clock just about to hit 06:00. He gets up and turns alarm off. It is still dark outside, night weather. He sits on his bed and looks upwards. He then looks forward for a few seconds. He has a look of worry on his face, which soon after disappears. He gets dressed. Shots of him brushing his teeth, washing his face, clothing himself. Shot of him going through his phone. He has only 5 contacts and they are all work related. He calls his cab.
KEVIN (Slow and humble) Morning, 10 minutes please (Hangs up phone) Goes to the window and gazes out at the sunset. This will be the last sunset he sees so he has a reminiscent expression on his face. SCENE 3 EXT/INT: CAB/CAFE It is a cold dark morning. Cab driver has parked up outside and is waiting outside the cab. Kevin steps outside with his suitcase. CAB DRIVER (blows into his hands) Morning Kevin. (smiles) The cab driver opens the boot for Kevin to place his suitcase down. Cab drives. Mid close-up shot of Kevin looking out of the window. Cab stops outside of a café. Kevin jumps out and walks into the café. CAFÉ LADY Morning Kev. You alright?
RE SHOOTS I have re shot a few scenes for my final major project for a number of reasons. Opening scene Due to a group critical, the lighting from the kitchen didn’t illuminate the characters face too well at the end of the scene. I then booked out some lights from MPS and re lit the kitchen ensuring there were no shadows. I asked a photographer to help with the cinematography of the panning shot. I got the photographer to stand behind me with one of the lights of the three and follow the camera as it panned from the sink to the character sitting on the floor. It was a bit over exposed, but I added colour correction and lowered the saturation of colours, mids and blacks to dim it down giving the effect of a late evening. This scene was quite tricky as being in a small compound with 3 lights, dolly wheels and people; it took us a couple of hours to set up. Locations during the driving scenes I had originally shot some int/ext shots of the industrial part of Croydon, big buildings, hotels etc to show a middle classed working status. However after a group critical, it was suggested to shoot London city/ canary wharf to show a middle class working status. The weather unfortunately at this time was very sunny, so I turned down ISO very low due to over exposure and will alter the colour correction in final cut in postproduction. Bedroom scenes As the actor is a very wealthy man, I had originally shot the bedroom scenes at a friends house. The house altogether is very nice, but the one bedroom I was able to use was very basic. Even though I want him to be considered as more of a miser, someone who doesn’t care about the material things in life, more about his assets and
his wealth, the money itself I have decided to re shoot this in a hotel location. After all, this is the location, which he wakes up for the last time in, and shortly after dies in as well, I think its best to get these shots in a better space, better lighting and more exquisite looking.
This is a screen grab from one of my earlier test shoots of the main character ‘Neil’ sitting on the kitchen floor. He is upset and is coughing up blood. He knows he only has a few days to live, as his cancer is becoming very harsh. As you can see, the ISO and aperture on the camera I was using at the time didn’t allow the audience to see his face properly as it was too dark. To fix this, I re shot this 2 more times, using 3 lights from the MPS store. It was quite hard to position the lights, as there was a huge table in the middle of the kitchen. We scooted it over and positioned the lights right next to the actor to illuminate his face a bit more.
I also had lighting problems and location problems in the bedroom. Even though it was daytime outside and the lights were actually on, it still didn’t look bright enough in the room.
Also, the location wasn’t best suited for the look I had intended to give. After all, he is a wealthy man, a bit of a miser, I felt that this location wasn’t suitable. I then asked a friend to use his house in kent as the interior for my bedroom scene. I also had a friend help me out with the lighting. We worked together to illuminate the room as the same time the actor switches on his bedside lamp. As he did this, my friend also timed it right to switch the buttons on the MPS lights to give a lighter exposure to the lens.
This was the original office scene I had shot as a test. I used Pringles camera, a small handheld camera (the name of it is in my notes), however, as you can see, the quality of the image isn’t great. The frames were very grainy and had lines on the when they were exported into final cut pro. This scene I had used two cameras in the start, the SONY MX and Pringles handheld camera, however I wasn’t happy with any of the shots and decided to re shoot this scene.
There were a lot of cut aways I had shot, in fact hundreds of them which I would have loved to incorporate into my film to explain it further with its screen grammer, however, given the brief for the film to be 5-7 minutes
long, and my one stretching to 10 minutes, I figured I didn’t have enough time to put these in.
Above is the letter I used for the short film, it was the first draft, however my actor couldn’t pronounce some of the words wth a sympathetic voice, so it had to be edited, and read from a screen.A GIFT
TROUBLESHOOTING It has been a lengthy process trying to get the perfect lighting, a great sound and the best quality on screen. I have re shot a lot of scenes due to poor quality on screen and poor lighting, however I have struggled tremendously with the sound on it. SOUND For shooting, I used multiple cameras however for my FMP, I have used a Cannon 550D. After switching and swapping cameras with some friends, I noticed that even though on final cut pro the quality of the picture may look good, or even on playback on the camera itself, it doesn’t actually look good on big screen. After being told that you have to ensure that the pixel quality in final cuts are explained for every clip, and that as a film maker you should ensure the same format and camera is used for every scene in the film, this added a work load to my schedule. However, to make sure I was completely happy with the quality, I did my best to make sure the ISO on every shot was correct, the white balanced was correct with every different lighting positions and locations and the frame setting matched what I was intending to film. I struggled a lot with the sound. Even though we were mentored through how to correctly use the boom pole for shooting, this didn’t input correctly onto my footage on the cannon. I then decided to use Sony MX cameras from the MPS just so that I could plug the boom pole in, however this camera gave me a very grainy image and the sound wasn’t great either. This then made me stick to what I know which was the Cannon. I still had hopes for a better sound as from experience; I know that without the perfect sound, this will let your visual down a lot. I plugged in a mini jack clip on microphone and ensured it was placed on my actors properly so it would not pick up any scuffling noises; however, this still didn’t pick up any sound on to the visual. It ended up coming out silent on export. For a few scenes, I did use an audio sound recorder which was helped set up by a few uni colleagues, and this again gave me problems when it came to transferring files, the Mac I was working on either couldn’t recognise the files, or I had not even recorded them in the first place.
LIGHTING I had shot a lot of scenes without using the lights from the MPS room, however when I came to post production it has hard to depict what was happening on screen and the effect I wanted to give.
I set up the lights and used all three in most of my scenes where I needed to illuminate the features of my actor as he is quite dark.
I was instructed to over expose the footage and adjust the saturation in colour correction in postproduction. This helped a lot, and made it easier for me to visualise the actors and locations to the audience much more. VOICE OVER I thought for the ending it would be best if I use a voice over to read the letter to the cab driver actor and the audience, so they would have a clearer understanding of what the story was actually about. EXPORTING The most annoying process on final cut pro is not the editing and exporting itself, it’s the rendering. For some reason, if I made just one small adjustment to any one of my clips, I would have render the whole clip again, which took about 3 minutes sometimes even 7 a time. I found this very annoying because its like when your in a train of thought, u get interrupted and cant see what you’ve done until 7 minutes later. But this is something I’ve learnt to deal with on final cut through the final major project even though it did give me heart palpitations. Also, I had filmed a few scenes which did not come out onto final cut pro. I don’t know if it was the format of the camera, but it was in a way a happy mistake because I was able to cut the movie down a lot, it would have been much longer that 10 minutes.
SYNOPSIS A young wealthy man has been diagnosed with a hereditary terminal cancer a year ago, which sadly took his parents 4 years ago. With his condition taking its very heavy toll, he knows he only has a few days left to live. Now he must find someone to inherit his legacy.