3. ■ Before I talk about practitioners and work that has inspired me and creatively shaped my own
filmmaking I want to talk about the origin of where this concept came from.
■ The concept originated from two sources, the first source being the shivering accurate ‘‘recreation’’ of
the highly controversial ‘Stanford prison experiment’. When watching the film I found myself glued to
the screen highly anticipating everything and completely consumed by the story. This was my first
introduction into these drama/psychological thriller themed films.
■ The second source was a study conducted by the University of Harvard on boredom. Where they
placed subjects in a room and left them with only their thoughts and an electric shocker. Almost all the
subjects shocked themselves at least once.
■ I found this simple concept of an inhuman experiment quite fascinating as (most) humans would be
disgusted by experiments such as the Stanford prison experiment, however, if they could watch it from
a point of view where they know it isn’t real they will be extremely intrigued and interested. Simply by
removing reality as contributing factor you can explore any topic a lot more aggressively as I doesn’t
have an anchor in reality.
■ This is why I think the concept has potential for success as it covers these things. Its an inhumane and
immoral experiment that is very interesting to watch as we loose someone loose their mind and their
sanity. Interesting to watch, especially because if it was something we read about in the news it would
be horrific but if its just a film it is perfectly fine and audiences are willing to explore the idea.
4. Music
■ Music is a huge part of my creative process. A large majority of ideas and concepts
that I come up with are inspired or developed through music. Whenever I want to think
of or develop ideas the first thing I will do is start listening to the genre of music that I
associate with the product and then I start writing down the things that come to mind,
slowly stiring the pot and sparking ideas here and there. I’ve always found that for
myself, it worked to formulate ideas and placing an emotion behind it.
■ Often the first thing that springs into my head when I listen to a new song that I really
like is what type of scene or mood it would work with and then I go from there. If ‘x’
song was playing what would I want to be on the screen. What type of editing would I
use, what would the colour scheme be, what type of cinematography would work.
True cinema is a marriage between music and moving image. I always find the films
that I remember have a good soundtrack. I won’t remember most action style films
because the music used within them is always the same and there is nothing that
stays in my head, so I might remember the overall plot but nothing will stick out
because the choice of music doesn’t keep my attention nor does it engage my brain.
But for example in films like baby driver or Kingsmen: the secret service, if anyone
has seen the film, they will remember scenes like the handbrake turn in the alleyway,
or even just the intro scene where ‘baby’ is sat in the car listening to ‘Bellbottoms’ by
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, in Kingsmen the church fight that works so
perfectly thanks to ‘Freebird’ by Lynyrd Skynyrd which accompanies it. It makes the
scenes memorable, a film can look extremely beautiful, but if the soundtrack or even
lack there of, isn’t as good as the visuals then a film can easily be forgotten. This is
why I think music is so important and it really helps me to come up with concepts,
inspire ideas and develop a story, regardless of whether or not there will be lots of
music in the final film or not, but its getting the idea onto the page where music is
important to me.
■ Proud by Heather Small, though the song is large seen as song for LGBT
empowerment, it was this the song that made me want to come up with and execute a
good FMP, it made me think, what will it take for me to make something that I can look
back on and feel proud of? Hence I want to push myself as much as possible with a
realistic goal in hand.
6. Undoubtedly this concept is comparable to some of the Black mirror episodes. Especially the last episode
in seasons 2 called ‘white Christmas’.
Within the episode there is a segment which is about the immorality of keeping someone in captivity
without having them giving them anything to do.
“For me the trick is to try to picture the finished film in my head, and describe what I am seeing and
hearing.” –Charlie Brooker (Inside black mirror, p. 13)
For anyone who was watched, heard of or even been in upmost vicinity of Black mirror will know how
highly acclaimed, and mind-bendingly well made the show is.
Black mirror often deals with concepts that are set in the real world and then have been added to or been
made larger than life. This is true for almost all of their episodes, whether it is a security robot dog willing
to stop at nothing to complete its task or a Virtual reality experiment that seems to defy time itself. Almost
every single episode seems to push at the edges of the society we live in, its beliefs, ideals and
moralities.
Contextually I think this is very relevant as both within black mirror and my own work you will often find
traces of a world that doesn’t exist but it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to believe that something like
this could happen in the near future, is happening or has already happened we just don’t know it yet.
Even Charlie Brooker the writer of the show has said while interviewed about ‘Black mirror vs Reality’ and
the fact that ‘Black Mirror’ seems to be in the public vocabulary to describe things that are a bit off as “uh,
this is a bit Black Mirror” responding “Yeah they do.. Its terrifying because it seems to be happening a
lot.” and stating that “its alarming how many of the story ideas that we have covered on the show have
either come true or there is real world parallels.”
7. Concepts explored in Black mirror, or even some of Quentin Tarantion's work (Django Unchained
springs to mind) are so complex that trying to explain them through dialogue and text would be like
shooting yourself in the foot. Explaining and wrapping your head around these concepts is much
better done through showing the audience something. For example, rather than telling the audience
how horrible and violent Calvin Candie is, show them how two black slaves beat each other to death
with hammers for his entertainment as a laughs and spurs them on. That conveys far more too the
audience than words ever could.
The reason why film is one of the best mediums in which you can convey complex ideas and
messages is because you have so much creative control and you are not limited in what you can do.
Unlike music, books or theatre, where there are always grand limits to the ability of exploring ideas.
These concepts have all affected us in someway or another, whether we’ve thought about them or
they were on the news, and boredom has definitely effected all of us at some point, whether that is
as a child on a car journey, or as an adult who is bored at work. At one point in our life we have all
been bored.
However, in this day and age instead of having to revel in our boredom we simply look at our phone,
turned on the TV or read a book. We don’t spend time alone with our thoughts. This is why I think
the idea of exploring this concept is interesting. Looking at what happens when you are just left with
just yourself, for hours, week, months on end.
8. “Project Socialize” Documentary
This documentary talks about and explores how humans are social animals and
rely on other humans to grow. It explores how social media constantly gives people
‘FOMO’ (Fear of missing out) and to oversimplify it talking about how social media
has caused people to be more connected while creating more distance between
people as what they are portraying themselves as online compared to reality. Now
while my film is not a documentary and it is also not about the anxiety related to
social media there was something in the documentary that I found very interesting.
It made me realise how absolutely connected we are as a species, I could contact
someone across the globe and talk to them in Realtime. So it allowed me to expand
and think more about what it would be like if a person was completely removed
from society and any form of social connection whether it is a real person, or a little
black screen. And what it might look like when this character is then returned to
society, or what they will do to themselves if they have no idea when or even if they
will ever see the outside world again.
https://vimeo.com/169384713
10. I often appreciate Quentin Tarantino films for his tendency to go lager than life.
Tarantino has often been criticised because his films have extremely and
unnecessarily violent and bloody scenes. However, I disagree completely. While it
is true that his films have extreme violence and bloodshed, they are not worse than
real life, and even if they were, why does it matter? He’s selling an experience not
reality, the world he creates is his own and it is not supposed to be a reflection of
reality. It’s a reflection of the idea that he created in his mind.
As he himself said “Violence in real life is terrible; violence in movies can be cool.
It’s just another colour to work with.” It doesn’t need to be 100% real, it just needs to
be real enough to feel real. We know that violence is bad, but we enjoy watching it,
because it is wrong. Similarly in black mirror, we know that certain concepts talked
about in the episodes, for example in an episode called ‘Nosedive’ where everyone
is rating each other through technology and constantly trying to have a higher
status. Though this isn’t real yet, we are starting to see a glimpse of what a world
like that might look like, with social media and online appearances.
Film is about pulling the audience into your world, therefore I don’t think it matters
what you’re world entails, so long as you know your world better than anyone else
ever will.
12. Acim Vasic
Both “8” and “Prey” are short films directed by Acim Vasic and I have absolutely fallen in love
with them because they have taught me so much about short filmmaking.
I will constantly be looking back at these films for ideas and guidance as they simply have so
much useful information and techniques.
The most notable about these films is that they have no dialogue, everything that needs to be
said is said through cinematographic language, composition and the actors expressions. I
love that I can watch these films and fully understand the story and the characters without a
single word being uttered. Even in the short film “8” the director decides that rather than the
soldier choosing to speak or use some sort of language to tell the other soldier to halt. He
makes a noise with his mouth, yet we perfectly understand what it means. Everything that
needs to be conveyed is conveyed through sounds and cinematic language, no dialogue or
text is necessary.
13. I find that when trying to create something that carries some sort of depth or something that
should evoke emotion and allow the audience to thing about something and contemplate it.
(not always) but often when you limit the amount of auditory stimulation such as dialogue in
can allow the audience to explore the concept more by themselves.
People often say ‘the book was better’ when talking about a film because it had more
information and it allows the reader to create a world around the words written on the page.
However in film if there is less words or dialogue, it allows the viewer to create meaning from
the visuals and interpret it in their own way.
A prime example of this is the Kuleshov theory and effect was developed by Lev Kuleshov.
By showing the audience an image of some sort and the a reaction, the viewer creates
meaning and emotion based on the visuals they just saw, however if you change the image
and show the same reaction the audience will create different meaning based on the new
images. This tool is extremely powerful and I will definitely be using it in my project to create
meaning and emotion without having to completely rely on the actors skill to show emotion.
The Kuleshov Effect
16. My own work
My first attempt at making a film that completely lacked dialogue was during my first
year at college. It was the 90 second short film we had to produce.
While the product itself was not really as good as I wish it had been. I think some
cinematic story telling devices had been used. I think it was very easy to tell that the
Protagonist was had a task to do and that he was waiting for someone to leave the
house. It was clear how he managed to get into the house as well as selling us the
idea that Protagonist was a ‘bad person’ through costume and props.
The overall ‘story’ I will admit wasn’t great but contextually I think this fits very well
and I will be taking some of the things which went well, and learning from the things
that were quite poor.
If this is contrasted to short film I made back in 2016, for my GCSE, there is clear
improvement in knowledge and techniques deployed that make for a better more
informative experience.
But this isn’t just about technical aspects, so how has this work affected my creative
thinking, and changed the way I approach my work?
17. What both of these projects are lacking is story depth and continuity as well as development of the
story.
The stories are very two dimensional, they don’t give the audience anything to learn about or any
revelations throughout the plot. Granted the films both had a very snappy time limit of 90 seconds
and two minutes, which doesn’t give you a lot of time to let the audience learn new facts and
information allowing the story to unravel. However, this is greatly beneficial as I now know how
extremely important it is for a story to be layered and unfold over the course of the film, rather than
setting up a concept and spending the rest of the film unpacking that concept.
I have also learned the value of using different equipment. For the two minute GCSE short film, I
used my camera a microphone and a tripod, my editing skills were very limited and I was not very
skilled with the equipment or software, I learned as much as I could to create as good of a product I
could at the time. However, you can instantly feel that 1 minute short film I created in 2018, just by
using a light reflector, better costume and a slider as well as a tripod. The product looks and feels
vastly better and more professional as the camera isn’t just something that is capturing the story
that is happening in front of the lens, it is becoming part of the story, evoking more meaningful
subtext trough its creative use, movement and composition.
As always the best way to learn is by doing. So having spent the past nearly 3 years of my life
indulging purely in media and tis creation and consumption, making short films, doing photography,
Photoshop compositions and more. Which meant that over the the course of those years, I have
been able to get closer and closer to producing what my initial idea was and converting that idea
18. Bibliography
1. anon. (.). David Slade Biography. Available: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1720541/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. Last accessed
21/01/2019.
2. Acim Vasic. (2010). 8. Available: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1592502/. Last accessed 21/01/2019.
3. https://vimeo.com/49319171
4. Aćim Vasić. (2018). “Prey” (“La Proie”). Available: https://vimeo.com/275113239. Last accessed 21/01/2019.
5. https://vimeo.com/acimvasic
6. Charlie Brooker, Annabel Jones, Jason Arnopp (2018). Inside Black Mirror. Manhattan: Random House, 2018. 1-71.
7. Good Morning Britain. (2018). Charlie Brooker on Black Mirror Vs Reality | Good Morning Britain. Available:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na-ZIwy1bNI. Last accessed 22/01/2019.
8. Timothy D. Wilson,1 * David A. Reinhard,1 Erin C. Westgate,1 Daniel T. Gilbert,2 Nicole Ellerbeck,1 Cheryl Hahn,1 Casey L.
Brown,1 Adi Shaked1. (2014). Just thinking the challenges of the disengaged mind. . Availaible: https://wjh-
www.harvard.edu/~dtg/WILSON%20ET%20AL%202014.pdf . Last accessed 22/01/2019.
9. Cade Huseby. (2016). “Project Socialize” (2016) | Award Winning Short Documentary by Cade Huseby | Featuring Casey Neistat
and Cesar Kuriyama. Available: https://vimeo.com/169384713. Last accessed 27/01/2019.
10. Lev Kuleshov (translated and edited by Ronald Levaco) (1974). Kuleshov on Film: Writings of Lev Kuleshov. London: University
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