Directors Reflection - Evoking Childhood

NAME: Jase Van Meeteren

DATE: September 19, 2016

FILM: To Overcome Death

DP: Taylor Davis

TMA 285 DIRECTOR’S REFLECTION

Reflect on how your film turned out. Have the courage to evaluate your work not only with a self-congratulatory eye, but also with a critical eye. Step back; pretend the film wasn't made by you. Be exacting. Be demanding. Don't let yourself off the hook. Be completely honest about your performance.

- Turn in a hard copy of this statement the next class session after your film screens

- Upload the statement to Learning Suite the day after your film screens

- Post this to your blog with your film the day after your film screens

Overall response (2-3 paragraphs):

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

I feel like the question if I was successful or not is a hard one to answer. I completely agree with them that not everything was communicated perfectly well. But I really liked the emotions people described as they watched the piece. That’s kind of why it’s hard for me to say if I was successful or not. I think the emotions were good, because they matched my emotions about my feeling about death and my relationship with my religion. It’s this somber confusing thing that I’m constantly battling with. I guess I maybe took the tonal, avant garde thing too far?

On the other hand, I think this piece for me meant a lot because it addressed something I haven’t ever really addressed all my life. It totally makes sense that people wouldn’t get it because it was full of very personal symbols that I didn’t give enough emphasis to. I think I should have found a way to establish that the nice nature area had more of a religious connotation, maybe if I added a cross, or a religious symbol in the field instead of in the graveyard. I would also just make it so there was one woman zombie instead of two, since that seemed to be the most confusing part of the piece. I’m not really sure how I could have emphasized more that the sun and cityscape was supposed to be the afterlife, but maybe just establishing a religious connotation in general at the beginning would have helped.

Briefly answer the following:

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

I wanted to show the feeling of overcoming a fear of death by making death seem less scary. I wanted to do that in the same way I overcame or am still overcoming those emotions, by relating death to zombies, but in a beautiful way. I’m not sure if I was successful because the feelings I have are so specific and deeply personal that it would be hard to recreate and give them to someone else.

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

I tried to use color temperature and tone to show a difference in the nice pretty field and the graveyard. Then when the zombies came, it was beautiful again. I also tried to use the field and sun as sort of a visual metaphor for the kingdom and a path that led to it.

What did you learn about Storytelling:

Sometimes being more specific in an idea is better than trying to be specific with emotion. I think the emotions were good that people were feeling because they were close to what I felt, but they didn’t translate to an accurate understanding of the statement I was trying to make.

Working with actors and getting performance:

I feel really bad when I ask my actors to do something. Also, the simplest way of telling an actor to do something the better. All I had to do to get my actors to behave like zombies was to tell them to go a certain speed and then act like their leg was broken, or like they had a twisted ankle or something. Simplicity really was the key here.

Blocking — camera and actors:

I learned that it is sometimes better to clear the frame when you don’t have enough actors to make something work. If I had used one actor instead of two, I feel like the overall feel would be a lot less distracting for the rest of the class and they might have gotten more meaning out of it. Maybe everyone would have been able to understand the religious connotation I was presenting.

Visuals — composition, framing, visual elements:

I learned that movement can do a lot to either help or destroy a frame. If you have a lot of still images and then suddenly something tiny moves on screen, it can pull your audience out of the experience immediately.

Design & Art Direction:  

Location helps a lot with design and art direction. I was lucky because I found two locations that perfectly matched the setting I wanted for my film. In the future, I want to do my best to find good locations that fit my script well.

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

It’s really hard to get everyone there. I thought I had several zombies coming to make that last shot a little better, but it didn’t work out and that was really depressing to me. It was also really nice to have the crew there that I did have because they sped up the process by a lot.

                  

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?  

It was kind of tough to watch it with people. While watching it, especially on a big screen, you notice all the imperfections that you had during the production. That was hard to do, but I think it is also good because it makes me want to keep trying and keep doing better. Some people got it and some people didn’t. I think that happened because I was maybe trying to tackle an idea that was too specific, with too little budget or time. I’m not making excuses, there were definitely things I could have done to make it better, I just wasn’t sure how.

Other observations:

I really wish I had been able to see the camera screen during the shooting of the project. That might have helped with the minor things that were distracting to the audience. Post became really hard when I saw that there were imperfections in the stationary shots I took. I think that is my fault for not taking more takes while we were shooting.