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Final Installation

Setting up the installation pieces

Southend shoot - Evaluation

Southend shoot - Evaluation

One of the consequences of climate change that we wanted to tackle was the rising sea levels. Initially, we thought we could represent that by shooting people in a living room in a house by the sea and having the water invade their space, reaching their feet. We came to the conclusion that the best way to shoot would be to build a simple living room set on the beach, so the water could easily reach our actors’ feet. This way we would be pushing the frontiers of filming a moving image piece by utilising an unconventional location to build a set in and even more so, by showing the construction, breaking the illusion crated initially. 

We decided on shooting first close-ups of a couple sitting on a sofa in their living room, doing banal things, such as watching TV, filing nails and eating cereal. Then, we would reveal the constructed set and it’s real location, panning to the water reaching their feet. This means of challenging the audience’s expectations was also used in the shoot at Dungeness, which created a link between the two that went beyond just aesthetics.

We decided to go for a vintage look. Not only would that create a link with the environmental destruction made in the decades of 1950/1960 - the time which we visually based our film on -   but it would still make sense in a future setting, considering the retro tendencies in fashion and design at the moment.

In the end, the set was destroyed by the intense wind, waves and the increasingly high tide. However, we decided to keep shooting because we thought that would go perfectly with what we were trying to say. It would also enhance the strangeness of the situation, especially by showing the couple on the sofa with no set in the end.

For the presentation we decided to build a similar set around an old TV that would show the final piece, so we would create a similar environment to the one being portrayed in the video. The poor quality of the screen went really well with our edit, which was made to look like a VHS tape. We also added an old weather forecast narration on top of the visuals so that the audio would also add to the theme of climate change and extreme weather conditions.

Dungeness Shoot - EVALUATION

Dungeness Shoot evaluation

The idea for this film originated from looking at deforestation as a direct effect of climate change. The first thing we needed to do was find an adequate location for this. Our main concern was that England isn’t well known for its deforestation, so it would be hard to find a place that showcased it accurately. After long looking, we found Dungeness. 

Dungeness is a headland on the coast of Kent, England, formed largely of a shingle beach in the form of a cuspate foreland. It shelters a large area of low-lying land, Romney Marsh.

After we found the location, we needed to think of the film. There is a straight link between the fifties era and our present issue of climate change, that generation having a complete disregard for the environment and us having to deal with the consequences. Referenced by David Lynch and his fondness to portray this generation, illustrated by his Twin Peaks aesthetic and his fascination with plastic as the representation of modernity. 

We have consistently gone with this aesthetic for costume and set design in our “rising sea levels” film, so we decided that sticking with the theme in this also more “narrative based” and “cinematic” film would be the right choice. We decided on a costume that was adequate to those standards. 

To also continue with the theme of the beach film, we needed to resort to the unexpected (also links to Lynch’s work) Creating an expectation, to challenge it with a strange and improbable outcome, using satire as an instrument to achieve this. 

We decided on the storyline of our film being: A girl dancing to upbeat 50’s style music only in closeups at the beginning, so the audience doesn’t get a clear view of what the location is or what’s going on. When we reveal the extremely desolate location on a wide shot, the music vanishes and we can only hear sounds of howling wind and loneliness, but she still dances as if there were music, completely ignoring her surroundings. With this we represent the disregard of this generation, how our earth could look like on its entirety if we keep going this path and shocks us with the dark reality we are facing right now. 

We also went with the old school look for the installation piece, using an old tv with a glitchy image and headphones that immerse you into the music just so when it stops, it's way more impactful. 

Beach Shoot 2nd Edit (VHS)

We decided to give the beach film a second edit, as we felt that our first edit did not possess enough narrative cohesion. When editing the first draft, we excluded one shot that proved to be crucial to our story. This is because the nature of the shot, being wide, and shooting into the sun against a dark foreground, meant that the it included areas of the frame which were bleached white, due to over exposure. This left us in a predicament as to whether or not to include it, however, we found that when showing others our edit with the shot absent, our audience was left slightly unsettled due to the relevance of the final shot, as there was no obvious link between the end scene and the scenes that come before. This meant that we had no option but to include this shot, as to us, narrative cohesion took priority over minor aesthetic details. Creating this VHS style effect not only aided us in slightly disguising this overexposure and distracting the audience, but also helped reinforce the context of a dystopian past-influenced future. In our opinion, this made for a more successful edit.

Infrared BTS

Infrared Behind the Scenes