After explaining my story, I want to describe a lot of my inspiration for my upcoming film and how it'll affect my production as a whole. I meant to post this earlier but this posts has a lot of research behind it and I wanted it to be perfect!
CHAPTER ONE: WES ANDERSON
Last year, Wes Anderson was basically the main inspiration for my film. Here is some insight on how I incorporated it to my previous film: https://introspectivepictures.blogspot.com/2017/03/my-inner-wes-anderson.html
This year, I want to incorporate a lot of Wes Anderson's stylistic choices, but I also want to mimic a lot of his cinematography. Wes Anderson's cinematographer, Robert Yeoman, has amazing technical skills that really capture whatever Anderson is envisioning. In order to achieve the most effective shots, I'm going to storyboard in extreme detail. That way, I'll have a better understanding and plan when I shoot.
There are very specific shots that I want to capture with this inspiration in mind. Throughout my film, I'd like to include tracking shots, that add liveliness and movement to the piece. If you see my "Official Storyboard" post you can refer to which sections of my film will include tracking or master shots.
Of course, symmetry is key. Wes Anderson's films are well known for their beautiful mise-en-scene elements and their symmetrical shots throughout. I think this aspect of the films makes it so much more visually pleasing, almost like looking at a beautifully composed painting.
Last year, I had a very specific use of color throughout my piece. I set out a color palette for my film, just like every other Wes Anderson film has. This year, I want to do the same thing. I'm thinking of either having warm colors all throughout, yellows, oranges, reds, etc OR having a rose/peach color scheme, similar to Grand Budapest Hotel. Overall, they will be soft and warm colors, specifically, pastels. Wes Anderson has become the all time master of pastel coloring, using "soft, gentle, and forgiving colors", which adds to the overall tonality of his stories. This is the exact look I'm going for.
As used above in the title for my blog (Introspective Pictures II), I want to use the same font as Moonrise Kingdom for the credits in my production. The handwritten font is actually "Tilda", which is a more decorative font in comparison to his usual Helvetica or Futura fonts. I think the Tilda font gives my story more personality, rather than the plain font I used last year in my "SWATCH" film.
With camera techniques, Robert Yeoman is very specific about his preferences. Yeoman loves to work in film, which is something I would love to do too if I had the available resources. High school is pretty tough. But he also has a lot of characteristic techniques that he does with digital cameras. Anderson always limits Yeoman to one camera, which means each shot must be extremely focused on achieving its overall purpose. He usually like to be the main cameraman, probably because he values and trusts his vision the most (which is my same character, I'm pretty bossy when it comes to this stuff). He also has very tight shots and uses space very effectively, something I'll need to do depending on where I shoot.
Overall, both Anderson and Yeoman are huge inspirations for me, and I hope to have a sort of "signature look" with my piece similar to theirs.
CHAPTER TWO: AMELIE
Surprisingly so, the film Amelie shares a lot of stylistic choices as many Wes Anderson films. "'Amélie' is a fanciful comedy about a young woman who discretely orchestrates the lives of the people around her, creating a world exclusively of her own making. Shot in over 80 Parisian locations, acclaimed director Jean-Pierre Jeunet ("Delicatessen"; "The City of Lost Children") invokes his incomparable visionary style to capture the exquisite charm and mystery of modern-day Paris through the eyes of a beautiful ingenue." Amelie has a very specific color scheme, revolving around yellows, reds, and greens, and using a lot of the shots and art direction for character development. A lot of the shots throughout Amelie also include a lot of movement, which is something I want to incorporate heavily into my production. I also love how Amelie has consistent zoom-ins to introduce different characters and ideas. I plan to do the same (refer to storyboard). The world Amelie lives in seems overwhelmingly unrealistic, through the use of many dutch angles, fast motion shots, and a variety of B-roll that adds to the complexity of the story. For my film I might add a flashback, which could potentially be in black and white, but not the weird cheesy version, but the Amelie version. I also plan to edit with fast motion for certain scenes. To get more insight on some techniques I'm trying to adapt, take a look at this video analyzing the overall cinematography of the film:
One of my FAVORITE aspects of the movie however is the soundtrack. Since Amelie is an overwhelmingly 'French' film, a lot of characteristics about the movie seem to fit under the French tonality that the director is trying to achieve. I think one of the most successful aspects is definitely the music. The music give off a sort of Parisian vibe, which is exactly what the director was trying to achieve. Below is the entire soundtrack just so you guys can admire it as much as I do. For my own film, I want to create very similar audio. I have a friend who produces music, and he will helpp me with the process! He has agreed to write and produce and entire score for my film, and I'm so excited to collaborate. Hopefully it will be as beautiful as Amelie's Yann Tiersen, who is the musician for the entirety of the film.
Although there is a decent amount of dialogue in Amelie, it is also heavily narrated. This is also something I want to adapt in my production, making it almost fully narrated.
CHAPTER THREE: BLACK MIRROR
Black Mirror is currently my favorite T.V show to date. If you're not familiar with the show, you should definitely check it out. The Netflix original featuring stand-alone dramas -- sharp, suspenseful, satirical tales that explore techno-paranoia -- "Black Mirror" is a contemporary reworking of "The Twilight Zone" with stories that tap into the collective unease about the modern world. Each story features its own cast of unique characters, including stars like Bryce Dallas Howard ("The Help"), Alice Eve, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Tom Cullen and Jerome Flynn ("Game ofThrones"). Joe Wright, Dan Trachtenberg, and James Watkins are among the featured directors.
Before I realized i wanted to go a more artistic route with my production, I really wanted to make my short film similar to a Black Mirror episode. However, each Black Mirror Ep. has a really complex story behind it so I realized it would be very difficult to capture that in a 5 minute limit. So i decided to branch off a bit, and include the technological aspect of the series in a much smaller and less complex way. My story is really based of of time travel, and how a relationship is formed through it. The watch in my film allows my main character, Leo, to go back in time one hour as many times as he wants throughout the day. The watch allows me to have that "What if?" factor that every black mirror episode has. This also adds a post-modernistic element to my film, questioning our current reality and how it could be distorted in the future.
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These three productions are my main inspirations for my film one way or another. For the past two years I've been analyzing and deconstructing a ton of work from a wide range of people, so it's exciting to finally apply what I've been learning. I don't have nearly as much experience as the people I'm learning from, but their work alone has motivated me to experiment with different techniques in order to get the best results. I'm excited to see what I can do!!
x Maria
Citations:
CineFix. “10 Best Uses of Color of All Time.” YouTube, YouTube, 19 Jan. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=tILIeNjbH1E&feature=youtu.be.
Crump, Andy. “A Beginner's Guide to Wes Anderson Movies.” Screen Rant, 14 Mar. 2014, screenrant.com/wes-anderson-movie-guide/.
“How to Stylize Your Cinematography Like Wes Anderson.” The Beat: A Blog by PremiumBeat, 18 Oct. 2017, www.premiumbeat.com/blog/stylize-cinematography-like-wes-anderson/.
Kyle Buchanan Follow @kylebuchanan. “How Wes Anderson's Cinematographer Shot These 9 Great Scenes.” Vulture, 8 Jan. 2015, www.vulture.com/2015/01/how-wes-andersons-cinematographer-shot-9-scenes.html.
nickhansbauer. “The Cinematography of Robert Yeoman (Wes Anderson's DoP).” YouTube, YouTube, 5 Feb. 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6L_txEdKDg&feature=youtu.be.
“Understanding the Cinematography of Robert Yeoman.” YouTube, YouTube, 3 July 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf6kH9lWlPQ&feature=youtu.be.
White, Adam. “How to Make a Wes Anderson Movie, by His Trusted Cinematographer Robert Yeoman.” The Telegraph, Telegraph Media Group, 9 Jan. 2018, www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/make-wes-anderson-movie-trusted-cinematographer-robert-yeoman/.
The Amélie Effect.” Film Comment, www.filmcomment.com/article/the-amelie-effect/.
“Deconstructing Amelie – Evan E. Richards.” Evan E. Richards, 9 Dec. 2012, evanerichards.com/2011/2120.
Fusco, Jon. “Watch: The Technique and Dreamlike Practices of DP Bruno Delbonnel.” No Film School, 2 Mar. 2018, nofilmschool.com/2016/08/dp-bruno-delbonnel.
