Cinematography Written Report

 

Cinematography Written Report

by Jake Liam Sharratt Martínez

 

The movie I plan to direct will be called The Meeting, and the theme of the story, equally, is the meeting. It is so called because two people meet up with each other and a third (albeit cleverly hidden) character will also be featured. The short movie will be about three minutes long. It will only contain two main people in the movie he story is as follows: It is all set in the middle of Cork Grand Parade. As a man (played by me) is walking down the street, he trips over a bag that someone has left behind and passes out. His friend (played by Ciaran McLoughlin) wakes him up and notices that they have a bag with a name on it, and suspect that this is the man that they have to give the bag back to and so they go on a hunt to look for the missing person and give it back. The movie is set in Cork, and the entirety of the short movie will be shot all around the part of the city, because of course, we are only allowed to be filming in one location. That is not a big problem though, seeing as how I was not intending to use other locations anyway. The idea of shooting our film in mostly one location is inspired by the movies Reservoir Dogs (directed by Quentin Tarantino, cinematography by Andrzej Sekuła) and The Breakfast Club (directed by John Hughes, cinematography by Thomas Del Ruth), as both movies were set in mainly one location. Another piece of media that inspired the idea of setting it in one location came from the Seinfeld (created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld) episode The Parking Garage (Season 3, Episode 6, directed by Tom Cherones and written by Larry David). These kind of episodes where they are set in mainly one location is called a bottle episode. The story of this movie is inspired by the classic movie The Wizard of Oz (directed by Victor Fleming, cinematography by Harold Rosson) in that that movie was mainly a fetch quest of trying to find someone. Though for my movie, the entire premise is that we are trying to find the owner of the missing object so that we can bring this missing object back to him, as opposed to trying to find someone to fix our problems, such as us going back to Kansas or getting a brain or whatever. Seeing as how the movie can only contain two main actors, this third person will be cleverly hidden by means of a first person view, which will represent the eyes of the third friend. There is also a similar point earlier on in the short film where as I am passed out and I am waking up, using an applied effect that represents the eyes opening up as I am waking up. The inspiration of the first person view in general is inspired by Hardcore Henry (directed by Ilya Naishuller, cinematography by Sergey Valyaev, Andrey Dementiev, Ilya Naishuller, Pasha Kapinos, Vsevolod Kaptur and Fedor Lyass) and how the movie is presented in a first person view. Although because I cannot have any handheld shots, it is not going to be as realistic, so it will be on a tripod. In fact, all the shots featured in the movie will be on a tripod.  I will also bring books and/or DVDs to put the tripod on, in the case that any shots I take are too short. There will be various shots of foot close ups to represent a sense of suspense and mystery on who will be coming down the road, as well as various close ups of faces, to show the way the two main characters of the story are emoting and the seriousness of the situation. This kind of camera shot is inspired by various action movies, though there are too many to list off. The whole color palette of this movie will be mostly warmer colors, which will give off a warmer vibe. This would represent how searching around the entire city is a mostly taxing task. This kind of color scheme was inspired by both the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (published by Rockstar and developed by Rockstar North) and the animated movie MFKZ (directed by Shōjirō Nishimi and Guillaume "Run" Renard), in that the city in those media were represented very warmly during the day.