Alice came up with the idea of a story that
would incorporate our evolving technology as a catalyst for a change on how we
live in the future. Her Story premise
was that our rate of texting has increased so much that we have lost the power
of speech almost like our primary mode of communication has changed so that
talking has become redundant and therefore extinct. The film name ‘Silenced’ is
quite fitting because as a society we are becoming silenced by technology.
Our film is a comment on our society
today and a peek into a future that we may soon inhabit. The nature of a film
like this is that it represents a future that we see as very close around the
corner and can even relate to how we are living now. Therefore the viewer feels
horror through the realisation of the likenesses between the film world and
ours and an anxiety that we are a switch of a button away from this dystopian
future.
A press release for the series 'Black
Mirror' says that it 'taps into our contemporary unease about our modern
world'. We wanted ‘Silenced’ to be a 'twisted
parable for the twitter age' (Channel 4, 2011) acting almost as a warning for
our society on what can be possible in a technology obsessed culture.
In the opening scene of 'Silenced' we
are looking at a world where everyone is constantly on their phones texting. As
the Camera Man I filmed a lot of footage in the centre of Leeds so that the
sheer volume of footage could be compiled to create a seething mass of people
attached to their phones. I feel that the clips of people sped up juxtaposed
with a huge number texts popping up around them showed this. A couple of shots
later Max our protagonist and his friend bump into each other because they are
so distracted from the world around them. I shot the lead up to the bump from
behind Max so that the viewer could see his friend bump into him in plain sight
and identify how engulfed in his phone Max is.
One thing I didn’t do very well in this
scene was the camera angles in relation to which friend is texting. I filmed
the bump from directly side on to the couple so that it was a mutual and
non-biased contact. By doing this it didn’t look like one of them initiated the
bump and emphasised that they’re both as engaged with their phone as each other
and I think this was a good choice.
When I saw Alice’s
script I began by story boarding all the 24 shots on paper so that I could plan
them out and refer back to them before shooting. My original idea was to shoot
it hand-held style much like ‘The Blair Witch Project’ (1999), in films like
this it puts the viewer inside the eyes of the character. I then came up with
the idea of it actually being filmed on the phone camera, almost like the
character is being viewed by the phone but is unaware of it filming. By doing
this it would give the looming impression that they are being watched at all
times by these omnipresent sentinels.
The camera also acts
as a filter for the user, our phone acts as a vessel to live our lives through
and I thought that I could symbolise this by filming through it. When we use
our phones we are viewing the world through them, trapped inside our technology
so I tried to come up with the idea of showing this viewpoint. There’s many
practise shots I did this way on my blog however we didn’t shoot in this way in
the end. We came to the agreement that we would film the conventional way but I
think it would have looked better filmed from the phone because it would have
been easier to see who’s texting who.
We opted for the look
of the texts that are done in the BBC’s ‘Sherlock’ (2010). In this the text is
solid, white and simple font just hovering beside the characters. We chose no
bubble around the text because this can easily look out-dated and tacky. The
words are next to the phone but hover independently to it so that they aren’t
bouncing around unable to be read.
I think the biggest
flaw of our film was in the texts however. It’s hard to read all of the words
because they’re not on the screen long enough and the texts are too long. I
also think that apart from the title sequence there shouldn’t be more than one
text on the screen at one time because one text distracts the eyes from the
other. I also think that on some of the shots they are positioned wrong, one
characters texts shouldn’t come to the side of their phone and then a shot
later to the side of someone else’s phone. I feel that instead of filming short
takes I should have shot longer ones to allow sufficient time for the texts to
be displayed.
Our phone use is
almost like drug use and the fact that people become addicted to their phones
is testament to this. In ‘Silenced’ there is a scene where Alex the main
characters phone is running out of battery and as it does so he starts to be
drained of energy. This provides the viewer with the imagery that he is
suffering from withdrawal from his phone, it’s his drug, his source of energy.
Our phones today are almost like an extension of our selves. They contain
everything about us, our means of communication, our profiles of our friends
and they even contain our memories. So by losing our connection to our phone we
are almost losing our self and this is what we wanted to portray in this scene.
When filming this I decided to emphasise how he was out of energy by swaying
the camera from side to side.
As his energy levels
get lower and lower so does he and so does my filming. I end up filming with
the camera on the floor at his eye-line to symbolise his energy levels being
almost completely zapped. In the scene where the three friends are watching
television I thought it would be a good idea to view them straight on and from
above so that the viewer could articulate fully how none of them are really
looking at each other. I think that the texts could have been better positioned
perhaps on top of the character it belongs to instead of them all in a line
down one side.
The film ‘Casablanca’ was
overlaid on top of the three friends in post-production to make it seem like
the camera was inside the TV. This echoes how the text and battery symbol comes
up on the screen like we’re viewing the action from the viewpoint of
technology. It’s hardly noticeable in the final film however and so I think we
should have made it more obvious. Only at the end when Max runs out of the
restaurant shouting does the view point change and no battery or text comes up.
This symbolises how he breaks free from the entrapment of his phone.
The scene in the
restaurant needed to be almost completely re-shot because on the first attempt it
was too dark, this I should have planned better. To combat this the second time
round we brought along some studio lighting. The problem was that in the
restaurant there were a lot of mirrors so we needed to be extra careful that an
edge of a light stand wasn’t visible in a mirror. In this scene I think it’s
difficult to see whom the battery symbol relates to, this could have been fixed
by showing it flashing on the screen only when Max is in the shot.
Finally we had some
problems with the sound in the last scene where Max runs out so we had to do a couple
more takes. Unlike the rest of the film where music and text noise was dubbed
over the top, here we needed to hear Max’s shouting so it was crucial. On
reflection I think we’re missing an obvious part of the film that is stated in
its title; silence should have been used more as a cinematic device.
Nothing says sterile
and emotionless like silence does and yet it can also be very haunting. The
title sequence could have been without music; silence with just the noises of
texts coming up would have given it a monotonous and cold feeling. There’s no
vibrancy, no warmth in a world without speech and the lack of talking and
background chatter could have been so much clearer without any music at all. Perhaps
white noise should have been put on top. When music from one scene rolls onto
the next scene it can be quite confusing. The complexity of the theme and the
practicalities of a film without speech posed many challenges and I now have a
huge amount of insight into how I would resolve the aforementioned technical
difficulties in a future production.
Bibliography
Channel 4 (2011) Available at: http://www.channel4.com/info/press/programme-information/black-mirror/allpi
The Blair Witch Project (1999) Directed by
Daniel Myrick. Orlando Canada: Haxan Films.
Sherlock (2010) BBC One Television
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