Critical and Contextual Evaluation

Idea Development and Research

When the experimental module started, I spent a lot of time wondering what I
was going to do for my project, I wanted to do something that hadn’t been done
or something that hadn’t been done in the same way. But I could not think of
anything until one day I was walking with my grandfather and brother down the
seafront when I saw one of those telescopes you usually have to pay 20p for.
However, it was just open for people look through, I thought it might look quite
good if I took a photo through the telescope and it came out with some
interesting results. I really liked the result of the photo’s that I decided to use that
as the idea for my experimental project.

For the research I first looked at examples of images and films that have been
filmed or taken through another camera’s viewfinder. To see if anyone had done it
before, I think this was a helpful thing to do because all those examples looked
good and there was a lot of potential to play around with it and it really enforced
that my idea was a good one. I also looked at how to film through a viewfinder as I
had no idea how I was going to film through a viewfinder, I found a way digitally
however it would not work on my camera, I did not want to go for that digital sort
of look as it had been done before and in some ways it felt like quite and easy
thing to do.

Thanks to Richard Edkins my Tutor, I started looking at John Smith who is a British
Experimental Filmmaker makes films that play around with the structure of films
and trying to push the boundaries of film language. This was interesting, and it
definitely added to my idea and in some ways, it went hand in hand with my idea.
It also gave me something I could use on my film; in a lot of his films, he makes.

Filming and Post Production

Making the film at first I thought was going to be really hard and in fact for most
the project I was thinking constantly about how am I going to film stable footage
through another camera’s viewfinder. First thing that I had to solve was what
camera I was going to use to film through the old camera’s viewfinder because
that camera is very heavy so it was going to be really hard to hold both that
camera and then hold another one directly behind it. I did a test shoot one
morning when I was out with my family and found that actually it wasn’t that hard
to film through a viewfinder, however it was going to be quite hard to film stable
footage through the viewfinder.

I do regret leaving it to the last one or two weeks to shoot and edit the film,
however I found it really hard to come up with an idea for the story for the film. I
knew that I wanted to do the viewfinder idea however it was really hard to find
and storyline with the filming style I was going for. I also realized about half way
through thinking of a story and potentially a script that it is an experimental
project so it doesn’t really have to make sense in some ways. But through
research into John Smith where in a lot of his films he plays with the perspective
of the audience and in some ways makes the audience dig further or ask
questions of the film. I thought that would be a really good idea for the storyline
of the film.

In the end I came up with the storyline being that the main character (my brother)
being trapped inside a camera, the storyline is basically about there being
multiple realities within camera’s, the confusing part is when the person we have
been following through the entire film finds a camera and sees another version of
himself trapped inside another camera. This I thought was the perfect way of
confusing the audience and make them really think about what is going on in the
film.

Through thinking about the storyline when I was editing, I felt like something had
to change to make it stand out and I tired making all the shots that were supposed
to be real life shots being black and white to make them stand out, as well to give
the impression that in this multiple reality there is no colour and the camera that
is following the main character is what is giving it colour. I also thought that again
this would confuse the audience and I think it that it did.

I think that I achieved what I was wanted to on this project as when getting
feedback from my friends about the film, they all seemed really confused about
what the story actually was and what was going on in the film. I also got feedback
about what they thought about the shots that weren’t filmed through a
viewfinder being black and white and mostly it was positive. However there was a
few that didn’t really understand it, which is actually a good thing as well as the
confused they are the more it becomes experimental.