Hello my dears,

I’ve also been shortlisted for the GFF trailer competition for which I’m so grateful as it’s going to kick my butt back into the short film making world. I moved up to Glasgow from Manchester after university and whilst working as a camera assistant up and down the country never had time to find the same contacts and wealth of skilled collaborators to call upon up here, yet seeing constant amazing work come out of every corner of Scotland.

I enjoyed listening to the other 3 proposals yesterday in our first meeting with GFF. All ideas I’d love to help out on when they get through to the making stage (if they need the help!) Also hearing about all the different disciplines they choose to work in and how it differs to my approach.

I learnt in the meeting that GFF actually shortlisted me for my 10 second sting idea rather than my original pitch for the 30 trailer, and would prefer if I worked the idea into the full length trailer. So I’m going to put up my original proposal then add a few further ideas I’m preparing for our meetings with Mark and Clyde, two senior designers at ISO, to help develop the ideas.

Original Proposal:

Straight on, symmetrical shot of a traditional Glasgow tenement building.

The square formation windows, characteristic of Glasgow tenements can be seen.

Within a flat a figure walks towards the window on the bottom left and draws the blind down, filling the frame with a flat purple colour. The same happens in the window diagonally above right to the first window, this time the blind is pink. Another is closed to show a letter.

This process continues until the Glasgow Film Festival logo is complete.

Ta-daaa

The idea was influenced by Avril Paton’s “Windows in the West”, (thanks Kim for reminding me of the actual name!) paintings of tenement building exteriors, where each window has it’s own separate life happening within.

(see the image here:
http://www.avrilpaton.com/paintings/glasgow/windowsinthewest.html)

The evolved idea is going to happen along these lines where the camera is moving between and coming up close to each window. The action that is happening inside was influenced by the Stella Artois ad campaign that came out a couple of years ago that they called the “cinema sudoku”, where there was a normal looking scene of a park or a beach but iconic film images were added into the scene.

(You can find them here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/jul/17/davidsmith.theobserver)

Each window will have a reference to a classic film, such as a the boy with the red hoodie bringing his bike in the house so it doesn’t get nicked or a man in a wheel chair and a broken leg spying with binoculars. Each character pull down their window blind and the camera zooms out it see the GFF logo made up by the blinds.

This is a brief version of the idea so far, once I’ve spoken to Mark and Clyde about it tomorrow I’ll update me blog on ways that the idea can be achieved.

Check out the other shortlisters yo!:

Kim Stewart, paddymac and Alburt