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

In the very early days of Central Station, we asked members within the community to submit their ideas for our GFF Trailer competition. The call was open for one month and we were looking for proposals along with simple sketches, storyboards and materials to support the application.

We, and our partners the Glasgow Film Festival 2010, were delighted with the quality and the number of responses from the network. The shortlist worked with representatives of GFF, GFT and ISO Design, for their commission. They were: Allistair Burt, Lucy Elliott, Patrick MacDonald and Kim Stewart.

All four worked on the development phase on their project ideas with GFF and Central Station’s supervision, at the end of which one proposal was commissioned.

Read these blogs from the shortlisted creatives, find out about their processes and see the winning trailer:
Glasgow Film Festival 2010 – development by Alburt
Glasgow Film Festival… Now Even Bigger! by Kim Stewart
Glasgow Film Festival Trailer development by Kim Stewart
And they’re off by Paddy Mac
Glasgow Film Festival – cinema sudoku by Lucy Elliot
Iso-tonic by Paddy Mac
More GFF trailer development by Lucy Elliot
Glasgow Film Festival trailer…revised script by Kim Stewart
The Barter system by GFT
GFF final submission by Kim Stewart
GFF2010 Trailer – sound and music by Alburt
Gff submission yo by Lucy Elliot
Gff submission by Paddy Mac
Disbelief by Paddy Mac
Friday ramblings by Paddy Mac
It’s a Wrap! by Paddy Mac

This is a bit late as was meant to go up on Friday but I thought I’d shove it up just to complete the GFF trailer competition experience! So here’s the material of my final submission with treatment and storyboards and stuff yo!

TREATMENT

The trailer involves a classic Glasgow tenement building and its inhabitants. The first shot begins by looking straight at the exterior the ground floor flat; it’s night time with orange street lamps illuminating the dark windows. To the beat of the music the lights in the flats turn on in sequence. This reveals the people inside carrying out an array of activities. These activities hint at stereotypical and iconic shots, scenes and concepts from famous films. One example is a red hoodie clad man pedalling furiously on an exercise bike with a large circular lantern behind him. The camera journeys at a constant speed up the tenement building staying locked straight on. More dark windows come into view and the lights come on to the beat. The hints become more abstract and some don’t involve people at all. The camera reaches the roof of the building carrying on to reveal the streets of Glasgow behind finally coming to a rest as the GFF logo appears.

The tenement building itself will either be a layered photo or a photographed and lit miniature model, similar to the technique used in my previous film Grandma & the Monster all the while keeping in mind Avril Paton’s iconic paintings of Glasgow’s tenements. The camera movement up the building will be achieved using After Effects. Rather than being filmed the action sequences will be created using looped photographs, forming gifs, a jolting style of animation. The people will be shot against a green screen and the sitting room sets slipped in behind them. The gifs will be animated to the beat of the music coherently fusing the audio-visual elements. The overall feel will be that of an automata sculpture; a multitude of miniature interlacing cogs, springs mechanisms working as one to create the rudimentary yet pleasing action.

Susan Boyle (of local band Vendor Defender) has agreed to collaborate to make the track for the piece. She has made a very rough mock up which hasn’t been mixed that she is thinking about using.

Window 1
A man wearing a red hoodie and sports gear peddling on an exercise bike in front of a round lantern lamp shade on his light – E.T.

Window 2
A woman watching a exercise video, one of the moves is to move your arms with fingers in ‘V’s across her eyes – Pulp Fiction

Window 3
Birds in a birdcage and birds hanging out – The Birds

Window 4
A man stands at the back of the room while in the foreground is a silhouette of a woman putting on her tights – The Graduate

Window 5
A shadow of a giant rabbit crosses the floor – Harvey

Window 6
3 People in red tracksuits – The Royal Tenenbaums

Window 7
This window is underwater, a squid floats by – 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

Window 8
A flashing television with static on it – Poltergeist

Window 9
The blind is down and there is a faint, distorted shadow of a hand holding a knife – Psycho

Window 10
This window is entirely bricked up – Brick

Window 11
A man wearing pyjamas with banages on his leg looking out with binoculars
– Rear Window

Window 12
A man taking off his glasses and ripping open his shirt – Superman

Cheers my dears

The original idea of the action happening within the windows of a Glasgow tenement building has stayed the same but the look and movement developed.

The camera may now start as a wide straight on shot at the bottom of the tenement, with cars and buses going past, the world carrying on as normal. Then the camera moves up the building, still keeping the tenement in a straight on wide shot, resting on the 2 top floors, so we can see about 10 windows in the frame. All of them are dark, lights start coming on in time with the keyboard, electro, retro Sega mega drive game type music, revealing the action within the windows.

The action is going to be people and objects becoming iconic imagery from films. The lights get switched on and off faster and faster in all the rooms as some of the characters start to interact with others from different windows until all the lights are on resulting a chaotic scene of movement made up of all the action that was introduced individually. The camera carries on with its movement up the building until it is in the sky exposing a cityscape of Glasgow where the GFF logo appears.

Before the meeting I didn’t want to get too involved in thinking about the action that the characters would perform. I wanted to ask Mark and Clyde how this idea would be possible to achieve, before getting lost in complicated action that wouldn’t work with the technical aspects. I knew I wanted the characters to be placed in front of a green screen and then take photos of random living spaces to slip behind them; this would take out any need for a set for each separate action. I did this type of idea with one of my films Grandma & the Monster (although that was back projected photos of a model city) and it gives a surreal quality to the scene. Also rather than straight filming the action I wanted it to be a moving .gif on a loop, which would add an animated fun feel, and would be easier on me in terms of lighting. Also I really like that Toshiba Timeslice advert that is like a “bullet time” looping .gif. Here’s a link.

Mark and Clyde said how the tenement building itself could obviously be just a photo with the windows cut out and used as a plate. But they came up with the idea of making up the image by collageing it together much like David Hockney’s photographic collages (link here) or like Dave McKean, collaborator of Neil Gaiman. As long as it keeps or even emphasises the essence and charismatic look of a Glasgow tenement building, all is cool. But as I was coming back from the meeting I liked the idea of making an actual small model of a tenement front and photographing that.

Anyway check out this guy: Arno Salters, I worked with him and got stuck on a train from Wales with him once, his style rules and I hope the style of the trailer to look influenced by his work.

Cheers my dears