"A Dimension of Mind: Film" - Part 2: Character Development

"A Dimension of Mind: Film" is a facsimile of the "Sight and Sound: Film" course at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.  However, "A Dimension of Mind: Film" differs in some important ways because it can be replicated at home.

Difficulty level: 2

Round 2 – Character Development.
Still shooting outside. Still no sound.

Movie 5.  Character portrait.
• Create a character and, through a series of individual personal choices, show us what this character is really like.

In the opening to Saturday Night Fever, See how Travolta makes specific choices and does specific little things to let us figure out who his character is?
 


Movie 6.  Character interaction
• Tell the story of what happens when two human beings meet. What do they want? How do they treat each other? Let’s see some real drama unfold.

This is a pretty effective use of silent character interaction, made using digital video:



Movie 7.  Close-up
• Make a short where the majority of shots are close-ups. Most of the meaning should come through the close-ups of things.



Movie 8.  Dream Sequence
• Manipulate location, continuity, characters and events to create some kind of surreal mindscrew. Use in-camera special effects like fades and focus changes and double exposures, as well as creative art direction decisions, to drive the dream home.

 Dream sequence from 8 1/2 by Federico Fellini




Click here to watch the dream sequence from Spellbound, a collaboration between Alfred Hitchcock and Salvador Dalí:

"A Dimension of Mind: Film" - Part 4: Sound

"A Dimension of Mind: Film" is a facsimile of the "Sight and Sound: Film" course at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.  However, "A Dimenstion of Mind: Film" differs in some important ways because it can be replicated at home.

Difficulty level: 2

Round 4 – Sound. 

Sound totally changes our perception of an image. In most of these exercises, you are to record background sounds on-location using a microphone, or find sound effects on the internet for free, or create your own foley sound effects. Remember that the keys to creating realistic sounds include room tone (the basic ambience or white noise in a room at any given moment) diagetic sound (sound that takes place in the story world, like sound effects, dialogue, or a musician’s fiddle) and non-diagetic sound (out-of-world “commentary” music, like voice-overs or soundtrack music)

Move 13 — Music.

• Create a film with a single piece of music as its soundtrack. Practice cutting the movie to the sound. (Cutting images to sound is called "mickey-mousing" because it migrated to film from the world of animation)

This scene from The Social Network makes good use of music.  It's not choreography, it's just using a soundtrack.

Movie 14 — Voice-over

• Create a film that utilizes some form of recorded voice-over.

Look to films like Fight Club, or some film-noir classic, for examples of internal monologues. Look at documentary films like March of the Penguins for educational-style voice-overs. Sometimes a story is told in-media-res and is narrated by the main character from the middle or even the end. Voice-over is so versatile that the sky's the limit.

Movie 15 — Offscreen sound-effects

• You’re not quite ready to show things making noise on screen, instead, imply the environment and the action off-screen with use of sound effects.

Movie 16 — Sound effects.

• Create a film that uses hand-recorded sound effects. These sounds can either be real sounds of objects or foley (replicated sounds).
  
  This scene from Delicatessen uses sound effects in a fun way

"A Dimension of Mind: Film" - Part 5: Finals

Round 5 – Finals

No explicit instructions here. Take what remains of your individual film budgets and use it up on this. Combine all that you’ve learned about storytelling, character, lighting, and sound to create a film with a story or an idea in it that YOU really want to tell —for your own sake, not for the assignment’s. The final film should approach four minutes in length, and needs to have some character, some sound and some lighting (you can’t just revert to the easier assignments and count it as your final)