My New Wave Film

 

 Here is a clip from my interpretation of a new wave film that features monochrome/black & white main images, emphasis on sounds like the music and extended shots with seemingly invisible cuts.

The basic idea behind this was to take some of the shots/pieces that are seen in the American new wave and its influence (political commentary and French new wave) and make it about how life almost has gone backwards with lockdown in effect whilst promoting safety within the current climate. As you can tell by the footage it's all handheld with minimum stability with the movements of the scene as I move.

The thought process was that the American New Wave made commentaries on the scenes or trends within current politics, as we know COVID is the biggest influence and news of this year and it can feel isolating and to some almost like they're going backwards.

Hence some of the shots having almost no one in them highlighting the isolation with the homes and quarantine, then the actual story line of the story seemingly going backwards in time.

So on to the critique of the work, overall I feel that I achieved my goal of making a comment on the impact of the current environment that the government has shown meeting the general type of film made within the 1960's-70's America at the time, it was also low-budget just me, my phone and some help from the internet for sounds further reflecting on the statistical side of the New Wave development. Enough about the theory and backing what about the clip itself and well I feel like I captured a number of points and edits in the piece, for example the sound and visual alignment towards the end of the clip builds scale and emotion around the environment of the character and what's happening to them. The transitions between them help to keep the flow running smoothly and not breaking the audience out of the experience. Another is the overlay on top of the scenes, having the low opacity of the images and clips on top of the video help to build an ominous feel whilst giving reminders of the government impact on the character (which explains the flashes of Boris on the overlay).

Now where did it go wrong? Well from the top there were a few health and safety issues along with privacy problems too, such as for the reverse walking scene I had to keep an eye out behind me whilst walking which limits my visibility and also makes the possibility of capturing something whilst filming with the camera facing the opposite direction. The next health and safety issue was that whilst walking my feet weren't stable at the angle of walking for the shot making it a risk of falling and damaging me or the equipment. As I mentioned earlier there was also a privacy risk and that was similar to what I mentioned earlier about not being able to see the camera whilst walking backwards so if someone or something got into frame that wasn't supposed to be there then that could  cause a lot of issues further down the pipeline.

Other than the issues filming lets go to the editing, going back over the footage captured within the clip did make a few problems like trying to align audio to fit clips and where there's edits in trying to blend them to ensure that the transitions seem more real and like a sequence rather than having it as a series of individual clips. The other one was trying to make sure that video clarity was still good and strong when putting in the black & white filters and overlays on top of the raw video files and having the transition effects at the right points to reflect the general theme of the clip.

To sum up from the review, overall I feel as though I achieved what I set out to do but in future I need to reflect on the problems and issues that I brought up for the next project.