From Storyboard to Screen Part 3
I was out of town last week which, for the four people reading this, meant no ‘From Storyboard to Screen Part 3’. But I am back and have some more low-quality, high-energy stick figure drawings from my recent experimental short film, ‘Smile: It’s Only the End of the World’ coming your way!
This image probably needs a bit of context because you’re most likely asking ‘what the hell is going on?’. In this scene, our main character Zara (played by Kaeley Jade Wiebe), is having a drug-induced nightmare/hallucination depending on how you interpret the scene. She’s seeing a vision of herself that has haunted her for the entire film. It is almost like an astral projection, or even a sleep paralysis demon.
This shot was a lot of fun to create and possibly a bit scary for Kaeley too - you’ll have to ask her about that. I wish I had the different layers to show you how we accomplished it. But essentially, we shot three different versions of this setup:
1) Nobody in the frame, just the setting
2) Zara laying in bed staring at the projection above her
3) Zara’s Projection laying overtop the bed and overtop her present body
This last one was tricky because we needed to have her floating overtop herself. So, what did we do? We had Kaeley lay flat on a chair. We had me and a few others hide below holding the chair so Kaeley didn’t fall. And then we snapped the photos as quick as possible.
Then, through the magic of Photoshop, we were able to combine the different layers, erase everyone who wasn’t supposed to be there and then we could shift Zara’s Projection so that she was floating right above her in the final version.
I feel like this spotlight shot is pretty self-explanatory. I really wanted to single in on Young Zara’s recital performance and I wanted to continue the circle motif (which I spoke about two weeks ago in S2S Part 2). We were pretty lucky because the location we shot in – ATB Financial Arts Barn in Edmonton – is used for theatre productions and they had a beautiful spotlight ready to go.
These last two shots kind of go hand-in-hand….get it? Yeah, yeah, there’s a corny pun for y’all! But these shots are actually super important and there’s a reason why they are framed almost identically. I can’t tell you those reasons completely because I don’t want to ruin the film or anyone’s interpretation of it.
Badly drawn fossil — at least I’m being honest with myself!
But what I can tell you is that in both of these scenes Zara receives important gifts from men, who she believed, abandoned her. The first from her father (played by Neil Chase) and the second from the mysterious Benjamin Cohle (played by Seth O’Shea). I chose to do a closeup of the exchange because I really wanted to highlight the significance of both. I chose to repeat the shots because…well, this isn’t just your typical gift exchange and it’s something that unlocks the entire meaning of the film. And that’s all I’m saying about that!
That’s it for me today! I hope you found this informative or at least gave you something to read while you aimlessly killed time wherever you may be. Stay tuned, next week I will post my final ‘From Storyboard to Screen” segment where I dissect four more images and let you know when the film will be released online. Dun, dun dun…..! Have a great week and thanks for reading!