Link To Drama: Thanks For The Year

Thanks For The Year: https://vimeo.com/211667729

Acceptance And Self Confidence In Pudding Bowl And Rite

Acceptance And Self Confidence In Pudding Bowl And Rite 

By Tom Wilson

The influences of Pudding Bowl, by Vanessa Caswill, are apparent from its stylist opening shots and use of sound design. The heavy breathing coming from the girl resonates that of Little Miss Sunshine (Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, 2006) which was released only a year before, and the stylised cinematography, capturing the almost dreamy appeal of 90s cinema, seems to mimic the colour palette and visual style of films by Jean-Pierre Jeunet such as Amelie and Delicatessen. But it's influences do not appear in just the visuals and sound design, but more prominently within it's chosen themes. Both Pudding Bowl, and the other film I intend to analyse Rite by Michael Pearce, focus on themes of acceptance and self-confidence, Pudding Bowl also focusing on beauty. These themes are also present in both Amelie and Little Miss Sunshine.

Pudding Bowl's opening scene creates an immediate atmosphere of acceptance and the desire to be. Jack (Tommy Knight), longs to be outside with his friends, but is unable to due to his strict mother. In order to both be with them, and likely impress them he ruins his sister's hair with glue. The cinematography in this scene also helps to amplify the desire to be accepted as the framing of Jack puts him central, alone, surrounded by the little furniture within their home. His friends are shot from behind a shut window, almost as if they're in a whole other world, together and laughing. The contrast between the Jack and his friends helps to further reinforce both Jack's longing to be outside and his desire to be one of the group, accepted. However, it is with Sophie Kingsley's character, Ivy, where the idea of acceptance is most apparent. The scene opens up with a close up of her character looking longingly at the beautiful women she's cutting out of magazines, similarly to Abigail Breslin's character Olive Hooper in Little Miss Sunshine as she watches the models on the television. Later, after her mother has cut her hair, she gazes at herself in the mirror as she tries to model herself of the women she sees in her magazines. These scenes help to highlight the central theme of the film, Ivy's self-confidence and desire to look like someone else, someone more beautiful. It is when we get to the final scene and we see into Ivy's consciousness, her desire to be thinner, without her glasses and chased by boys, that this theme is its most emphasised. While this scene is shrouded in dreamlike cinematography and accompanied by cheerful music, a sense of sadness is lingering as the audience realise she is not content unless she looks completely different. She wants to be accepted by society, and look as she is told she should look by these magazines. This contrasts with this films influences such as Little Miss Sunshine and Amelie, which is why it was my preferred film out of those we watched. The film masquerades it's sad themes with cheerful cinematography and music, Ivy laughing, just like Ivy masquerades her discontent with make up and her own imagination.

Similarly, my least favourite film of those we watched, Rite uses the same themes, but less generalised than Pudding Bowl. In Rite a son, Gary (Bradley Hall) has to deal with his violent father, Mike (Martin Herdman) who fails to accept him, or understand him. Unlike Pudding Bowl, Gary is content with his own identity, and is clearly confident about being both gay and as he describes it "alternative". He wears what he likes, and hangs out with his boyfriend. However, similarly to Pudding Bowl, Gary doesn't feel accepted. While in Pudding Bowl it was by society as a whole, Ivy not feeling like she looked how society wanted her to, Gary doesn't feel accepted by his father, who struggles to understand that he doesn't like football, and just wants to be with his friends. While Rite doesn't take any risks with cinematography, it does make good use of close ups, and crowded spaces, to create a feeling of claustrophobia. However, unlike Pudding Bowl, the cinematography doesn't help to add to the themes, it is merely the story that helps to highlight these. The acting in this short film also helps as the bond, or lack thereof, between the father and son feels realistic, and the violence that Mike displays doesn't feel out of place, rather we understand that he is in a tough place, and has a lot of anger built up within him.

Both films successfully touch on the themes of self confidence, identity and acceptance, just in slightly different ways. Pudding Bowl is not necessarily risk taking, but uses its cinematography and sound design in a clever and thoughtful way to help add to its themes. Rite doesn't do this as much, and as a result finishes without making too much of an impression, but does deal with these themes in a respectful manner.

The Technical And Aesthetic Approach Of Our Drama

The Technical And Aesthetic Approach Of Our Drama

Our primary goal for this piece is to create a film with a 90s theme and aesthetic. This will require a large amount of planning, as well as the collection of props such as posters, video tapes and clothes of the time. We also want to incorporate the musical scene of the time as the films main connection to the 90s; to do this we want to make reference to the death of Kurt Cobain, as well as reference other musical giants whether through posters, albums, or music videos. Through studying 90s cinema, we want to encapsulate the cinematography of the time, and portray this through the framing of our shots. However, I strongly believe that the majority of our 90s aesthetic will be created through the edit, using colour grading to mimic almost that of the time's cinema. I want to create a retro, 90s look through the use of purples, blues and yellows, using films such as Dazed And Confused (Richard Linklater, 1993) and The Big Lebowski (The Coen Brothers, 1998) as inspiration and a guideline. We would also like to create a VHS aesthetic too, using grainy effects, and perhaps effects such as static lines. I intend to research how to do this within Premiere Pro.

The Edit

The Progression Of Our Edit

By the time we had finished completing the drama, we had four edits. Each edit seemed to add a little more to both plot and the 90s aesthetic we were aiming for, but it wasn't until the third edit that any semblance of a plot properly emerged. I will break down the progression of our edits through a brief description of each one, as well as the emergence of a moderately coherent plot.

Edit 1

Our first edit was created with the intention of simply revealing it as a proof of concept, as opposed to anything presentable. This allowed us to receive any form of feedback from our teacher, which we could then apply later on. Each sequence had been edited to form complete scenes, and I had made minor changes to the colour correction in order to display our intentions in regards to creating a 90s aesthetic. Each scene was linked by a piece of text informing the viewer of what the following scene was going to be. It was at this point I realised that there was a lack of plot in our piece due to a heavy lack of footage. I began experimenting with different forms of narrative with the ambition of forming something coherent.
Link: https://vimeo.com/210191418

Edit 2

Our second edit was created as soon as we had received feedback on the first. I was not interested at this stage in completing the plot, but improving each scene individually. Because of this each scene was still accompanied by text, and the plot was nonsensical. However, it was in this edit that I began experimenting more with colour correction in order to achieve a retro, 90s aesthetic, adding a far darker and more vibrant purple glow to the piece. While the colours were too saturated, something I later changed, it was a vast improvement in our visuals, and brought us closer to what we had envisioned for our final piece.
Link: https://vimeo.com/211199769

Edit 3

Our third edit was a huge effort to both repair the broken and nonsensical plot, and improve on the effects and visuals. I tweaked the colour correction to lower the saturation, and added in lighting effects where they were needed. I learnt how to do transitions, and added in a simple one using key frames, channel blur and levels, thus replacing the text and creating more of a cinematic style. Someone in our group had suggested that we use a flashback narrative in order to fix our issue with plot. I went home and worked on this, using colour correction to help the viewer identity different time periods in the character's life, adding transitions to help alternate between past and present, and altering the sequence of scenes to show a progression in our main character. This added more of a plot than we previously had, and it became clear we were close to our final product.
Link: https://vimeo.com/211404771

Edit 4

Our final edit was created to incorporate the final footage Amy had shot. It added in a scene at the beginning to establish routine and the setting, which helped the plot flow smoothly. I replaced various shots I believed to be better, with their counterparts, and edited those to improve them, improving on the visuals. This applied most to a shot of a falling bed sheet, where the framing of the original covered up the lower half of the subjects body, meaning the sheet he had picked up was not visible. I replaced it with the other shot of the sheet falling, however this had hands holding the sheet up visible in the shot. I learnt how to cut these out, then proceeded to do so, thus improving the sequence. I also added in the shot of the music video playing on the TV to further emphasise the 90s theme. The colour grading was altered further until all of our crew were satisfied, and credits were added. The sound design was added in and we finally had our finished product.
Link: https://vimeo.com/211667729

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