Narrative Visual Perspective in Film

As a first year Film student, I was challenged to create a Narrative Film without dialogue. We started our pitches for this project in October, and worked really hard on this project through February. For this project, I worked with Brandon Choi and Elen Parry, and we created a film that I am proud of. This is my first attempt at making a Narrative Film and one of my first attempts at making any film. Even though it isn’t a perfect product, we all worked really hard on it and I am happy with our film Love, Calamity.

A guys night spirals out of control on a typical laundry run.

Film Synopsis:

Car pulls up to the laundromat, and car parks. John gets out of the car, grabs his baseball bag, and walks into the laundromat. He sets the bag down, and begins putting his clothes in the washing machine. He pulls out his Walkman, clicks play, and begins listening to his music. He hears the door chime over the sound of his earbuds and turns to see who it is. John does a double take. It’s a girl! She’s really pretty. John slowly takes his headphones out, as she walks closer to him. She chooses the machine next to him, and sits down. After glancing at his Walkman a couple times, she finally asks why he has one. They share some dialogue, and some awkward spaces in between. He hands her an earbud, and right as she’s about to take it, she gets a phone call. Her face changes, she’s not scared, but her eyes harden. She exits the laundromat, walking to the right. As she reaches to put her phone in her pocket, something falls to the ground. John goes to inspect it. It’s a flashdrive. He tries to get her attention, but she’s already gone. He puts the flash drive in his pocket, and sits back down. John pulls out his phone, and types in “How to talk to girls”. He begins reading it, when his machine beeps, his clothes are ready. 

He’s loading his clothes back into his bag when he hears the door chime. Is it the girl? He turns, but instead the girl, it’s a man. He’s wearing all black. There’s something sinister about him. He begins methodically searches around the room, looking down the aisles of washing machines. He starts yelling at John, but he has his earbuds in. John looks confused. Who is this guy? He grabs our protagonist and throws him against the machines, screaming at him. Our protagonist is frightened, he’s not able to get his words out properly. From his jacket pocket, he pulls out surveillance photos of the girl. Is this guy a spy? Frightened and unable to speak, John points in the direction the girl left in, hoping that gets the guy to leave him alone. The guy leaves the store. Our guy sits there in shock for a couple of seconds. He’s glad the guy is gone. The girl is in danger. He realizes what he’s done, and frantically runs out the door, towards them. He grabs his baseball bat on the way out. 

Protagonist gets to the corner of the building, and feels someone grab his arm. It’s the girl, and she pulls him to where she’s hiding. He pulls back, and motion to her that they need to leave. They start walking together. They turn the corner, but the antagonist is there waiting for them. He walks up to our protagonist, and punches him. John drops the bat, and falls to the ground. He hits his head on the curb, and passes out. The spy grabs the girl, and begins pulling her away. Suddenly, the girl knees him in the stomach, and a fight ensues. Both seem trained in fighting, and it’s an even match. For a split second, John regains consciousness and sees the fight. What is going on? He passes out again. The spy punches the girl, she falls to the floor. As he begins approaching the girl, she gets up, elbows him on his left side, then punches him in the face. He falls, she runs inside the laundromat. She begins frantically looking through her laundry bag. A shadow falls over her, in a figure of a man. It’s the spy. Just as he’s about to grab her, he clutches his left side, and doubles over in pain. He turns around, and his head gets knocked back. He falls, and we see John standing there holding his bat. The girl gets up, grabs his hand, and they run out together. They get into his car, and leave the parking lot. As they’re driving, John reaches into his pocket and gives her the flash drive. She takes it, and a small smile can be seen from her face. She reaches to turn the radio on, and it’s the song from earlier. They share a moment, laughing at the serendipity. We see the car drive off.

Acting Scene

In preparation for creating our film, we practiced acting, in order to understand how to direct our actors, as well as understand how to memorize lines and learn how to act ourselves. We were randomly paired up and we got to choose any 2-4 minute scene from any film that we wanted to. I was paired up with Casey Snell, and we chose the argument scene from Damien Chazelle’s La La Land. After shooting this acting scene we learned how to multi-cam edit on Premiere Pro.

Dialogue Scene

In preparation for Narrative 2 films, we recorded, filmed and performed a scene that was given to us by Mr. Taylor. Then we edited the footage to make the audio that we recorded separately to match up with the footage.

Storyboard

Because I am a Film 1 senior, my group was assigned to create a storyboard for our film, rather than a script. We spent a couple of weeks drawing our first draft of our storyboards, and then went back to fix them to be more clear. In the end, we had about 100 storyboards to map out the shots that we were going to take for our film.

Light Scavenger Hunt

To learn how to do proper lighting, we practiced using multiple different lights in the film room and created a short video to show examples of the different types of lighting. Some of them are incorrect, because we had to remember from the lesson that we had learned earlier that day. This was fun to make because I got to make new friends in the class and practice new techniques.

Love, Calamity: Behind the Scenes

In the gallery below are images from behind the scenes of our shoots at Oasis Laundry for our film.

Brandon eating Jonathan’s dinner while we were shooting one night
The mess that was our camera bags and lights when we filmed each night.
Me very excited that it’s past 9:30pm and we are still filming
Sydney Enthoven herself giving direction to our actors

Narrative Trailer

Love, Calamity