Fading Away
My film ‘Fading Away’ is a representation of a girl losing herself through drugs, and ends up believing she is a cat, the cat represents the influence of the drugs and the temptation. As the film is an illustration of the girls mind, the film seems very surreal. The film we ended up with is very different to the film we planned to make our initial idea was to do ‘A Day In The Life Of A Cat’, we made our story board for it and even started to film it, we wanted it to be a comical film about what cats get up once their owner has left the house, we wanted to show the cat creating mischief, but when we started filming we realised our idea was nearly impossible to do, as we had to work with cats, and they didn’t do anything which we planned, they also got scared of all the people and equipment, it all became very time consuming. We also realised without having access to certain technology, the film would end up looking very amateur, and the storyline wouldn’t flow very well, it may of even become boring. After long discussions we decided to drop the idea and brain storm a new one, we stayed with the idea of cats but thought we should do something a bit more edgy. We wanted to make our film surreal, so we based our ideas around the Surrealist Theory, this theory was launched in Paris in the 1920's, it draws upon the subconscious mind and rejection or reality. We wanted our film to attract the target audience of men and woman aged 17-50, I feel we achieved this, as the age range is broad and I think many different people would enjoy and understand it, we didn’t think people younger than 17 would fully comprehend the meanings behind the film, as the storyline is not just handed to the audience on a plate, they would have to participate within the film to figure out the metaphors within it.
Within our group we all had different jobs including Director, Cinematographer, Sound, and editing. We didn’t 100% stick with our jobs as we all worked together but we did base ourselves around our jobs. My job was Cinematography, so I had to make the lighting and camera decisions during filming, I also helped with colour and transitions during editing. Within my job I had to think about mise-en-scene, I would have to think about what you can see within the camera frame, and because we were doing a surreal film I had to think heavily into the meanings and representation of objects and camera position, as most things were metaphor of her unconscious mind.
At the beginning of the film we have shots of the girl’s family talking about cats, it’s from the girl’s point of view. This allow us to put ourselves with her family having dinner, as many people experience with there own families, but as the conversation is based around cats it shows that its obviously a memory of hers which has fixated within her mind. It then moves on to ticking with shots flashing up in time with the ticking, the shots are hard to make out at first as we wanted to show some enigma codes. The shots include, point view shots of a cat in grass, shots of cat or memorabilia around the house and so on, as we get confused by this it shows that girl is feeling confused too, the ticking builds tension as if we're waiting for something to happen. The mise-en-scene of her bedroom consisted of a cat rug, a cat toy, a cat book, a cat model, a cat mug and a cat coaster. This already gives the audience an idea about how the girl feels about cats, it may also show how cats are the temptation of drugs, which are constantly surrounding her, and its now is her life. We then have shots of her rolling up catnip into a rizla (representing the drug use), on a chopping board in the shape of a cat, we then hear and see the cat as if the cat is forcing her drug intake, as if it is her subconscious mind.
Throughout the film we get shots of cats and cat items, we start to realise the girl is dominated by cats (drugs). Before she watch’s ‘The Aristocats’, it’s as if the cat chose the film for her as the cats rubs its body onto the film, already showing she is controlled by them, there then is a shot of her sitting down ready to watch it, and then a flash of the cat comes in the shot in the same chair, this gives the audience the impression that she may believe she is cat, this is emphasised as we see close up shots of her clawing on the sofa. This scene was tricky to do, as we had to rely on the cats to do as they were told, we had to take many shots before we got the perfect one. A shot very good for mise-en-scene would be the shot of all the cat models on the mantelpiece, with her in the background, it’s as if all she can see is cats and herself being a cat, that she can barely see her true self in the background. When filming this I had to try and get the correct angle, otherwise the whole shot wouldn't have worked. As the film goes on we realise she is slowly losing herself even more, she leaves the house as if she is looking for something, this symbolizes her on the path of destruction, the tension then builds up, and we then get shots of her spinning round in confusion, this was the most difficult scene to shoot, because we had to use a step ladder, however the tripod wouldn’t fit onto it, so I had to then use it by hand and try to keep it steady without getting the ladder into the frame, to over come this we decided to film it slowly and then just speed it up during editing. This scene is the first time we properly see her cat mask, this signifies herself as a cat or the temptation of drugs, while this is happening there are shots or her aiming for a tree, when she finally gets to the tree we see her for the first time without the mask looking very lost, the camera zooms in her face make it become more claustrophobic and trapping. We then see her in the cat mask looking back at her; she walks behind the tree in the direction of where she was in the mask, and disappears. This shows her completely losing her identity.
Throughout the film I wanted to subtly hint it was getting more and more surreal and twisted, so with each scene the colour would change slightly more orange, by the end of the film its far more orange, but because it has been building up slightly throughout you barley notice, this is the same with drug use, as the person become acclimatised to their own drug use. The colour orange also has many different meanings behind it, on of them being ‘the relief from things becoming too serious’ which could show that she had enough of the ‘seriousness’ of her life. It also means 'deceit' and 'distrust', which could show the only thing who she really trusts in her life now her feline friends (drugs).
The film we ended up with was very different to the film we attended to achieve. Our original film 'A Day In The Life Of A Cat', was aimed at all age ranges because it would be a light hearted comedy, however our film now wouldn’t be suitable for children, as it represents and includes drug use. We were also not going to include people in our film, and our previous storyboards showed that we would only see the human’s feet leave the house, but now our film is based around a person’s life, not a cat’s. After much deliberation at the start of making our film, I couldn’t be happier with the outcome, although I do wish we gave up on our first idea quicker, so we had more time to plan out our final idea, but all in all I feel we came out with a positive outcome. Most of our target audience agree with this, however they find the film quite confusing and may have to watch it a couple of times to get the full picture, I personally feel we could of make it slightly easier to understand in some places, but I do like to leave it open for interpretation.
