British New Wave video essay

Video essay script:

Introduction:

During the 1970s, young and inspired directors all across France started a movement in film making. It was named The New Wave and it changed the way filmmakers create a film. The French New wave changed the way people film especially inexperienced at directing. This offered a fresh view of storytelling in the industry. With this, it also offered lots of different techniques that mainstream didn't use but the new wave capitalised off of these. It gave the new films a style that stuck throughout all of the films coming from these new eager directors. Labelled in the late 50’s early 60’s as films kept the same as everything else in culture was changing 

The British New Wave came from the success of the French New Wave. The French New Wave acted as a benchmark for the film at the time and did a complete 180 on the mainstream film industry. New Wave had lots of stand out characteristics, for example, having unknown actors. They were very different from mainstream films at the time. They were not looking for mainstream success. The new wave saturated the market of filming, through these techniques the press recognised the filmmaking skills at the time and didn't go unnoticed. 

"I was working backstage in Liverpool playing for small projects..." - play interview clip

Breaking the fourth wall.

Alfie clip when he talks to the viewer

Facing taboo subjects

Play a synopsis for a taste of honey 

Unmotivated camera movements 

Play clip from a taste of honey with an unmotivated camera movement 

British New Wave directors have similarities with each other as they all wanted to do the same thing, to stand out. Visually they all looked similar but had their own personalities. Through their stand out personalities, they had similarities, a taboo narrative was the main similarity. Because all of the new wave directors wanted to all standout they implemented real-life taboo subjects so that audiences can relate and have a deeper understanding

The British New Wave video essay:

To conclude the new wave video essay I felt like I set the scene well with the context of the time with lots of footage and news reports of the time. The song I used was very popular at the time and links well with the time. The clips I used for the examples of the film I studied were good for me expressing points as they showed the viewer what I was talking about. Overall the video is a good representation of the time but the commentary that I used could have been improved on. The script that I used didn't get used to its full potential. When recording the audio I didn't follow it completely and some sentences were unusable as I would say them wrong. As this was my first voice over for an essay the nerve got to me and ruined some good points I had purely by not saying them right. When reviewing the audio back I should have gone back and re-recorded the parts that I did wrong.

Overall I felt like the video essay expresses how the New wave impacted the rest of the world and the ripple effect it had on the modern era of film.     

New Wave Film + Plan

New Wave film Brainstorm:

• Montage
• Black and white with distortion layer
• Possibly edit to mimic a super 8 camera
• On-location shoots 
• Natural lighting 
• Make video footage slightly saturated 
• Make the film personal (Narrative ideas)

I will use my train journey to the college to my advantage and film the journey. I will combine the video with my footage and stock footage. Some of the ideas I have will be very hard to get myself so I will have to use stock footage. When it comes to editing I will merge the stock footage and my footage together so that it all looks authentic. 

The song that I am putting over the top of the film will be from a band called brockhampton, this band has done music videos for other songs of theirs and their style is very unique and eye-catching. Typically in their videos, the film is very abstract and experimental. Most of the music videos don't follow a narrative but have some sort of visual structure. I will be implementing their style into a new wave format. The music video that I have been inspired the most from is this one as the video has this grain and noise all in the video. The video is very dark and drab. I will be using the grainy effect used in this video. For the brockhampton video, the reason it was grainy is because of the lighting or lack of. The ISO was too high and this is how they achieved this effect, it works stylistically with the song and pace of the vocals.   

Although my video will not be focused on the vocals as much I still want there to be a connection to the vocals and visuals even if it's in a small way. The stock footage will consist of security footage of a robbery, a time-lapse of a car going down a highway and a night club.

I would like to apply a black and white filter over all of the footage to make the extra noise a better look. I will also experiment with the effects of black and white by lowering different channels of colour and intensity of certain channels and see what the outcome looks like. Along with the black and white effect, I wanted to make the aspect ration different than normal so that it conveys a more experimental and new wave style. Breaking the rules is exactly why new wave was so important for that time.  

I will be adding an extra effect on the black and white footage and that is both noise and dust/scratches. I will alternate between coloured noise and no colour noise. Switching between the two will have a good effect and make the video look even more experimental. Both of these effects will give a very authentic look to the footage, especially with the black and white it will add to the aesthetic I am trying to portray.  

The editing process took longer than I thought because I had to add all of the effects individually. 

New Wave film:

 

To conclude I feel like the final product came out well as I combined stock footage and footage that I shot on the train. I wanted to have a psychedelic and trippy video that has a very small narrative. I didn't want people to focus too much on the narrative but to focus more on the visuals and the stylistic choices that I had made. Along with the small narrative that I had towards the end of the video I wanted some of the video to be personal to me. the beginning of the clip has some key motivations that I have and want to achieve in the future. Along with the film being personal and some of the shots and zooms being unmotivated, it follows specific traits for New Wave cinema.      

4 Hour Film Challenges

Film challenges:

Editing challenge: 

Positives:

• Brief met 
• Entertaining concept
• Very creative
• Focusing on the technical aspects rather than the narrative
• Good choice in song
• The beat of the song goes well with the jarring jump cuts 

Constrictive criticism:

• Could have been longer 
• Slightly out of focus 
• Should have exported it in better quality
• Aspect ratio could have been adjusted 
• Maybe a change of location and or movement 

Unusual perspective challenge:

Positives: 

• Very unusual concept 
• Colours were a good idea
• Good camera angles 

Constructive criticism:

• Checking the focusing and the ISO
• Executing the filter idea could have been done better
• Unmotivated sounds that could have been more effective if had more thought

1920's style challenge:

Positives:

• Playful narrative 
• Good starting with a close up on what the story narrative is about
• Fits the aesthetic well with the grain
• Font fits well with the period

Constructive criticism:

• Could have had more varied shots
• Text boxes were too long and could have been shortened 
• Some more stylistic composition with the shot types could have been used
• More dialogue would have made the narrative more interesting
• Could have been more scenes to further the narrative 

Found footage music video challenge:

Positives:

• Good choice in music (fits the tone of the video)
• Nice choice of theme 
• Good shots used that portray meaning through the lyrics
• Good length 
• Good fading of audio and video

Constructive criticism:

• Could have been exported in a better quality 
• Could have examined it and focused on more than one character
• Could have used more of a variety of shots instead of reusing some of them