Directors Questions

Jamie Martin is a name to look out for, along with his martial-­‐art trained fists, as he makes his directing and writing debut in the greatly anticipated action-­‐thriller “Wake Up”, a short film featuring the violent fantasies and nightmares of a man disturbed by the mundane structure of today’s world. Jamie was nice enough to take a few minutes out of his busy schedule to sit down and answer a few questions.

Q. What was the inspiration for “Wake Up”?

A. I think the original spark came from Murnau's Nosferatu (1922) coupled with a recurring nightmare of my own, where I am constantly being watched be this creature. Max Schreck plays the vampire creature and appears as a very creepy leering character who creeps around watching his prey.

Q. “Wake Up” covers so many themes; it’s really a break away from the stereotype of the average action genre. How do you feel about this? Is this something you would like to see more in action films, or do you think this is already an excelling trend?

A. I think action films have evolved from just generic action films with simple plots, although these films can be very enjoyable because you can turn your brain off and sit back and enjoy the film, which I'm a big fan of. Crank is great example. Film genres are becoming hybridised now more so than ever. For example, both Fight Club and Inception are thrillers with elements of action.

Q. You worked very closely with your cinematographer, Blaine Rennicks, who previous directed the action film “Guerrilla”, which came out earlier this year. Can you talk a little about the director-­‐cinematographer relationship and how it felt to deal with someone who could relate to your interest in this genre?

A. A man of strong opinions, I was very grateful to have the experience on the team it was very valuable to us in the preproduction and during the shooting. Nine times out of ten we'd be on the same page with thoughts and ideas on how to shoot a certain sequence or a particular movement or visual style.

Q. One of the most noteworthy scenes in the film is the main fight scene you choreographed to fine detail. Seeing as how you have experience in martial arts training, can you just go over the process of how you staged this scene with the actors, and how was this as a directing experience for you?

A. The fight was great fun to do. I had started the choreography with a good friend and fellow Kenpoist Fergal Traynor who was greatly involved on the genesis of the choreography. The style of the fighting would be a raw street fight style. The fight was to include a varied number of hand strikes, kicks, trapping and grappling. My own background would be American Kenpo Karate, various different styles of Kung Fu with cross Training in Jiu Jitsu. Elements of these can seen through the

choreography. The style of the fighting was to be very gritty and real so had to be simplistic in its application, the theory of the choreography is steeped in the principles of Bruce Lee's Jun Fan Jeet Kune Do which works on the idea of simplicity and interception. Our fight was between two highly trained Krav Maga practioners, Tomasz and Mariusz Oplawski and Sam Dowzard who was totally untrained so what I did was I choreographed the fight to allow Sam to do basic things and the twins to do more impressive looking moves. When doing the choreography the reactions are more important than the actual strikes thrown so the reaction is what makes it look real. I lived with Sam for a few days prior shooting to teach him a lot of basics from kicks, punches, throws and defenses for weapon attacks, which he learned quickly. In the fight, Sam is the underdog and I'm a big fan of the underdog coming out on top and he does this through his resourcefulness and use of his environment in the fight while the oppressors have a size advantage.

Q. The actors you managed to bring on board of this project truly are amazing, such as Sam Dowzard (“Voyager”, 2011) and Conor Marren (“The Attendant”, 2011). How did you manage to work with these brilliant talents on a such a psychologically deep film as “Wake Up”?

A. I had worked with Conor before a on a short titled ‘Kieran’ which was about domestic abuse from the point of view of a 6 year old child. Conor was the abusive father. I knew Conor's intensity would be invaluable to Wake Up. Charlie is such an important character and vital for the film to work. Charlie must be terrifying and what makes him terrifying is he is unpredictable and gets pleasure from John's suffering. There is a lot of physical violence against John. I sat both Sam and Conor down together and did a lot of work on making the violence look real but also on the emotional landscape of their relationship. I gave them the violence scene with the idea of a rape scene because its about power struggle, and sadism. For John helplessness and pain is what was needed through his performance. Sam's portrayal of pain through the violence scenes was very impressive, his shrill wails of pain sent shivers up the spine of one of our camera operators Patrick Clarke.

Q. The film was shot on DSLR cameras, a creative decision that is also attracting a lot of consideration from both low budget and big budget productions. What was the reasoning behind this decision, and what did you feel it would add to your overall vision?

A. DSLRs open many possibilities for low budget filmmaking; the quality for the price is unrivaled. The big plus for me, my DP would agree, is the availability of different lenses which can open a lot of options narratively of what you can or cannot do.

Q.What do you hope to achieve with this film?

A. The one thing I want to achieve is when an audience watches the film, I want them feel totally uncomfortable and physically affected by the pain presented on screen; in this event the film is a success. 

Some Stills From The Footage

  

The Research and the Film, and the Perception of Separation

We have focused for prolonged periods of time on the film exclusively, as its own separate entity, as opposed to an element practice-based research. That is the truth. And before that, we focused exclusively on the research end of the project for even longer periods, without any idea what were doing for a film. There has been a long-standing theme in our project feedback that the two seem like separate entities, that there is not enough of a link between them. This is our fault, as we did not dedicate time to communicate the truth instead of further promoting this miscommunication. The truth is that both are intricately related. I will attempt to describe this relationship and correct this issue here…

The film is built upon the research topic. This has been the case since the very beginning, even when Jamie was drafting narrative ideas never mind scripts. This is how the structure of the narrative was designed around the three central action scene types; chase, hand-to-hand combat and firefight (although what we got shot in the end did not encompass all these strictly speaking, that was always the goal). While we chose these types of action sequences based on conventions within the action genre and our own personal interests, crucially how we chose the style of each was from the results of our questionnaire. Visual style is a key element of action, moreso than most other film genres, so this influence on the film was significant. 

This was the only real tie between the research and the film that was communicated in our demo presentations, and therefore the dismay of the lecturers who did not see any more connection is understandable and in hindsight, unsurprising. The ties go much deeper. Throughout the months leading up to production, all members of the deep were conducting in-depth textual analysis, which fed back into valid research and our inspirations for the film. We looked at a very extensive array of films of a range of genres, although of course action was the most prevalent. As with any genre as wide ranging as ‘action’, there are several sub-genres within it, and most action films could be catagorised under something else (e.g. The Matrix could be labeled as sci-fi, Full Metal Jacket as war/drama etc.). All these films fed back into both our research and the film, as we attempted to take what we saw as the best techniques used and emulate them within our own film.

Only after deconstructing successful action sequences in detail could we accurately analyse what made them successful. In many cases, such as our oft-mentioned Bourne fight scene, the edit is clearly the key element. In most however, there is an intricately balanced combination of filmmaking tools at play between sound design, score, stunts and performance, visual effects and of course camera movement and composition. We know, and have always acknowledged (even if we have not communicated this acknowledgement as well as we should have), that camera movement is only one part of what makes an action sequence engaging to an audience. We simply choose to focus on this element and analyse what different techniques can produce and contribute to scenes overall. And this brings us back to our film.

Having done all this textual analysis (and its worth mentioning in case this post is being read out of context of the rest of our research that our textual analysis goes way beyond films; books, games, articles etc.) we began testing our own camera movement techniques. We conducted several test shoots, attempting in practice established camera movements designed to work either in conjunction with stunts or to create the illusion of impacts by hiding the absence of impacts. Such techniques include the ‘Long-lens stunt’, the ‘Matching motion’ technique, and the ‘Wall drop’. Some of these we ended up incorporating into our own action sequences, some we were glad to test and discard. Having used the initial research to feed into the test shoots and practiced some of the techniques ourselves, we also discussed some of the technical aspects with renowned DP PJ Dillon, who advised us of many of the pros and cons of DSLR. The issue of shooting with DSLR was something I myself researched extensively, as it is well documented that it is not ideal in many ways for shooting action.

As cinematographer a key part of the shoot was prepping equipment and test shooting with our light setups. As part of all this I did my own Steadicam training for a few days, and this in itself all feeds back into the research data needed for the final dissertation. My experience in practice both during this stage and of course during production is a key part of the research that will feed back into the final product. This is the whole point of ‘practice-based research’, and so you can see how the film and research are related.

Production Crew

The highlight of the year so far was of course the shooting. We thank everyone who helped out, there are so many as with any production of this scale. 

We managed to pull together a great team in the couple of weeks before shooting. I will go through the main players, excluding the four man college team. 

As AD we got Dominique Brennan, a graduate from  Video and Film a couple of years ago. Myself and Niall had worked extensively with Dom before, so we knew she had extensive skills in management and organisation so although I had never seen her in the AD role before, I knew she would be great. And she was; as with any great AD, without her the film would have collapsed! She ran the set like a proper AD should, things happened on time and everyone had their role and jobs to do.

As gaffer we had Adam Heapez, another ex-BAVF head. A joy to work with, I found I could communicate light setups with him quickly and, crucially, trust him to set up at a second location while I shot at the first. He also stepped in on sound when Andrew couldn’t make it; an invaluable second skill. Adam was the only skilled crew member other than the 4-man college group and Dom that was on set all day every day for the whole shoot. All for a measly box of Roses!

On sound (most of the time anyway) was Andrew Grafton, a DkIT music graduate who did the postproduction audio on the last two DkIT films to get into Galway. He was a friend of Jamie’s and greatly skilled audio guy. Not an experienced boom op, he is a successful musician, an experienced sound engineer. All that was more than good enough. A soldier and a very busy guy, he is also taking care of the post audio for us, which is such a bonus to have him on boom as he knew on set what was usable and recorded lots of opportunistic extra stuff for the hyper-real sound design Jamie wants.

I was adamant that each camera-op have a dedicated camera assistant. When shooting with DSLR, the camera assistant has so much more to do between lens changes and assisting with rigging, on top of focus pulling occasionally and running back and forth with cards and batteries. The camera assists were also responsible for logging with camera log sheets and clapping. On B Cam we had Alan Markey, a skilled guy I met briefly at the Darklight festival and invited down, and then Patrick Clarke, a local photographer who supplied a 5D, who was a friend of Jamie's. As camera assist, I had Odhrain Soanes, another ex-DkIT film head, who was fantastic to work with and Rob Siberry who I worked with on Black Ice, a Still Films co-production in Sligo-Leitrim in which he was the DP’s camera assist.

We had so many more crew in terms of skilled crew who stepped in for a day or two when the other guys could not make it and all the unskilled production assistants and runners, that I could write about all night but I’m guessing you have stopped reading by now so I wont! All in all though, it was one of the most professional sets I’ve ever been on and it paid off as the results show. 

First attempt at promo poster

First Attempt at a promo poster. Way way too dark to print, so will need to rework this... Pity we dont have that many production stills and so can only use stills pulled from the footage! (they look great but even 1080p is terrible resolution to be printed on A3 at 300dpi)

Black Mamba Questionaire

Test shooting fight sequences

ABOUT OUR PROJECT

Welcome to the Black Mamba Blog! Read the 'About Black Mamba' on the right for info on us. We have only just set up this blog and will be updating it regularly going forward, but for now have a read of the Abstract, Introduction and Conclusion of our research proposal paper to get an idea of what we are doing with this research topic and why:


ABSTRACT

Movement within the frame is one thing but movement of the frame itself creates a completely different effect for the audience. Camera movement can be used for many different reasons and create many visually interesting and unusual effects.

This movement has the potential to function in many different ways, such as to direct the viewer's attention, reveal an off-screen area or provide narrative information.  This project aims to explore just how camera techniques in action sequences which involve movement create a more stimulating experience for the viewer.

Through a primarily practice-based approach, the group aims to gain and grow expertise on different methods of achieving this spectator experience, to apply this expertise to the final film and to showcase and share the research findings which arise from the many experiments conducted in the process.           

INTRODUCTION

“Along with sequential editing the ability to move the camera is the most fundamental aspect that distinguishes film and video from photography, painting and other visual arts… The movement itself, the style, the trajectory, the pacing, and the timing in relation to the action all contribute to the mood and feel of the shot. They add a subtext and an emotional content independent of the subject”.                                                                                                                

(Pg 210 Brown)

This project aims to investigate how camera techniques, particularly movement, bring depth to action sequences, increasing a viewer’s level of stimulation and therefore his/her interest and engagement with the film. Camera movement can be an expressive tool as it has the power to change the viewer's perspective of space and time within the frame. The human eye is naturally drawn to movement, making this one of the most useful tools to present action. What makes an action sequence engaging are the choices made behind the camera.

This project is heavily tied to the film theory of realism; the pursuit of a sense of stimulation where perception (shots influenced by the subject) is distinguished from representation (shots intended to be perceived), but is still infused with a hallucination that the imagery on the screen is real.

“Any spectator will tell you that he doesn't believe it, but everything happens as if I there were nonetheless someone to be deceived, someone who really would believe in it.” 

(Pg 72 Metz)

Metz states that this deception is necessary for the spectator to engage in the action on screen.

It should be noted that the image is not the end product, but is rather a means, along with movement, composition, and the edit, to the end product, which aims to convincingly mimic reality as closely as possible; to gain the audience's belief that the sequence is real. In essence, the camera techniques used take direct influence and inspiration from the action and subject itself, morphing the mechanical attributes of the camera into more natural and organic behavior.

The cinema process suggests a monocular viewpoint, the third-person viewpoint of the camera as all-seeing and even “God-like”, the camera gives this voyeuristic point of view to the audience in order for the audience to engage with the action of the film.

“Without this identification with the camera certain facts could not be understood, though they are constant ones: the fact, for example, that the spectator is not amazed when the image 'rotates' (pans) and yet he knows he has not turned his head. The explanation is that he has no need to turn it really, he has turned it in his all seeing capacity, his identification with the camera being that of a transcendental, not an empirical subject.” (Pg 50 Metz.)

There is no more relevant film genre than action to demonstrate the use of camera movement. A natural handheld shot or a pursuing Steadicam can make chase scenes much more fluid and exciting, and something as simple as a whip pan can be used for a speedy transition. Tight, fast-moving and fluid framing that literally follows actions during a fight scene add impact to the actions themselves. Moving over-shoulder and POV camera angles add extra immersion for the audience, effectively moving them closer to the action. The team aims to experiment with all these camera techniques and more in our examination of how camera techniques involving movement make action sequences engaging for audiences.

In order to gauge success or failure in experimenting in the practice of camera techniques and in implementing our own action sequences, the team will be consulting with focus groups regularly as well as gaining online feedback on test sequences. The team will consult with experts in the field of cinematography in order to tap into industry experience and expertise. But most importantly, we will be engaging in many test shoots, putting our research findings into practice while also gaining further primary qualitative research.

TEAM BLACK MAMBA, AND RESEARCH TOPIC CHOICE

As should be the case in any major piece of research, the team was formed through shared interests of its members. In October 2011, the initial area of focus was in the areas of cinematography and the action genre. This naturally progressed more specifically to camera work for capturing action, and finally to how camera movement enhances action sequences.

The team has some experience of directing and shooting action sequences but each member has much yet to learn on this very technical topic. It was considered that this research topic is something the team is deeply interested in and want to learn more about in practice, meaning that it is perfectly compatible with the outline for this project; to conduct research and put the findings into practice.

By definition our research topic involves practice; i.e. camera work is practical implementation of visual ideas. Test shooting is the most valid form of practice-based research for a camera techniques-based research topic. The team’s plans for implementing these test shoots are outlined in the methodology section.

Another factor in deciding a research topic was the team’s preferred workflow; all members work better when implementing primary research ahead of citing secondary sources, although of course we aim to strike a balance between both.

The team aims to explore how the camera can make action more impacting. We aim to discover how to make action scenes engaging and stimulating to a wide audience, through the shots, sequencing and pace (i.e. the edit). The team aims to showcase technical prowess in successfully engaging with the camera techniques, to improve our own expertise in the area, and to share our research findings thereafter. We aim to do this within two restricting conditions; on a low/no budget and on DSLR format.

CONCLUSION

What make action sequences engaging are the choices made behind the camera to present the action in an interesting way. Camera movement can be considered an expressive tool as it can change the viewer's perspective of space and time within the frame. This tool can often be considered the jewel of a filmmaker’s arsenal as it has the potential to function in many different ways, such as to direct the viewer's attention, reveal an off-screen area or provide narrative information.

The team is in a position to gain highly valuable research and to create something exciting in the final practice-based project at the end of semester. The attitude, work ethic, interest in the subject material, enough relevant experience and skills as well as access to sources and resources all exist.

The team will be gaining insight from practiced, highly experienced professional cinematographers, conducting literal edit break-downs of the best action sequences to analyze movement, looking at the best regarded written material and at the most relevant films, and most importantly conducting a huge amount of primary research through test shoots and gaining first hand feedback on the results from constantly relevant focus group sessions, complimented by further online feedback via this blog.

The means, motive and drive are prevalent, and with all this in mind, the team looks forward to the months ahead.