The assignment involved adapting a small section of bare and undercorated dialogue from a play, and transforming it into a visual cinematic piece. I chose a section from the play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time which is based on the author Mark Haddon's novel of the same name. The task began with this section of the play, and having to interpret it out of context and in the dimensions afforded by the film versus theatrical medium.
Enhancing the colors of different spaces helped us characterize the world that Christopher encountered along his journey.
Prior to going out into the field, we recorded the voice over dialogue. This helped both the actor get into character, and gave me a framework to start and think about how the final edit might turn out. The film was shot in Upper West Side, New York, with a skeleton crew, and with only the sound that the in-built camera microphone could pick up.
All of the sound design, the construction of the city's sound landscape, was done in Adobe Premiere.
From camera's perspective, we harnessed a very algebraic and geometric approach. Lines in the frame were paid close attention to, focal lengths were chosen logarithmically, and at one point, we incorporated the use of the "pinhole-effect", where we poked a small hole through the camera-body cap and allowed the subject to be captured through a perfect inversion of light.
Timing is our friend.
Side by side comparison between raw footage and after color grading.
All of the editing and color correction were done in Premiere.
Ultimately, the task was to achieve something remarkable armed with very little.
I am very proud of the results.
