AT3 Drama

Limitations
Application
Challenges
What went well?

What is Magical Realism and provide examples where you have seen it in films, series, books
etc.
Magical realism is a genre in literature that shows the real world as having woven in magic or fantasy,
perceived as being "the real world" for the characters.

Examples of magical realism in films are:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Life of Pi
Pan's Labyrinth

TV shows
Twin Peaks
The Leftovers

Books
The House of the Spirits
Beloved
Big Fish

Discuss ideas that were explored with your group.

What role did you take on within your group?

My role in this assignment was cinematographer and my job was to shoot our short film.

I worked closely with our group on storyboarding in particular, working with the scriptwriters to show
a visual representation of what they had written. I suggested what shots and angles I thought would
work best for the mood of the story, along with what lighting I thought would work. We discussed and
made some changes before and whilst filming, this is also apart of being a cinematographer, which is
having the ability to come up with potentially better shots when seeing the opportunity on set.

What was the process of film development like? Did it change as the weeks went on? Did you
stick to the same script? How did it evolve?

1. We discussed as a group some ideas we had, most of us took the same inspiration of mirrors
in magical realism being portrayed as a gateway or “glass ball” to seeing the past/future.
Everyone liked the idea, as it was simple and convenient. We decided to film at school, not
only because the mirrors we needed were readily available to us, but we were busy outside of
school and couldn’t commit to consistent days of filming.
2. During the scriptwriting phase, there was some miscommunication within the team about
whether our film would be silent or not. We went with dialogue in the end, which the actors
favoured as they found it gave structure for them on how to express their characters
emotions.
3. The group worked on the script together with people splitting up into writers and inspiration
finders. (Show script)
4. As the cinematographer I drew the storyboard, adding additional shots and angles I thought
would aid our story.
5. For costuming we discussed a 2000’s look, since most of us owned clothes similar to the styles
of that era. Some actors bought clothes from home, and others chose from the costume
room.
6. Writing the script and storyboard took most of our time, we found it hard to focus in class

because we are all good friends, and tend to talk a lot 😊.

7. Once we got to the filming stage, I would say we were more efficient than the writing and
ideas phase. We got the majority of our filming done in two to three double lessons (4-6
lessons total), although most singles were taken up by laughing, resulting in 90% of our
bloopers.
8. One idea that did not make it past the storyboard phase was the first scene of a hit and run.
We kept putting this scene off for various reasons, one of which we would have to film at an
inconvenient time. Another being the risk factor of someone getting injured, as there was a
heavy vehicle involved (put photo of Toyota Kluger and weight). In the end, we ran out of
time to film this scene, we did however have dialogue suggesting the hit and run happened
off camera.

 What research did you do into: the genre (Magical Realism), your role, idea, and script
development etc?
1. I watched a video on how to storyboard, particularly the use of arrows as guides to
how you as the DP Director of Photography) want the camera to move.
2. Using the links our teacher gave us on our class page.
Real World Setting:

Mythology Folklore and or Historical Influence.

Underlying Social or Political Commentary.

Read and research current affairs

for creating a grounded world, with the events that happen in the real world at the
time set.

Learn about the culture

Beliefs, religion, mythology, folklore, fairytales, ghost stories and gossip.

Provides inspiration

It's important to make a connection with the audience, they are more likely to watch a
movie they can relate to in some way. Cultural introspection helps add social
commentary and realism to the supernatural to connect with the audience.

Pick your real world setting:

 Having a clear time period, political state, class system (rich, poor etc) it will help the
audience relate to the fictional world.

The genres success relies on the believability of the realistic world.

Asking "What are the magical elements pointing out that can't be achieved via other
means".

Moral, Political or Social Critique:

The point of a magical realism film is to make a point about the discource in the real
world. Thinking about moral, political or social issues will help with and idea for your
story.

Incorporate subtle magical elements

Aid in characterisation, progression of the story and creating conflict.
Ask why the magical element will occur, makes the story genuenly magical realism
and not fantasy.

Using magical elements can bring forward the themes of your story and the political
issues of the world (hunger, homelessness etc).

 What challenges did you face and how did you overcome them?
1. While editing I realised there was missing footage, the first mirror scene wasn’t on
either of my SD cards from my camera. Later I found that we had shot that scene on
Emma’s phone but it was too late to re-edit the short film.
2. The dialogue that went missing in the first few clips was about (look at storyboard)
….., I changed the storyline to make sense with the footage we did have.
3. I changed the story line from…. To….
4. The biggest challenged our group faced was concentration during class – while script
writing, storyboarding, and filming – we spent too many lessons chatting and
laughing instead of working, since we are all friends, it made it difficult to stay on
task.
5. Another challenge we faced was being short actors. At the start we had an issue with
two potential actors. One didn’t like having their face on camera, and the other was
often out of class when we were filming. I spoke with one of the actors about being
on camera, that they don’t need to look at the footage right away, only the final
product. We also asked Jada to act in place of our second actor.
6. Our group member who wasn’t in class much wanted to film behind the scenes for
when they were with us during filming. This was a good opportunity for them to help
out in a way that suited them.

Pre-production:
Ideas: As a group, we discussed what elements of magical realism we had seen and liked in films, one
common element was the use of mirrors as a gateway or “glass ball” to seeing the future. We had
already decided to film at school, as we were all busy outside of school, and mirrors where readily
available in our working space.

Disagreements: We came across a few small disagreements, such as whether we should make a silent
film or have dialogue, the number of characters and the opening scene of the film.
Solutions:

Silent or dialogue problem and solution: I had suggested we make our film silent to save time on
writing dialogue to focus on the symbolic elements of magical realism and the storyline. We went with
dialogue in the end, which the actors favoured as they found it gave them structure on how to express
their characters emotions.

Number of Characters problem and solution: We had originally four main characters in our film, the
two that were in the mirror, and the other two outside the mirror. One of our group members couldn’t
make it to all the classes, so we asked our friend from another group who wasn’t filming in class if we
could borrow her acting skills.

Opening scene problem and solution: As a group, we decided not to record the first scene, we weren’t
too sure about it from the start and thought it would be too much of a safety risk to try and film the
scene.

Role taking (deciding):

Handing out roles was easy for me and my group, I was the one supplying the camera so the group
agreed I could be the cinematographer. Emma and Callie had their hearts set on acting, and none of
us really wanted to act so they got that role, and everyone helped on the script and suggesting ideas
for the storyboard. Since Max wasn’t going to be there for many lessons, he offered to be the BTS

camera man for us 😊.

 What new learning did you do? Equipment/software

I used Premiere Pro to edit our film. I’ve had a little experience with using this software,
mostly from this year as I have another subject needing its use.

I haven’t made many storyboards before, and I learnt how to draw different from different
perspectives, as well as how to show camera movement in the drawing.

From watching (inset name here’s) presentation on different cuts we could use to make our
videos more interesting; I tried out L and J cuts, which I haven’t done a lot of before, and
some jump cuts between the same scene but using different angles to make it more
captivating to the audience.

I also learnt how to keyframe with editing Emma and Callie into the mirror, this was a long
process as I had to do it frame by frame and move the markers myself, but now I know how to
do that.

 Where did you find inspiration?

I searched on Google, movies that used mirrors, and most of them were horror films, so that
gave me inspiration for, what if we make this a horror/crime genre, rather than just a crime
film.