Filming Day 3 - Roadside

By the end of this long day, my crew only consisted of me and my dad. Since my character does not appear in the epilogue scene, I could do the cinematography and so I no longer needed my mum and brother for the shoot. We had about a 10 minute drive down to the roadside I had planned to use, and by then the weather had started becoming greyer, which wasn't really ideal for the tone but luckily the colours of the flowers should counteract this and establish the positive closure I want to evoke. 

Since this is supposed to be the final scene, I wanted it to feel conclusive and reflective rather than rushed, which is why I only have about two minutes of footage because I didn't need many shots. But the shots I do have are prolonged and lingering, slowing down the pace. 

This opening shot creates ambiguity for two reasons. Firstly, the audience are suspicious of who has laid the first bouquet of flowers (hopefully it becomes obvious that it can only be Dylan) and secondly, the identity of the person standing over the memorial is a mystery to begin with. Zooming out from the flowers successfully starts with the focus on the flowers and then shifts the attention to the character in the shot. 

Despite never using dialogue to explain that this is the road where Dylan's brother died, the flowers heavily imply it, and so does this shot. Before the Father leaves I wanted him to look back on the road solemnly, which is the reason I framed this as a long shot so that I could capture the wider angle to include the road. 

In any film, the final shot needs to be memorable and affirmative of the ending. Unlike in a television show, where many of the final shots are deliberately misleading to create cliffhangers, films need to establish a suitable point at which to conclude. In my storyboards I was torn between two endings, one which was sombre and the other which was more reassuring. The darker shot was of the road, ending with a dramatic and downbeat undertone, but I decided against this when I thought about the tonal shift from suspenseful to enlightening as the narrative had progressed. To end with a depressing reminder would undo how effective the narrative arc has been, more of a regression back to the guilt and hatred at the start rather than the acceptance and forgiveness at the end. Therefore I opted to wrap my timeline with the original ending I had in mind. The  flowers representing Dylan and the Father is a statement which is open to interpretation, creating the thought-provoking conclusion I wanted.  To me, these flowers are symbolic of how the characters respect what each other is experiencing, and have a mutual understanding of their pain at the end. 

So, this is a wrap. At the moment I have a short film which is almost three times the length of the criteria (mine is currently 14 minutes long) and after Christmas I am going to focus on reducing this to a concise but impactful narrative.