Memento Project Short Film

The process of filming this project has been a challenging one, I have been out of my comfort zone and had to find creative solutions to problems. This has been one of the first times I've been able to film, only filming twice before for work. Because I only had myself as cameraman and to act, it meant I needed to work around this. That is why for most shots I used static camera angles, it meant I could easily film without having to be behind the camera. I also used the idea of found footage as an inspiration for this.

One issue that came up was the realisation that my digital camera didn't have a filming option, this would have limited me to only using my phone until I realised that I could plug it into my PC and have it act as a webcam. Then, using Windows' built-in software, I could record the footage as if it were from my camera. I used this for shots either from the perspective of my desk or that would be too difficult to film with just my phone. In the end most of the shots that weren't static were the ones I used my phone for.

Throughout I made choices to move away from trying to accurately follow my storyboard as some shots became too difficult to do alone. I also added some more shots to replace those that I cut out, mostly cinematic ones from my garden or looking out the window. I even included some shots of my cat to add to the happy atmosphere in the start.

Overall I found that filming with my phone actually gave a better quality than I anticipated, I could still capture some of the same effects that I wanted such as the bright light coming from the desk.

The most difficult shot that I left in the film was reflecting psychedelic lights through my glasses. To do this I had to angle my camera next to my desk in a way that you could see the light reflecting from my monitors. As for the lights, I used the light tunnel scene from 2001 a space odyssey as that was the original inspiration for the scene altogether. Here's a shot of how this looked behind the scenes:

When it came to editing I wanted to do more than just string the clips together and add music, from the get go I wanted the music to feel as if it interacted with the footage. Using a tutorial on youtube I muffled the opening music until the character put on their headphones and then muffled it again as the music slowly faded out into silence. I also used this when playing the music for the final shots though not to add another shot of putting on headphones. I did this to add a dreamlike feel to the music, to represent the feeling of nostaliga the character is getting from the music.

I ran into some challenges due to my inexperience with premiere pro so I used a range of tutorials online to help:

The looping music aspect came when I realised that some parts of the heartbeats present in the song 'Speak to me' by Pink Floyd, didn't last long enough for all my footage to play. I also used this technique to shorten the time before the lyrics kicked in during the song 'Breathe' otherwise my film would be an extra minute or so. Whilst it wasn't perfect it turned out surprisingly well for such a simple method.

The full process for this project can be found here

This was my final outcome for the film