BECHDEL TEST

(SAM'S WORK)

The Bechdel Test is named after the American cartoonist Alison Bechdel in whose comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, the test first appeared in 1985. Bechdel credited the idea to her friend Liz Wallace and the writings of Virginia Woolf. After, the test became more widely discussed in the 2000´s, a number of variants and tests inspired by it, emerged. It is therefore also known as the Bechdel-Wallace test. It is a measure of the representation of women in fiction. It asks whether a work features at least two women talking to each other about something other than a man. The requirement that the two women must be named is sometimes added. The majority of films meet these criteria. Passing or failing the test is not necessarily indicative of hoe well women are represented in any specific work. Rather, the test is used as an indicator for the active presence of women in the entire field of film and to call attention to gender inequality in fiction. The media industry studies indicate that films which passes the test financially outperform those that do not.  

In 2013, four Swedish cinemas and the Scandinavian cable television channel Viasat Film incorporated the Bechdel test into some of their ratings, a move supported by the Swedish Film Institute. In 2014, the European cinema fund Eurimages incorporated the test into its submissions mechanism as part of an effort to collect information about gender equality in its projects. It requires a Bechdel analysis of the script to be supplied by the script readers. In 2018, screenwriting software developers began incorporating functions that allow writers to analyse their script for gender representation. Software with such functions includes Highland 2, WriterDuet and Final Draft 11.

In addition to films, the Bechdel test has been applied to other media such as video games and comics. In theater, British actor Beth Watson launched a Bechdel Theatre campaign in 2015 that aims to highlight test-passing plays.

The test only indicates whether women are present in a work of fiction to a certain degree. A work may pass the test and still contain sexist content, and a work with prominent famous female character may fail the test. A work may fail the test for reasons unrelated to gender bias but such as setting works against the inclusion of women, for example Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose are set in a medieval monastery. What counts as a character or as a conversation is not defined. For example, the Sir Mix-a-Lot song Baby Got Back has been described as passing the Bechdel test, because it begins with a valley girl saying to another "oh my god, Becky, look at her butt". 

(MY WORK)
So in order to pass the Bechdel test, a film must

• Have 2 named women
• Have them talk to each other
• Have them talk about something other than men

In our film opening: our film opening does not pass teh Bechdel test, but as a full length film it would

PLAN FOR SHOOT hospital scene

Casting
Tanay Saigal
The protagonist/tennis player
He is needed from:
11:40-12:30
3:15-4:30

Hannah Ni Leigh Evans
The partner of Tanay
She is needed from:
11:40-12:30
3:15-4:30

Sam Lau
The coach
He is needed from:
11:40-12:30
3:15-4:30

Harriet Barlow
Tanay's teammate
She is needed form:
11:40-12:30
3:15-4:30

School nurse
Nurse
She is needed from:
11:40-12:30
3:15-4:30


Location
The school nurses' office in our school, we had to ask the nurses for permission and we gave them a brief of what we want to do - we had to be flexible for shooting because if a student came in the space had to be free
We eventually filmed after school so we had more time to get all the shots we wanted
Date:
27/12/18 - cancelled because actor could not make it
28/12/18 - cancelled because nurses office was occupied
07/01/19 - "
11/01/19 - "
14/01/19
Time:
11:40-12:30
3:15-4:30


Equipment

• Sony A58
• Tripod
• Dolly

Props

• printed out picture of brain scans
• folder
• bandages
• blanket
• trophy
• cigarettes/packet - we included this in the training scene because it made more sense
• Nurses outfit
• Coach's costume

Shot List

• POV shots of Tanay waking up (hand-held)
• MS 2 shot of teammate and partner next to Tanay in bed
• CU BE of Tanay's face waking up
• ECU hand nervously tapping on trophy
• MLS 3 shot of coach arriving
• shot reverse shot sequence for dialogue
• CU HA of trophy being put on bedside table
• MLS 3 shot of all dialogue
• OTS MLS of nurse coming in and her dialogue 
• MS of nurse's dialogue
• CU OTS of nurse  pointing at brain scan images in folder
• CU of coach's reaction to tennis news
• try 
• try a few different shots for reactions to the news
• CU of various things in the space (looking at watch, stethoscope, bandages etc.)

Screenplay

I showed the screenplay to the nurse, and she suggested edits for her lines to make them more realistic, those are the ones used in the final cut
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SAMPLE SCENE 2 Packing scene - 1st attempt

This is the scene where the Tennis player's partner is leaving him

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Feedback

• Mise-en-scene
• include tennis equipment in the background (racket, bag, water bottle)
• passport (shot of it being put in the bag)
• photos of the couple together and the team (have partner pick them up then put them down again, angrily)
• panning shots of props
• in wardrobe have clear split of his/her side
• have a larger suitcase, get a shot of Cathy grabbing everything from one side of the wardrobe and putting it in the suitcase
• Acting
• include clearer demonstrations for the actor/actress
• make it angrier and sadder
• aggressively throwing clothes into the bag
• slamming down the photos
• get a closeup of her face (expression)
• do a 'final look' around the house (living/kitchen) - more realistic and chance to include more mise-en-scene for exposition
  
• Editing
• bit at the start has very fast-paced editing, but you can't really see the shots because its so fast
• get some more ELSs to use for establish shots (closer and closer to the house, similar to in Psycho) 
• Get shots of the wife entering the car and slamming the door

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PODCAST 5: upcoming shoot, cast, BTS, upcoming essay

In this podcast we discuss:

• the scenes we are going to shoot (jogging scene)
• update on cast
• some behind the scenes
• essay practice about film industry and comparison between Warp and Working Title

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WEB 2.0

Web 2.0 describes how the internet has become driven by users, converging the line between producer and consumer. An example of this is user-generated content, like the fan-art that was made for the Cornetto Trilogy, or the poster for Hinterland which was also fan-made. This web 2.0 theoretically allow indies more of a chance at achieving successful distribution online, by setting up twitters, instagrams and being able to engage with audiences directly.

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Packing scene storyboard

this is the storyboard for the scene where the partner of the tennis player is packing up their things and moving out
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PODCAST4: Upcoming shoot, industry/genre research

In this weekly podcast we discuss:

• our plans for another shoot this weekend (the packing scene, the jogging scene, the tennis scene)
• updates on cast
• more industry research we did this week in essays comparing Warp/Working Title
• deconstruction of another social realist film opening

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TECH TIPS episode 1 - FCPX basics

This is the first episode of a series of tech tips on how we are using software like FCPX, in this episodes we look at some basics of FCPX:

• importing footage from a portable hard drive
• creating libraries, events and projects
• inserting clips to the timeline
• cutting, detaching audio, other basics
• saving 
• publishing to the web

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IDENT: Journey Films (old)

(SAM'S WORK)

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For this Ident, I used a luggage and threw clothes in it. Under the clothes, I wrote "Journey Films" on a piece of paper and included a passport which adds verisimilitude. Then I reversed the clip and increased the speed by 8.

IDENT: Maw Productions

(SAM'S WORK)

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For this Ident, I took several pictures and put it into FCPX as a sequence. I shortened the duration of the pictures to make the sequence faster and also decrease the duration of the Ident (2-3seconds long like other Indie Idents). I added a 3D title which zooms in and out which makes it an animated title. Then I recorded a voice-over saying "Maw Productions" and put a filter on the voice-over.

IDENT: Red Films

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For this ident I used photo transfer paper to iron the Red Films logo onto a white t-shirt. I mixed red paint with water so that it would make an even splatter on the t-shirt rather than just paint chunks. In FCPX I reversed the clip so that it looks like the paint comes off the shirt and added a colour mask so that red was the only colour and the rest was in black and white to give it a grim mood.
This ties in with the social realist genre we have decided for our film opening, and the short, practical effect is conventional of indie production/distribution companies. 
The serif font on the t-shirt is also conventional of low-budget indie companies.

GENRE RESEARCH Historical context

French New Wave (nouvelle vague)
In the 1950s and 60's a post-war movement began in France, lead by writer's for a French magazine Cahiers du Cinema such as Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard (A Bout de Souffle) and Claude Chabrol . It encompassed a lot of documentary style film techniques in order to challenge traditional film styles and make audiences acutely aware that they are watching a media text which has been artificially constructed, as a backlash against the influence of Nazi propaganda.

A Bout de Souffle poster

The idea of an anti-hero emerged form a lot of these films, having protagonists be morally ambiguous and focusing more on an aspect of audience identification rather than aspiration.


Some conventions of the movement found through research:

• Low budget
• pretty much all indie productions
• shot on site because of this (people's houses or public locations)
• cast was often people that the director already knew
• transportable equipment
• e.g. in Godard's A Bout de Souffle a scene shot on the Champs Elysees used a shopping trolley for a tracking shot
• improvisation (of lines, and spontaneity in filming)
• Themes:
• existentialism (often criticisms of organized religion, or nihilistic protagonists)
• gritty (disillusionment, abortion, rape, violence, poverty)
• Jean-Luc Godard did extensive research into Marxism and it is present in some of his films
• Techniques
• long takes (film reel was expensive)
• hand-held cameras
• fast cuts
• breaks of convention (e.g. the 180 degree rule) to subvert expectations
• jump cuts
• character asides
• breaking eye line matches
• Discontinuity editing (more on this in prelim blog post)
• Other:
• Lots of intertextual references
• e.g. A Bout de Souffle has quotes form Dylan Thomas, William Faulkner; music from Bach and Mozart, and lots of film posters as a part of set dressing
• They were black and white films, a lot of them made for television due to low budget
• The progression of time was often close to that of real life
• Cleo 5 to 7 follows 2 hours in the life of an actress/singer as she awaits the results of a medical test, however the narrative is divided into chapters follow her state of mind

  

  Cleo from 5 to 7 screenshot

• Open ended narratives
• some scenes are shown more than once but from the points of views of different characters - showing both the objective and subjective events

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British New Wave
British New Wave (1959-63) was inherently similar to French New Wave, as it was the spreading of the movement. Because of this most of the techniques used were the same, but some notable differences:

• Often had a focus on working class struggles, particularly those in the North of England
• e.g. Room at the Top has a protagonist from Yorkshire (though the actor's accent is inconsistent at best) 
• Heavier focus on relationship and social drama (hence the name 'kitchen sink drama/realism)
• e.g. Billy Liar follows the life of a man with three girlfriends
• e.g. The L-shaped Room uses the social interactions between the protagonist and her neighbors to explore social conventions and challenge social status quos

PODCAST3: Idents, genre research

In this weekly podcast we discuss:

• filming/editing idents
• more genre research (specific films)

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Genre Conventions: more films for analysis

Tennis Films

Wimbledon (Richard Loncraine, 2004) 
Synopsis: rom-com about 2 upcoming tennis players.
I'm going to look specifically at how tennis scenes are shot for influence in shooting a tennis scene in our film opening (specifically: framing, sound, and editing)


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Match Point (Woody Allen, 2005) 
Involves a retired tennis player, also looking into this one for inspiration for the tennis scene

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Main Films for Influence

Journeyman (Paddy Considine, 2018) 
Synopsis: social realist about an accomplished boxer suffers brain damage after defending his title at a tournament and has to work to recover and rebuild his life

Journeyman poster

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Tyrannosaur (Paddy Considine, 2011) 
Synopsis: a social realist which follows the life of working class, racist, violent man, Johnny.


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This is England (Shane Meadows, 2007)

Synopsis: social realist drama following the life of young Saun as he becomes a skinhead in 1983 England


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Dead Man's Shoes (Shane Meadows, 2004)
synopsis: British psychological thriller, Richard returns to his home town in the Peak District after serving in the British Army. He and his younger, mentally-impaired brother Anthony, camp at an abandoned farm near the town. Flashbacks reveal Anthony's abuse by a group of drug dealers in the town; Richard vows to take revenge.


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Naked (Mike Leigh, 1993)

Naked poster

Synopsis: British black tragicomedy written and directed by Mike Leigh and starring David Thewlis as Johnny, a motor-mouthed intellectual and conspiracy theorist steals a car and visits his ex living with two housemates in London.
Mike Leigh is a famous kitchen sink realism writer so we'll probably take a lot of influence from his style.



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Sweet Sixteen (Ken Loach, 2002)
Synopsis: the story of a teenage boy from a troubled background, Liam, who dreams of starting afresh with his mother as soon as she has completed her prison term.


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Withnail and I (Bruce Robinson, 1987)

Withnail and I poster

Synopsis: British black comedy, loosely based on Robinson's life in London in the late 1960s, follows two unemployed actors, Withnail and "I" who share a flat in Camden Town in 1969. Needing a holiday, they obtain the key to a country cottage in the Lake District belonging to Withnail's eccentric uncle Monty and drive there. The weekend holiday proves less recuperative than they expected.


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My Left Foot (Jim Sheridan, 1989) 
Synopsis: biographical comedy-drama about a working class Irishman born with cerebral palsy who could only move his left foot.
Focus on disability/rehabilitation aspect (in narrative, dialogue and filming/editing techniques) on how to realistically/effectively represent characters with disabilities (like our protagonist who is recovering form brain damage after being in an accident).

Prelim Task

Task
Practice continuity editing by filming someone walking down a corridor, entering a room and interacting with someone in it


Techniques we practiced using

• shot reverse shot
• match on action
• 180 degree rule
• whip pan
• focus push
• panning shot
• tilt
• basic lighting techniques
• we also made a brief shot list
• dutch angle

What we didn't have

• call sheet
• script
• tripod/monopod
• dolly
• props
• stabiliser
• microphone 
• mood board

What I learned 

• body language is as important as dialogue
• director needs to be clear/may need to demonstrate
• shot lists make it easier
• shooting in reverse order 
• continuity (eg turning out lights) must be payed attention to
• how to use manual focus
• get lots of footage (often of the same scene) from different angles/distances
• always try and jump at least 2 shot distances (eg extreme long shot to close up), other wise it looks like a continuity error
• see what footage looks like with and without lighting

Continuous editing v. Discontinuity editing

Continuity editing uses techniques which immerse the audience in the media text, make it smooth and show events as they happen in chronological order. Discontinuity editing however makes the audience acutely aware that they are watching an artificial text which has been constructed, and uses techniques such as jump cuts and the breaking of the 180 degree rule which take away from audience immersion.

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SAMPLE SCENE 1 bad jogging and tennis

(SAM'S WORK)

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Here we see how I recorded and created the background music for our film opening. It's a melody on the guitar with notes that are several seconds apart just like in Tyrannosaur.

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(MY WORK)

Review notes:

• The jogging is not realistic (takes away from verisimilitude)
• get involved as director and demonstrate
• Use stabiliser 
• See if actor can grow a beard to make him look older
• Add sound of heavy panting for running
• POV GoPro shots of running
• Add water to make it look like sweat on the protagonist (for verisimilitude)
• Bring towels to show tennis player wiping sweat off of himself
• Try and film the final cut before the end of autumn (colours show up nicely on camera)
• not enough shots
• not enough shot variety
• bring water bottle to make Tanay look sweaty
• create a coach character - verisimilitude
• get sound of tennis balls 
• create dialogue
• get shots of Tanay warming up
• see if you can get someone to play tennis with him

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LOCATION SCOUTING

Over the course of this week we each looked at some different locations for filming the jogging and packing scene, before deciding on the ones you see in the sample scenes. We took either a Sony A58 or used our phone cameras.
The tennis training scene will be filmed in Tanay's tennis club, and for the nurse scene we will try and film in the nurses' office at our school when they aren't busy. We chose a street near our school with forest area on one side for the jogging scene because it was very accessible and not very busy, and my house for the packing scene.
These are the locations we discarded, either because they were too far away, too busy (risk of continuity errors with people walking past), lack of space for cameras:

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PLAN FOR SHOOT packing scene

Casting

Hannah 

Leigh

Cathy - the partner of the tennis player

He is needed from:

2:00-3:00 

4:00-7:00

Location

Harriet’s house

Date:

17/11/18 - this happened, but after there were issues with it so we changed the cast and reshot

01/12/18 - there was unexpected snow and the roads were too icy to drive on safely

13/01/19

Time:

2:00-3:00

4:00-7:00

Equipment

• Sony A58
• Tripod
• Dolly
• SD card

Props

• Tennis equipment lying about the room
• Photos of the couple together, and of the tennis team (in frames)
• Feminine beauty products (makeup, perfume, hairbrush) to put on wardrobe
• Women’s clothes and men’s clothes (to hang in wardrobe, clear line down the middle)
• Large suitcase
• Keys
• Car
• Toilet bag

Costumes

Cathy:

• Smart business clothes (black blazer and blue or white shirt, trousers or skirt depends on what actress already owns)
• Laced shoes
• modest makeup (lip gloss)
• Jewellery (ring, earrings)
• Watch 

Shot List

• Close-up suitcase being slammed onto bed
• ECU zips being open-end and closed
• Shots of the suitcase being opened and closed
• CU of hands opening wardrobe door
• CU of Cathy’s face (camera inside wardrobe)
• MS or clothes being taken out - pan putting them in the suitcase
• OTS of clothes being put in suitcase
• MCU of Cathy picking up photos and wiping away a tear
• CU of tear being wiped away
• CU of hand picking up and putting dow photo
• CU of putting items on dresser into toilet bag
• Master shot of items being put into suitcase
• ECU of shoes being tied
• ECU of keys locking door
• ECU of keys being put in post box
• CU of car door slamming
• Shots form inside the car of Cathy getting in
• ECU of car keys being put in

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OUR TARGET AUDIENCE

"Audiences are both a product of social context … and a response to a particular media provision"-Denis McQuail

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Gender/Age
Primary target audience: males, 18-25
Secondary target audience: females, 18-25

Initially we wanted our film to be a 12+, but we did some research on the BBFC
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BBFC Indie Social Realist Ratings from harriet Barlow

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Because nearly every indie social realist film we looked at received an 18 or 15 rating, we would hope for a 15+, but it is likely that our production would also be pushed to an 18.

To put this into some context, these are some of the rating Big Six/Subsidiaries received:

Conglomerate/Subsidiary BBFC from harriet Barlow

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As the main character is male, uses and gratifications theory would suggests that a primarily male target audience would be interested in this film as they would either identify with the protagonist, or aspire to be like him.

The other central character is his partner, Cathy, and she is a significant enough character to draw in a secondary female target audience.

Ethnicity
We have an ethnically diverse cast (Caucasian, Chinese, Indian), and as caucasian is the hegemonic demographic targeted, we wanted to both represent and target multiple ethnicities. This is something we found to be conventional of the social realist genre (My Beautiful Laundrette, Slumdog Millionaire), and helps to widen our target audience.

Sexuality
Initially we wanted to have non-heteronormative representation (taking influence form My Beautiful Laundrette), with the protagonist, Tanay, being with another man, but due to casting issues and a need to film we had to scrap this idea and include heteronormative representation.

Socioeconomic Status
The majority of social realist films are produced by indie companies, and therefore do not have the budget to afford mass mainstream marketing campaigns, leading to exhibition in mainly arthouse and indie cinemas (independent deals), and sometimes film festivals. The average film-goer does not really attend these, as most people go to mainstream cinemas. The main people who attend arthouse cinemas are looking for out of the ordinary films and experiences, or are academically inclined critics, or are in the industry themselves, making the films challenging content more accessible to them as they can employ advanced media language. Even though uses and gratification theory suggests that the social classes being represented in films make up the audiences, this is not always the case for social realist films, as they usually receive major critical praise from high-standing critics, as they include more sophisticated themes/ideologies/representations than many mainstream films. This suggests that ABC1 audiences would find appeal in them, though C1C2DE audiences could still find appeal through identification.
(source of information)

Counter-Hegemony
Gramsci was a 1930's Italian Marxist who argues that the ways in which the elite bourgeoisie dominates wealth and power is not only through legislative and physical force, but through culture, by distributing hegemonic ideologies and representations, leading to wider cultural acceptance of what is being propagated. However, as this is inherently unstable, it can be challenged by counter-hegemonic texts, such as ours strives to be.

As we have included counter-typical representations of ethnicity (and wanted to include non-heteronormative representation) our film opening could be argued to be counter-hegemonic. As it is produced with a micro-budget by an indie company, it is not a product of the elite (The Big Six). As covered in other posts this does affect our ability to effectively distribute our film to a wide audience, so our product would likely appeal to a niche target audience, and is, essentially, a binary opposite of the films produced by conglomerates and many of their subsidiaries.

Moodboard