Stills

The sequence of stills and audio track portfolio gave a great taste into what people are going to create for their direction piece. Over the videos I watched there was a wide variety of styles and techniques. Everyone who has attempted the stills exercise brought their own unique ideas and vision to it. Although some did not meet all of the criteria set on the brief I think all of the stories managed to tell a story very well. It’s hard to get a story across in still image form which is why audio was so important in this task. It’s easy to put a song over a piece of film and let it play out but to really tell the story to the audience you mean other sounds in the film. One film in particular used the sound of a shop till over a still image of crisps and chocolate bars. By using this technique the viewer’s mind automatically connects the sound and image and you have told them that the character has left his house (where he was in the last shot) purchased sweets and returned home. This is all done in a second, maybe less.

One of my favourite films was the fast paced weekend story. It moved at speed always kept the viewer’s attention. It would be very easy to have a fast paced film with lots of talking and loose the viewer half way through. It reminded me of the Rules of Attraction scene where they sum up a whole years travelling in a three minute piece of fast talking accompanying fast images.

Composition plays a big part in the stills images task as the audience must see clear, well composed shots to understand the story. It’s not like in moving film where the director can ‘reveal’ parts of the shot when he desires, the still images are all the audience is looking at so if the audience is unclear as to what is on screen the film is going to suffer.