Cinematic Approach To Project: The Refuge

After receiving our brief for this project, that being:
'Where is the emotional centre of your film?'
'Interview your main three contributors in order to find it. Get to know the animals'
'Establish why the audience should care about their fate'

I decided to research into how I could make this brief from a cinematographer's point of view. Firstly, our emotional centre for this first film is the story of the animals, how they came to be at the refuge, what happened in their past that cause them to be 'left'/brought here in the first place. Also, we wanted an emotional aim from the interview into the struggle of the refuge. Even though this first project isn't going into detail over the struggles of the refuge, we wanted to show that they are struggling to some extent, to show that the animals we are talking about are not stable here, and therefore allow the audience to react to both points; the animals have terrible pasts that can tug on the heartstrings, but also the idea that the place they currently rely on is struggling, and they may end up losing their home once again.

There are some motifs I feel we should include from our cinematic approach to this project. Firstly, when we are interviewing someone, who talks about an animals past, for example, we know of one monkey who got frostbite on his toes and bit them off, we want a repetition, a pattern of shots to show the sadness of the monkey, close ups of it's face and eyes, as well as a close up of his injured foot. We want these close ups to capture the animals emotion to attract the audience to get emotionally involved in the film. The emotional repetition will continue with the contributor's interviews, as they mentioning emotional trials of living and working at the refuge, we want close ups of them as they work and talk, to capture their emotion and feeling towards what's happening around them. I also want to show a repetition of the contributors working around the refuge when they are presenting the interviews, to represent and signify that they are constantly working 24/7 and never stop - there's always work to be done and not many people to do it. In regard to the interviews, some of the questions asked to each contributor will be the same, to capture their emotional response, for example, what they think the future of the refuge will be - therefore we obtain a repetition of close up emotional shots of these people to capture the audience's emotions and therefore understand that we should care what happens to these animals.

In regard to style, I aim to get up close and personal, as one of our main focuses for this project is to capture emotion in the animals, workers and then our target audience. Use a range of close ups to capture pristine detail of the animals and the areas they live in, where it is run down, to create a sympathetic atmosphere for the audience. In regard to the interview, I aim to film them in different ways, one quite traditionally, with the rule of thirds and the character placed in a 'flat cinematic space' so the focus is on them, and other interviews will work with much wider cinematic spaces, as we want to portray their busy schedule, therefore the interviews may be completed whilst they are working at the same time, and we want to expand the film of these shots, because even though the contributor is important (and it will be important to capture close ups for the emotional purposes) the fact they have to work and talk at the same time will signify how busy they are, and we are able to explore their workspace and gain information on them at the same time. I'd like to have the two different styles of space running through the film, because I like the fact we have an interview that solely would focus on the subject, most likely the owner, to capture her emotion, to get a concrete concentrated piece of information, here I compose a beautiful shot, and in the others can work with motion of my contributors and keep more things going on within the frame.

In regard to the post-production approach, I aim to do some grading with the work. As we're in a farm/greenery setting, I hope to make the colours deeper without making them vibrant. This is because even though it would look beautiful, we want the place to still feel slightly run down and cold, and therefore will use this to approach the grading. The dimmer the colours the dimmer the mood and atmosphere of our film, and as we're trying to get our audience to feel sorry for the animals and the workers at the refuge, I'd like the colour grading to match this mood we're hoping to create. However, I hope to capture some scenery shots, such as the sunset and sunrise, which I would like to grade to be warmer, to capture the loving emotion between the animals and characters - there are many emotions we want to represent within the film. Yes, we want the audience to feel sorry for the animals and workers because it's a struggling world for them both, however we want to present the relationship the workers have with animals, add a little happiness, but also show how the animals depend on the workers, and have developed a relationship with them, which will cycle round to the sympathetic emotion when we mention the struggle and the chance that they might not be able to stay here much longer due to struggles. Before I approach grading however, I hope to research further into the process, as I haven't had much experience in this process.