Haiku Workshop
In order to gain a better understanding of how a poem could be adapted for the screen, we looked at haikus, which are poems that usually follow the pattern of 5-7-5 syllables (Henderson, 1965).
The Haiku I selected out of the ones provided was “Everything I touch” (Issa, s.d cited in Sengstaken, 2021). In my opinion, I believe that this Haiku is about someone experiencing heartbreak, which seems to be a recurring problem for them and they feel as though they are at fault (“Everything I touch…pricks like a bramble”). They have so much love to give, yet it isn’t always reciprocated or gone about in the right way, leaving them heartbroken. I chose to adapt this Haiku onto the screen as I felt that I could do more with this haiku than the other haikus.
I created a story about a heartbroken woman who feels alone and lost in the world after her heartbreak, but is reflecting upon it and slowly becoming a new version of herself.
When editing this project, I gathered stock footage and royalty free audio clips from the internet, which I then edited together to create a story that I felt expressed the meaning of this haiku. I chose a mixture of more abstract video clips and naturalistic video clips as I wanted to play around and see how using different types of video could work for my project within the fiction adaptation unit. I selected footage that I felt I could create a narrative with and pieced it together. As I envisioned the woman feeling a sense of heartbreak and loneliness, I placed clips where there was background space and they weren’t as full as the first few pieces of footage. This space creates a sense of being alone, feeling lost in this world, as though the world is empty.
Within the edit, I envisioned the burning rose from a piece of stock footage, on screen whilst the camera zoomed/moved further away from the rose (the subject). I chose a clip of a rose burning because a rose is often used, particularly by poets, as a symbol of love ( In order to achieve this, I asked a peer to show me how to do it. Due to the scale of the video being too small despite rescaling it, and time limitations, I was only able to zoom out by a small amount. With more time, I would extend the zoom and make it smoother.
Through participating in this workshop, I learnt how a poem could be adapted into an on-screen visual form. I enjoyed this workshop as I felt as though I could be more experimental than in previous projects through creating a narrative using different clips and a piece of music as the only audio. If I had more time with this workshop, I would attempt to colour correct the footage so that the colour is consistent throughout. Overall, I was happy with what I achieved within the time given.
Camera Workshop
Within the camera workshop, we looked at camera shots and angles. When shooting anything, there should be a motivation behind it, thinking about why you chose that shot and what meaning does it portray. There is always a narrative within a story, however poems are often more open to interpretation therefore, poems can often have multiple meanings and interpretations to them.
Within this workshop, it was primarily focused on camera angles and different camera shots. We looked at the meaning behind each shot in relation to the viewer.
In addition to this, we looked at camera movement. One of the things that I learnt was that the use of a tracking and/or dolly shot can accentuate the depth by causing objects to move in relative distance to the camera (Creamer, 2021).
For one of the shots, I suggested that we use the spider dolly to create a shot of the male subject (George Walters) making it seem that the world was spinning around him and as though we were entering the memories circling within his head. To achieve this, we moved the spider dolly, with the camera on it, in a circle around the subject. By doing this, I then came up with the idea of layering the memories on top of the spinning shot of the male character, creating a montage and giving the viewer an insight into the memories he was thinking about. These memories told a story about the abusive relationship he had with his partner that ended up with him murdering her. The method of montage that I used was tonal as I layered the clips to infer the story of the couple and what happened to them and to create a sense of nostalgia and sadness as the male character is looking back on the events of his relationship and the result of his actions. In addition to this, there is an element of a rhythmic montage as I tried to match up what was happening on screen with the lyrics of the song (Matrix Education, 2021).
An issue that we had when using the spider dolly was the surface that we were using it on. The carpet within the building meant that the spider dolly struggled to move smoothly. In order to try and combat this, we had another person helping to push the spider dolly whilst the camera operator operated the camera. When using a spider dolly in the future, I will remember that the floor surface the dolly is being used on is of great importance, particularly in ensuring the stability of the camera shot.
Figure. 1 Diagram of the spider dolly movement and set up
During the whole process of this project, I will try and aim to think about the camera angles I incorporate into the film and think about the meaning behind them.
Lighting Workshop
This workshop introduced us to lighting, with an emphasis on experimental lighting. I learnt the terms naturalism (lighting that often tries to use the light around you to create the effect of real light within the shot) and pictorialism (the manipulation of light using mostly non-naturalistic light sources) (Creamer, 2021).
When partaking in this workshop, we used the naturalistic lighting from the windows and a combination of the natural lighting from the windows and lighting from the led panels when shooting further away from the windows. As we were shooting in front of a window, we noticed that there was a flare on the lens of the camera. In order to try and overcome this problem, we used a piece of polyboard to shade the lens so that the lens flare was avoided. When editing the footage, I noticed that there was still some flare from the lens within the shots by the window. In order to combat this in the future, we will think about how to try and avoid this, possibly shooting at another angle nearby the window. In addition to the polyboard, we also used a gold reflector to reflect some more light onto the subjects, creating a more golden, nostalgic look.
When shooting away from the window, we used LED light panels as well as the natural light from the window to light the subjects up.
Figure. 2 Diagram of the set-up for the shot of the actors by the window
Figure. 3 Diagram of the set up for the shot of the actors by the wall
When creating my final project, I will aim to experiment with lighting and think about the meaning behind it. For example, using lighting to create varying levels of contrast and invoke emotions from the viewer.
Bibliography:
Creamer, S. (2021) Fiction Adaptation Lighting Workshop. [Kent:University for the Creative Arts 18/11/2021].
Didi, L. et al. (2021) ‘The Universality and Variation of Flower Metaphors for Love in English and Chinese Poems’ In: Turkish Journal of Computer and Mathematics Education 12 (9) pp.3359-3368. At: https://www.turcomat.org/index.php/turkbilmat/article/view/5743/4792 (Accessed 25/11/2021)
Fig. 1 Diagram of the spider dolly movement and set up (2021) [Shot Designer, screenshot] (Accessed 04/12/2021)
Fig. 2 Diagram of the set-up for the shot of the actors by the window (2021) [Shot Designer, screenshot] (Accessed 04/12/2021)
Fig. 3 Diagram of the set up for the shot of the actors by the wall (2021) [Shot Designer, screenshot] (Accessed 04/12/2021)
Henderson, H. (1965) Haiku in English. At: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED019266 (Accessed 20/11/2021)
Matrix Education (2021) Film Techniques: Montage | How to Analyse Film. At: https://www.matrix.edu.au/film-techniques-montage/ (Accessed 04/12/2021)
Sengstaken, K. (2021) Fiction Adaptation Overview. [Kent: University for the Creative Arts 16/11/2021].
