https://youtu.be/h7QzIiveR90
Lina Lee
Time: Metropolis
Dream Sequence
The video without audio has two portions. The dream state and the waking state. I wanted to express those as different entities while keeping in mind theories from Deleuze and Peirce as well as well as the editing tools learned from “The Cutting Edge.”
The video is about a dream, specifically a nightmare so I wanted the setting to reflect that. When we got to the video portion I wanted to use streets, to make it feel like the person was walking for ages. But that sequences turned out to be quite dull to watch, so I decided take multiple sequences of my dorm hallway. Still going with the theme of walking, I walked several times from the elevator to the door. In editing terms, I made a montage (or gaseous shots) of someone walking several times to a door. The lights in the hallway was covered entirely by red sheets of paper to give it a red tint. I thought that this would be an appropriate setting for a nightmare. The whole hallway was decorated for halloween but the left side was a bit haggard looking, while the right side was neater. For the first to scenes walking towards the door, I used the right side of the hallway. For the last scene, I used the left side, because the right side had stickers all over their door but the left side didn’t. Originally, the left side door was opened at the end, so the aesthetics of the door mattered a bit more.
The conscious state’s setting is in my dorm room. It was a striking enough difference in terms of the color pallet, white vs red that I decided to keep it like that. I also didn’t add additional tint to the conscious state because it’s suppose to depict morning time in the real world, in real life.
In terms of composition, the dream state is incredibly symmetrical. This was so that I could editing in a set of eyes, and it wouldn’t be too jarring because eyes are also symmetrical. Also this allowed me to add split screens and play witht eh symmetry in those. The shots are mostly close up shots in tandem with long shots of the hallway juxtaposed on top of each other or next to teacher. This allows the viewer to see what the walker is looking at and what the walker is thinking through their eyes. The longshots of the hallways allowed the view to make an objective inference that the walker was in the hallway; while, the close ups of the eye let the view into what the walker was feeling. The dream sequence, in terms of Peirce’s modes, is an example of firstness. It’s what the walker sees, and just what it sees, not really thinking about computing information or an action through viewing another thing.
The composition of the waking state is balanced, but not exactly symmetrical. The scene when the dreamer wakes up is balanced between the figure and the empty space and the bedding–but it’s not symmetrical. Between the unconscious and conscious state, I wanted a transition–but I still wanted it to be abrupt. So I added a montage of scenes transitioning ontop of one another, but fading in layers to view the door handle, then a jump cut to a person waking up. There was a scene where the person is rumbling around, but it was cut to directly depict the person mid-jolting awake. This was to create a sharp contrast to the dream state and to show the viewer it is morning. Also to show a reaction to the dream from the dreamer–when the dreamer jolts up and carefully reaches for the door, this is an example of secondness. It shows the effect of the dream on the person, the fear it caused them.