Evaluation for 'Dream A Little Dream'

Our aim for this course was to create anything in the world, as long as it was acceptable and moving image. This was fantastic to work with, because it gave me so much freedom, and allowed me to do anything I wanted to. I enjoyed the opportunity to be original massively and I think this shows in my final piece.

During the term, my production developed quite radically. I had different ideas, so my final piece changed as each idea was rejected due to practicality and/or my faith in it. My first idea was to do the story of a penny in stop-motion. I thought this was a cute, quaint idea that would amuse the audience, and couldn’t really go wrong. However, when I started to come up with a storyline, I got bored quite quickly didn’t think that it was adventurous or exciting enough. Also I thought that using stop-motion would be too much work.
My next idea was drastically different. I decided to switch completely from stop-motion to live action, and instead of using humans I was going to use animals. I thought this would provide more entertainment, as well as originality. The theme was ‘James Bond’, but with dogs. My dogs’ daughter is owned by close friends who have taught her many tricks, and I thought that I could use her. This turned out to be a failure, as I couldn’t take her away, and only had the one dog that could perform (my dog is old and blind…)
I then switched back to stop-motion. I decided to create something abstract and surreal, something that would be dream-like and wonderful. Though I changed ideas again, this theme overrides both. My first was to do a short production where an innocent looking girl goes through her bedroom door and ends up in the garden. A lot of weird things happen to her (such as flying) as she progresses through other doors, ending up in random places in the house. I started filming this, but stopped due to technical difficulties. The day that I was meant to spend filming, it rained really heavily, and then the actress wasn’t available etc… so I had to abandon that idea, and come up with something that was all indoors – though I then used the footage as my preproduction exercise, which was useful as it used many of the features I wanted to include in my main production.
I now have come to my last - and final – Idea. Named ‘Dream A Little Dream’, it follows the dreams of a boy. The audience see him asleep, and then his duvets crumple and they are transported into 3 dreams, that each star different strong emotions – frustration, happiness and fear/sadness. Frustration is based on the boy not being able to eat the delicious food that is in front of him. Happiness is the boy and his friends laughing and enjoying themselves, and fear is the boy having a nightmare where he loses his teeth and then his hands turn green. There is also an aftermath of each dream once it cuts back to the sleeping boy. Apples appear from his head after the food dream, silver shooting stars after the happy sequence and a (painted) tear rolls down his cheek after the third dream clip.

The biggest problem for me was shutter speed timings. I didn’t know how fast I should take the pictures, or how slow my actors had to be. I overcame this problem by practicing on both my pre-production and final piece. I developed a steady rhythm for tapping the ‘shutter’ button, and making the actors’ only move slightly slower then in real life. My other minor problem was objects and people moving in between pictures. I made sure that once the set was fixed, no one went near it, so none of the objects moved. As for the actors’, I just had to keep telling them to keep still, which I think they did quite successfully after a bit of coaching!

I believe that my creative vision was realized. I wanted my film to be slightly comical, but mainly very surreal and abstract, giving it a dreamy effect. I showed my film to some friends and family, and then interviewed them on their thoughts and opinions. They all correctly identified the emotions in each sequence and thought that they were portrayed well. They also said they found sections amusing.

The other section on my film was the sound. I decided that I wanted different soundtracks playing over the different dreams, each relating to the emotions in it. I used an almost comical barn-dance type song for the frustration clip. The audience thought that it was a good use of music and that it made the section more humorous, which was the desired effect. For the happy sequence I used salsa music, which I think highlighted the happy emotions and made the atmosphere more fun. For both the nightmare scene and the short flickers back to the boy sleeping, I made up tracks on ‘GarageBand’. I made the scary music low and rumbling. This was more effective as the rumbling notes created tension and when it reached a crescendo, as the boy’s hands turn green, the audience said that it increased the tension and made his fear appear more urgent.
I also included Foley noises, as the film was shot by taking pictures so it had no normal domestic sounds. This was successful and many people in the audience noted that it was particularly realistic as the timing was spot on.

I think my film was a success as it pleased me, and also pleased the audience I showed it to. My creative vision was realized and it stayed the same as my storyboards. Although the film slightly developed from the original idea, I think this was a good thing as I was learning new aspects of the genre and kept adding different things that I thought would make the film look better and run more smoothly.

During the process of making this film, I learnt that it is always best to prepare and be organised. I learnt that although it is best to stick to one idea from the beginning, it can still be done with hard work and effort. Overall I loved making ‘Dream A Little Dream’, and I had lots of fun with it, especially as it is a very creative course that allowed to be as free as I wanted.