Fiction Adaptation | SUBMISSION (Links)

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Research and Development Journal

• Research
• The Brief
• Chosen Sonnet and Research
• Workshop Exercises
• Montage, Animation and Timelapse
• Experimental Piece + Camera Movement
• Production Development
• Idea Development and Proposal
• Pre-production
• Script, Shot List and Schedule
• Cast and Locations
• Production
• Post-production
• Rough Cut
• Director's Statement

Project Evaluation

Fiction Adaptation | Project Evaluation

What worked?

I feel my interpretation of the poem allowed me to take a different, topical and thought-provoking approach to my film.  I feel that the subject matter fits in well with the theme of isolation present in the poem with contemporary political overtones.

I am very pleased with the final outcome of the project - the scripting works well to build up Abdullah's character and his situation - I feel my cinematography has advanced immensely in this project - and the edit has come together very well and I am proud of what I have created.

I feel I took most of my feedback on board which allowed me to make positive changes to my film.  For example, my lead actor was involved throughout the whole process, leading me to change several key aspects, such as the character's name and how to edit the prayer scenes so I can represent a Muslim character respectfully and accurately.  I also listened to what Mike suggested for the edit, such as incorporating the montage earlier to allow for the structure to fit better together.

Sound design is always something I try to spend a lot of time on, and I feel it has really paid off this time to build the atmosphere of each scene.

I feel I have balanced my workload well for this project, allowing time to write my blog, plan my shoots and edit my footage in ample time so that I do not panic too much to meet the deadline.

Creating a script and shot list really helped to keep me on my feet so I knew exactly what shots I wanted to capture on the shoot days which also saved me a lot of time.  Although I would have liked to have been able to experiment with more unfamiliar camera movements, I feel that the movement I have used - particularly with handheld shots - has worked to create the right tone that I wanted within the film.

I am also very pleased with the performances of my two actors, Imran and Nikki.  Imran captured the fear and uncertainty of being a refugee who is persecuted both in his homeland and his new home.  Nikki was also very good at portraying a patronising and careless officer who did not sympathise with Abdullah's situation at all.

What didn't work?

Whilst I was able to shoot nearly everything I need, the shoots felt rushed and it would have been better if I could have had more time on each shoot day.  This was down to limited time available, but I could have prepared more so I could shoot more with the time I had to potentially save time.

I feel I could have worked better with recording sound on the first shoot so that I did not have to rely so much on ADR audio.  This was because the location was very windy and I did not have a proper windbreak on the microphone, meaning that a lot of unwanted background noise was captured.

I am happy with the structure of my film, but I feel I could have arranged it in such a way that the film followed a more succinct structure so that the audience is able to feel more sympathy for Abdullah - perhaps this would have allowed me to draw more attention to the racial discrimination against him.

Again, I am happy that I was able to shoot in a town centre, but I feel I could have done more with this opportunity, perhaps by filming members of the public (with permission of course) to gauge more authentic reactions of the general public.

What did I learn?

I learned some very useful new skills in Adobe After Effects - in particular, motion tracking, as I have always wanted to have a proper crack at it and I was able to teach myself how to decorate the background of a shot in post-production which will be very useful in the future.

I also learned how different camera movements and editing techniques, such as montage, can be used to convey tone and emotion, which I was able to apply to my work.  I have used montage previously, but now I feel I have a greater understanding of why to use montage for thematic meaning rather than just for aesthetics.

What could I develop?

I could have been more experimental with the types of shot I used and how I moved the camera.  Most shots stick fairly safe with handheld or tripod shots, where I would have liked to use the track and dolly.  I am also desperate to try using a drone to film, which may have worked for some of the shots in this film.

This was the first time I had properly used one of the new Panasonic DVX200 cameras, so I would like to develop my understanding of how the camera works to get even more out of it.

I feel that I could work on my use of lighting in my work.  Most of the lighting in this film was natural, which allowed for consistency, but I feel I would have been able to shoot more interesting and emotive shots if I could utilise lighting in future projects.

Fiction Adaptation | Director's Statement

With the edit complete, I wanted to explain some of my choices throughout the production process, from choosing the sonnet to exporting the final cut.

As a group, we were also tasked with creating a short sting for the intro of each piece so that everybody's films fit together as a series.  It was originally decided that some members of the group would create this, but due to other commitments they were unable to, therefore I created the intro in After Effects.  I kept it simple, at only 6 seconds long so it did not eat into the films too much.  I kept to the theme of adapting fiction by adding the projector background which worked to bring in the film element, combined with the text that appeared with a keyboard sound effect to give the impression of typing, bringing in the idea of adaptation from a text.  I feel this could have been more interesting, but at the same time, I do not feel it should distract from the main film.





I chose 'Trespass' by John Clare as I felt I drew the broadest interpretation from it.  The poem draws from themes of isolation and almost paranoia from Clare as he embarks on a journey through the beautiful countryside.  The narrative voice conveys a sense of displacement, and a feeling that they do not belong, which drew me to write a story about a refugee in response to the poem.  With the recent EU referendum, rising division against different ethnic groups, and the rise of hate crimes as a result, focusing on a refugee who feels this sense of displacement and isolation would be a topical and potentially hard-hitting subject matter to deal with.

This led me on to write the script, which I decided should take place in three different locations to reflect a classic three part story structure: the central character's war-torn home country, out in the public in Britain, and the central character's new home, after he has integrated into Britain.  I aimed to comment on the discrimination against migrants by creating parallels between the central character's home country, where he is persecuted for being on the wrong side of the conflict, and in his new country, where he is persecuted for his race, religion and status as a refugee.  I chose not to name the country, as I wanted to bring attention to discrimination against any refugee or ethnic minority, not a particular race or culture.  I did, however, focus on a real-life and current model for this by looking at the Syrian conflict and subsequent refugee crisis as a basis for the locations and casting of the film.

Fairly late in the edit, I chose to rename the film from 'Trespass' to 'Home', as the main goal of our central character is to find somewhere he belongs; his home.  This word becomes a motif throughout the film: Abdullah cannot go back home, and he is told to 'go home' when he reaches his new 'home'.

The film itself begins with the central character, Abdullah, running from soldiers in his home country.  This scene is filled with various sounds, such as soldiers shouting, gunshots and explosions.  We can also hear Abdullah's footsteps and breathing so we feel more of a connection to Abdullah as he runs through the landscape.  The fast cuts work to emphasise the fear and turbulent nature of the scene.  As he ducks for cover and curls up, the audio volume rises as the tension rises and the frame blurs to give the impression that Abdullah's fear levels are rising and he is becoming more isolated in his position.

We cut to black, then straight to several hours later after the fighting has stopped.  I shot this footage with a slightly lower exposure level which I accentuated through colour grading in post production.  There is just ambient outdoor noise now, no fighting, just nature and Abdullah's footsteps.  The cuts are much slower now as things have calmed down and he is alone.  We follow him as he finds somewhere to pray - this scene establishes his religious background and demonstrates how Abdullah is trying to find solace in prayer.  The sound of water fades in as we see a body of water.  I have made use of intellectual montage to suggest that Abdullah wishes to travel across the water to reach a better life which we see mirrored in the next scene with the shot of the glass of water as he has reached Britain.  In this scene, I also decided to add a plume of smoke to the background to give a more believable representation of the setting.

The scene cuts; we are now at Abdullah's new home in Britain as he is being visited by a patronising support officer who does not understand the struggles that Abdullah has endured.  The scene is very awkward and uncomfortable through the performances of both my actors and through the edit where I have drawn out these long pauses and reactive shots to highlight Abdullah's discomfort.

The interview scene ends and we see a happier Abdullah as he is walking through a town centre.  I chose to shoot here as it is a crowded place with a lot of noise and movement to lead on to a sense of being overwhelmed by the new environment.  This also draws on the line in the sonnet "every stranger frowned at me", as he is surrounded by strangers, and the stranger he bumps into reacts in a very negative way to Abdullah being there.  The strong racist language is intended to strike a cord with the audience, bringing attention to the level of discrimination being inflicted on some people coming into Britain.  This scene overlaps with the final scene, which is introduced through jump cutting between flashbacks of Abdullah in his home country.  This brings the whole film together by juxtaposing Abdullah's treatment in his home country, which is arguably just as harsh as the racist abuse he is being dealt with in his new country.  By juxtaposing the mirroring shots of him running away from conflict in this scene with the flashbacks, we are left with the notion that as he is running from one place he is persecuted, he is walking back towards persecution.

Clare's isolation draws from his poor background and mental health which I have alluded to in my film.  I do not feel I have commented on Abdullah's financial status, but as a refugee, he is an outsider in this respect, so I have altered this to bring it into a more contemporary context.  I have also alluded to a psychological side to the poem by utilising close up shots to enter the character's psychological space, as I experimented with previously, as well as the flashbacks in the final scene.  This hints at Clare's own personal struggles with mental health.

The final scene also brings us back to Abdullah praying in a much darker location.  He is only a silhouette which solidifies his position as an outsider in Britain due to his race and religious beliefs.  The film ends with a shot of Abdullah's clothes - the same clothes he wore when he was running from his homeland - to resonate the idea that no matter where he is, Abdullah will be an outsider: he has nothing and cannot fit into a country that is not his own. "But, having naught, I never feel alone and cannot use another's as my own."

Fiction Adaptation | Post-production: Rough Cut

I started the first rough cut after wrapping the first shoot set in Abdullah's home country.   I had intended for this scene to be around 1-1:30 minutes in duration, but it ended up at just under two and a half minutes.  This meant I would have to cut out some footage out so that the full film fit the brief of 5 minutes.

I started the edit using the shallow depth of field shots to establish the setting, focusing on the ruined brick structure and the foliage to create a sense of destruction by drawing attention to the desolate landscape.  I added some colour grading for this scene for two reasons: the original footage was more saturated, bringing the more vibrant green colours from the grass, and there is a time-jump during this, so I made the second half of the clip darker to give the impression that it was later on in the afternoon/evening.

There are a lot of cuts in the first scene as I wanted to make the audience empathise with Abdullah by highlighting the eratic, fast-paced and confused nature of the scene.  This contrasts with the scene after Abdullah wakes up, which has fewer cuts as the situation has calmed down a lot since he has been asleep, and so he is calmer than he was previously.

I have incorporated some intellectual montage in this scene by cutting between the shot of the water and Abdullah's face which suggests that he wants to travel over the water, which he would later do to escape his country.

Note: There is no sound in the first edit as I would be adding this later.  There was a lot of wind interference on the first shoot, so I needed to spend more time perfecting it before adding it to the edit.

Here is the first rough cut, which only includes the first scene: 




After coming back to the edit, I started to work on the sound design.  I particularly focused on adding to the warlike atmosphere I wanted to create, which I achieved by finding some royalty-free ambient sounds to transport us to a war-zone.

In this version of the edit, I also added black bars to the top and bottom of the frame to give an anamorphic-look to the film.  By adopting a 2.40:1 aspect ratio, this gives the film a more cinematic quality, and condenses the action into a smaller frame.

Here is the second rough cut, which also only includes the first scene:



After I shot the rest of my footage, I was able to compile most of the footage into the timeline.

I added a high-pitched tone to transition between Abdullah taking cover and waking up later that day, and combined with the Gaussian blur effect I added, this built a more convincing transition between day and evening.  I found that in my experimental piece, this was effective in building up tension, which would work well for this scene.  I was also able to add more and fine tune some of the audio.

The next scene in Abdullah's kitchen was very easy to edit, due to the lack of action.  I found it to be very effective to add long pauses that did not necessarily happen on the shoot, so to add to the awkward nature of the exchange.  The aim of this scene is to highlight Abdullah's desire to integrate into British society, mirroring the line in the sonnet "how beautiful if such a place were mine" - depicting the narrative voice's desire to reach this 'beautiful' place.

The third scene was also fairly straightforward to edit and I was able to be a bit more creative with the use of shots compared to the previous scene.  The audio has more work to be done, as you can hear me directing in the background, but this should not be difficult as I recorded several buzz tracks on the shoot.

I felt that it was vital to include such harsh language in this scene to illustrate the problem of intolerance in today's society, which is what I aimed to do in my adaptation of the poem.  I have heard this sort of language being used in the street, and so even though it may be difficult to hear somebody saying this to somebody's face, by drawing attention to it in my film, I want to highlight that this is a topical issue that should be dealt with.

At this point in the edit, I decided that I would cut the mother and child scene from the film for several reasons.  Firstly, I feel that it would disrupt the pacing of the film as a whole - having Abdullah react to seeing a mother and child, and reminiscing about his family back home distracts from the action of the previous scene with the racist attack.  I also encountered a continuity issue during filming which meant I could not use one of the shots that I wanted to.

Here is the rough cut:



I was now entering the final stages of the edit.  In this version, I added the last scene, which I will later cut into a montage using clips from the previous scenes.

I really hammered down on the audio in this edit, by adding voices from a royalty-free site to add to the impression that Abdullah is being chased.  I feel I may have gone a little overboard with the voices, so I will probably tweak this before the final cut.

I also spent a few hours working on adding a visual effect to one of the scenes so it appeared there was a plume of smoke in the background of one of the shots.  This is not something I had done before, and so I was eager to try my best to create a realistic-looking effect.  I began by tracking the motion in the background so that the effect I added would move with the camera.  I then added the effect (which I found on a website for free), keyed out the alpha channel, tweaking the speed, opacity, brightness, contrast, exposure and colours before finally masking it to appear behind the bush.  I am very happy with how this has turned out and I have learned some very valuable skills in Adobe After Effects.

In the next scene, I worked on refining the audio by removing some knocks and clicks that occurred during filming.  I also removed some of the hissing in the background - I initially used the sound removal tool which I had used a lot in the past, but I found this made the dialogue sound very tinny and degraded the quality of the audio more than I was comfortable with.  Therefore I used the hiss removal tool which was much more subtle and effective.

For the town centre scene I tweaked the colour grading, and fixed the audio by incorporating the buzz track.

I was able to add the final scene which I had decided should only focus on Abdullah as he is praying at home.  I tweaked the brightness and contrast to bring out the dark and light tones in the scene and isolate him in the frame by making Abdullah appear as a silhouette.

I felt the final shot should end on Abdullah's clothes from when he was escaping his home country as this brings home that he is still a refugee, and he will always be persecuted because of this.

Here is the full rough cut:



In the final cut, I aim to add montage elements to the final scene and to add titles for the beginning and for the credits, as well as fine tuning the audio and colour grading.  I will also need to cut out some shots to fit with the brief of 5 minutes.

Fiction Adaptation | Production

Day 1: Woodland/Warzone Scene

We were up against the clock on this shoot, as I had to rush to collect the equipment and get to the location, which meant that we started shooting over an hour later than I had intended.  There were three of us on the shoot.  My girlfriend Sophie was helping with the kit and taking photographs of the shoot, as well as helping me adjust the picture settings on the camera, as I am colour blind and often struggle with getting the picture right.  Imran was there acting, of course, and I was on camera and sound, as well as directing.

I asked Imran to wear a mis-matching tracksuit as I feel this fit the aesthetic of a refugee and he was happy to roll around in the dirt to get his clothes dirty to add to the idea that he had been on the run for a long time - I did not ask him to, he offered.

We were using the Panasonic DVX200 with a Rode mic; I mainly shot handheld to capture the sense of displacement felt by Abdullah as a refugee.  I had booked out the track and dolly to shoot something similar to my experimental film, but unfortunately it was unavailable, so I tried something similar - I pulled the focus away from Imran rather than tracking back on the dolly.

As we had such little time to shoot, I decided to only shoot this scene today and delay the house scene for next week, so we could shoot it at the same time as the office scene, which I have also decided to go with the 'home visit' idea to save the time and hassle of travelling to a different location.

Despite the issues with timing, I feel this was a successful shoot day.  I was pleasantly surprised with how well each of the shots turned out, and I was happy that Imran was able to deliver a good performance.

Day 2: Mother and Child Scene

This was a very straightforward shoot, as I only needed to film the mother and child walking past a window.  I set up the camera at home before I went to Lauren's house - she had kindly offered to let me use her house for this scene since I needed a window looking onto a street (my house has a hedge in the way).  Setting up the camera beforehand meant I could simply arrive, shoot what I needed, then leave.  The shoot only took around 15 minutes, with no issues.


Day 3: Home and Town Centre Scenes

Today was a busy day but I am happy that we managed to shoot everything that I needed to.

We began by shooting the interview scene which would have been in an office, which I had instead decided to shoot in my kitchen, as if the support officer was visiting Abdullah's home, as I did not want to risk shooting in too many places with so little time.  Whilst the lighting in this location was not ideal and I did not have any lights to assist with shooting, this actually turned out quite well.  All the light from the scene comes from the window and the ceiling lights, which was dark enough to convey a sombre mood, but light enough to distinguish my actors.  We did about six takes of the interview itself from various angles and I also shot some close up shots of various objects of significance in the scene - such as the Union flag mug which helps to establish the transition from Abdullah's home country to Britain.  I am very happy with the footage and their performances.

Afterwards, we recorded some audio pickups for the praying scene we shot last week, then filmed the rest of the mother and child scene from Abdullah's perspective.  We encountered an issue here as we could see the reflection of the hedge in the window, which does not follow the other shots with the mother and child walking past.  Therefore I will have to work around this in the edit.

At around 11AM, I received a call from the Kent Film Office to which they said I had permission to film in Gravesend Town Centre.  I was making plans to shoot elsewhere, but even though their response was so late, I decided to go ahead and shoot in town.  As I was going to be in one scene briefly, I asked Katie to help for this part of the shoot.  She also helped to spot for me whilst I walked backwards with the camera.

With Christmas only a few weeks away, it was very busy and we got a lot of strange looks whilst filming, but we were finished within about an hour and I am pleased with the footage we shot.


I have learned a lot through the production period:

• It is essential to prepare for contributors and locations to drop out up to the last minute.  This is something I had to prepare for with the documentary and TV news unit, and with such a fast turnaround for this project, this was even more of an issue.  Therefore, I am glad that I had scouted several different locations to film my scenes that I could fall back on if necessary.
• This shoot also required me to plan for fairly short shoots compared to what I am used to.  This meant that I had to work a lot faster than usual and I feel that I adapted well to this as I was able to shoot everything I needed to.
• This shoot also marks the first time I have filmed in a busy public place, so I had to liaise with the Kent Film Office and town authorities to get permission to do so.  I have done this before, but not for something that may involve members of the public, so whilst it was a little daunting, this is a new skill I have learned during this shoot.