New Wave Brief

After studying the French New Wave and looking at Jean-Luc Godard's films, I have decided that for my own personal new wave film, I am going to capture the everyday and the ordinary, as this is a common theme in the movement and particularly in Godard's work. I plan to capture a day in the life of a person that I find particularly interesting and that I am close to, in the way that Godard used actors and actresses that he was familiar with or found interesting (the actress that he used in the vast majority of his early films, Anna Karina, was his wife for several years). My film is going to be fairly short, around 5 minutes long, and will follow an non-linear narrative about a person exploring a place that they've never visited before. My film is going to take place in a small seaside town called Bridlington, which is a place that I myself have never visited before so the footage that I take whilst there will be spontaneous and candid, which will make for a more interesting film. I intend to draw inspiration from the three films that I analysed for my contextual study, taking into careful consideration the camera techniques that are used and the rules that are purposely broken in order to make a visually exciting film. 

I plan to use predominantly diegetic sound, which is sound whose source is visible on screen, however I may add some non-diegetic music at various points in the film as Godard does in Une Femme Est Une Femme. I also intend to experiment with using both a tripod and with hand held camera movement, and incorporate some very long takes, sometimes lasting minutes, which Godard was fond of doing. My light source will be natural ambient light and therefore, will differ from high key to low key depending on the time of day at which I film. I have chosen natural lighting specifically because it echoes the idea of realism behind the new wave movement which is something that I hope to recreate in my own film.

In regards to editing the clips that will make up my new wave film, I am going to use a lot of jump cuts. This is because Godard was well-known for his extensive use of jump-cuts, particularly in his film 'Breathless'. I may also repeat some of the footage throughout the film, focussing specifically on important aspects of the film to emphasise their significance. 

When considering the equipment I am going to use, I need to think about what kind of lens would best suit the footage I want to make. I am going to be shooting on a Canon EOS 700D camera. In addition to using my DSLR camera, I may also use my phone camera to film some footage, as I'll be attending a concert whilst in Bridlington and will be unable to take my 700D in with me. I think that this may create an interesting contrast to the better quality DSLR images, and may make the jump cuts look more effective.

In regards to technical settings, I plan to make sure that all of my footage is correctly exposed; playing close attention to the relationship between ISO, shutter speed and aperture. I'm hoping to achieve footage with a relatively low ISO to avoid the presence of grain and noise, a shutter speed of 1/50 s to correspond with my frames per second (1/24) and a variety of different apertures to add depth to my footage. In scenes where I might show a landscape setting or a location where there are lots of people or subjects to look at, I will use a wide depth of field and in scenes where I will be filming close ups of people or objects I will use a shallower depth of field to direct the focus onto that specific subject.