Bristol New Wave Draft Evaluation

In my contextual studies, I focused on the French New Wave movement, therefore when creating my new wave short I took influence from this movement and made an effort to implement techniques that were common to French New Wave films and particularly Godard and Truffaut. First of all, the entire film was shot with hand-held cameras, allowing the viewer to immerse themselves in the film and empathize with the characters, and so creating a sense of realism. This was also reinforced by the fact that none of the scenarios were scripted and all were shot on-location, I simply filmed the activities we were getting up to around Bristol, from this I was able to capture genuine reactions and events as they occurred; this was a common convention of the French New Wave as directors aimed for spontaneity by shooting in public places and improvising lines. On the other hand, I used techniques that make the audience aware that they are watching a film; taking influence from Truffaut, there are scenes where the characters interact directly with the camera, whether it be looking into the camera or speaking to the audience through the lens. Another generic convention of the French New Wave was the excessive use of jump-cuts, therefore from taking influence from Godard's 'Breathless', in the post-production of my film, I tried to implement as many jump-cuts in my film as possible. Unfortunately, some of the clips that were shot were quite short in length, and therefore any jump-cut wasn't noticeable within the post-production. In the future I will shoot longer clips in order to be able to make effective and clearly noticeable jump-cuts. On the other hand, the technique of long-takes was popular among la nouvelle vague, for example the final shot of Truffaut's 'The 400 Blows', and because of this some of the shots in my film run unedited for a longer period of time. I decided to overlay the audio in my film with non-diegetic music, and I chose to use royalty-free music from Youtube to avoid copyright issues. This was to create a montage-style feel for the film, and I feel that the particular music I chose helps to convey the light-hearted mood achieved from the clips used in the video. Though a convention of French New Wave films was the overall use of diegetic sound, this is why in parts of my film I experimented with keeping some of the diegetic sound from the clips in the film. A disadvantage that I faced is that due to having to change camera settings for different shots, some of the clips didn't match in terms of lighting or image quality; although the film is only meant to be rough, in the future i will try to maintain a similar quality of picture in order to produce a higher quality final cut. I would also make an effort to film more clips of people in real-life situations to be able to have a running theme throughout my film, at the moment it doesn’t contain a set narrative, however films of the French New Wave were renowned for having open narratives with which audiences could make their own interpretation.