The first time I saw any of my chosen directors,
Ariel Schulman, was when i watched the film . The camera approaches and elements of post production that i saw within this film were both innovative and engaging. For example, just simply the way it was filmed from a handheld camera fully interested me in Schulman's work and made me look into more of his work. When
Nerve was released in 2016, i watched it not knowing that it was directed by Ariel Schulman, there were so many elements within the film that again were innovative and engaging, reminding me of
Catfish. This is why i chose
Ariel Schulman as my director, i was interested in recreating his work in my own way and also looking at his work on the whole further. The general approach that i took with this, was to be organised in every act of filming, including script, location, casting, camera approach and sound. The art of directing is a hard task to master, and too prepare myself for this i researched some academic articles to develop my knowledge and understanding as what is required of me as a
director. The first site I read upon, was
http://www.filmmakers.com/stories/Director.htm, a rather long article, but one thing i read stuck with me throughout the process was 'the role of a director is to creatively translate the words of a script into an image'. The reason that this stuck with me was because it made me think about
why i chose to do something, why i chose to shoot something in this shot etc.
I undertook some research of certain directors and directorial styles of programmes in order to influence how i would direct myself. From my research of
Jack Bender, director of Lost, i looked into the art of displaying a characters emotion. From the script of
Nerve i understood the internal conflict that my main character
Vee would be going through, i wanted the drama that i create on screen to be very subtle, much like the character herself. This is why i took influence from the work of Bender and used a range of close up shots all in succession with each other to show the emotions n and internal struggle that
Vee goes through. Another element that i decide to use (that i didn't find in any of my research) was to use sound effects to create this drama also, in the same subtle way. The two examples that i have used within
Nerve would be when Vee is making a cup of coffee and i used sound effects to build up tension before she talks to her mother, and then also using a sound effect for when Vee slams her laptop down.
Most of the creative process that comes with being a
director,
comes with a lot of decision making, this includes decisions in casting, locations mood and style. Firstly, there were reasons that i chose the specific
locations that i chose. My production all takes place in one house, however to film i used multiple rooms in multiple different houses. The key reason behind this decision had everything to do with
lighting. In each of the rooms there is different elements that allow for different amounts of lights. For the scenes that take place in
Vee's bedroom, i wouldn't the light to be quite low and almost cold, in a way reflecting the personality of
Vee because as a character she is very introverted and quiet, therefore i chose to film in a certain house that had just one window that would let some light in, and also had dark painted walls to reflect the light to look a dark/blue tone. Furthermore for the kitchen scene that i did i wanted the lighting to completely oppose that of
Vee's bedroom. Therefore i chose to film in a different house, mainly because it had 2 wide windows in both sides of the wall that would allow for maximum light, also the room itself is a lot lighter in terms of the kitchen design and wall colours, this helped to create a more vibrant, yellow looking feel. The main reason for this idea of opposing lighting in the kitchen was because I wanted the kitchen to reflect the personality and stature of
Nancy (Vee's mother),
Vee struggles to communicate with her mum and that is put across throughout
Nerve, i wanted to create a this opposite in personality through their home and for me,
lighting, was a key element in creating that atmosphere, which is what lead me to make these decisions in
locations.
This leads me to decisions that i made in both
casting and
costume design. The main actor that i cast was
Holly Conroy in the lead role of
Vee. When casting the main role, i wanted someone who would be aged 18 who could be going through the same thing as
Vee goes through within
Nerve. Holly looks very similar to
Vee within the original adaption of
Nerve i thought this was a good thing because whilst i have directed it in a different way to
Ariel Schulman it isi good to have these recognisable elements from the film. The character of Vee's mother Nancy is a minor but important role with my production. I wanted to cast someone with different coloured hair to Vee because it is the an obvious difference between the two, subtly referencing their personality differences. This also lead me into my decisions in
costume, the character i wanted to be wearing specific clothing was
Nancy. I wanted
Nancy to be very well dressed and well presented, because the type of character i was trying to portray was someone who is confident and an upstanding member of society, and the clothes that she wore on the shoot and the way in which she presented herself did very well in adding to this representation of the character.
Vee i wanted to be dressed in a very normal, teenage way, clothes that weren't too bright and vibrant, just conformable clothes that a normal teenager would wear.
Sound design is something i didn't think much about when organising my production, until we had a workshop with Simon about the different ways in which sound can be used within a film. First of all, i wanted to open with some music, the music itself it very happy sounding music that i believe links well with the genre and therefore i believe it fits very well. For the rest of the production i wanted to use mainly
sound effects and
ambient sounds. This is because what we see is very much day to day life for
Vee and therefore these normal sounds would be in a way expected by the audience. I didn't want to use music throughout the non-dialogue scenes, purely because i wanted to have a realistic sense about the production, something i believe too much music doesn't provide. Moreover, sound design was very important in looking at the actual game of
Nerve (the videos that Vee watches throughout the film), because the graphics of the game was very hard to replicate on a professional level, i decided to just use the sound and instead focus on
Vee's reaction to the game rather than the actual videos itself. This sound was important, i wanted the sounds from the video to be loud and intense, appearing almost like the audience are watching and seeing the video soon, so i prerecorded the sound and layered it in to the film, turning the audio gain up to make it as loud as possible.
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| An example of the coverage i achieved in the Kitchen Scene |
Decisions that i had to make in sound design, particularly for the
Nerve videos, made me consider the different camera approaches that i wanted to take. Throughout i had 2 main camera approaches, firstly i wanted to to make sure i had
good coverage of every scene, so in order to achieve this i wanted to make sure i had at least 3 different shots of each scene; a long wide shot that would show the whole room/location rather than just the action, a medium shot that would detail some of the action but still show some space around the character, and finally close shots that would focus on just the action and dramatic parts of the film. One of my biggest creative influences for this, was my research of BBC programme
Luther, this is because Luther i believe in a similar way has very good coverage of its scenes (mainly due to its crime drama genre) and this is something i wanted to replicate. The second approach that i wanted to take, was a succession of low and high close up shots of
Vee as she watches the
Nerve videos, this was to make for a more intensifying view for the audience and also i believe pairs well with the sound design of these videos.
In terms of
editing within this production, i didn't really take a different approach to what i normally do when editing. I like to edit very tightly and i like every shot to flow into one and other naturally, this obviously comes back to camera approaches because you need to make sure you film all of the shots you need to get that flow that is trying to be achieved in editing. Something that i also had to do in editing was reverse a few of my shots so that i didn't cross the line, this actually is something i had never done before but it worked well and I'm happy with how it looked in the final edit. I believe that all of the above elements and creative decisions i made, including camera approaches and sound design, helped to achieve the correct
mood/design that i wanted.
Nerve as a film, has implications of many different genres, including elements of sic-fi, teen drama and thriller. I wanted to try and create elements of mainly drama through the mood i create, the main things i believe to affect this mood are the
sound design and
lighting, the sounds i create, for example in the kitchen scenes i decided to use some
ambient music, which creates this implication of drama. The lighting also is quite cold, its very blue in most of my scenes and again this adds to the effect of drama, the unknown and enigmas within the narrative.
Overall, i am happy with all of the creative decisions i made as a
director. I believe that, as i have explained, i had reason and explanation for all of my decisions and they all went in favour to create a my production as a clear and concise film with the direction that i wanted. Though some things i have learnt from and didn't entirely go to plan, i am happy with the end project.
Using the following site as my reference - http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/04/09/teens-social-media-technology-2015/ - many statistics can be found about firstly how many of teens use these sites and secondly how often they use them. Due to the increase of widespread use of smartphones, teens have a larger access to social media than every before. Found in the Pew Internet Research, only 2% of teens admitted to not going online that often, thus demonstrating the amount that do. Within teens Facebook is the most popular social networking site, however 71% of teens are still using more than one site such as instagram. These sites have in more recent times developed into more than just instant messaging services, Snapchat allows users to send pictures that disappear after up to 10 seconds, Instagram works like everyones public photo album and twitter allows for opinions and debates through 'tweets'. The widespread use and purposes that we have now through these sites means that teens are using these as part of everyday life, instead of real social interaction. 
The statistics above demonstrate the intensity of which teens have become highly dependent on these sites, within our documentary commission our 2 aims would be too 
