Filmmaking- Influences

When writing the script for the Go Outdoors advert, I was already starting to visualise how certain shots would look, and how we would achieve certain moments and scenes. When I started thinking about what influences inspired certain aspects and shots, I noticed music videos seemed to be incorporated quite a bit, as just like an advert, many are trying to tell a story in a limited amount of time. The opening shot to the Go Outdoors advert and and which helped inspire the storyboard from it comes from Coldplay's music video for the song 'Paradise'. Until I started thinking about it, I had

Shot from 'Paradise' music video.
Copyright Coldplay, Parlophone Records, Mat Whitecross
Source: Youtube

 no idea about the similarities, and then I realised I had been striving for a shot, similar to this. The shot is centered to show the road in the middle and this canvas of land and hills behind it, with a man in an elephant costume riding a unicycle in the middle of the shot. I loved the depth to this shot and the build up of layers. The colours are also very strong and paint a temperature in the shot. The first shot in the Go Outdoors shoot is a boy riding is bicycle towards the camera, but he would be riding by the side of the road and not directly in the middle
and the camera is also shifted so its not centered with the road but more in line with the edge of the road to show the boy coming closer to the camera. The framing and placement of this shot from 'Paradise' stuck with me and gave me a better idea of how to maybe represent certain scenes better and in new ways.

Shot from 'Before Sunrise' 1995.
Copyright Castle Rock Entertainment, Columbia Pictures
Source: Telegraph.co.uk

Another influential piece of film I feel affected my work on this shoot, was from the film Before Sunrise (1995). This film is very much about the dialogue and the characters chemistry, and thats what the audience respond to the most for this film, I looked into how they were framed and shot in this film and how they were always positioned side by side. I liked the use of this side by side technique and decided I wanted a similar outcome for the characters in the advert.  The shots are also very long and many in one take, which is another technique I liked but wouldn't be as effective in an advert as it needs to be short and quick in 30 seconds. I adapted this idea and developed the shot into a longer and more moving shot as I thought maybe we could have the couples children walking behind and we could pan around the couple to reveal them.

Shot from 'The Fault in our Stars' 2014.
Copyright Fox 2000 Pictures, Temple Hill Entertainment,
TSG Entertainment, 20th Century Fox
Source: TheGuardian.com

Shot from 'True Romance' 1993
Copyright Morgan Creek Productions, Davis Films
A Band Apart, Warner Bros.
Source:Vancouversun.com

As well as the look and style of the film, I also had influences when it came to writing the script and the characters. The story is kind of heart warming and romantic, and the characters living this romance throughout the years need to develop as well as there romance, but also stay the same and have the same and recognisable qualities for the audience to know they are the same couple. I took influence from two on screen couples from films I've seen, the first been Hazel Grace and Gus from The Fault in our Stars (2014), and the second been Clarence and Alabama from True Romance (1993). Their relationships are quite different but I wanted a balance, what I liked from The Fault in our Stars was how intelligent the relationship was and the dialogue between the characters, and from True Romance, I loved the spontaneousness of their relationship and the need they had from each other, making them very clingy and together most of the time. I wanted to use these qualities in the characters in the Go Outdoors advert but with obvious little time to do it. Throughout the advert the characters have this routine/habit of kissing on the cheek which can help show the audience they're the same couple throughout, and I also have them been close like Clarence and Alabama from True Romance.