Sofia Coppola Openings

The Virgin Suicides

The opening of Coppola's Virgin Suicides introduces one of the main characters Lux, eating a lollipop on the street on the right hand side of the screen, she stands around for a moment and then disappears walking of the screen. The following shots are simple and peaceful as the camera sets onto the neighbourhood watering plants, taking dogs for walks and children playing. Its summertime and  heavily reflected with warm tones almost turning sepia. The sound of birds increase and soft music begins to play with a sound of an ambulance getting louder in the background. The music then stops to drips of water with a shot of cold blues contrasting to the heavenly warmth shown outside.
The contrast represents the darkness within what seems to be a paradise of a happy neighbourhood. Its almost an illusion as the four girls are really suppressed with rules, religion and purity by their parents, unable to grow and experience. This is a piece of detail carried throughout the film through characteristics, mise-ene-scene and cinematography as they are forever innocent and young, failing adolescence.
There is a narrator talking about the family (main characters) from an outside perspective of his memories, which goes with the footage as the camera surrounds rather than following with an inside perspective. The audience and camera are treated as a neighbour, not really knowing their thoughts but hearing from others. The film almost acts as a documentary to the neighbourhood, focusing on one family. What is noticeable is that it is narrated in past tense, equally showing the past in a dreamscape style.
The ending of The Virgin Suicides is in opposition to the opening with colours de-saturated and lifeless, showing more of a realistic colourisation. Empty rooms and its left over neighbourhood in silence. The narrator comes back the same age as when the Lisbon girls died which then establishes the present tense.

        =inspiration for my short film

Storyboard

Storyboard Opening from Media 12345 on Vimeo.

Targets

Evaluation on photographs

• The edits, inspiration, colourisation
• Structure storyline (minimum of minutes)
• Storyboard drawn/digital stills animatic with sound all due December
• Create a range of foley sounds/research freesound.org to accompany
• term 2 - create a sound scape using adobe audition

Sound

• Narration subtitles
• Silent film style
• Mini example clip
• Silent film subtitle short film research
• Polish folk music

Ivan Passer

Short Film Ideas

Locations:

The location will be in Poland. In a small town Szydlowiec. The main locations in Szydlowiec will be around the blocks of communist flats, the inside of one of the flats, the view from the flat windows, the park, the lake, the streets, the cemetery and the church.

Characters:

The characters will be real local people in the town, the main character being my grandmother (Marta Zytnicka) who lives in the flat. No one will know that I am filming them because I want everything to be authentic.

Narrative:

Narrative will be a based around the environment and following my grandmother around her everyday life with pieces of locations that fit into the scene for example an outside piece of footage cutting into another. The type of narrative will be driven by the aesthetic of Coppola by a documentary-style and way of showing the narrative rather than tell it/narrate it. Tarkovsky has a very similar way however with uses of long takes in still images or panning movements.

Themes:

The themes will be inspired by directors Andrei Tarkovsky and Sofia Coppola. Themes of childhood, innocence, memories, dreams, nostalgia and remoteness. This will be translated through the cinematography.

The Virgin Suicides by Sofia Coppola:

Inspiration on opening and closing the short film

For my opening I have similar ideas, however a different stage in life, the identity of a lonely woman, from an older generation, in Poland. The way Coppola opens the film is the way I would like to introduce the environment and its neighbourhood. A first impression focusing on its main theme within the shots.

The film also opens with a narrator talking of his memories about the family, which is another idea in consideration for my film to open with. Talking in past tense however presented in the present would be the only difference. Footage would have a link to what the narrator would be saying as a reflection rather than acting as the real memory. Because my grandmother does not speak English and only Polish, I also have to take in consideration ideas for subtitles.
I was thinking about having shots of a routine including pieces of the environment cutting into it to establish the films location. The routine will be of either starting the day or dealing with the graveyard or whatever is a repeating process within the environment. Local people going to church, grandparents sitting outside, children playing, teenagers in hang out places and most importantly memories. The memories (inspired by Tarkovsky) are important because they are the main theme to the narrative.

This overall short film will be documentary-style, due to its dependence on the main character to make a narrative.

Poland Coppola Edit

The images taken are either from the summer or winter time. And I wanted for that to be noticed. Playing around with the warm and cold effects again I think these shots worked with that a lot better, specifically because they are outside with natural light or indoor with only natural light. The tones were easy to pick because most of the photographs already had its colour palette blended together by the natural light, nothing was in contrast with an object opposing to the colour themes.

The images of children playing outside with the grandparents watching was a lucky shot, nothing was set up, because everything was natural and genuine. It links to Coppola's Virgin Suicides, the girls playing/sunbathing outside became very natural with sunlight hovering over them. Although they are a different age to these children, they still obtain the theme of innocence, immaturity and youthfulness in their own way. Personality sinks through to the audience where they are able to comprehend by the detail the characters make, with things you wouldn't think to order when making a film.
This again fits into the ideology of memories carried out in Tarkovsky's films. Pieces of memory can be related through a shot by an action of detail or mis-en-scene. Especially with youthfulness, everyone can relate somehow with another's childhood.
The winter shots have specified tones of blues and pinks, although pink has more of a warmth I wanted the warmth to be like the left overs of summer, a sense of nostalgia. The cool blues are to represent the present time of winter. I did this by enhancing the warm temperatures first as the past tense, like I did with the summer shots, to then enhance cooler tones as a layer of the presence. Coppola's Virgin Suicides also have contrasting effects from summer warmth to bleak tones of nostalgia turning into a dark winter. For example, one of the characters (Lux) downwards spiral into winter time is reflected with constant crisp blue sceneries after her last night of summer at prom. She wakes up left alone by her partner in a football field with a close up shot, eventually expanding in the establishing shot positioning her at the bottom of the screen in pure ice blues. The grass is turning grey as summer descends and the audience is left with a sharp breeze of Lux's innocence vanish.
This colour psychology creates a narrative of childhood, nostalgia and memories.