Directions unit: Directors statement

Directors statement

For my redirection I choose Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. I did this as I like the way Burton tells a story to the audience, he follows the "show don't tell" aspect of story telling to the extreme in his choices for casting, production design etc and therefore I had a lot of room to play with for my own style and interpretation.

For my ideal cast I'd have have;

Mad Hatter (Tarrent)

For the Mad Hatter (Tarrent) I'm going to focus more on the iconic top hat pocket watch. As the T.B Tarrent was as a Hatter by trade he has pins and fabric attached to his hat. 

The Hatter's personality is erratic and unpredictable, he says what ever comes into his head without care or thought. I cast a course mate due to the original actor dropping out last minuet, they fit the 'mad' behaviour required from them though and made a very believable Hatter.

March Hare
For the March-Hare I decided to make them ex-military, they'll therefore have a military jacket and the character them self although eccentric will have a sense of discipline from the army about them such as sitting up straight etc. The character would ideally have grey facial hair giving them the unkept look of a mad old man.
***Character was cut due to not being able to replace the actor that dropped out***

Mally
For Mally's character I wanted to try and show her personality through her clothes. In the T.B adaption Mally is an adventurous and feisty girl, she is one of the boys. 

I wanted to try show this through her costume having her in trousers, lots of pockets and practical clothes. Mally is cast with a professional actor who had mouse like qualities such as dainty features and strands of hair to look like whiskers, she moves quickly and thoughtfully.
Chesire

For Chesire cat I wanted a scruffy appearance. They'll speak slowly and thoughtfully and wear sombre colour palettes such as greys and blues.

I cast a fellow student as Chesire, he suited the young and scruffy appearance I wanted as well as being able to talk in a monotone voice.

Alice
Alice is a shy and reserved character and her visit to the Hatter brings her out of her shell, she becomes more extroverted and the entire premise of the film is Alice learns that it's ok to be different.
Because of this I had a young girl play her, she was dressed in plain clothing so she wouldn't stand out and her demeanour was quiet.

As my film is set in a family home I'll be filming in my own student accommodation where there is plenty of room for me to play wth the production design.
The living room is where the majority of the script will be filmed with the corridor and the outside path of the house being used too. Because it's a student accommodation I can add things such as wall hangings and fairy lights to add to the aesthetic of the scene.

Ideally for my costumes I would have:

Alice
For Alice I decided to not have her in what is perceived typical steampunk clothes, detaching her from the Mad Hatter and his friends. Alice's character will be in primarily black and white aside from a blue cardigan, this being because of the blue dress that the original Alice iconically wears. She'll have the fingerless gloves that T.B's Alice wears however they'll be black to fit with the darker aesthetic. 
For Alice I decided to have her in plain and casual clothing, she still had the iconic blue as the only colour in her costume and she wore a black bow like the original animated Alice did.

Chesire
For Chesire cat I wanted a scruffy appearance. The character is in their dressing gown as they don't really bother to get dressed for anything, they don't shave often and they're detached from the world. They'll speak slowly and thoughtfully and wear sombre colour palettes such as greys and blues.
For Cheshire we decided to have the character in a grey onesie (sticking with my original idea that the character very rarely gets dressed for anything), the onesie was grey and fluffy to connote the fur of the cheshire cat.

Mally
For Mally's character I wanted to try and show her personality through her clothes. In the T.B adaption Mally is an adventurous and feisty girl, she is one of the boys. 

I wanted to try show this through her costume having her in trousers, lots of pockets and practical clothes.
Ethel (the actress who played Mally) came to set with her own interpretation of the character's wardrobe, she had excessive jewelry and messy hair.


March Hare

For the March-Hare I decided to make them ex-military, they'll therefore have a military jacket and the character them self although eccentric will have a sense of discipline from the army about them such as sitting up straight etc. The character would ideally have grey facial hair giving them the unkept look of a mad old man.
***Character cut due to actor dropping out last minuet***

Mad Hatter (Tarrent)
For the Mad Hatter (Tarrent) I'm going to focus more on the iconic top hat pocket watch. As the T.B Tarrent was as a Hatter by trade he has pins and fabric attached to his hat. 

Because of the steam punk choice I've substituted pins and thread for goggles, these are common trade marks of the look and help establish that Tarrent thinks he is in a different time.
For the Mad Hatter we had to go with what the cast member was wearing at the time as they were a last minuet cast choice, it happened to work well and the monochrome nature of their clothes contrasted nicely with the bright overbearing colours on set. As well as this it was a nice differentiation from Burton's Hatter. 

For the production design I wanted to try and make my own version of the tea party, I went to charity shops for things such as wall hangings to act as table clothes as well as getting various crockery. The Hatter's watch was brought online as it was a vital part of the character (he is waiting for time to pass until Alice returns).

With editing I included a lot of cutaways and jump cuts, this created an erratic feel around the mirroring the the madness of the Mad Hatter. However as a lot of my shots were continuous I didn't need to do much editing visually.

When I sped up the voice for Mally's character I also sped up the video itself to enhance on the quick movements from Ethel the actress making her character more mouse like.

My initial ideas for additional sound design weren't fully concrete plans until I started editing, I knew I wanted to make the Hatter's world unsettling but wasn't sure how. In the end I decided on adding sound effects such as children laughing and running, to the distorted music I already had added in the first place.

As well as that I experimented with both the Hatter's and Mally's voices. For the Hatter I substituted Johnny Depp's Scottish accent when the Hatter gets mad for layering Zak's voice over itself to create and echoed effect. Because when the Hatter gets angry his other personality comes out.

For Mally as the original character is a mouse I simply sped up her audio to have it at a higher pitch then everyone else making her more mouse like.

For the camera I was heavily inspired by Wez Anderson's symmetrical style, characters are often therefore placed in centre shot or on either side. I like the way this style looked with my work and it actually worked very well with the multiple shots I had filmed as everything became nicely erratic to connote the mind set of the "Mad Hatter".

 I choose Wez Anderson's style for laying out a shot as both he and Burton are highly stylised directors and thought it would work very well with the Hatter and Alice.

My visual style for my work was aiming towards fantasy meets real life, initially similar to the Burton film however my execution of it was slightly different in that all my characters are live action and they are not altered physically unlike Burton's characters who's eyes are made bigger.