Script
Hello, my name is Maria Monastyrenko and I am a creator of the film “Snow Always Melts”. The main idea of drama in this context is to convey the idea of first love experience and mental issues due to harsh life that can suddenly become better at any moment. The name of the film clearly personifies this meaning and after watching the film opening it is more easy to interpret the title. It took me 3 months in common to finish the final outcome and my website.
I was thinking about the genre for a quite long time, and eventually came up with an idea of drama/melodrama as it is the best way to convey meaning and characters feelings and emotions in order to show the problem visually without any words. In modern world there is a big amounts of people who always analysing and trying to delve into true meaning of any media product and interpret it by themselves, so it is easier to to express those emotional codes in drama. The main most important aim of this film is to show people that life is such a multifaceted substance, which include both black and white stripes in life that flow in different ways and bring both losses and benefits, experience. This film is telling audience that your life is not always under your control, which means that sometimes you have to go with the flow and not resist, because in the end fate itself will decompose everything as it should.
During the process of making the film, I tried my best to create an atmosphere of drama through lighting, transitions, music and emotions of the characters. The first scenes with a title sequence provides and expression of loneliness and calmness by the sense of empty streets and low-key natural lightning, which occurs throughout the whole film to convey the meaning of sadness and emotional condition of the character, which indicates the genre as a drama. The music throughout the whole film opening changes slightly depending on the situations occurring in different scenes. I also used effects such as flickering on the moment of the Tom’s memories about his last meeting with dead friend and also ghost effect on the shots with memories of how they were spending time together, and added a few filters that slightly obscure and darken memories to produce the effect of the character’s thoughts. I tried to represent protagonist’s feeling both through his live emotions and various effects after editing to enhance the effect of emotions and drama. Also, I used the defocus effect in some moments to diversify the visual component and add some mysteriousness. The transitions I used are also depends on the situations happening in scenes, for example, in calm and passive scenes or the transition to the memories and back, the slight dissolving transitions are taking place to make it seems more calm, and during the part with father-son conflict, the transitions change quickly and abruptly to create tension and a sense of sharpness and conflict. I also used fade-in and out transitions so that the change of parts is clear to the viewer. Visually, I tried to recreate the sense of an average family with the help of clothings, home location and social status, which is understandable after the scenes with Tom’s father. Snowy and cloudy weather draws parallels to the title of the film, and creates a feeling of emptiness. The background of the scenes with Tom’s bedroom shows a lot of books, which indicates that he likes to read, analyze and write, which means that he is proned to self-examination, which leads to all his emotional suffering.
I have done the editing in “videoleap” as it gave me the opportunity to use many different transitions and qualified sound editing, and then I used “inshot” to add various spec effects after editing and keep the good video quality. I used the school’s camera to record the most shots from my film opening and make it look as professional as possible.
My film is mainly aimed at an audience over the age of 16, as it is emotionally immersive, so you will have to analyze a lot, look for meaning and understand it. In my opinion, drama is quite a deep and sometimes emotionally heavy genre, and it is better for mentally mature viewers to watch. This film is created for people who began to doubt that life has many bright and pleasant moments and got focused on the negative sides. “Snow Alway Melts” makes it clear that not everything in life is as bad as it could be, and that there is always a way out of any situation and joy can be found anywhere.
First of all, the film should pass all stages of distribution. I would create a trailer and distribute it through different types of media networks to make people interested and to inform people about the upcoming release of the film on all platforms of media. In order for people not to face the problem with access to watching the film, I would distribute it on all the most accessible platforms, and also on the most popular websites, like “Netflix” or “Premium”, where it could be clearly seen.
During the process of project I was learning how to communicate with people I was working with and I also developed my organisational and leadership skills in result of controlling the situation and filming process. I learned how to use professional camera and gained some skills in choosing the right type of shot or effect for each scene, which also goes for editing. Due to the fact that this is my first serious project in terms of proffesionality, I gained an immense experience of organising such a big drafts. I also delve more deeply into analysing the genre “drama” and gained an understanding of what the melodrama is based on. Since I am a perfectionist, I took into account every little thing and every detail in the process of creating and editing my film, which also helped me become more experienced. This was a very interesting and useful experience in my life in terms of media.
Foundation Portfolio 