Black Background Technique

 

Advantages to black backgrounds

There are several advantages to filming with a black background.
They are easy to set up
They eliminate distractions
They make colours and characters pop out
Also, a black background adds a very serious tone, which works well for adult themes and serious ideas. The black Background takes away any sense of location, which forces the viewer focus on whats happening. In the first few seconds of my opening sequence i will have a black background, and a hip hop montage of extreme close up shots of clowns doing crack.

How i will create my "blackground"

I will build a makeshiftt frame out of wood and scrap metal, and i will hang sheet of heavy black fabric over it. Heavy Black fabrick works the best because unlike paper, it is non reflective, and just looks better in general.

Lighting smoke infront of the blackground

Smoke is hard to film infront of a blackground because it has a natural grey colour that only really shows up when light is reflected on it. So i need to set up a lighting source with a mirror opposite to it, so the smoke gets an equal amount of light from either side. I need to put the smoke and the light quite far infront of the blackground so that light doesnt get reflected onto that by accident.

Representation

I think an important part of my story is representation. Because the subject matter of my opening sequence is dark, drug addiction, it is a living hell that people cant imagine, or don't want to. So i found that it would be much more interesting and less shocking or disturbing if i used clowns, because you aren't meant to take clowns seriously, they hurt themselves and get into uncomfortable situations for the pleasure of the audience viewing them. So if the hardcore drug addicts are clowns, people may see my video in a different light, they may take a more sympathetic view on real life drug addicts. Also because clowns are supposed to represent something funny, so if you make something funny do something very bad it creates a strange kind of paradox in the viewers mind, and they are unsure of how they feel i.e the audience is slightly disturbed and confused.

However i understand that clowns are also perceived as being scary, evil and the most morbid people on earth, so i think they will create some really interesting characters, and if the audience is scared of clowns-they will feel fear and panick as they watch, which is what the clowns themselves feel.

Here is an example  the picture of the real life drug addict is much more upsetting and hard hitting than the picture of the clown.

Lighting and Mise En Scene

My opening sequence deals with dark subject matter, the taboos of society, the things that you don't often see happen in broad daylight. So,my lighting will be very dark, and minimal. I want there to be muted colours, like greys, blacks, browns, etc with a splash of bright colour from the clowns costumes. However they will also be quite muted and dirty. This will make the clowns jump out at you, and they will be a strong contrast to their bleak surroundings. I am thinking of trying to film in black and white, and then only the clowns will be in colour, and so they will jump out at the audience even more. I want it to be bleak because i want my audience to feel bleak and morbid in themselves, it is a technique used to help the audience empathize with the characters. I want my audience to feel empty and alone as the clowns do.