Patrick Ireland's Film 'Ramapithecus' Film shoot

Ramapithecus from Phoebe Jaspe on Vimeo.

I've recently joined the Sheffield Film Society based at University Of Sheffield, as well as the Creative film society at SHU. I found the society via Facebook and google. It was a great experience working on a professional set with Patrick Ireland, a 4th year student studying Politics at University of Sheffield, a film enthusiast. I got the experience to work in Boom Mic Operation/Clapper Board/Continuity/Time/Equipment Setup and A.D. He organised a rota between five people that were willing to help. The location shoot was at Shakespeare pub, near Kelham island. 

"The plot for the film is as follows: two university students, ex-Oxbridge and old, aristocratic wealth, decide to slaughter a mentally handicapped teenager. Why? Because they believe there are no ethical or social reasons for why killing someone with a mental disability is un

just. They challenge a fellow student, one comfortably settled in the middle class, to challenge them; to give them a coherent, strong argument for why they should not commit the murder. The film is a horror/drama, very theatrical and twisted."

By Patrick Ireland

A prop on the Ramapithecus set

A crew list and job descriptions written by Patrick Ireland

Script and Storyboard by Patrick Ireland

I learned a lot from Patrick's handouts with the fact that he directed and produced the whole production by himself and the crew he gathered was inspiring. 

Experimental film progress

The Soundscape

Picture taken with iPhone instagram in Crookes, Sheffield.

Experimenting with a Marantz sound recorder

A range of sounds were recorded around Sheffield, the idea of the experimental film is to show the binary opposition between civilisation (city) and nature, how both of them clash together with connotations of the inevitable human life cycle. Tom Cunningham and I decided that we will split the roles in this production, I will be in charge of the Director/Writer/Sound producer side of this short film whilst Tom is in charge of the cinematography and film editing. Both of us will be mixing jobs as well to get it on the right track. An actor was found using the Facebook drama group which was an absolute necessity. At the beginning, we used a Marantz and recorded sounds of ice cubes in a cup, door slamming, food wrappers, leaves rustling, car engines, hydrophone in a fountain, people talking and all this is edited with the experimental sounds I created with Thumbjam that was uploaded on soundcloud to show my progress. 

This is the progress so far on Soundcloud and Soundtrack Pro:

The experimental film circulates around the idea of:

The premise encapsulates the message I am trying to evoke in this experimental film. The ideology of a human bored of living, not suicidal but one that despises mortality. An intuitive logical introvert, an unhealthy rational thinker that is unhappy with his life and has a realisation that he should seek for the opposition. He works in an office and has to wear a suit everyday, gradually in the film, it shows the character slowly transferring himself from the office environment into nature, his appearance also changes when this happens. The character is a protagonist that switches roles to an antagonist (himself) that forms a disdain for technology, a neo-Luddite that suffers from neuroticism and self-deprecation. This idea is also inspired by the film Holy Mountain (1973).

I replaced the word 'chill' with 'ill' and the phrase 'My inevitable death and disintegration makes me fucking ill' should be inserted into the narration at the end of the film, to describe his situation. This is when the character is seen meditating in front of a small broken mac desktop computer (my friend has one) and he is seen wearing a pink wig, fake eyelashes, rags in a lotus position and somewhat burying the mac computer in a forest. I bought some black food colouring that could intensify the aesthetics of him vomiting black goo. This was inspired from the unpleasant Begotten (1990), an experimental horror film about Genesis, I will critically analyse this film in later posts comparing it to Ballet Mecanique (1923-4) as well.

How the Neo-Luddite idea was shown with props:

I used a broken mac keyboard, an old rusty hammer, fake blood, tomato and a paintbrush.

Behind the Scenes (Iguana) from Phoebe Jaspe on Vimeo.

This is roughly a moment of the film which would be edited in fast cuts where the protagonist murders the keyboard and the insanity is also shown when he plugs the keyboard into a tomato. The mania is captured with close-ups of the protagonist's enraged face along with the violent smashes of the keyboard. It also shows that he is restless of the situation and hopes to find a place that he could be reborn into. Since he is neurotic, this will make perfect sense in the character's mind.

Steal Everything

Jim Jarmusch's quote reminded me of the Remix Everything videos that was shown in class. Recently, I've been reading Michel Ciment's book 'Kubrick' and it suggests that if one seeks to evolve in originality, one must refer to the past, this is where Ciment discusses the concern of originality in film.  To be original, he states, one must reference tradition.  He proposes:

"To affirm one's difference it is important to preserve a historical conscience, a sense of being linked with the past.  Other artists -- painters, writers, composers -- discovered this a long time ago.  Like those civilizations which know they are mortal, as Valery said, they see themselves as links in the chain of time.  And this recognition of time and the evolution of forms is undoubtedly one of the characteristics of modern art. Film-makers took a long time to reach such a stage of awareness. When they finally realised that the cinema had a history, they lost their innocence. Godard was perhaps the most remarkable example of this transformation..."

Sheffield cityoneminutes

Sheffield cityoneminutes from Phoebe Jaspe on Vimeo.


Louise Essam and I booked out a Sony Z1 and were asked to film a one minute short in the style of cityoneminutes about the Sheffield Midland Station. Louise Essam did majority of the cinematography while I had the final edit on Final Cut Pro X.

At 10am, we were outside the Sheffield train station. There were a plethora of objects and sceneries to capture and it was a joy to work with another person. Teamwork is something I've always considered but haven't practiced much of it. I find that it's an important skill to develop over time, especially in the film industry.

Final Cut Pro X seems to be a simpler version of FCP 7, I find that FCPx is more convenient because I've been using it for a few months. FCP7 is similar to Sony Vegas which is what I am familiar with as well. During the film shoot, we managed to get 13 minutes of rushes and I compressed it to a 1 minute film, it was enjoyable to put it together. Not many difficulties were faced, except for choosing specific scenes and trying to create a storyline. A fast paced narrative and montage editing was the most suitable route for this short.
A linear narrative is what I had in mind, especially with the beginning and an ending. The mid-point contains a lot of fast cuts as the music parallels with the fast movements of people walking and it evokes a sense of speed and urgency about city dwellers. Small seconds of their lives are recorded running towards the train station, either leaving, visiting friends/family or returning to their homes.

I've also deliberately cut the music with the fast cuts at the beginning with the man on rollerblades, which I think is fantastic. The music is constructed by a part time composer and a full-time software developer with Guitar Pro. He was happy to let me use his song in this film. A small error with this film is that it's 61 seconds, not 60 seconds. Overall, I think it went well and hope to continue making interesting films in the future.

Aldous Huxley

The above quote is from Huxley's novel Brave New World, it suggests the definition of normal is not necessarily mentally well, but a conformity to social norm.I find this apparent and accurate in everyday society because the world is built around Extraverted-sensory preferred individuals. According to the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, roughly 60% of the world consists of Over-seers and Artisan-sensory types while the other 40% are Intellectuals and Dreamers.

Huxley challenges the idea that these 'normal' people are suppressed to a stage where they are trapped in their constructed 'comfort zones'. Trapped within what society has given to them and how they are structured like cyborgs. In America, the default personality is ESTJ for males and ESFj for females. With distractions such as entertainment, especially targeted at types where the youth is manipulated into drugs, night life, watching TV and etc. The dominant personality type for United Kingdom, would be ESFp for females and ESTp for males (The Conquerers).

Personalities of countries

Although genders are not relevant in personality types. Having a night out seems to be incredibly important to most University students as a social convention, it relates to the ideals in Huxley's 'Brave New World'. Although, there are different personality types that dominate each country. Therefore, society is build around the personalities that is dominant within each society.

 Aldous Huxley is on the top of my list of inspirational people.

Brave New World is about eugenics, transhumanism, a dystopic dream-world that leads to the last revolution of the human race:

 “There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.” 

 I find this really inspiring and hope to incorporate similar ideas in my future productions. I have to agree with both of Huxley and Orwell's thoughts on society because I could see countries such as Israel or North Korea being stuck in Orwell's 1984 political ideology, while developed cosmopolitan cities tend to point more towards Huxley's viewpoint.

The reason why I like Huxley's writings is possibly because we have the same personality, according to socionics.

Referring this to what is shown in class, it reminded me of Isle of Flowers (Ilha das Flores 1989) which I've watched multiple of times and have shared this among peers. The satirical nature within this film has interest me greatly with its fast paced narrative structure, its sardonic representation of consumerism, absurd aspects of human condition and the emphasis on cultural imperialism. Which relates to Huxley and Orwell's ideas as well.

The dark side of capitalism is reinforced and it begins with 'This film is not fiction. There is a place called Isle of Flowers.There is no god'. Furtado's monologue contains a wide variety of connections from different places, at first it may seem outrageous and comical, placing the tomato as the main protagonist, the microcosm of the whole film. The narrative takes us on a journey through a tomato, slowly zooming out from the microcosm and towards the macrocosm- the issue of human oppression. It is not a story about a tomato, is it a story of a huge network in which the tomato plays a part of, a human hierarchy circulates this idea.

Old Jacob's Factory

Location scouting for future film shoots:

Had a photo shoot with Michael Masser, a photographer