Being Watched

To begin, I want to research how people act under the watchful eye of others to determine specific mannerisms and response so that my short film can be accurate and realistic. This translates to real life and online as these days, a lot of public perception can be found through the internet. Social media has vastly affected how people see each other and themselves. This may not be the classic form of people watching but this is a good case to examine in terms of how people react to being watched. These days, people are generally more uptight about what they post on socials including Twitter and LinkedIn as anyone can simply scroll through their posts at any time, which may affect a job interview or college admission. Under someone else’s watch, we try to best the best version of ourselves, trying to hide embarrassing or ‘unnecessary’ information about ourselves to appear well. This is particularly apparent in public shops and cafes as no one wants to cause a fuss or really draw attention to themselves. It has been proven that people are so uptight about their public appearance that even seeing an image of an eye can influence our behaviour. To prove this, in 1976 at Halloween, there was a study that involved 360 children going around taking candy. If there was a mirror at the door when they were left alone to take candy they were less likely to take more than they should as their own reflection would stop them. Another case was at Newcastle University where they put up signs with eyes on and reading ‘cycles thieves: we’re watching you’ around three sites where bikes were commonly stolen from. This decreased the level of threat by 62% which made it a great deterrent but didn’t work in every case. These both prove that being under a watchful eye, even if it’s only a sign or your own reflection makes you stop and think more. In the case of people watching, anyone that realises they are being observed will likely change their demeanour to hide any details to above sticking out. 

Watching

Furthermore, I now wanted to look deeper into what aspects of a person people look to when people watching as this will focus my attention for my short film. Many people carry out people watching when even unaware of it so this will bring more light to me in what specifically people make their judgements off. What we determine from watching each other can lead to social judgement. Being in a room waiting around with other often leads to lines of speculation about what bought another person to the same place as you at the same time. We also find ourselves eyeing their clothing but first comes their facial expression and body movement. This can say a lot about a person. Here are now six stages of what people look out for. First things first with clothing, which can say a lot about a person from where they live to what sport team they support to their favourite brands. This is a dangerous field however as it can lead to class discussion and judgement. These may all seem like small details but they can make a huge impact to identify someone’s likes, dislikes and personal tastes. This can also be said in the region of tattoos. Tattoos usual reflect a memory, a favourite thing of theirs or simply a cool design that they like, which even then still tells you information about them. The second thing to look out for is their self-esteem, the way they hold themselves. This can relate to their posture, their shoulder and head placement, among other things. Simply seeing a person sat upright with their head held high can tell you their confidence and self-respect whereas someone hunched over is like insecure, introverted or in self -doubt. This alone can tell your story to the world and, like stated before, many people try to alter this appearance to avoid being noticed. This can suggest their level of narcissism. Next, by judging someone’s facial expressions, you are able to determine their emotional state. You can watch this through the movement of their eyes. They may dart around or blink lots if they are unsure of their position. As an extension to this, someone’s fidgety hand movements or slowed walking pace may also indicate their emotional state. Additionally, someone’s kindness is a huge implication for their social character. Small actions such as holding open a door or allowing you to take a lift first can serve wonders to project your character onto those around you and anyone watching will put you up in their estimations. And a final way judgement can be made by someone’s willing to make conversation. Now that you have accessed their likes, dislikes, choice of clothing, unconditional kindness and self-esteem among others it is then time to see what they are really like if or when they choose to make a verbal introduction. This stage often doesn’t happen due to the nature of the encounter but it is worth bearing in mind. You can immediately tell someone’s an extrovert if they try to work the room and spark some energy. Their speech pattern and use of vocabulary can also talk a lot for them. Now these are all aspects you and I are well aware of naturally but they are worth mention in this research as these are things that I need to be really particular about when I come to production of my short film. In my script, as well as focusing on dialogue for obvious reasons, I must make sure that I list all the mannerisms and costumes of each character involved, no matter the level of their involvement. This is a very stereotypical film of how people naturally act but that will be the most communicative and realistic perspective on the topic. 

First Impressions

Moving on, people watching is an art of first impressions. I’ve already looked into what people look out for and what people try to display but now I want to look into more detail as to why people find their first impression so valuable, giving them more reasoning behind their mannerisms. Also, I am very interested to see how long it takes for someone to make a first impression and how much they determine from that. This will assist me with timings for my short film so I am always in control. The truth is that you only get one chance with a first impression. No matter what, whoever it is whether a stranger or interviewer will always make a very quick assessment of you out of the gate, usually taking about a 1/10 of a second, judging everything mentioned above to get a gist of who you are in an instant. So why do people casually make this assessment so fast? A lot of this initial judgement that can’t be changed is on someone’s face to determine your expressions, which plays a significant role in how we treat others and get treated. To consolidate these theories, experiments were held to study this initial judgement. Participants were asked to look at a series of photos of unfamiliar faces for 100 milliseconds, 500 milliseconds and then 1,000 milliseconds before being asked to describe the traits of those people and rate the confidence displayed by their face. The experiment revealed that those who saw the photos for shorter periods of time had more concise answers than those who took a longer look. Now, I want to go slightly deeper into first impressions so I can truly understand what we were experiencing in those brief moments to better help my short film in my directing for the actors. There has even been a study where people have predicted the winner of an election due to singular candidate photographs. Your first impression is more like the first expression you display when you meet a new person. That becomes the expression they will forever associate with you. Expressions are somewhat contagious, if you walked into a room frustrated it is likely those who are already there will start to become frustrated with you. I find it fascinating the levels of ‘mind games’ that are involved in a simply first encounter. What is seconds in standard time is really the culmination many of neuron activities that come to quick conclusion about something or someone. Our brains handle around 40 bits of information a second and most of these are quick assessments made during scenarios such as a first encounter.

With all of this information, I believe I will now be able to direct my actors’ feelings and emotions easier due to my understanding of what their characters should be feeling. 

Primary Research 

In terms of primary research, I can think of a situation I was in that clearly proves my secondary research that is quite important to me and frames some of my opinions of the activity and sensations I have discovered to be associated with people watching. When I joined the college at the beginning of the year, I arrived alone, not knowing anyone here let alone on my course. I was more nervous than usual but from looking around the room I immediately got the sense many other people were in the same situation, judging by their mannerisms and body language. So, I decided to jump in and try to get to know people and since then we’ve been a tight group. It took a few more weeks for me to properly become friends with Vi which really came about one day when they were wearing a Dungeons and Dragons t-shirt. With me also being a big fan of the game, we finally had something to talk about and eventually made our documentary together. This example proves the importance of clothing and first impressions and the reason I want to produce my short film about this topic.

Additionally, a very simple way to get inspiration for this short film is just doing some people watching myself and making notes on the public. The first thing that catches my attention when looking at the public is most certainly colour. To me, colour sets a mood and tells me if someone is worth paying attention to. Below, I have made a chart of people I’ve spotted, what they look like and what imagine them being like. There are certain friends and family of mine that I want to put in this film as actors due to probably availability and reliability, which is crucial to this project as they each must fir their parts. Therefore, as well as looking at the public, I will have certain people in mind when writing their characters. These include my parents. For my dad, I will draft a character that fits his personality as I want to reflect multiple age categories from a younger person’s point of view. My dad is a hard-working business man who cares a lot for my family but always seems exhausted from working. Although he, I and my brother get on, we do have a lot of times when we’re all sick of each other and need some space. As most parents are, my dad usually acts as a taxi for me (until I can drive) and this definitely gets in the way of his personal life. Next, I have a set of friends who are very close to me and great actors so wanted to make sure there are parts set for them. Therefore, I’m going to base a pair of characters off them, following the trend of siblings or dating. People have suspected and asked them about this in public so I thought I could try and represent it. This plays into common misconceptions. Taking all this into consideration is very useful for my film as I am aware of the type of people involved and their performances will be in line with the character’s that I will write.

How This Will Help

All of these sections of research will help me hone in on the topic and I understand in much greater detail how people generally act which will later assist my casting, direction and script. I think taking a look back at my own experiences and how I understand myself through these stages has really helped me connect and realise why this topic is so interesting to me. Many of the people I've seen and made notes of likely won't be useful as I dont want to flood the film with too many different looks and characters. I want to keep the archetypes quite simple and understandable through small interactions like I've seen here. This gives me the urge to research colour theory in greater depth so I can represent each character in terms of that also.

As I am painting people watching in a positive self-reflective light, I think it is important that I also examine stalking and stalker behaviours as many think the two activities are the same when they are definitively not.  There is a clear cut line that many people do not appreciate and I wish to research more thoroughly into this so it is clear that I know where the boundary is and I don’t cross it. At a first thought, many people think that people watching is a creepy thing to do yet accidentally do it anyways. The truth is that it is simply human nature to be observant but then we move into stalking. Some people take this to an unnecessary next step, beginning obsessions about a particular person or people. The clear boundary between this and casual people watching is that this is definitively targeted whereas people watching is more general and assumptive. Stalking can become apparent in two ways: becoming obsessive over a particular stranger and following their movements from afar or becoming overly personal. The second case isn’t really relevant to my short film as the characters being watched won’t actually interact with the lead but the stranger perspective is worth being aware of. The motivations of a stalker could be rejection, obsession, fantasy or narcissism, all of which have worrying social issues associated. 

How this will help

This research is important and useful to me as I believe it is valuable to succinctly know the differences, proving that I am aware the boundaries my short film has. The short film aims to present the benefits of people watching so I must also be aware of its disadvantages and similar activities that disturbing.

As I would like colour to play an important role in my short film, I believed it was necessary to look into the different meanings and interpretations of each colour. The aim is to reflect each character with a singular colour or a shift I atmosphere from one to another. To do this, I sent out a pole online to see what conceptions different people have of colours. I then assembled the responses into six word clouds, one for each colour, to more easily see trends. Here’s what I discovered and how each trend will help my project:

Red: Red is the colour of passion, whether anger, love or fire. This is a strong colour with many meanings but all are driven and focused. Using the colour red to represent a character can have many conflicting interpretations but from this I believe I will be going down the path of love and anger and how both feed into one and other.

Orange: Orange is the colour of danger, fun and light. I find these interesting as they are even more conflicting than red. In my short film, I plan on using this colour as a signal of danger but I don’t think it will be as prominent as the other colours.

Yellow: Yellow jumps off what was said for orange but leans more on happiness and joy over danger. However, this can be a dangerous colour as its brightness and joyousness can be mistaken. For yellow, I may use these undertones to misdirect or lull the audience into a false sense of security but primarily I will use it to show the friendly and happy atmosphere. I aim to have a couple of my characters wear yellow as their happiness cannot be contained and is hard to miss from a random perspective.

Green: Green is a colour of life and death, a colour that creation is built upon. This makes it a fairly mysterious colour and may become the central point of my people watching exploration. As well as life and nature, green can also represent the polar opposite with sickness, envy and greed, highlighting its mystery. 

Blue: Blue is a peaceful colour but that peace can also be interpreted as sadness and woe. Someone wearing blue in my film could simply be relaxing and getting away from everything or this could be to cover up deeper layers of hurt. Strangely to me, some people on the survey also listed blue as a mark of summer and hope which I would think of as warmer colours but I’m guessing the peace and simplicity of blue reminds people of happier and relaxed times.

Purple: And finally for the survey, purple is a mystery colour, more so than green, with many meanings including royalty, luxury and power but also fear and mystery in itself. I really want to use these theories in my film to represent a singular character and drive an audience into speculation, presenting many different views on this colour. 

How this will help

It was very interesting to me to here lots of different people's reactions and interpretations to different colours as what I associate is strangely divergent from others. This is very good to note as one of my characters in the film could accidentally be misrepresented to someone and a little action found above and colour combination may come off the wrong way. With that, I want to compare my interpretation so I can come to a common ground that will be met in my film.

As well as general colour theory, I also wanted to look into colour grading as this has been an area I have struggled with so far in the course and I would like to use this project to rectify that. Colour grading is a vital stage of filmmaking as it defines the lens that the audience have of the world. Understanding colour theory is only a jumping off point when looking into colour in film as audiences respond to colours in different ways. For example, a romantic comedy is more likely to have a warm red colour grade while a space sci-fi would be colder as a reflection of isolation and paranoia. The main mistake people make with colour is not considering it until the edit. Colour shapes the story and must be integral to the project if used successfully. Colourists will affect the colours in correction and grading, these being technical and creative. Technical correction is fixing the white balance (which should be 4000 – 4500K inside and 5000 – 6500K when outside in the day) and matching exposures. When you have a shot that’s across a couple shoots, as most productions are, the conditions will never be identical so it is the colourist’s job to adjust these all to match and seem streamlined. Following that, there’s the creative side of colour grading. This can go unnoticed by the casual viewer but it communicates the light in which the director wants the viewer to experience the feature. However, colour grading can be striking and force a viewer into a new world. The colour from filming doesn’t truly translate to a director or cinematographer’s vision in production so colour grading is necessary to complete the feature. 

Now, with a better understanding of how colour is important, I wanted to look at how to go about colour grading as I don’t feel I’ve been doing it well in previous assignments such as the music video and TV show adverts. Luckily for me, there are many guides on how to do this in adobe premiere pro. The first thing to look at on Premiere is Lumetri tools. On here, there are several presets to help inexperienced people so I may use one of these as a jumping off point for my project. However, starting of scratch, it is a good idea to look into all the aspects that make up the grade. Under Lumetri colours is the basic correction tab which allows you to change the parameters of the frames. This works in the same way as still photography. The general advice I’ve found is to increase the sense of depth by lowering the exposure and increasing contrast. In these settings, you can also alter the colour highlights and shadows to increase or decrease the presence of individual colours. I will likely be using this setting a lot to find the correct palette for each individual person watched. You can also enforce a more cinematic image by lowering the black parts of the image. This is also the space where you can edit the saturation which shouldn’t be altered too much or the overall visual design looks to fake. So far, this has helped me understand the importance of each aspect in colour grading that will help me edit my final film.

However, there are many more stages to colour grading that will enhance the film. The next thing I will need to look at is colour casting which uses tints and colour levels. On Premiere, this is found under Creative edit tab in the shadow Tint colour wheel. Moving the spots in the colour wheel around shifts the focal colours of the footage. This is usually used to establish a general feel or genre for the film. For example, a green blue shift is denoted with dramas and thrillers. From this information, I can imagine that I will be shifting the palette more towards yellow orange to find a warmer palette that can be associated with friendly early 2000s features as this is a light-hearted film. Colour effects make the footage look more stylised and processed, usually used for music videos. I don’t expect that this will be something I tap into. Delving into saturation more, in premiere, you are able change the saturation in different colours individually which will help a great deal in my film when I want to draw more attention to one colour over the others depending on the scene. This works on a colour wheel where the closer you pull the spot to the centre the less saturated it comes. The main draw to colour grading is that I will be able to create my unique feel for the story I want to tell and not just rely on the footage I gather on the day. 

How this will help

This is a very useful piece of technical research for editing as my colour grading in the past has been very weak. I can keep coming back and referrancing this to understand the principles. With this, I can also make sure my colours, as researched above, also match up nicely to heighten their meanings.