Cumha - Production Blog

Past The Second Stage is a six-minute movie by Samuel Hunter Galloway about a man grieving for his brother. Due to it sharing a similar genre (drama) and timespan as Cumha (about five minutes without credits), I decided it was a good idea to analyse it and search for inspiration for our own piece. The structure of Past The Second Stage follows a fairly conventional route; there's an established equilibrium (Man trying to get his brother's affairs in order), a disruption (Man angry at his brother's death due to it being an accidental overdose), and then a new equilibrium (Man allows himself to openly grieve for not only his brother but their lost youth, where they were much closer.)  One of the most notable aspects of Past The Second Stage is the use of a voiceover as a sound bridge to introduce a conversation while the action on screen doesn't match up. Although nothing is set in stone, this is something we were considering for Cumha , if not with a s...

Although the original idea for Cumha was to a be simple romance, we took a vote and recently decided that Cumha will now be a drama, with a twist at the end implying that the young man invented the relationship the audience has been following. This will be a far more sinister film now, and many of the scenes we'd already planned will take a second, hidden meaning to be revealed at the end, when it becomes clear that The Girl is not in love with The Boy.  This changes some ideas I discussed in my Narrative Theory post, as now Cumha does have a villain, and it's the Boy. The film is now without a hero, and also has a possible third character as the Girl's real boyfriend.  To make Cumha more sinister, we are considering changing the wind sound effects to ticking noises from a clock, as the sharp repetitive noise raises tension and when repeated for too long, causes anxiety.  Due to the change in tone, we are now unsure of whether to change the title o...

 ➞ A  story  is a series of events that tells us what happens. A story has themes and motifs, such as romance, family, money, or power. One story can have multiple narratives depending who tells it.  The story of Cumha is a young man lying awake, listening to the wind, missing his girlfriend.   ➞ A  narrative  is how the story is told. Humans need a narrative to understand a story. It's created to appeal to an audience and puts themes into context, underlining what is important, and who the hero is.  The narrative of Cumha is a third person silent movie with an  achronological  timeline. Third person : " a grammatical category of pronouns and verbs used when referring toobjects or individuals other than the speaker or his addressee(s)" Achronological : A movie told through flashbacks and forwards that does not follow a linear structure.  Narrative Theory   is about looking at the devic...

➞  Technical Codes  of  Cumha   Technical codes refers to the actual making of a visual narrative e.g. Sound, camera angles, design, and editing. They're the building blocks of any story, and as  Cumha  will have either minimal script, or no script at all, the technical codes we use will have to be carefully selected, and be able to tell the story we want to communicate.  We'll use technical codes to cheat time, allowing us flashbacks that cut from present today (in a bedroom) to the not-so-distant past (memories of days spent together.) If we manage to do these right, the audience will be able to fill in the blanks and assume that the boy and girl are in a relationship.  ➞  Verbal Codes  of  Cumha     This is how language is used, written and spoken. It's reliant on the skill of both the actors and script writers. Different styles of Verbal Code apply to different narratives, e.g. a documentary vs ...

Of course,  Cumha wasn't the only idea we had. As we were planning our first idea, another idea came and we had to compare the two and eliminate one. Our other idea wasn't based off one story in particular, but off a common trope in old Irish folk stories. Very typically in old folk stories, the hero will come across a mysterious woman on the road, they will speak briefly, she will give him advice, and then he will move on. Once he looks back, she's suddenly gone.  This second idea was a comedy piece; the plot was that a young man fascinated by Irish folk stories meets a girl by a bus stop who suddenly vanishes. Convinced he's met some kind of fairy queen, he sets off on an 'adventure' to find her again. At the end of the movie it's revealed she didn't vanish, she simply stooped down and he missed her when she straightened up again.  This piece is a lot more similar to last year's piece we did - a romantic comedy with fairly sim...

Last year our final piece in media was light hearted and straightforward. EARNEST was adapted from Oscar Wilde's classic, The Importance of Being Earnest  and we were fairly happy with the end product we produced.  This year however, we want to try something new. EARNEST , as a comedy, was tricky to make work, so our group decided to try something different and more serious. We all agreed that basing our piece off an already existing story had been beneficial, so looking at folk stories was where we started. We're all interested by our own local Irish culture, so we started our search in a collection of short stories,  An Chead Chnuasach.  complied by  Peigí Rose. All of the stories are in Irish so it was up to one of our teammates, Jane, to translate them for us.  One story that jumped out at us was Oíche Ghaoithe , or Windy Night . It's a fairly simple story in full; Set in the 1970s, a young man is lying...