"Dreams Come True" Reflection

A foreign film derived from a Korean story, “Dreams Come True” is a formalistic film. Each of my group members had specific roles as director, screenwriter, actor, editor, and cinematographer. I took the role of the editor in my group. We each took our roles in this film seriously which might be the reason that we were able to finish it on time, even though it might not be professional work. Even though we were all amateurs and created a film for the first time, I am satisfied with our finished film.
At the starting of the pre-production state we each had different ideas for our film which was difficult for us to conform it into one. This phase was unproductive for our group because we kept talking about different ideas that each of us wanted to do. However, after we finally agreed on a final idea, we worked together progressively. It was during the production and post production phases when everyone’s schedule needed to be considered to meet up and start filming. As a team, we had to understand each other, even though it was difficult to. We all meet up without any real script or complete layout of our film. We only had a plot and decided to make a script as we went along because it would be easier for the actors to act and therefore, more ordinary. One of the difficult issues in this state was the time of day. We weren’t able to film it late at night because the shot wouldn’t be captured on the camera, so we had to carefully adjust our time and schedule, to fit in with our film.
Our film is derived from a Korean scary legend that most people are familiar with. We took this story and changed it to a more suitable state that was appropriate for our film. Instead of the plot of the story occurring in reality, the plot of this story happened in a friend’s dream. We wanted to elaborately show how dreams can affect someone’s fate. Briefly summarizing the story of our film, it starts off with a friend (dreamer) who dreams about her friend, running away from a person who’s wearing a kimono (ghost). The ghost asks the dreamer if she saw the direction to where the friend went to, at two lanes showing where the friend could have ran to. The dreamer lies to the ghost, because she judges that the ghost looks dangerous on it’s outer appearance, and therefore wants to protect her friend. The next day the dreamer dreams again at the same time of day. She sees her friend run pass by her, and a minute later, a person in white shows up and asks her if she saw the friend. The dreamer tells the truth because she judges that by the person’s white clothes and kind features, the person looks harmless. However, the person in white is actually the ghost from the dream from the night before, who had been following the friend around, wanting his soul. My favorite scene in the film is the ending. It is when the screen turns black and there’s a sound of a heartbeat. It shows what happened to the boy who was being followed afterwards without directly visually showing what happened. This part closes the whole story and brings it to an end.
I learned that the art of film is something that needs effort and time. It is not only the actors who worked hard, but also the hidden directors, editors, cinematographers behind this film worked to their best ability too. As audiences, we only see the actors in the film, but it is actually the whole team work of director, actors, cinematographer, and editor who contribute their effort to a film to make it successful. There were a lot of techniques learned in class that influenced our film. The long take was used at the beginning of the film where three people started off with a conversation that gives a hint of what our whole film is going to be about. The dutch angle used, when the ghost appears in white clothes, gives an impression of warning and to watch out. There was also a close up to show the dreamer’s expression. This shot was appropriate at this moment because it shows how the dreamer felt after realizing something at that particular moment. A long shot was used to show roads and the emptiness and loneliness of it. This loneliness of the road shows the dreamer’s feeling, while she is trapped in her own dream world, alone and unable to escape it. Lastly, a subjective point of view shot was used, when Paul was running away. It showed us what he was looking at breathlessly, and gave us a sense of how he was in a life threatening situation at that time.
This experience of creating a film of our own was different and new. With all amateur director, screenwriter, actors, cinematographer, and editor, our film might not be the best, but I am indeed satisfied because all our hard work was involved, and we had worked the best to our ability.