Young Eyes Reformed - Short film by Nathan Harkin

Over summer, I made a short film that I wanted to create to reflect my childhood memories and contrast them with the reality of today. I used my recently purchased Nikon D5100 to film it with after taking an number of photographs of the location (my garden) and used that to create a story board with. My lack of equipment (tripod and all sound equipment) meant that I knew the film wouldn't be as professional as I would have liked in terms of quality, but I hoped the experimental style of filming would create a powerful narrative and theme within the short film and that would outshine the other pitfalls. My main focus in this film was to focus on testing out different compositions and how the depth of field could be used in a creative way for shots such as focus pulls and foreground focused images. I attempted to experiment with colour and content in post production as well, by making the more shaky shots more blue to connote a flashback POV sequence, and the more static shots vibrant and green to connote natural beauty and innocence. I used a variety of different shot styles and post-production techniques in order to create the narrative of reflection on a simpler time. I wanted to use specific songs for it, but in the end decided to record my sound no-sync with my phone which is why the quality of it is quite poor.

However, I am quite pleased with the final film as it shows my ability to use a variety of techniques to connote the themes and emotions I wanted as well as create a narrative through the use of cinematography alone and without the use of dialogue, much like the film Regen (1929) by Joris Ivens. Although I'm not completely satisfied with the final draft of the film due to the lack of equipment I had, I believe it is an fairly good attempt at a short film and has kept my skills up to scratch ready to carry into my second year.