Preliminary Task

The day before our session of shooting, we were told about what we would be doing as our first preliminary exercise. At first we went out with a script and storyboard and practiced the scene given amongst ourselves, thinking about how we would say the lines, move in and out of the shots and how we would shoot them with different camera placements. After half an hours practice we had until the next lesson to find 2 people to use as actors who wouldn’t be doing anything else during shooting. Others in the group found 2 actors.
There were props in the room we were using. These were a gun and some keys. We decided to move a desk around so instead of having both people standing, one would enter while the other would remain seated at the desk throughout the sequence. The lights were turned off and the only light used, other than the light faintly coming in from outside, was a lamp on the desk. The actors ran over their lines and we got the camera ready for the first shot.
The camera was set up for a wide shot of the room, so the desk was at the right of the shot and the door at the left. The idea was that one of the characters was to walk in the room and place the gun down on the table, and then continue with the speech in the storyboard telling the other character to “do it”, not revealing what “it” is, even though it’s pretty easy to come up with an idea.
JJ took over the camera; Tom helped him as well as provided good ideas for actions, movement and shot types. We took several wide shots, then over shoulder shots of both actors, as well as an ECU of the gun being placed on the table. Other shots we took were a POV shot and a panning of the floor as the sequence starts.
When it came to editing Tom and I edited together as the other two weren’t there in the lessons. In just a few lessons we felt we had done a good job but we just needed to spend a little more time on it. Unfortunately we didn’t have sound so we planned a voiceover. JJ was in a later lesson and he provided some good suggestions and learned about final cut pro. After we were finished editing we were happy with the outcome. I’m not surprised films take so long to make as we spent several days on a scene which lasted about 30 seconds.

Introuction to Practical

So far we have done several practical lessons. In the first week we filmed a mock T4 documentary. We were given a list of questions and we had to think of answers for them. Two people were assigned the roles of the interviewers, while others had to do things like camera work and lighting. The interviews featured questions like “Why did you decide to take media as a subject?” and “what films/music do you like at the moment?” After most people had been interviewed the roles were re-arranged in order for the interviewers and those on camera and lights to get interviewed as well. After we cut and ended the session.
Next in that week was our intro to photoshop. In our first photoshop lesson we went to a file sharing website to download a film poster of our choice and told to basically play around with it however we wanted, but to ask for help if we needed to do something specific that we didn’t know how to do ourselves. I decided to use a poster for the original “Friday the 13th”. It was fun but as we didn’t all know exactly how to use all of the basic tools there was a limited amount we could do before asking for help.
The second lesson was better, as we were asked to take pictures of each other as they would be the subject of our photoshop editing. This meant we were able to use cameras, which we hadn’t done yet before. After we each had a photo of someone loaded up onto photoshop we were shown how to use all of the basic tools along the toolbar one by one. Now as we could edit the photos in anyway we wanted it seemed a lot freer and it felt like we had a lot more control.
After a while we had another practical which would teach us about how to use video cameras and tripods were we leant about adjusting height, light, zoom and frame rate settings. A few lessons later we were out in groups making our own short films. We were given a short tutorial on how to do good filming, this being mainly about the fact that every shot is repeated from both different angles and different shot types and sizes, meaning all actors have to get into a habit of repeating their lines and actions on set hundreds of times. We then went off with our cameras in our groups to try and mimic these techniques and make our own simple sequence.
I was doing the camera so tried to make sure shots we took were in focus and had enough light coming into the room. After taking a wide shot we were happy with I moved the camera closer to the action and took a mid shot and the action was repeated. We made an attempt to make sure that every action was the same as the time before. Again, after we were done I moved the camera a little bit closer and took a final shot of the action being repeated, this time not needing to make sure that everything was the same to the same extent as before as most of the shot was taken up by the size of a face.
We took the camera back and it was wired up and we watched the videos of each group. Ours was bad for many reasons; one being that the camera didn’t move around much and stayed in the same line of sight when it had the potential to move around through a full 180 degrees. The shot was in focus and we did adjust the blinds in order to gain a good light in the room for the shot, which was recognised. At least it wasn’t all bad, but we still learned that both movement of the camera and experimentation with different movements and actions are key for making a good shot, especially when you’re new to film making.