Wednesday 17 November 2010

Design Practice 1: One Shot Film: Development




The other day we began to produce our one shot film, our ideas and inspirations had been concluded into a solid idea, there was no further planning required and the weather was perfect for shooting (we were postponed one day due to rain). We began by locating the perfect spot for filming, in terms of lighting, dryness (for chalking on the floor) and free from public interruption. We decided upon the area in front of the main gates in the park next to our university campus, not only did the sun rays here create excellent imagery and wonder due to them being split into segments by the gates and trees, we were also granted full permission to chalk away as long as we washed it afterwards.

Secondly our cameraman began work on setting the white balance to achieve a prime realistic light, he also tampered with the iris, as we were filming in sunlight it was vital the iris wasn't overwhelmed by the light, he reduced it to ensure a good picture quality. Next we began to experiment with various positions and angles with the camera, It became increasingly obvious that it would take some time to frame our character in the shot, the main problem was that we were using an over the shoulder shot so the majority of pictures our actor was drawing were blocked by her body. I suggested zooming out and altering the heights of the tripod, along with everyone else's input our cameraman finally found the perfect position to begin filming.

As filming commenced we aided our actor with the drawings, as there were happy, worried and sad stages different pictures had to display these emotions. We only had one take effectively as lighting was getting dimmer by the minute, so instead of accurately planning what to draw before, we suggested pictures to draw to our actor while filming, It's best explained as method acting I believe, using yours and other peoples opinions and emotions while filming to create spontaneity. I suggested a crack in between the girls family, I believed this would symbolise break-up perfectly.

We finished up with the camera panning up, showing the girl walking into the sun-lit distance, leaving her drawings behind, we washed away our drawing and later uploaded our film to Adobe Premier Pro to produce a group edit. In the group edit we decided to cut out certain frames due to objects blowing into the shot, we also used colour correction to increase the visibility of the sun rays. The main focus was on creating a time-lapse, as our film was originally seven minutes long we had to speed the clip up by 600%, the speed was optimum in keeping the audiences interest, if it would have been any slower the pictures would have taken to long to reveal, ultimately boring the audience. We finished up by adding the foley, two piano song were selected for the backing track, they aided in creating the emotions we felt suited the film, also certain sound effects such as a heart beat were added to create tension at the peak of the film.

I will upload the finished product soon, while your waiting here our some
production shots of us filming:


Ha ha cool music to boring production shots, I love it, almost cringe-worthy.
Samuel Dobson

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