Tuesday 20 January 2009
Tuesday 13 January 2009
Tuesday 6 January 2009
In a group of four we created a short scene based on a card game. as a group we decided it would be best to plan the scene first, give ourselves charcters and decided what would happen. The sene began with a member of the group walking into the college, we used a long shot to establish the secene and allow the audience to relise our location, as he walks into the college, myself and another member of the group foloow him, chases him and rob him, throughout ths we used several diferent shot such as close ups, medium close ups, low angle shots and high angel shots, these shots ensured the scene looked intresting and allowed the audience to see the situation fom all poits of view. The scen then carried on as me and the other person run away from the person we robed, to show the chase we decided it would look effective to shhot from outside of the college through the glass windows, this allows the audience to see the chase from an intresting angle. Towards the end of the chase we decided to shoot from 3 different angles firstly, the theifs from the frount being chased by the victim, then from behind showing the hreif behind the theifs chasing them and then a close up of each person allowing the audience to see facial expressions and body language. The scene ends with the card game, whihc is used to determine who keeps the stolen property. throughout the card game we used various shots such as close ups to show expression, we also used panning.
Once we had all of our shots, we began ptting it together, it took us time but eventually we managed to match up each shot, cut out irrelevent parts, add sound. In my opinion i feel the "card game" went quite well for a first go, it alowed me to develop my skills on camera work and i learnt how to put shots together that ensure the scene looks real ad flows well.
Today The class watched a documentry called " Watching" the documentry was based on the beggining of films, i found it extremly intesting and discovered that there are different types of beginings of different films. From watching the documentry i realised i dont really like credits and feel that my thriller should use as litt;e credits as possible as i feel they take the focus off of the begining. The documentry also made me realise how important the first few scenes in a film is, these scenes determine wethere the audience cntinue watching the film, they also allow the audience to learn bout the genre and discover if they will enjoy it or not.
For the rest of the lesson we watched pat thrillers made by previous media students, this was very fascinating as it allowed me to critise othere work and made me realise what i liked and didnt like. Some of the thrillers were better than others and they all vaired. There was one that stood out to me, it was called missing, The thriller was extremly
Thiller
January 6, 2009
We were put into groups (Me, Levi, Tara and Claudia) and given a pack of cards so that we could film "a very thrilling card game." In my group's practice, we had me and Claudia robbing Levi and then playing cards in order to see who would win the money in his wallet. I think that the camerawork was quite good, we were quite creative with our choices of shots. We used close ups, long shots, mid shots, a high angle shot, a low angle shot, and so on. I think that the most successful shots were the long shots and the low angle shot. The low angle shots helped to make the attackers look more overpowering. I don't think there were any shots that were particularly unsuccessful. Anything that didn't look very good, we fixed up in the editing process. The editing went quite well and we didn't mess up anything during filming so we didn't really have trouble with putting the film together. The continuity editing went pretty well except for the part where we were running through a corridor and it was filmed from the front and from behind as well. It came out a bit weird though because we tried to do a match cut but cut the "from behind" clip a bit late and the "from the front" clip a bit too early and so it looked a bit like we were running and we went past a pole but when it cut to the front view we hadn't passed the pole yet, so that was a bit of a problem. I think that despite the fact that our running scene was a little bit messed up the film did make a lot of sense. I think that the scene right at the end worked as a suspenseful one because Claudia picks up a card that she's been sitting on and I think it makes the audience get a little bit suspicious of her character. Overall, I think that our "thrilling game of cards went quite well but if we could do it again I think we could do the editing of our running scene a bit better.
January 13, 2009
In the lesson today, we watched a program called, "Watching". It was a documentary all about film openings. It was presented by a man named, Thomas Sutcliffe. He talked about the importance of drawing the audience in straight away during the opening so that they'd be willing to watch the entire film. Director, Jean Jacques Beineix pointed out that once the audience have become victims of that instant arousal, what happens next? Watching the program, I found it to be quite interesting because it made me realize how much directors think of the audience when they are making the film.
January 15, 2009
Today, we did a shot list exercise. We learnt how to make shot lists in order to help us plan shots for our thriller opening. We were given a synopsis for a short sequence and then we had to use a grid to create a shot list for it. Using no more than 20 shots, we wrote in exterior/interior, the shot type, the action and a description of what the shot would be like. My group did quite well with this exercise and we finished quite quickly. The technicians then showed us the sequence to see if it was similar to what wed come up with and from that, we learnt all about match cuts.
We were given a brief for a match cut exercise to do and it was, "A character opens a door, walks into a room, sits down opposite another character and they share a few lines of dialogue." We got to planning it and the first thing we did was create a shot list for our clip. In 20 shots, we'd decided to start with feet walking up some stairs, the hand of that person opening a door, the person walks through the door and it shuts behind them. The person (me) then walks down a long corridor and then stops at a classroom door and reaches out to open it, from the inside of the classroom, we see the door handle going down then it cuts to show that person's face through the glass. The person then walks into the room and goes right to the end and sits down at a desk, this is when we meet the other character (Tara). Both characters then exchange a few words, "you took your time" and "so did you". The first character then pulls out a mystery package and drops it on the table, the other character says, "I'll let you know". The first character then gets up to leave but stops at the door to look back at the other character. The camera cuts to the other character, who looks scared and then it cuts back to the first character who sniggers and then leaves, slamming the door behind them.
In the next lesson, we filmed, edited and published our clip from the match cut exercise. There were only of us so on the upside, we got it done quickly and finished before the end of the lesson.
Overall, I was quite pleased with the camera work. I think that most successful shots were the very first one, with the feet walking up the stairs (from the side and from behind) and the one where I'm in the classroom, walking to the desk too sit down (extreme close up from the side). To be honest, I don't think there were any shots that we used that didn't work. The editing went quite well and we got it done pretty quickly. The continuity editing was almost perfect except for the fact that we had some problems doing a match cut between the very first shot and the second one. We had difficulty getting the feet right an making sure they were stepping on the right steps and with the right feet and so on. We didn't do much to make it look better but it did look alright. I think we successfully created suspense during that film, especially the scene with the mysterious package and Tara saying, "I'll let you know".
Although the whole film went well and the editing process, we did forget to film an extra 5 seconds before and after each shot but that didn't cause any problems during editing so it was OK.
January 13, 2009
In the lesson today, we watched a program called, "Watching". It was a documentary all about film openings. It was presented by a man named, Thomas Sutcliffe. He talked about the importance of drawing the audience in straight away during the opening so that they'd be willing to watch the entire film. Director, Jean Jacques Beineix pointed out that once the audience have become victims of that instant arousal, what happens next? Watching the program, I found it to be quite interesting because it made me realize how much directors think of the audience when they are making the film.
January 15, 2009
Today, we did a shot list exercise. We learnt how to make shot lists in order to help us plan shots for our thriller opening. We were given a synopsis for a short sequence and then we had to use a grid to create a shot list for it. Using no more than 20 shots, we wrote in exterior/interior, the shot type, the action and a description of what the shot would be like. My group did quite well with this exercise and we finished quite quickly. The technicians then showed us the sequence to see if it was similar to what wed come up with and from that, we learnt all about match cuts.
We were given a brief for a match cut exercise to do and it was, "A character opens a door, walks into a room, sits down opposite another character and they share a few lines of dialogue." We got to planning it and the first thing we did was create a shot list for our clip. In 20 shots, we'd decided to start with feet walking up some stairs, the hand of that person opening a door, the person walks through the door and it shuts behind them. The person (me) then walks down a long corridor and then stops at a classroom door and reaches out to open it, from the inside of the classroom, we see the door handle going down then it cuts to show that person's face through the glass. The person then walks into the room and goes right to the end and sits down at a desk, this is when we meet the other character (Tara). Both characters then exchange a few words, "you took your time" and "so did you". The first character then pulls out a mystery package and drops it on the table, the other character says, "I'll let you know". The first character then gets up to leave but stops at the door to look back at the other character. The camera cuts to the other character, who looks scared and then it cuts back to the first character who sniggers and then leaves, slamming the door behind them.
In the next lesson, we filmed, edited and published our clip from the match cut exercise. There were only of us so on the upside, we got it done quickly and finished before the end of the lesson.
Overall, I was quite pleased with the camera work. I think that most successful shots were the very first one, with the feet walking up the stairs (from the side and from behind) and the one where I'm in the classroom, walking to the desk too sit down (extreme close up from the side). To be honest, I don't think there were any shots that we used that didn't work. The editing went quite well and we got it done pretty quickly. The continuity editing was almost perfect except for the fact that we had some problems doing a match cut between the very first shot and the second one. We had difficulty getting the feet right an making sure they were stepping on the right steps and with the right feet and so on. We didn't do much to make it look better but it did look alright. I think we successfully created suspense during that film, especially the scene with the mysterious package and Tara saying, "I'll let you know".
Although the whole film went well and the editing process, we did forget to film an extra 5 seconds before and after each shot but that didn't cause any problems during editing so it was OK.
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