Tuesday 6 January 2009

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.

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