Monday, 15 December 2008
Tuesday, 2 December 2008
Shoot 3 - Evaluation
This was our final shoot. To ensure that all actors were on time and able to attend, I called all actors on Monday, then again Friday night, and the following Saturday morning as we really needed to get this shooting done. To get Sophie to the shoot I had to pick her up at her house for 10, then, met Tim at the Pembury bus stop at 10 past 10. Tom then arrived at 20 past 10 which was a little late. I then received a call from Shaun saying that he couldn’t attend, so I asked him whether he could leave his jumper in his porch for me so that I could pick it up and use it, so my little brother could wear it and look like Shaun to the audience. After this I then heard from George that he could not come either. After this quite stressful turn of events we made our way down to the location, being the shack for the end scene.
When we got there we had to clear a good opening to get to the shack as in the first shot Tom had to lift his leg quite high to get there which kind of spoilt the mood I was going for.
In the shack the camera gave a snowy effect inside the shack, I overcame this by hanging my coat over a hole in the wall, stopping some of the light from coming into the shack, this seemed to solve it and made the shot inside the shack a lot clearer.
I then tried to get a shot of Sophie, Tim and ‘Shaun’ in the shack all in the same shot without panning, This was very hard as I had to do a lot of takes to frame the actors right, but still get a reasonable amount of each actor in the shot, I then settled on all three crouching in a corner.
After this I then filmed Sophie and ‘Shaun’ doing a variety of creepy looking actions. These included twitching, moving their hair with their hands slowly and looking up jerkily in synchronisation.
I then filmed Tim reading the book with a jerky head movement, and made him look creepier by getting him to open his eyes really wide giving him a more possessed look. I then panned down during this shot to show him reading a book with words associated with horror scratched on. Then I filmed him turning the pages of the book, to the last one saying ‘They’re here’ which I thought causes suspense and adds a little more to the enigma. I also added fake blood to give a scarier effect to the scene.
After this I decided to get a shot tracking into Tim’s face. I went from a low shot to over Tom’s shoulder then into Tim’s face, with him then quickly looking up into the camera for a shock value. I did a smooth, and a shaky shot of this both in steadicam. The shaky shot will look good with music building up behind it and the smooth shot can maybe sped up and look more fluid so I did a couple of takes of both style.
After I got the end scene done, we walked down to the graveyard to get Sophie’s ‘corpse’ scene done. To not mess with continuity too much I re-filmed Tom entering the graveyard and had a variety of shots of him walking through the graveyard, using tombstones in the foreground for the variety of the shots to give a good effect. I then filmed Tom walk past Sophie laying on the ground with two takes of Sophie in the lower left hand corner, and one of her in the upper left hand corner. This was to get either the tombstone in shot, or something in the foreground. This can then be chosen later in editing.
After that I got a montage of Sophie’s face in a variety of CU shots to then later be edited, and I had finished for the day.
From this last shoot I learnt that you can ‘cheat’ continuity if you have to and that using cheap methods to get shots you want can still leave you with quality footage.
We were very happy with this last shoot and are pleased with the footage we have collected.
When we got there we had to clear a good opening to get to the shack as in the first shot Tom had to lift his leg quite high to get there which kind of spoilt the mood I was going for.
In the shack the camera gave a snowy effect inside the shack, I overcame this by hanging my coat over a hole in the wall, stopping some of the light from coming into the shack, this seemed to solve it and made the shot inside the shack a lot clearer.
I then tried to get a shot of Sophie, Tim and ‘Shaun’ in the shack all in the same shot without panning, This was very hard as I had to do a lot of takes to frame the actors right, but still get a reasonable amount of each actor in the shot, I then settled on all three crouching in a corner.
After this I then filmed Sophie and ‘Shaun’ doing a variety of creepy looking actions. These included twitching, moving their hair with their hands slowly and looking up jerkily in synchronisation.
I then filmed Tim reading the book with a jerky head movement, and made him look creepier by getting him to open his eyes really wide giving him a more possessed look. I then panned down during this shot to show him reading a book with words associated with horror scratched on. Then I filmed him turning the pages of the book, to the last one saying ‘They’re here’ which I thought causes suspense and adds a little more to the enigma. I also added fake blood to give a scarier effect to the scene.
After this I decided to get a shot tracking into Tim’s face. I went from a low shot to over Tom’s shoulder then into Tim’s face, with him then quickly looking up into the camera for a shock value. I did a smooth, and a shaky shot of this both in steadicam. The shaky shot will look good with music building up behind it and the smooth shot can maybe sped up and look more fluid so I did a couple of takes of both style.
After I got the end scene done, we walked down to the graveyard to get Sophie’s ‘corpse’ scene done. To not mess with continuity too much I re-filmed Tom entering the graveyard and had a variety of shots of him walking through the graveyard, using tombstones in the foreground for the variety of the shots to give a good effect. I then filmed Tom walk past Sophie laying on the ground with two takes of Sophie in the lower left hand corner, and one of her in the upper left hand corner. This was to get either the tombstone in shot, or something in the foreground. This can then be chosen later in editing.
After that I got a montage of Sophie’s face in a variety of CU shots to then later be edited, and I had finished for the day.
From this last shoot I learnt that you can ‘cheat’ continuity if you have to and that using cheap methods to get shots you want can still leave you with quality footage.
We were very happy with this last shoot and are pleased with the footage we have collected.
Shoot 2 - Evaluation
This shoot turned out to be a very disappointing one. This was due to one of the actors we needed not being able to turn up, and only being told at the last minute. This meant that we had to do another shoot after this one.
Since we couldn’t do the end scene without Tim there we decided to re-do some of the footage that didn’t look as good as we had hoped in the editing. We also decided that instead of having a montage of the corpses when they were alive, we decided to have a montage of the dead body. For this we had to amend our storyboard.
The first shot we did was in the opening scene, We shot a montage of a CU of Shaun’s face, then filmed Tom sitting up from the log, as in editing it wasn’t clear he was getting up from the first shoot. We didn’t have any problems with this, as since only a portion of Shaun is shown form the first shoot, we got him in relatively the same position and he was wearing the same clothing so we didn’t have a problem with the continuity. This was the same with Tom.
When filming Tom getting up off the log, we filmed a variety of different angles, but when looking back on the shots we found a branch was in the foreground of the shot. This gave the shot a great effect.
After this we decided to at least film Tom entering the barn for the last scene. We filmed him going into the barn for a few takes, and found they didn’t really look as good as we had liked. This was mainly due to the cars being in the way, which spoilt the shot. We fixed this by bringing the camera closer and putting the cars out of shot. This made the shot look a lot better, but still not good enough. From this we then decided to use a different location that we had seen before and thought of it as a second option. From this we had to amend our storyboard.
We also found that our ending won’t fit as well in the new location, so, to overcome this we decided on a new ending where the corpses will be shown at the end of the film, in the shack ‘alive’ again to get the audience thinking and make our opening more enigmatic.
From this shoot, we learnt to organise our actors better and putting things in the foreground makes the shot look so much better than without. We weren’t as happy with this shoot as we only got a small amount done. However we were a lot happier with our new ending and location and now knew exactly what we had to have done.
Since we couldn’t do the end scene without Tim there we decided to re-do some of the footage that didn’t look as good as we had hoped in the editing. We also decided that instead of having a montage of the corpses when they were alive, we decided to have a montage of the dead body. For this we had to amend our storyboard.
The first shot we did was in the opening scene, We shot a montage of a CU of Shaun’s face, then filmed Tom sitting up from the log, as in editing it wasn’t clear he was getting up from the first shoot. We didn’t have any problems with this, as since only a portion of Shaun is shown form the first shoot, we got him in relatively the same position and he was wearing the same clothing so we didn’t have a problem with the continuity. This was the same with Tom.
When filming Tom getting up off the log, we filmed a variety of different angles, but when looking back on the shots we found a branch was in the foreground of the shot. This gave the shot a great effect.
After this we decided to at least film Tom entering the barn for the last scene. We filmed him going into the barn for a few takes, and found they didn’t really look as good as we had liked. This was mainly due to the cars being in the way, which spoilt the shot. We fixed this by bringing the camera closer and putting the cars out of shot. This made the shot look a lot better, but still not good enough. From this we then decided to use a different location that we had seen before and thought of it as a second option. From this we had to amend our storyboard.
We also found that our ending won’t fit as well in the new location, so, to overcome this we decided on a new ending where the corpses will be shown at the end of the film, in the shack ‘alive’ again to get the audience thinking and make our opening more enigmatic.
From this shoot, we learnt to organise our actors better and putting things in the foreground makes the shot look so much better than without. We weren’t as happy with this shoot as we only got a small amount done. However we were a lot happier with our new ending and location and now knew exactly what we had to have done.
Shoot 1 - Evaluation
On our first shoot everyone arrived on time and we arrived at out first shooting location a little later.
Our first shot would include Shaun and Tom going from an ECU to a LS. This presented a few problems, first one being I had to walk backwards, so I couldn’t see where I was walking. We overcame this by having someone lead me while I kept the camera in position. Another problem was there was a lot of debris on the ground, We solved this by clearing the area of things big enough to trip over. Lastly, we found that we had to move the actors to lots of different locations to get the shot we wanted. After about 7 different takes I found the kind of shot I wanted to use. I chose this shot as it had very good framing for both actors shown, and was relatively easier to walk backwards down that line.
Another shot we had problems with were the scene with Tim sitting in the river. This was a difficult shot to do as we had to get Tom in the shot and framed to be in the upper right corner, to then pan downwards and left to get Tim framed in the lower right hand corner, This was hardest because we weren’t sure whether to use steadicam or use the tripod for this shot. We decided to do both, and found that the tripod being used made the shot look smoother, and so we used that.
After this we suggested that if Tim lay in the river that this would give a very disturbing look and so tried that. We tried this shot with both shirt on and off. We only did two takes of this as the river was very cold. A problem with this was that the shot with the shirt on gave his shirt an air bubble and didn’t look as good, so we had to use the shot with his shirt off, for this we had to amend the storyboard to include another body on the same stretch of river, occurring after the image of Tim lying against the bridge.
After we were finished in the woods we went to the graveyard to get Sophie’s corpse scene. First we filmed Tom entering the graveyard through a gate this presented a few problems as it was very hard to frame him correctly and still get the gravestones in. We decided to overcome this problem by shooting it again in another shoot.
When we finally got to Sophie’s scene we discovered that we had no battery left, this left us with no options but to do another shoot at a later date.
From this shoot we learnt the effectiveness of the leading lines and how to frame a shot correctly. If done again I would have tried to keep the walking back shot steadier and would have taken more batteries. However we got the majority of our filming done and were on schedule to get our opening sequence done by the deadline.
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