Word Count: 721
Brief:
Your preliminary exercise involves filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.
Planning process and pre-production:
I've decided to take lead on this production as I wanted to demonstrate my skills in terms of cinematography and exploring different types of shots. We looked over the brief and knew that we were able to execute the 180 degree rule and the exchange in dialogue but we went against the fact that a door needed to be open and characters needed to be sat down. I would never challenge the real brief as of course I want maximum marks for my production but this was just a practice task so I thought it would be fun to make something completely random from scratch.
By having a discussion with my team we didn't have an idea for a story however after a while we basically concluded to take heavy influence from a few film-makers and go with the subject of 'time'. After the initial discussion I have assigned everyone to tasks and at the end of it we had a storyboard, shot list and script.
In terms of preparation for filming, it was an easy decision for us as we knew that we wanted to use a camera dolly for this film because we never really used it properly and this gave us the opportunity to get really cinematic, smooth shots. In addition to this, my choice of lenses was the 35mm f1.8 as it was important that we achieved the depth of field and necessary amount of light to the camera sensor which played a massive part as we relied at all times at the lighting provided in the building. The actual most important part of the planning was to use a slate reference when filming but also that this appeared along the side of the shot list labelled correctly so when we actually started rolling it was easy for us to get exactly every shot. I assigned Taranjit to be my clapper loader and Rehan to manage the production by making sure we contained continuity and had every shot. Rehan and Taranjit communicated together to make sure the slate was right before each shot - This made post-production fantastic for us when editing.
Strengths and Weaknesses:
The main strengths of our production were that our planning was excellent which made the filming easy for everyone working on this film. The range of close ups at the beginning of the film contributed the hallucinative storyline and made the audience feel confused but also worried for the character. Although we couldn't really deliver and emotional connection to the characters as this was a very fast paced film and I was worried about the pacing from the start because I was unable to tell the story that I really wanted. Everything in the film happened so fast and even then this was over the 30 second limit that the brief gave us. I believe strongly that if we were given a 5 minute running time that this story would be better understood by the audience.
The feedback given from our screening told us that the audience didn't understand the story and that the script was either too short and or wasn't understood clearly. I believe the use of the composed song by Ryan Taubert gave the final piece a great exciting feel with all the dolly shots spinning around the character and matching with the pacing of the music. This was one of the things that set our film apart from everyone else's. On the topic of sound, the final sound design was rather complicated with many layers having to match with the camera shots. For example: At 0:14 seconds in we have a high pitched sound notifying the audience the change in transition which is a sound bridge and also suggests the initial flashback that occurred.
Overall I believe we did a great job on the production being that we filmed in under 5 hours and edited this whole video in 1 week. We have learned a lot things that will be carried towards the real film.
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