CONSTRUCTION : Filming 2 - News Reporter

To start our film we decided that it would be best to open with a news report as it would set the narrative and provide enough information to grab the audience's attention without jumping straight into the action immediately.  This will help provide enough information for the film to make sense but isn't as simple as an exposition dump through a textual opening, such as Star Wars. 

We used a greenscreen to allow us to the edit the footage in post production and make it seem that this is an actual news report. Using the ultra key in Adobe Premier Pro we could cut the subject of the frame cleanly, allowing us to edit the background to look more like a newsplace. 

To make sure that the sound was as good as we could make it we utilised the external microphone available in the media room. This allowed us to capture the best sound we could and help the news report look more professional.

Another technique that we used was clapping before starting filming, so that way we could keep the camera on until we finally got the best shot for our film. The clap served as a marker for where each batch of filming started and ended, the clap showed as a very high frequency on the soundwaves, showing precisly where the clip starts and ends which we could then use in post productioon to cut the section we needed and delete the rest.

So we decided that we would do a news report to start the film, this would work as it would provide information to the viewer to help the short time we have to tell our story flow easier. The footage that we captured is shown below.

CONSTRUCTION : Filming 1 - Action Sequences

Members of the production team (and actors) met on 27th of October to start the first filming shoot. Discussions had taken place in class to determine what type of genre of film we wanted to make but no clear decisions had been made on the plot because it wasn't fully developed. The focus was on capturing general footage that suit the tropes of the genre we wanted to portray. 

This filming session was focused around filming the transitions that could be used to show the characters moving around the setting, allowing audiences to gain a glimpse of the characters and making sure that the transitions were clean, as well as work on the actual narrative for the story.  

An idea was to use light from the torches to cause over exposure to the camera and then when the camera's focus shifts it would reveal the characters. It was felt this would make for a more interesting introdcution to the characters rather than just straightforward static introduction. A great idea from the team on the day but unfortunately the light from the torches caused some shots to be dark and blurred and meant that the characters weren't perhaps revealed as well as they could have been. 

Overall the team took a lot of useable footage that can be used and incorportated into our final film.

CONSTRUCTION : Cinematic Storytelling

To make sure that we correctly engage with our target audience for our film we looked at 'Cinematic Storytelling' by Jennifer Van Sijil to study the most powerful and useful film conventions, I list them below as well as a brief description and examples of each one.

Smash Cuts

Some examples of smash cuts, a term referenced by Jennifer in which there is a sudden, seemingly abrupt hard cut to an entirely separate scenery or sound that is different to what the story has been focused on. Examples are listed below:

Psycho : In this film a smash cut is used to jolt the audience by sabotaging the audiences building expectations. Psycho did this whilst also incorporating the use of a high angle shot.

American beauty : the smash cut in this film changes a scenery of a vast city of buildings to a close up of a clock. This also affected the audio as well, turning from a silence to the loud banging of an alarm clock.

If I was going to use the smash cut in our my own production it would be to cut time from unnecessary traveling and allow us to make full usage of our limited time. This would also allow us to maintain the audiences attention by not adding in any un-necessary filler scenes. 

Climate

The natural elements that surround the scenery it enhances the actions of the characters, and when used correctly it enhances the mood of the film in the genre, for example darkness in a horror film, or soft lighting within a romantic film. Examples are listed below.

Sixth Sense : The woman enters the basement and breathes out a cloud of cold air, which leads the viewer to believe that it is initially due to the coolness of the basement, however as the movie develops we notice that the temperature drops whenever any ghosts appear in the film. Which provides an early clue that the protagonist is in fact a ghost.

Directing the eye

By directing the eye to make the viewer fell that something could happen it engages the audiences attention. This can be used to subvert the expectations of the viewers and to make them more engages in the film itself and direct they eye to the screen and the story being told.

Citizen Kane : Some journalists are shown watching a movie about Kane's life then the lighting decreases and only scattered light is shone of the central characters. This centres the attention onto the small variety of characters shown and makes the viewer gain a sort of tunnel vision, as they are told only those that have light shining on them are of importance to the story.

PLANNING : SCP

How will SCP influence our project? by Keyhole Productions

PLANNING : Props

 

prop list by Keyhole Productions