After consulting with my fellow team mates and also our teacher we agreed that we needed to change our idea and also re shoot as our filming was too dark. We came up with a new shot list and filmed later that day. We obtained some good footage but were unable to complete the shoot as one of our actors had to get to work and i also had a prior engagement. We plan to shoot again early this week. We also agreed that we may need a new music track to reinforce the video we use.
Our new idea for our shoot is to, instead of opening with the antagonist in the other characters house, the antagonist is trying to break into the car of the home owner. He is then stopped by the home owners who is coming out of his house to shout at the antagonist to stop trying to break into his car. The chase then begins and the characters chase into the alley where they continue down to the bottom were the villain attacks the character and the scene ends.
We filmed for our thriller opening down the alley in Chalfont St.. peter, near the leisure centre. Me and mairead were there to film, steven was unable to make the film shoot, and my friends Lewis Brown and James Hall had agreed to act for us. We decided to film at half 5 at night as we thought that it wouldn't be too dark. The idea was to film at a time where the the actors were still visible, but we got our times wrong and it was too dark so it was difficult to see the people in the scene. So to overcome the problem we decided to reshoot and have the 2 actors holding torches which will illuminate the alley way more and also highlight the front runner more. After editing we also decided we needed a lot more footage as what we had was way too short. We have some good shots and angles were i had climbed up into a tree to give the look of a crane shot and some where we had hid in the foliage. This shoot gave us an idea of what we have to do to create a 2 minute film at this pace, it was partly unsuccessful but partly successful as we gained both positive and negative points from it.
After researching the filming style of our thriller we came across a set of rules which are used when shooting fast paced running scenes. The rules were set out by a filming studio called Dogma 95. They shoot many scenes similar to ours and say to use the rules to create an effective scene.
The above writing is taken from a website we found that quotes Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg who worked for Dogma 95.
Earlier in the week a friend and i went to practice our chase scene for our thriller. The scene involves an antagonist being chased by the homeowner down an alley.
After filming and editing we found that the way we held the camera was too shaky and we were unable to see what was happening in the shot. Also the transition from the homeowners point of view and the antagonists point of view was unclear and difficult to see the transition.
This is our first try at filming and editing a short film, this is our continuity task. For our continuity task we were given a shot list and asked to create our own short film based on the shot list. We decided to base our continuity task around the idea of a student that has started a new section of his school life, and the teacher wants to see how he's getting on.
we presented our continuity task to the group and we were given feedback and targets to improve on for our next filming task.
-music was fitting to piece
- variety of shots and angles
- some of our shots were too shaky and we needed to work on holding our camera still.
- framing was poor.
>impacted on meaning
> couldn't see reactions clearly
- P.O.V not well executed
- good evidence of shot reverse shot.
- effective use of sound. need to master levels though.
- good variety of shots.
- editing was effective.
we were scored 30 / 60 for our piece, which is a level 2
our targets were to focus on
> Framing
> Continuity
> and to practice our camera movement.
This is our first development stage of our thriller opening, it is a basic outline for our opening.
- Criminal entering the house
- POV of the criminal looking around
- Shot of home owner waking up after hearing a noise downstairs.
- next shot is of the homeowner walking down the stairs with a weapon, maybe a baseball bat
- CU of H.O stopping on the stairs with a frightened expression after hearing that someone is in his house. (noises coming from the next room)
- Pan of H.O continuing down the stairs and entering the living room
- POV of H.O looking around the room (heavy Breathing, builds tension)
- long shot of living room showing H.O and criminal seeing each other for the first time.
- (shot) CU of criminal,
- (Reverse) CU of H.O
- (shot) CU criminal
- long shot of criminal running through the living room and past the H.O, pushing him over, and running out the front door.
- Long shot of front door opening with the criminal running out and the H.O following.
- POV of criminal running down the road
- POV of H.O following the crim.
- Pan of the chase down the road, towards the alley.
- (track of the chase down the road).
- long shot of the alley opening, with the criminal entering, followed by the H.O
- POV of Crim. running down the alley
- POV of H.O chasing the crim. down the alley
- back to POV of crim.
- POV of H.O
- actors turn the corner and the crim. is gone. cuts to black with the title on screen.
