This is our first team, (Me, Eden, Mitch), we will be working in this group while we work on our first production project filmmaking 101.
Our first project was to recreate a scene from a film, we choose to recreate the famous Forrest Gump scene where he says "life is like a box of chocolates", we decided as a team that Mitch will be acting as Forrest, this means that he will be saying the lines from the original script. Eden will be working the camera and trying to film to the scene as close to the original as possible. I will be helping with the camera as well as managing what is happening by being the director.
Firstly, we started with doing production paperwork which helps us when going out to film by telling us what shots we need to film at what time. We filled out a practical video production task sheet, this helped us to see what skills the team already had and how we could use these in our task to re-shoot this scene. It also made us decide what types of shots we were going to use to try and re-create the scene as close to the original as possible, for example, we decided to use close-up shots as these are what used in the film.
We then downloaded the script from the film off the internet and printed it out so we could highlight the sections we needed and what actors we were going to make say them. We also annotated on the script to show what types of shots we needed to film at each section of the script. This helped us when filmed to know what type of shot was going to be used at each part of the script.
The scene breakdown sheet we used was very helping in showing us as a team and others what we needed for the scene for example, what props we needed such as the box of chocolates for this scene and what equipment we may need to use to get the shot such as the fig rig which is what we used to make the shot stable as Eden was using the camera handheld rather than on something like a tripod so that we could get the smooth zoom that we wanted.
We then headed out as a team with our actors from a different team who were helping, we used a nearby bench next to a river close to college as our location to re-create the scene, we choose this location as we needed a bench for our actors to use as there was one in the original scene. The photo to the right shows our team working on the forrest gump re-shoot.
This is the final product that we ended up with after editing the shots.
Movement in filmmaking -
We were asked to describe movement in filmmaking for one of our filmmaking 101 tasks.
When we were creating our horror film we had a good idea of a way we could use movement in our shoot. This was the 360 degree spin shot that we used in the beginning of the horror.
When experimenting with the cameras and equipment we figured out a creative movement shoot that we would include in our film. We used the fig-rig and turned it around like a steering wheel to create a 360 degree spin which turns into a close up shot of Laura dressed as a clown.
180° Degree Rule -
The 180-degree rule is a basic rule of filmmaking, it is a guideline on where the camera can go and where the characters can be on screen. Filmmakers must imagine that there is an invisible line that the camera must not cross other the 180-degree rule will be broken.
The camera must stay within the 180 degrees at all times.
We made a short video to show that we understand the 180-degree rule in filmmaking. -
Editing Basics -
In today's session, we went through and learnt the basics of editing using Adobe Premiere Pro software, we learnt the basics such as how to import footage from the cameras that we filmed on, to the computer and how hard drives to how to cut the clips together on the timeline to make it into a short film. We also learnt how to add effects to our clips such as a dip to black effect that makes the clip fade to a black screen. Learning all this was very useful as we are going to be editing a lot of footage throughout our time at college with this software so learning how to use it now will help us be confident in using it in the future to edit our films.
Film Noir -
Our next task was to film a short film from a list of genres, these genres included thriller, horror, western, film noir, comedy, and romance. We decided as a team that we would go ahead and film the film noir and horror films as we had good ideas on how to create a short film to fit the two genres.
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The first thing we did as a team was we sat down and planned out what we were going to film for this genre,
we wanted this film to be in black and white and to have an aged look as this would make it fit into the film noir category.
As film noir does not have any dialog we did not have to sit and plan any, we instead planned out what shots we wanted to do and what we wanted in them, for example, shot 4 was an over the shoulder shot.
Planning all of our shots like this made it easy when we went out to film as we knew exactly what we wanted to shoot and how we were going to shoot it. Pictured on the left is out planning sheet we used to plan our shots.
We then went ahead and filmed the shot sequence as a team with the help of Conrad (a member of another team), he helped by acting in our film noir film. Mitch was acting in this film and Eden was working the camera and using equipment such as a tripod and fig-rig to get both still and smooth handheld shots. Like the Forrest Gump re-shoot I again took on the role of being director and also helping Eden with the camera.
Our third filmmaking 101 shoot was a horror that we called The Killer Queen, it's a basic horror story of a person who is being followed by a killer clown and end ends up gets killed at the end by the clown.
On this shoot we had decided to form a new group, the new group included the original members from the first two shoots, ( Me, Eden and Mitch) but now had two additional members these were Laura and Anya. The member's roles of this shoot were:-
Me - Director & Editor
Laura - Actor (Killer Clown)
Eden - Camera Work (Cinematographer)
Anya - Photographer & Editor
Mitch - Actor (Person being followed by clown)
As this was a horror film we thought that horror make-up would be a great thing to have on our actress Laura, as we needed her to be a clown we got one of the make-up students at college to do a scary killer clown makeup look on her. This makes the film more of a horror feeling and the audience can feel like they are actually watching a horror. Below is the finished makeup look -
Again we sat down as a team, now with our new members, to plan what we wanted to shoot and what types of shots we were going to do. As you can see on the planning sheet to the left we planned out our shots and described what was going to be in them so that we could use this when filming to know what shots we have filmed and what is supposed to be in them and also to tell which ones were left to film.
We then went out to film our planned horror film, we used the fig-rig as we knew most of the shots were going to be handheld and we wanted them to be smooth so using the fig-rig was a good way to try and get smooth shots.
Here is us filming the first few of our horror film shots...
we wanted this film to be in black and white and to have an aged look as this would make it fit into the film noir category.
As film noir does not have any dialog we did not have to sit and plan any, we instead planned out what shots we wanted to do and what we wanted in them, for example, shot 4 was an over the shoulder shot.
Planning all of our shots like this made it easy when we went out to film as we knew exactly what we wanted to shoot and how we were going to shoot it. Pictured on the left is out planning sheet we used to plan our shots.
We then went ahead and filmed the shot sequence as a team with the help of Conrad (a member of another team), he helped by acting in our film noir film. Mitch was acting in this film and Eden was working the camera and using equipment such as a tripod and fig-rig to get both still and smooth handheld shots. Like the Forrest Gump re-shoot I again took on the role of being director and also helping Eden with the camera.
Below is the finished product of our film noir film.
Horror -
Our third filmmaking 101 shoot was a horror that we called The Killer Queen, it's a basic horror story of a person who is being followed by a killer clown and end ends up gets killed at the end by the clown.
On this shoot we had decided to form a new group, the new group included the original members from the first two shoots, ( Me, Eden and Mitch) but now had two additional members these were Laura and Anya. The member's roles of this shoot were:-
Me - Director & Editor
Laura - Actor (Killer Clown)
Eden - Camera Work (Cinematographer)
Anya - Photographer & Editor
Mitch - Actor (Person being followed by clown)
As this was a horror film we thought that horror make-up would be a great thing to have on our actress Laura, as we needed her to be a clown we got one of the make-up students at college to do a scary killer clown makeup look on her. This makes the film more of a horror feeling and the audience can feel like they are actually watching a horror. Below is the finished makeup look -
We then went out to film our planned horror film, we used the fig-rig as we knew most of the shots were going to be handheld and we wanted them to be smooth so using the fig-rig was a good way to try and get smooth shots.
Here is us filming the first few of our horror film shots...
Below is the finished product of our horror film shoot -
