We
filmed our second opening sequence idea, that included a young girl
very sad at a train station and a shot of her father looking very
stressed and then receiving a very important phone call that his
daughter just jumped in front of a train. We filmed this because we
felt that our first test shoot/sequence idea was poor and did not
have enough detail to its story line nor did it build tension
effectively.
What
substitutions did you make in the test filming and why?
In
the second sequence we used normal stairs instead of the escalators
of a train station, we did this because we do not have any escalators
in our school and we were unable to shoot outside of school grounds
for the test shoot.I mimed drinking, that was supposed to be a bottle
of liquor to show that she was severely depressed and turned to
alcohol to get through it. I sat on a wall instead of a train station
bench to keep with the consistency of the location, we remained in
the same area to keep the shoot basic and less complicated. We also
substituted a small wall ledge for the train track ledge, because we
could not shoot at a train station, as well as not doing this for
safety reasons.
We
also used me as the girl, however I can not be acting in the actual
shoot as I will be behind the camera and we used Jamie instead of the
father as he was a male actor in our group.
What
camera angles and camera movements were you testing and why?
We
tested a low angle of the girl coming down the stairs to see the
effect it would have in terms of defining her character. I do not
think it gave the right effect as we wanted to portray the girl as a
sad and vulnerable character, however filming from a low angle made
it boring in my opinion and did not show the emotions on the girls
face that we wanted to show.
We
also tested the close up on the girls hand to show her nervousness
and to be closer to her character from an audience's perspective. I
think this worked well and was effective in terms of conveying her
emotions to the audience. It also looked good and worked well.
Did
you find this process useful as a group?
Yes,
it made our idea clearer and showed us the amount of detail we had to
put into our idea. It had too much story line happening for a title
sequence, even though it was short, this was only because we did a
basic exploration of the camera angles, not all the angles we would
be using that would lengthen the piece further. This process helped
us evaluate our mistakes which were deciding on our story board and
the angles we want to shot before going out and shooting as it became
just a brainstorming session with filming in between instead of just
shooting the sequence.
What
worked well?
The
use of a close up on the girl's hands worked well and it will be very
effective in our new sequence as there is a shot when he holds a
whisky glass, and we want a close up on the whisky glass to show the
importance of it as well as revealing more and more about the
character without revealing his face because we want to leave his
identity hidden to create a sense of mystery. The pace of the piece
was effective however we found that not very much worked well and
there wasn’t anything that we would recycle in terms of story line
that we would use when shooting our new and actual thriller title
sequence.
What
didn’t go well?
First
of all we filmed the sequence with an IPhone, this meant we had the
option to film in landscape or portrait, without realizing we filmed
it both ways which looked bad and amateur.
We
also did not have the appropriate location required to get the right
mood and tone of the sequence. The fact that we filmed it outside
completely changed the feel of the piece and we did not see how it
was working in terms of creating tension and building the suspense
high enough to get the audience to feel intriguing by the piece. I
believe we were not passionate enough about the story line of the
sequence to make it look good. We, again, did not film enough which
left us with a shorter video then intended.
When
it came to editing I tried to make it look as smooth as possible but
because of continuity issues this was not an easy task. I also tried
to make the effect of her falling by zooming in with editing effects,
because of the lack of footage it did not work well but the idea can
be seen clearly which was what we had intended for this test shoot.
The
location was different as well from what we wanted it to be and we
realized how difficult it would be to film at an empty train station,
let alone a girl jumping in front of a train without using tricky
effects.
How
has this influenced you with the next stage of your idea?
It has helped our group recognize the
importance of a story board with camera work detailed and planned
along with timing. As well as keeping a very close eye on continuity because it can either make time in the editing suite much more difficult or even impossible, therefore we would have to cut a lot of he footage which might end us up in a position where we must go back and shoot more or we will have a title sequence that does not meet the required time limits.
