Question 7

Question 7

Very first thing I learnt in the preliminary task was the vital importance of the 180 degree rule, before filming started, and how important it is to follow it to avoid confusion and disorientation to the audience; by crossing the line, the actor appears to have moved from facing one direction, to the other. This rule in camera work is always seen in sports television programme. The camera stays on one side of the pitch so the players don’t appear to always be running in opposite directions making the game easier to follow.

Next I learnt how to keep the audience entertained based only on camera work; variety. Having the camera in one place with no movement or editing will make the scene look extremely dull and not very entertaining. Even if the scene is of one person talking performing a monologue, theoretically the camera could stay on that one person throughout, however it wouldn’t make the scene very interesting. In conversation, the speaker always has pauses unconsciously, which is why the variety of shots is important to breakdown a scene. Within the preliminary task, I learnt how to take a variety of shots well; not cutting off someone’s arm, or part of their head.

After the preliminary task, I felt like I had enough knowledge to make a good opening to the thriller with my new editing, and camera work skills and thought things would go smoothly; this was ignorance. At the start of the film project, very quickly I learnt planning ahead for any complications is a very good idea. The locations my group had chosen, for the opening establishing shots especially, are quite populated areas. Choosing the right time to film was a skill we had to require in order to get the shot we wanted. Having the shot over populated didn’t give off the right mood we were trying to aim for. The simple solution would have been to stay out in Norwich for late hours when no one is around. Few things wrong with this idea, first being no one liked the idea of staying out late on school nights, and on weekends was even more unappealing as that’s is when the majority of Norwich is out drinking. The second was that one of our locations involved being in an alley next to a gambling club and a pub. To resolve this as we had no intention to change locations as the one we found was perfect, we started to film as soon as it appeared dark enough to give the illusion it was late at night but wait for the rush for getting home was over so there was minimal chance of people walking through the shot when they were not wanted.

During the preliminary task lighting was not a factor we really took into consideration we filmed within a building, in one room where the artificial light source was bright enough to light up the whole room and we had not thought of using it for any effect. During the thriller it was different; lighting can be used to create harsh shadowing for an unsettling mood. Within our thriller, we discovered that it could be used to give an impression off for a certain character as being morally ambiguous; by only lighting up one side of the actors face by using a black light angled at whichever side that it is you, as a director, would think will work best.

Personally, I did not find editing to be that much of a struggle and grasped the technique rather quickly. However, I did learn that through editing the length of time a scene is on the screen, it changes the pace of the thriller dramatically, and can give and edgy mood. For example towards the end of my thriller ‘Crowe’, jump cuts worked extremely well as he is walking away from the scene of the crime. It gave him the sense of enigma which we had initially been trying to portray.