On the 1st of October I was absent from class, but I was however working very hard on my Final Project for the semester.
The previous evening I caught the train back to my hometown of Yackandandah in North East Victoria, the following morning I began shooting my short film. The process was rather rushed and unproffesional, but it all worked out in the end. Two of my actors were only avalible for one day (Nathan who played the President was only avalible for about 2-3 hours), this meant that everything had to be done as fast as possible, I had Kaddy (my other friend, who was avalible for one day only) assisting with filming, as well as recording “behind the scenes” footage on my phone. Nathan’s sister Emma even helped, and had a cameo role as Doloros, the secretary.
Before the day of filming I wasnt exactly sure how many people I would have to work with, although my “script” allowed for this, so many of the lines and especially costumes and sets were created as we were working. Filming was done on my dads digital camera which was of quite reasonable quality, the morning was dedicated to all the scenes Nathan was involved in, which happened to be a scene at the beginning, middle and end of the film. They were relativly simple scenes, but I was delibratly choosing shots and movements which I would be able to manipulate in editing for stylistic effect, including frame-rate alterations, freeze-frames and rapid quick cuts with a “WHOOSH” sound effect.
After saying goodbye to Nathan and wishing him a happy overseas trip (as I said, we had to get this done quick), I began to start work on the rest of the film. We were joined by my cousin Josh, who with me and Kaddy was playing one of the three main cast. After ruffling through my wardrobe to find a suitible costume (a purple shirt, eye-patch and mini top hat) we were ready to film. At first it was some very simple shots of characters silently listening to a phonecall (which was already recorded), we then headed of to the bush.
It was here where some more shots were done that I planned this entire film (and frame-rating experimenting) around: the driving scene.
Each character was going to be given a freeze-frame introduction, and Kaddy’s character “Black Hat” was always seen with his car, which made it the perfect time to get mutliple shots of moving vechiles. Inspired by Drive, Mad Max (both Road Warrior and Fury Road) I wanted 3 different types of shots.
The first being a shot from inside the car, watching it move forwards (the type of shot that was very common in Drive). Due to it being a very small area, and not exactly being stunt-men, we could only drive very slowly. However this worked to the advantage of my project, as I wanted to speed it up artifically in editing, and see how far I could push it before it looked terrible. I was inspired by The Road Warrior which used this exact technique for the same reasons, and Fury Road, which used similar manipulation more for stylistic effect.
The second type of shot I wanted was of the driver’s (Black Hat AKA Kaddy) face while driving, which proved to be difficult to shoot, since driving with a camera pointed at your face is rather challanging. This shot is where the freeze-frame and character intro was going to be, so I needed a good shot of his face and costume. I also wanted to continue the speed editing, to make it seem like he was driving more than 10km/h.
The final car shot I wanted to get was a stationary camera looking at a moving vechile, which established the location more-so than the limited view the previous shots gave. Again I wanted to experiment with just how far I could speed it up, without it looking terrible.