Considering the enormous amount of time in Friday’s tutorial that was devoted to contemplating the meaning of pain after my forced 6:00am wakeup, I decided it would be much easier to simple move ahead onto Monday’s tutorial…and what a tutorial it was indeed.

Our task for the day? In the most minimal way possible, control the action of what happens in the front of the frame for a 50 second take. No zooming is permitted, however, use of tilts, panning, and other camera movement is allowed.

I wish I had access to the shots we ended up submitting to provide you with visual aid, however, sadly I cannot locate them at this time. Therefore I will simply had to do my best at describing them.

If theres one common theme that ran through the 4 shots, it was reversal and abstract thought, we wanted to present the unexpected and the strange, as opposed to the standard and obvious.

Our first shot involved a leading lines leading down the brick hallway of RMIT near the alumni courtyard. As Sam walked towards the camera holding books, he slips and drops his book to the floor. Shiwen and Aidan walk towards Sam, away from the camera…

It’s here that the audience instinctively expects the two to pick up Sam’s books and hand them back to him. So this is where we decided to make the shot strange. Whilst Shiwen and Aidan do pick up the books, they then calmly walk away from Sam, leaving him in hopeless shock in the foreground of the frame as Shiwen and Aidan walk off straightly in the background. Rewatching this shot on the day, we found it effective in presenting the theme of abstract and oddity that we hoped to be present in our shots.

The next shot begun on my hand pressing an elevator call button,then panning left and revealing me waiting for it. After a few seconds, the elevator arrives at the sound of a beep…

It’s here that we hoped the audience would expect me to simply hop on the escalator and leave the frame entirely. However, like our previous shot, we attempted to defy expectations in my character staring blankly at the open door, only to press the call button furiously as it closes again.

Whilst we found the shot to be effective in conveying the theme of “strange”, I personally am critical of my own acting in this shot. It appears overly exaggerated, taking away the realism we hoped to fully convey in the beginning of the shot.

Our third shot involved Aidan and myself leaning on two bins in a corner. Holding a notebook, yet no pen, I ask Aidan to borrow his pen…

Here, we hoped audiences would expect my character to begin to take notes in his notebook. Instead, I throw the pen in the gap behind the bin that Aidan is leaning on, and leave the frame. The shot then concludes with Aidan hopelessly attempting to move the bins out of the way in order to grab the pen.

We found this shot the most successful overall in conveying not only our themes of quirkiness, yet also a darkly humorous situation.

Finally, we concluded with a slow pan shot from left to right, placing the camera on the 3rd level of building 9, and panning over the construction happening next the alumni courtyard. As the camera slowly pans from left to right for the majority of the shot, we wanted to influence the audience to expect a change in theme, and see this as simply a shot of the construction activities occurring down below. As the camera moves to the edge of the construction, it frames up the arm of an excavator, revealing Sam and myself having a detailed conversation in an extreme long shot.

Whilst we loved the colour and action occurring in this shot, we believed it suffered from a minimal presence of abstract ideas or strange occurrences that we decided were more prevalent in the previous shots.

In the end, we found our activities during the tutorial to be successful. My group and I were thankfully pleased with the shots we submitted, and our success in weaving similar ideas throughout them.