I am going to shoot several scenes of daily routine of a person’s life, a girl. I will focus on the specific, small, detailed and ordinary life events, for example (the events I have in mind) getting dressed, putting on or take off make ups, getting up in the morning… I want to create mysterious atmosphere, so I will find different framing and angles to show some parts of the girl but not her face (can be a blurry one). In my shooting, there must be direction, performance and staging. I want to show the power of the real moment- it may not look that bright and wonderful from outside, but the beauty of it is that it’s real and ordinary. There can be the authentic of documentary, there can be exquisite of drama, there can be both. For me, I am trying to create something real and beautiful, I want to show the power of real using good cinematography. CINEMATOGRAPHY is the thing I want to work on this semester.

Location

For the location, I will shoot in my best friend’s apartment. There would be kitchen, living room, bedroom, bathroom and balcony. I am trying to capture something causal and daily, however there is still staging in it. I will move some stuff around and make it look good in the framing. To get ideas of framing and camera movements, one thing I can do about location is to take picture of them, frame it up with my phone. When I look at the pictures later, I may get some sparks about framing, lighting, angle, mise-en-scene… When I get more familiar with the locations, I will be more flexible with all kinds of camera movements at this place.

Camera movement

I will use both tripod and hand-held. Tripod is more stable which is more suitable for still shoots. Hand-held is more flexible which is more suitable for different angles and compositions of shoots. I think I will use handheld more because I am trying to find interesting and tight framing and angles, hand-held can give me big room of moving camera around.

Lighting

As Paul suggested, I will use different lightings in different scenes to create different atmosphere. At the same time I can learn more about lighting. Once I read that all of the natural lighting you see in cinema is not natural. So for lighting research, I need to borrow some lights or reflectors from uni or use some lamps.

Editing

When editing, I want to try different filters on different scenes, the same as lighting, try to create the atmosphere. This is just a thought. Also I want to add a voice over, some music, also I will keep the original sounds appear in shooting. The voice over can be something creative, related or not related to my shooting. And the music plays when still shoots come.

Casting and directing

I am going to work with my best friend Phoebe who knows me very well. In the scene, she is acting me. I will communicate with her also I will be directing her when shooting. I think that it is easier for her to understand my direction and what I want to get out of the shooting based on the closeness and good communication between us.