This week’s task was to shoot two exercises (one script & one action description); one being a single-shot (no hand-held) and the other being shot-to-edit.

Beginning this task I thought it would be very difficult for us to get both exercises filmed in the time frame, however I was wrong. It’s possibly due to the fact that we have had more experience now with working together and filming these exercises that we worked quite efficiently compared to earlier weeks.

For the single-shot exercise, I was in the support team. The executive team was quite large compared to our small group of four in the support team, however no-one suggested that we make the teams even. As the executive team was so large, the discussion over their roles took up quite a bit of their time as many of them didn’t want to act as they had acted a lot in previous exercises. After some time, it was decided that both the director and DOP roles would be shared by two to three people. With that being decided, they began to position the actors and frame up their single-shot.

As there was quite a lot of them in their group, we in the support team didn’t have much to do with the filming of their scene, but rather advised them on what we thought looked like a good frame. Watching and listening to them discuss what worked and what didn’t work was interesting as there was little argument over what looked good; everyone seemed to come to the same conclusion. Their framing gave foreground and background to the scene due to the positioning of the actors and the way in which they were directed to move within the frame. The tightness of the frame around Marie ensured that the audience’s eye was kept to the action unfolding between the two characters, rather than a wider frame which may have distracted the audience with unnecessary information. Originally, there was a discussion amongst the executive team about implementing a pan, however that was decided against once they had established their frame. This was a good decision as their frame was well composed and a pan would have only detracted from that in this case.

It was then my group’s turn to be in the executive team, filming the action description in a shot-to-edit style. During the previous exercise, Tom and I began discussing how we would like to cover the scene, and we agreed on the first shot of being over-the-shoulder of the person doing the crossword (foreground) with the person pacing in the background. When it came to filming, our team used the camera to pre-produce our shots and decide on what frames we liked a part from the shot previously discussed.

Tom had some really interesting ideas and communicated them well which made it clear that he should direct the scene. We worked quite quickly as there was no dialogue and also Tom’s clear vision for the scene. As a result, we had many interesting shots from different angles that we could experiment with to cut the scene together in post-production. During editing, I decided to use three out of the four different shots we filmed on the day; the over-the-shoulder shot of me, the close-up of me, and the pacing medium close-up. I decided against using the opposite shot-reverse-shot as I felt as though it didn’t add anything to the scene, and the close-up of my reaction was a better way to demonstrate the action.