I filmed this scene over a week ago, however I only edited it recently. I wasn’t that happy with uploading the content as I only had access to a camcorder and my iPhone to film the scene. I chose to use my iPhone as the screen is larger and the camcorder (like my phone) couldn’t add anything in terms of manual settings (focus, exposure, etc).

The scene is taken from a screenwriting friend of mine’s script (Harrison Murray) called ‘Presence’ which follows a young boy who is enlisted with the task of cleaning up crime scenes. I chose a scene that could convey the action without dialogue as my test for filming prose written by somebody else.

The prose and my notes towards filming the scene are here: harrison prose

As the director of the scene, I chose to take my own liberties in how I interpreted the scene and decided (as you can see in my notes) not to include Rhonda and Chris in this scene as I just wanted to focus on Liam. I didn’t believe that Rhonda and Chris really added anything to the scene and in the context of the script were moving between locations which is why they are included in the script for this scene. In hindsight now, it would be interesting to include these characters to practice focus pulling and how that could effect the scene.

I had some ideas about using a particular location and decided to use my phone to take some test footage and photos according to my shot list. I then decided to just film it on my phone to test my camera coverage choices as a sketch with the aim of re-shooting it in the future.

As I am researching the director’s vision and ownership of the text as well as working with prose VS script, I should reflect on how working from somebody else’s text effected the way I worked. I wasn’t very motivated to film this scene as I didn’t have any grand ideas of how to make it visually interesting or unique. I didn’t feel attached to the project and so deciding to film the scene on my phone wasn’t a big issue for me as it would have been if I did for my own text. In a way it felt a bit freeing to not be constrained by large equipment and to just capture the image in a very immediate way, without having to worry about setting the tripod to the correct height, etc. However, this scene has definitely suffered due to my lack of ownership of the text/project as I would’ve taken much more care and probably made more creative choices if it was my own text.

With my interrogation scene, I have been much more motivated to investigate different shots, implementing lighting and set design, and researching similar scenes to inspire me – all of which I didn’t even consider when filming this scene. The shot construction is quite simple and crosses the line (I think?), however I think if next time I wrote a floor plan, maybe used a better location and used a camera with a tripod I may create something much closer to what the writer envisioned. I really wanted to get a bird’s eye view of Liam with the case, however I couldn’t reach my arms over enough to get the correct angle and still see the screen – something which could definitely be corrected by having a camera and tripod.

In re-filming this scene, I need to believe that this text is important to me in order for me to take the camera coverage and treatment of the text more seriously and create something of a higher standard.

https://vimeo.com/128359767