For my scene recreation from House of Cards, I had planned to shoot on the weekend with some people that I thought would suit the roles well. However due to busy schedules these plans fell through and I was forced to improvise. This led to me roping my parents in to act for me on a Monday morning. Whilst I was appreciative that I had an alternative, I was not pleased that my plans had gone awry. In my alternative plan there were a few problems. Firstly I found out very quickly that neither of my parents had a hidden talent for acting or remembering lines. Secondly, my step-father is ridiculously tall which led to me balancing on the edge of a bath tub to get an over the shoulder shot. This also meant that I couldn’t burry my eye into the eye piece and had to look at the view finder.

The original scene is one incredible shot that I was eager to attempt in a far less sophisticated way. Therefore I decided a pan to the right, zoom in and tilt down would suffice. However zooming was a big issue as the zoom lens didn’t allow for me to do this smoothly. I attempted several times to achieve the best possible result but I was never satisfied with any of them. Therefore I decided on the spot to add in more shots that I could intercut and/or replace the shaky zoom with. I attempted a close up, wider profile and separate tilt down to the cufflinks. The profile was particularly hard as I was again struggling with my subject’s height. Lighting was another issue as I had originally wanted to shoot this scene at night but instead had to shoot it in bright morning light (my white balance was way off and the colours were far from natural). Whilst at this stage I haven’t looked at my footage too closely on an editing program, I can tell I’m not going to be enthralled by the result.