Assignment 4 – 4

PROJECT TWO – SHOOTING  1

This was our second project, and we decided to keep the script, but shoot it in another way. It was a new start to us because we need to come out with a totally new concept. We were so frustrated and tired. Everyone has other assignments to do and feels hard to keep concentrated. Robin gave lots of ideas and suggestion to us, which brought us some inspiration and energy. To be honest, I barely feel that we are doing a group work, and I don’t feel everyone is working together. As a director, Jialu was under more pressure, because she was responsible to work something out. What I can do is help her doing research and find some inspirations for her. Luckily, she came out some ideas before the shoot day. I really doubt that everyone is actually knowing what we gonna shoot. To be honest, I don’t really get her ideas.

Rachel, Jialu and I remade the ‘bar’ before the shoot and borrowed a light to test it. It was much better than the last one we made. Based on the last experience, we did not take too much time on setting up the curtain. However, we were facing a big problem- the lighting. Jialu had new ideas of setting up lights, so everything was different from project one.  She wanted the bar’s shadow to look heavier and keeps the room lighted at the same time.  And we found out the 1000k Arri light was not bright enough to create a heavier shadow, because if we want to make the shadow heavier, the bar should be set far away from the light, so we need 2000k Arri light to provide more lights.  Also, we did not have enough white reflectors to bounce the lights back to the room, and one of the Dedo light was damaged.  Personally, I think we were not in a bad situation, and we could work it out together.  However, they found someone to help with the lights(someone who didn’t even care about lighting). His solution was turning on the all of the top lights and moved closer the light and the bar.  To be honest, I cannot agree with this. This is our assignment,  and the aim is to practice and to deal with the problems we encountered. The result was not the most important. The most important is we are learning something from the progress.

The second problem is that I have a different opinion with Jialu. I think as a cinematographer in the group, I am responsible to share my thoughts about the scene. Honestly, I cannot agree with Jialu’s ideas. From my perspective, the scene should and need at least to be reasonable and good looking, however, I cannot see any sense of beauty from her designed concept and framing.  I just cannot bear to shoot in her way. In order to avoid more arguments, I decided to change my position, and let others operate the camera. Honestly, I was not happy with this new concept.

 

 

Editing

Basically,  Jialu, Yoland and I did the editing for both projects.

For the project one, since it was a long take scene, there was not much stuff to do, we basically added some sound effects and did some color grading.

For the project two.

Yoland and I were just following Jialu’s ideas to edit.

There is not much to say about the editing, I was just doing it as what she told.

 

To sum up, I personally like the project one, because I can feel that we are working as a group, and I like the way we are sharing our ideas and thoughts. And everyone was contributing to the project.  The second was more like a personal work.