Our group consisted of Alana, Jeyda, Daleen and myself. Some groups were made through friendships but with our group, friendships were formed through this group for our final assessment. We kicked off to a good start in the first few discussion of our final project. Firstly it was important that we all had the same vision when it came to the final product of the film to avoid a clash of creative vision. Thankfully the whole group was on the same page and all jumped on board to the concept we decided on. Secondly, each member had a fair share in contributing and sharing ideas, all of us also had very open minds towards exploring and experimenting ideas to make our film the best it could be. As a group we understood the importance of creating our project to be very visually aesthetic way but to not let that get in the way of it’s true meaning of the film. (i.e- having shots that we like and felt ‘looked pretty’ but had no contribution or relation to the meaning of the film)
DAY 2 – OFFICIAL SHOOT
This week we had our last day of shooting at Macedon. This location was beautiful and every turn we made, every corner of the location was visually appealing. Even though we had particular shots we already had in mine, one thing that we were concern about with shooting at such a location with endless possibilities was that we might get off track and ‘shoot the shit out if’. Having our film based on a poem really helped guide us through the filming process and gave us an idea how it should look like. The poem was about death and grieve, which means moody, dark, emo, loneliness. With the weather on our side, we were blessed with a nice cloudy day with no sunlight with contributed to the mood. During our test shoots at this location we were concern with lighting as that day was really sunny and had too harsh and bright lighting which we would struggle to fix during the post production stage but thankfully we don’t have to worry about that anymore.
We learned a lot as individuals and as a group, each member got the chance to direct and be the camera operator and while that was going on, we were constantly giving each other tips and feedback for the shots. I feel like this was really beneficial in a sense that they saw things that I did not see and vice versa that was wrong about the angle/framing etc. This is one important thing that I stated in my collaboration blog post.
In terms of camera movement and angles, I feel like we did a decent job however I realized that we had too many shot where the camera was stationary and the character moved, which could result in it looking boring. It would have been a good idea to take more tracking shots/ moving with the character or in the perspective of the camera.
One thing I wished we could have filmed better was the concept of the character going on a journey to this unfamiliar yet familiar place. While looking through the clips, I felt like we didn’t follow through thoroughly with our plan to take the audience with the character on her journey. For example this clip below, if we were to put it into the film , it would have been improved we had establishing shots of her feet taking steps, close ups of her hands, maybe a mis shot as well.
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The two shots shown above is two wide angled, tracking shots the the character, one around the back of her and another one moving towards her from the back. We knew form the start that a dolly or any camera equipment besides a tripod and the camera itself was out of our reach nor did we want to hassle to get it.
The process of creating these two shots was my ultimate favourite part of the day. At the end of it, we felt so proud and excited to edit the shots to our liking such as the speed, colour grade and etc. The clip above is the final product of the shots.
Below a behind the scenes look of how the two shots were taken.
I clearly remember the excitement we had after we overcame this obstacle of getting the shot we wanted, the ideas just kept flowing in. We kept in mind the idea of ‘shooting to edit’ which really helped us in a sense that we shot only what we thought would fit the vibe and be a contribution in projecting the meaning of the poem (not just ‘shooting the shit out of it’ quote Paul)
Things I feel we could have improved on:
- We had too many pull focus shots , but luckily we considered the timing and how we could edit/cut it if we did not want the shot as a pull focus.
- Too many of the same shots, next time more of a range in actions/angles
- Not as much camera movement as we should’ve incorporated, too many stationary shots.
- We figured we would add music in the background and not add in the raw audio from the clips, therefore during the shoot we talked a bit too much in the background giving us no option but to cut out the audio.
- Not much of a range in shots, mostly same shot repeated.