Over the weekend, I have made a short scene called ‘Brain Cancer’. This scene consists of four shots. Although the number of shot is few, the shots, for me, are impressive. However, there are a serval of adjustments during the process.

figure 1

First of all, the dolly shot cannot be finished due to the space that was too narrow to move. My intention that the dolly shot compose with three movements (see, figure 1). However, I consider the transition would be very abrupt and ugly between the process of 2 and 3. Therefore, my finally decision was stopping my camera at the 2nd movement. If I were making this choice, another question was arise. ‘How do I continue my movement without doing movement 3?’ The dolly shot supposed to show two characters in the scene, Julie and Emma. Without movement 3, it cannot reveal Emma at the end of this scene and it would lose the continuity while cutting to the next shot that shows Julie and Emma together.figure 2

So, I use Emma’s hand. It is not necessary to illustrate Emma’s complete appearance but I can show her partial body with which the shot convinces audience that someone else exists simultaneously. Showing Emma’s hand achieve not only achieve a great transition between shot by shot, her hand also create a dynamic vision. Even though the shot is slight changed, it seem to be much better than I thought. Thanks for the constraint of space.

There are some continuous problem from shot 2 to shot 3. I found that Emma’s performance is disconnected in these two shots. Her eyelines do not match. In shot 2, Emma is talking to someone off-frame and she looks at the direction. Shot 3 is a high angle wide shot in which Emma does not looks at the subject that she did in the previous one. She suppose to looks at Veronica’s head when she is talking to Veronica. So she should put her head up a little.

figure 3

figure 4

Another problem is the focus subject. The distance between Veronica and camera was out of the focal range. I could not focus on Veronica when I try to film. It is because I did not get enough space in the kitchen. My body has already been as close to the wall as I could, however, it does not really help. Therefore, I chose to focus on Emma who is amid Julie and Emma but this is not ideal decision in my mise-en-scene intention. Nevertheless, the shot is acceptable. Even though Veronica was not sharp like Emma, she is clear enough to notice.