Shooting: Day Two

Today I shot some more of my short film. I'm even happier with the results as I was yesterday. I think I'm going to stick with the idea of having an alert/text message appear on a phone, and that shall kickstart the film. I like it because it allows me to contain the film within one location and does not over complicate it. 

I was thinking of varying ways I could shoot things, so as you can see above and below of the broom I shot from the perspective of the broom and towards the camera too. I thought this would make my film a bit more interesting and gives me more scope to play in editing.

I said yesterday I was going to shoot various scenarios for the ending of my film, but I realised today whilst filming that the differing scenarios required completely different shots throughout, and I would essentially be shooting 2 films at once. For example, instead of having a shot of someone tidying shoes I'd have to shoot someone tripping over them. I'd have to do this for every single action shot - the successful way, and the failing way. So, considering time and my preferred direction for my film, I have only shot the "successful" scenario of my film. This keeps the story very simple and should hopefully strengthen it in turn. 

Whilst shooting my film I've been careful to consider framing and depth of field, and I would say that's apparent when you look back over my shots. When I concluded my research I pointed out how one of the strongest ways to convey a message or story immediately was through the framing of the shot, as good composition establishes an immediate heirachy and importance within a shot - it draws your eye to the important part straight away. I hope this strengthens my film.

Whilst shooting, I started to think about sounds. I'm thinking I may try to establish some comedy through my use of sound, and I could do this through comedic sound effects (e.g. cartoon-style "pops" "whoosh" "bangs" etc). I was browsing on Vimeo and found this video;

Obny sound design for Brian Chang 'Garden crash' video from OBNY / Music & Sound design on Vimeo.

I really like this video because of the sounds that are used. Even though it's a stop motion animation video, the use of the sound is over emphasised, is actually the "wrong" sound for the clip (but works) and is funny. I think it's clever how they've used the sound to emphasise a story more so than the actual image. I probably won't use sound this extreme or dramatic, but I like the idea of using emphasised, cartoonish style sounds, as i said before, to highlight an action.

Something like these;

Shooting: Day One

Today I started to shoot some of my shots I had planned. I am really, really happy with how a lot of them have come out, as I made it my goal to try and get some good quality, well composed angles and to consider things like depth of field. Below are some screen shots from the shots that I got.

I shot in 720p at 30fps.

Now I'm working to put together a rough cut, and am planning the rest of the shots I am going to shoot. I'm happy with the look of the shots, but I want to focus more on the content of them, and to shoot some more angles. What I'm finding now that I'm looking through them is I have a lot of close-ups of actions, but there's not enough links between each shot. I want to create a sense of the person running around within room, and I don't think I've shot enough footage to portray that yet. 

Either way, I'm really happy with the footage I got today. My favourite shots would have to be the ones of the shoes lined up, the side profile of the hoover, the canvas on the wall wonky and the wide shot of the entire, very messy room.