Film Blog Four

25 – 10 -10

Workshop.

Today we were given a hand out showing examples of different kinds of shots and what they look like. These shots ranged from Extreme long shot (XLS) to Extreme close up (XCU), and we discussed the different affects they can have on the viewer and what they are commonly used to portray. An example of this is in a very famous scene from The Shining.

There are two shots that stand out to me the most in this scene. The first is a medium/medium long shot of Jack swinging the axe all the way behind himself in order to gain further leverage. The purpose of this shot is to show the audience the strength, power and insanity Jack is portraying in this scene. The second key shot is a big close up of Jack hacking through the door with an axe. The purpose of this type of shot is to make the audience feel really close up to the action and feel frightened. Extreme close ups are also used to show character’s eyes, and the expression or thought behind them. A common occurrence of this is when a character realizes something or holds a menacing stare.

After looking at shot types, we were then given an example of a shooting script. This allowed us to see what a shooting script should look like and what we must include in our own shooting script. We then went through an example script called The Eager Student, and marked the shots and shot types. Mike then gave the groups a camera and a time slot, and told us to go through the shooting script we just created and take photographs of the shot types. This included putting ourselves in position as characters in the script and using the camera to portray the distance, angle, etc of the shot we planned in the shooting script. We did so, and then went to the editing room to log our photos on to final cut pro.

Once we had completed this we had a brief meeting about our film group. We had previously discussed what roles we would each like in the production, but I thought it was time to decide on roles and assign jobs to everyone. I said I would still like to be producer, and that I would take on organising and over seeing the production. Everyone was happy with this and I began suggesting job roles and job ideas from the research I had done last week on film production jobs.

Eventually we decided on the following job roles:

Danielle – Producer

Hope - Director

Harry – Production assistant (general camera, directing, etc), film editor

Ed – Location, sound on set, sound editor

David – Story board, Camera

Dan – Script editor, shooting script, assistant editor

Kay – Casting, Character profiles, on set lighting

Everyone said they were happy with their roles, and I encouraged them to let me know if they would like anything changed or were not entirely happy. I then gave everyone the contact sheet I created so communication between us should now be really easy.

We arranged our next meeting for Friday at 2pm. For this meeting Kay will bring a character list and ideas for each character. We will each rewrite a copy of the script, so that we can discuss and edit the script in this meeting. We will also each think about possible locations, props and costume ideas.