Directing and Performance - 11th January - BAFI104

Directing and Performance

Monday 11th January 2016               Directing and Performance              Lecture: Andy and Lucy

Initial Idea: At the start of the lesson we had a look at method acting, as a class we were asked what we thought was the difference of acting within film or theatre. I came up with the idea that within film, the cinematographer and director will use different camera angles to shoot the actors, won't show all of the movements on camera, if anything goes wrong you can re-shoot the footage and editing can cover up a few mistakes. Where as for theatre the actors would have a big audience watching and if there was any mistakes for any reason, the audience would recognise and it could mess the whole production up.

The task for today was to use the scripts that we created for homework, get into groups of 5-6 (not including actors) and we would have to re-enact the storyline, we were asked to shoot 5 scenes and leave un edited.

Our idea was based around a football script, taking place was a conversation between two lads who were playing FIFA, we took this idea and we wanted to re-create the scene by playing a game of pool. Unfortunately the pool table wasn't working so we came up with the idea of going out to play football on the astro, it worked really well and we had great fun with directing the actors.

My role for this task was the Cinematographer, my key role was to work with the director, to establish the scenes that we wanted to capture, once we arrived on the pitch we had the idea of the actors being in the crowd as spectators, the script talked a lot about the ref and fouls on the ball. Ed had the idea that we could film it from a perspective of spectatorship, the girls were shouting over at the ref, 'c'mon ref'. Claudio and Charlie came up with the idea of bringing a ball into play, wanted to give the actors something to track up and down the pitch.

I was really pleased with the way that our shoot went, as soon as we got the ball (props) we started to film and record our 5 continuos shot scenes, we used a variety of different camera angles again which I liked because it helped to bring the viewers into the conversation, especially the line "c'mon" which was shortly followed by a short clip of Ed hitting the crossbar. The pan up at the start really helped to introduce the scene as the audience became aware that the girls were behind a barrier, followed by the spectators sign which helped to establish that they were spectators at a sporting match (astro within the start of the frame).

The feedback that we got on our project was great as a whole and it showed that us as the film team and the actors worked closely together to create a naturalistic piece, using the script and improvising.

Here is a link to the finished short film of our task that we created for the "FIFA Film".