Evaluation for Film B - Including classroom work
We were asked to get into small groups, we would allocate a preferred job role we would like to work on throughout the film i.e. Cinematographer, Production Designer, Creative Producer, Editor or the Director of Actors. After working on Film A I thought about changing to a different role but I really wanted to pursue the Cinematography role, I wanted to use this project as a chance to gather an understanding for how to set the lights up on the shoot, I wanted to give myself a real challenge by having the responsibility of setting up the cameras and the lighting for the shoot location. Towards the end, I worked as the co-editor for the project to create the final piece along with Josh who was the editor.
Here is a link to the screen test that I filmed and edited within the first lesson of Film B, I explored how to capture facial expressions, movement in front of camera, I wanted to play around with the lights and camera angles to ensure that I could capture different body movements, the hands moving was my main focus point as well as close-ups on the actors faces.
Directing and Performance - Screen Test from Luke Curno on Vimeo.
Here is a link to the blog post, containing notes from the first planning session for Film B.
http://lukecurnopca.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/monday-15th-february-2016-directing-and.html
What I liked
Planning: I thought that the actors interacted within the group chat on Facebook that we set up, we set them a task to generate their own character profiles for the film, they all contributed well and we managed to get each profile which myself and Danielle (Director of Actors) were able to use to create the script, it worked well that we gave them a copy of the script a week before the shoot, this provided them with enough time to practise ideas, get to grips with the main concepts for each of the four scenes that we had created.
As the cinematographer for this project, I feel like it worked by myself reviewing existing films with similar scenes to that of the bar scene that we wanted to achieve, I wanted to see if I could re-create the bar scene from the film "The Fighter" (Directed by David. O Russell), I picked up on the idea that this whole scene was shot handheld which I tried to re-create, adding motion into the frame as well as shooting the piece as if it was from a spectators point of view. I referred back to the annotations that I did on the script as well as an additional shot list that I had on my phone.
Here is a blog post which shows the annotations that I made to the script once the director of actors had finished writing the scenes and ideas for the content of our short film.
http://lukecurnopca.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/directing-and-performance-film-b-bafi104.html
Filming: I thought that the idea of having a test shoot before hand was great, as the cinematographer I was able to play around with the lighting on location, decide on the best camera angles for each scene in the short film, I played around with the zoom, the ISO and took a lot of cutaway footage around the bar, I wanted to explore the idea of changing the focus on certain shots to give the idea that the character would be falling asleep, linking back to our idea in the script of the shy girl starting to feel sick, edited as if it's from her point of view, both fast and slow shots to be suitable for an editing montage of the night. I thought that the actors and the crew worked together well to collaborate to achieve a high-quality film, I worked closely with the director of actors in order to capture the scene, the sound man to ensure that the boom or any shadows weren't cast within the scene, I worked with the editor to think whilst shooting, how would these shots be edited together, would we need more closeups etc. I worked with the production designer and creative producer to think about what would be needed on the shoot to make it feel as if a night out, bottles, pills, lights, colours, clothes etc.
Editing: I thought that the editing stage worked well, again it was a collaborative effort, by having other people at this stage, we were able to bounce ideas off one another which changed pieces of the film around. Myself, Danielle and Josh worked together to arrange the clips into a rough edit which we will work further on for next Monday, we will have a rough edit to work from and the clips that we have planned to use have been renamed so easier for the editor to locate and import into Premiere Pro.
What I didn't like;
Planning: Although as a group the crew were organised throughout this project, I thought that the majority of actors in our group were awful at arranging their time, they never seemed to be free. I thought that it was hard to interact with the actors, even though we created a Facebook chat, one of the actors doesn't have Facebook, we continuously asked the actors to keep each other updated with the progress, any shooting dates etc.
Filming: We had organised 3 dates where we were going to film, the first date was proposed for a week after the test shoot, everyone agreed but then one of the actors had told us the day we were filming that they couldn't make it, we already had the equipment booked and everything which was a bit annoying, so we had to redo our bookings on multiple occasions to fit their availability. It was annoying for the toilet scene, on the back of the cubicle there was a mirror where the flush was, it took quite a lot of attempts to avoid getting myself and other members of the crew in the frame. One of the main problems that we came across through shooting was from the test shoot, the sound equipment that had been taken out hadn't been checked, the zoom was making a crackling noise, we tried different XLR leads and plugging it into the camera but nothing was working, meant that we had to cancel the shoot, I used this time to film as many cut away shots as I could, thinking about glasses, bottles, pumps, pipes, boxes, pictures, anything that would work as short clips for a montage of the night.
Here is a blog post to the first shoot that we did.
http://lukecurnopca.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/directing-and-performance-22nd-february.html
Editing: I think that we could have done with more time for the edit, once we had finished the filming it felt as if we had long enough to complete a decent edit, however I feel like if we had more time, we could have added more sound effects, chosen the music more to fit "The Fighter", thought more about what was going on around the characters as they were talking, I had input on the edit as well, myself and Josh used work from the shot list and annotating the script which well for the shooting as well as the editing.
Here is a link to my blogpost analysing the bar scene in "The Fighter".
http://lukecurnopca.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/directing-and-performance-4.html
What I think could be improved;
Planning: i think that we could have organised a time to meet the actors throughout the weeks but it seemed as if they weren't available to shoot at the same times we were, they were restricted to the time that they had to keep in contact with us, we still used the film chat on Facebook but I think the extra meeting could have helped with the character profiles and dates to film since one of the actors didn't have a Facebook account.
Filming: I think that I could have taken a few more cutaway shots, make the montage that Josh edited, make it really fast paced, have a variety of slow motion and fast shots to act as if time was passing by, make it feel like a proper night out, the lights could have been dimmed in the room a bit and the additional lighting from the LED panels could have been increased a bit to cast a few shadows when the actors walked past each other within the frame.
Editing: Again I think that we could have used more time to edit the piece together, instead of watching just the Bar scene from the film "The Fighter", I could have watched other scenes from the film.
Overall: Overall I think that the team worked really well together to cooperate throughout the shoot everyone was there to lend a hand on different scenarios, the fact that we managed to get extras from other actors, this helped to make the bar seem busy, helping to form cutaway shots.
Here are loads of shots from our film shoot to show the team as we worked together to collaborate on the shoot.
The Fighter - Bar Scene: Erkin Dogrucu. (2012). The Fighter - Bar Scene . [Online Video]. 30 March. Available from:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BCSF-GW-7k. [Accessed: 07 March 2016].
Note: I didn't have enough space on my Vimeo to upload the FILM A or B so I can't evidence it here, however they are placed in the google drive folders.
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