Ideas and Concepts BAFI103 (Evaluation) - 25th November

Wednesday 25th November 2015

Course Module - BAFI103                          Ideas and Concepts                     Lecture - Dan P

My written evaluation for "SUPER 8 CITY" PROJECT. 

Prior to last week lessons, I started to edit together a rough cut for my Super 8 City project, this was made possible because once our film strips had be telecined, we were all sent a link to download our films and import to our chosen platform/piece of software to edit on. I got together our research, from my blog posts, I started to have a closer look at our shot list and storyboard, thinking about how to re-create some of the shots that we hadn't captured. I took a look back at the ONA film that I discussed within the first week of our ideas and concepts lesson. I think that the whole short film was eye catching, had a great music track, collage of people shopping around New York City, used a variety of different camera angles, pans, close ups to show the movement of the public and transport within the area. After watching this film over I was determined to create an awesome Super 8 Film, with a weird soundtrack, use colours consistently and have a few pieces of footage that would be blown out, stick in the viewers head as they watched the Film. 














Initial Ideas  - What we wanted to achieve (planning)

I started off today’s lesson by listening to all the audio clips that I had recorded in the space of last month, these included sounds of the park, birds calling, waterfront, and a lot of wind from around the City Centre. I had recorded all of this audio using the H4N zoom recorder with the idea of getting ambience from around the town as our initial idea was to film in Plymouth, with a particular area of focus on the Civic centre. Whilst listening to the audio files, I discovered that the quality wasn’t as clear as I was expecting. The next step that I took in the lesson, involved replaying the edited footage over and over as I thought that from seeing the visuals, perhaps I could start to re-create sounds in my head to fit the footage, add a mood to the project, which again would be enhanced through colours and saturation from the clips. After watching it through, I took a walk around the college to record different sounds using a directional microphone i.e. the shotgun mic, I recorded sounds like the vending machine, elevator, people talking, and even a kettle boiling etc. 

Placing and tweaking the audio tracks, recreating new tracks (editing)

I had a clear understanding of what sounds would fit; from today I can now understand that I have completely re-created the audio, to sound mysterious and bring the visuals to life. I thought that the sounds of the extractor fan and the elevator would work well with the shots of the buildings, as the first shot in the film is a panning shot, a high angle pan, rising up the face of an old structure, when watching this clip back, it gave me the impression that I was in an elevator, rising skywards. I started to gather a few more audio clips of machines, especially the elevator as I wanted to re-create the noises and sounds of the mechanics, perhaps I could change the levels of the sound. I thought it could accentuate the amount of power of the elevator as it traveled from the first to the third floor. Listening back to the sounds of the elevator, it sounded tinny and pretty echoey but I used this to my advantage, throughout the sections of the buildings I played around with the audio levels, speed/duration of the clips, making both the clips and sounds faster as the camera panned up and slower as it panned down, giving my overall project a different perspective.

Direct sound and video footage amendments (editing)

In changing the audio to sound like another sound I thought it became pressurized, gave the film an industrialization feel, with everything moving and cranking, using simplistic audio to enhance the movement of places and machinery. My favourite piece of audio recording was from the sound of a kettle boiling, going back to the edit I can remember that I had taken one of the water shots and reversed the footage so that it looked as if the bubbles, surface of the water was being sucked up across the screen. With this in mind I then played around with the speed and duration for the kettle sound, reversed it and changed the audio level by placing key points and dragging them down to create a curve. I thought this worked extremely well as it gave the impression that the water was slowly building up as the kettle boiled (fading in and out).

Another clip that I thought worked well was when there was a pan shot across a granite wall, I decided to take the noise of the elevator doors closing and again reversed it.  I then increased the sound by dragging the audio bar up a little, reversed the sound and started cutting segments together from when the doors opened, once finished and played back it sounded like the cranks, machinery on board a warship. I thought it made it sound unbelievably abstract and again links into the idea of industrialization, thinking about the brief that we were set, to make an abstract type film and be creative with the sound to reflect the visuals.

Colours

I played around with the colours for one of the window shots, it came out over exposed but I thought that this looked really cool as all of the windows were blown out, after I had studied it a few times, I thought it looked like railings. I played around with the white balance and the PARADE RGB colours that we were instructed on how to use in Stu’s lesson, Practical Screen-craft. Once I glanced at the shot several times,  I thought that the film grain was really detailed, it gave the impression that the clip was fading away. 

I also played around with a few of the water clips, changing the saturation and brightness to help bring out the reflections in the water, linking back to our initial idea. I can remember our lecturers stating its amazing how much of a difference little tweaks can have on things like the audio and footage of a film, I now understand what was meant by this. 

I wanted to leave some of the colours the same as they came out really nice and it looked realistic and I was afraid to add colour correction onto individual images as some might stand out and other shots could just look out of place. However, now that I have played around with the colours,  it has given the film a dirty/grubby look, linking back to my idea of industrialization. I thought that the sound enhanced the colours for the footage too, especially with the noise of the kettle, the colours of the water were changed slightly to make them seem dark and add more detail onto the ripples and bubbles as Jay pressed his foot into the water. 

Additional sound/speed changes and titles

Once I had edited and placed the majority of sound clips and video footage on the timeline, I asked Jay to have a listen with me to gage his views and opinions on what I had created. Shortly afterwards we tweaked the starts and ending of certain clips, replaced a few shots, experimented with more colour correction, which all helped to improve the outcome we were looking for, We then finally added our titles on, including the title for the film “City 8” and then our names and the PCA (Plymouth College of Art) end slide. 

Conclusion

What went well?

Overall, I was really impressed with the final product that myself and Jay had created, I felt like I had achieved a different perspective on how the city looks and feels, how everything moves. Thinking about what specific things sound like and in re-creating interesting audio I was able to create a satisfying abstract film. After letting a few of the students view our film, I discovered that everyone had a different perception of the whole video which got me thinking that this sort of film could have been used as a segment in a Stanley Kubrick or a newer Alfred Hitchcock film. Looking back at the end result I still can’t believe that through all the problems that arose, we still managed to create a really good Super 8 Film for our Super 8 City module, I really enjoyed the whole experience, especially working on a different medium.

What I felt could be changed or improved for future projects?

For future projects I would like to approach the edit in a slightly different way, by cutting down the raw footage to a minute, then starting to view the content and arrange the clips into sections, water, buildings, designs, colours etc. I would then get a clear idea as to the sorts of sounds that could be used to give my films a different perspective. 

Depending on the sound that I want to collect for any particular project, I will now think about using a directional microphone for recording near-by sounds but I will still use the H4N zoom recorder to capture ambience. 

We were unlucky with our project because the weather was too sunny on the day of our filming, we wanted a lot of cloud coverage. The sunny weather meant that we had to change the locations pretty sharpish and we weren’t able to utilize our initial idea of reflections in the water but we still managed to get a few of our proposed shots i.e. panning shots of buildings, the pole reflection, water bubbling and various shots of the money centre’s windows and architecture. Throughout the shoot, we kept thinking about light conditions and how shots could be pieced together but it was just too sunny and we wanted it to be a lot darker, besides it rained for the rest of that week. 

I would like to explore the camera setting a lot further for future projects, playing around with the light metres, focus, iris, frame rate etc. 

References

All of the images above have been taken by myself, screen grabs using preview on my Mac laptop - November 2015 - Images from our film City 8

ONA. (2014). Super 8 Short Film . [Online Video]. 2014. Available from: https://vimeo.com/92069466. [Accessed: 25th November 2015].

Ideas and Concepts BAFI103 - 16th November

Tuesday 16th November 2015

Course Module - BAFI103                          Ideas and Concepts                       Lecture - Dan P

Reviewing Super 8 Films 

Throughout the day, we spent time looking at everyone's super 8 films to critique and reveal what our films actually looked liked, had everything we had planned to shoot worked? Mine and Jay's was the first film to be showcased on the big screen, at first I felt a little nervous but at the same time I was ambitious to find out how successful our shot was, what worked well and had the colours and effects that we proposed, did they come out the way that we wanted, especially the shots showing reflections in water.

One of the clips that really stood out to me was towards the middle of our footage, we filmed from a really high angle as one of the concrete struts was reflecting in a puddle of water, wanted to give the feel that we were using the water to reflect back on the time period of the building and the age of the buildings architecture, in this case the concrete struts which held up the outside interior roofs around the Civic Centre. The film appeared to be received well by other students in the class, they liked the panning shots of the building and so I have planned to place this shot at the start of the film.

I was quite pleased with the shoot itself and after watching the footage back, I now have a digital copy which I can import into Premiere Pro, my chosen editing software to use for this super 8 project. From looking at the film, I have generated a visual storyboard, also I have decided on a few more sound recording ideas which could be beneficial to make our film feel/look abstract.

Great panning shot, looking up at the scale of the building, seems taller than it actually is, adds a separate dimension to the architecture of the building. The colours from the film itself help to reinforce the age of the pebble dash and concrete struts attached to the place, reinforces our proposed VO line "Their original intent forgotten"

Photographs were taken using the Nizo, Super 8 camera, the image itself is a screenshot from our film, "City 8". It was taken using preview on my Mac Laptop - November 2015 Film by Luke Curno and Jay Austin (PCA students). 

Ideas and Concepts BAFI103 - 9th November

Monday 9th November 2015 

Course Module - BAFI103                          Ideas and Concepts                       Lecture - Dan P

Direct Animation 

As a class we talked about how the filming on super 8 experience went, decided on some negatives and positives throughout peoples shoots, here are a few;

Parallax view of the world in film.

Committed and stuck with film - Decide on the image by looking through the camera's view finder and making sure that the needle lined up.

Can't replay - No review function unlike a DSLR camera where we have the option to discard straight away. More planning needed for film.

Equipment was heavy - a lot of extra attachments were needed.

Different Aspect Ratio

The cameras were straight forward to use - no getting lost within the camera's menu - doesn't have one. You can manually change the cameras settings using the dials on the side to adjust the frame rate, focus, light balance etc.

Don't have any direct sounds for the scene - once it has been developed we can review our film and decide on the sounds needed within our piece. (Doesn't record sound).

For the rest of the day, we started to use tools on black, clear and existing film stocks to add different perspectives and experiment on what works and how we can achieve or create a clever animation.

Felted Pens
Pins
Craft knives
Scalpels
Sparkly Nail Varnish
Glass Paint - Transparent
Household Bleach
Abrasive pads and sandpaper

Every one of these tools gave a different effect but when when you applied more than one effect on-top of each other, it truly looked awesome i.e. using a coat of bleach, dabbing it on specific points of the strip, then using a pin to apply scratches over the top, it looked like strands of DNA and my idea had been a forensic scene, used a red pen again to collage some blood over the top. The blood started to smudge through the scratches giving the look of a cut, looked awesome.

Finally, we were each given a piece of film strip with a number from an existing film, the idea was to use any tools, techniques from this morning and to direct animate over the reel. It was great as we had something to work with, I particularly liked scratching over the piece of film strip that I had, showed a pattern of tiles on the floor, I used felt tips to colour in the tiles and then used the sandpaper to scratch over the colours to give a sharp effect to the outlines. Lastly I decided to coat over the strip with some bleach, outlining the man who was presented in the centre of the frame, wanted to make him appear faded with the background in focus for the tiles.

Ideas and Concepts BAFI103 - 19th October

Monday 19th October 2015 

Course Module - BAFI103                          Ideas and Concepts                       Lecture - Dan P

Tutorial for Super 8 City

Jay didn't turn up to this tutorial so I went solo - Myself and Dan, the lecturer discussed the Super 8 Project ideas that I had come up with, with the aim of achieving a final plan for filming.

Nizo camera - We will request a tripod to enable us to film the panning shot of the Civic Centre, get different angles of the centre, high angle, low angle, wide angle etc.

We can use the same shots over, play it again in reverse, slow motion, cut away, lighter/darker, play around with the brightness and colour in post, give the image a different perspective that can be perceived in many ways.

Thought further about our shot list for the Super 8 project, what sort of angles am I going to use, how am I going to achieve the frames, continuous or using single frames to create a time-lapse effect, could be really effective to slow down the motion of the ripples in the water, creates a distorted image which is reflected back through the cameras viewfinder.

Dan, our lecturer advised me about the lines of the building, keep them lined up, try to avoid any curvature with the building architecture.

Talked about the camera's settings, set the red dots on everything for the standard shooting mode, could be worth getting a cable release for the camera which will require the camera on the black dot for use, 18mm standard use for the super 8 camera.

Collect my film stock on Friday from Stu at ERC and then book the camera for a day on the week commencing, ask Stu if he can run through operating the settings of the camera to familiarise myself with what can be achieved.

Super 8 test - IPAD APP

Prior to my discussion with Dan P, I decided to download a super 8 application onto my IPAD as wanted to see what the footage would look like in Super 8 film, the tests went really well, especially when I could see the water reflecting of the sides of the walls. However, due to the sun being really bright, the reflection in the water was a bit faded, which in my mind I thought helped to add a mysterious mood to the building, making it look decrepit. Also I thought that this would make the film look like it was fading away, giving it a scratched effect look.

From today's test, I know that this specific shot will have to be filmed early morning or late afternoon as I need the cloud cover in order to get the best reflection. Having been out today, I have found a few different angles and reflections which I think could work, one panning shot made the building look like an elevator as I moved the tripods handle downwards, with the camera looking up at the roof of the building.

All of the above images were taken using the SUPER 8 application on my IPAD - Videos captured by Luke Curno - October 2015 - Civic Centre, Plymouth. 

Ideas and Concepts BAFI103 - 12th October

Monday 12th October 2015

Course Module - BAFI103                          Ideas and Concepts                       Lecture - Dan P

Super 8 City - Progress and planning 

Myself and jay got together, looking back on the footage that I had shot in the previous week, we started to write down a shot list for the production, we discussed about the middle content for our Super 8 film and how the angles and parts of the building could link on to each other, possible transitions, effects for post production or just manually using the film camera to achieve creativity. 

Panning shot from the water to the top of the building, parallel lines and a line of symmetry down the middle of the building. Using the water puddles to capture reflections and the remains of architecture on the outside of the Civic Centre. Looking at the different patterns and surroundings that we could film and use to create a narrative for our super 8 film, here are a few ideas that I came up with;

Wide angle of the Civic Centre

Reflections in the water

Zoom shot - Portraying the clouds in the windows of the Money Centre 

Experimenting with lights and shadows around the buildings, taking into consideration about the angles we could film to show the decrepit state of buildings. 

Possible Voice Over that we thought could be used to add a narrative to our Super 8 Film, would link the footage of buildings to the words i.e. the concrete struts around the Civic Centre and underneath the Money Centre. 

Here is the VO lines that we came up with;

Pebble dash is the new black
Concrete struts, the new white
Fragile glass towers
Monuments to man's bloated ego
Their original intent forgotten

Ideas and Concepts BAFI103 - 8th October

Thursday 8th October 2015

Course Module - BAFI103                          Ideas and Concepts                       Lecture - Dan P

Location Scouting and Shooting

Myself Josh and Dan went out on a shoot last Thursday to capture some ordinary shadows and reflections around the city centre, we constantly generated ideas while walking around plymouth, using interesting angles, locations and focal lengths on the camera, whilst adjusting the lighting to suit the time of day or mood that we wanted to represent. We also made decisions around changing the iris, especially for a shot where I started filming the clouds reflecting in the window of the Money Centre (Mayflower Street). We started of at the top of town, but our main shoot was carried out by the Civic Centre, Plymouth, we played around with the reflections of different parts of the building around the pool and the reflection of ourselves as we walked past the buildings windows and small puddles along the ground. 

The shoot as a whole worked really well and we captured the reflections of the buildings as we proposed, here are just a few of the shots that we liked, being imaginative and experimental with the shape of the buildings and artefacts from around the Civic Centre. 

Go-Pro Footage by Dan Hobbs - Plymouth College of Art student - I was out shooting with him and Josh (PCA students) - October 2015 

Ideas and Concepts BAFI103 - 6th October

Tuesday 6th October 2015 

Course Module - BAFI103                          Ideas and Concepts                       Lecture - Dan P

Constructive Environment

World Of Tomorrow (1939) - (gives the impression of Las Vegas) - A film we viewed during class 

We looked at a short film portraying New York's World's Fair, it gave a sense of what America could be like in the future, it gives the idea that they are great in power. Throughout the film I picked up on the content, it could be seen as propaganda as they make it seem like it's the biggest country, and forms of racism because the coloured people were treated like a sideshow. The buildings within the film looked imposing as they were grand, dominated by ornate architecture, the whole piece was edited clearly and everyone looked happy, symbolised through the dancing and events going on in the images. Political and cultural messages might be invisible to some people, driven by capitalism (my own opinion). 

Googie Architecture - Modern 

Walkways on stilts (concrete struts), pyramid structures

Different angles - Logo McDonalds, shaped for looking like carriers that you get for your chips

Primitive aspirational, past and future.

Boomerang shapes for roofs, common feature, (symbolising the wing of a delta bomber plane). 

Large domes, often made of concrete. 

Cars were built to look like Jets 

Googie buildings appear to float - a few attracting the motorists, glass fronts acted as virtual billboards.

Atomic Energy - Americas abilities to generate the products and the power is fulfilling.

We went out for a walk with the class to look at the city and see what things stood out or could be interpreted in different ways, looking at reflections, shadows, with a specific area of focus at materials used, whats the potential for the place we are looking at. Explored Plymouth City Centre, went to places like the bank, drakes circus, shops, car park, court, guildhall, water features. 

My Concepts and Ideas

Drakes Circus - The entrance to the shopping precinct is shaped and it looks like the bottom of a bridge deck, bottom of a boat.

Around by the Billabong Surf shop there was a blue box which was positioned on the outcrop of a building, looks really significant and can be seen from far away, gave me the impression of the TARDIS police box in Dr Who, I thought this could perhaps be linked to our short film as not only would it link into the journey but also it's as if by shooting on film that we have travelled back in time - could be enhanced by film grain and colours (sepia tones). 

We looked at various buildings around the city centre, they were modern, ruins, pubs, shops, banks, theatres, parks etc. Lots of buildings had the decrepit feel to them by this I mean that after analysing them on a 360 point, we started to see different shots, vertigoes, glass panels and the fact that in some places the buildings were crumbling, structures have been built in places for cover from the loose debris that have fallen in the past. 

The photographs above were taken on my mobile phone - Images by Luke Curno - October 2015  - Plymouth City Centre. 

RESURGAM - Will rise again (linked to the bombed church) Time traveling (TARDIS box), when were they built, what has been left. At night it could be said that the City Centre looks like a ghost town apart from Union street which is full of bars and night clubs.

Reference 

The World of Tomorrow (1939) Directed by Fredrick Ullman Jr. [Short Documentary]. USA: PerescopeFilm.com 

Ideas and Concepts BAFI103 - 5th October

Monday 5th October 2015

Course Module - BAFI103                       Ideas and Concepts                       Lecture - Dan P

Location Scouting

Today I went through some of the photographs that I took on the wednesday after we had finished early for the day, I took a trip up to the park behind the University and myself and Dan Hobbs (another student) booked out a canon XF100 and a Nikon DSLR camera as we wanted to get to grips with how they work and what purpose they can serve when out on location.

The footage wasn't amazing, but we we wanted to go out to test the cameras, ISO/White balance, depth of field, sound quality and additional features such as the shoot modes etc.

Here are a few images that we captured to show us using the cameras, I got down to ground level to film a spider, carefully and slowly zooming the camera, in and out to play with the depth of field and zoom, when played back, the footage was clear and it the attention to detail was great on the web, got to see the water droplets on foliage.

The images below were captured using the nikon DSLR that myself and Dan took out with us. Images taken by Luke Curno and Dan Hobbs (PCA students) - October 2015 - Beaumont Park. 

Ideas and Concepts BAFI103 - 1st October

Thursday 1st October 2015

Course Module - BAFI103                          Ideas and Concepts                       Lecture - Dan P

Sound Work Effects

I decided to book out some recording equipment from the ERC as I wanted to use my time to explore different sounds around Plymouth, which of course is the location that we will be shooting our Super 8 film. Throughout the day I ventured alone recording a range of sounds around our City centre including places like the Barbican, The Hoe, Parks, Seafront, Cafes, Drakes Circus - shopping mall and various modes of transport. 

I explored different techniques on recording the sound using a Zoom H4N mic with a pair of Sony headphones, I wanted to create my own sound clips for future work and to start creating a library that I will build up over time, some of which I hope to use in this Super 8 City project. Along the way I attempted to capture some interesting noise i.e. water rushing, birds, construction work, vehicles, public speaking, and a lot of WIND! I also explored the possibilities of creating my own sounds whilst location scouting, some of them worked i.e. using my feet to rustle the leaves, walking along the beach, kicking pebbles, heavy breathing and many others.

I tried to play around with the volume of the clips, I started to record the subject at a low volume and then during the recording, I slowly upped the volume to give the effect that I was traveling closer/further and it sounded like I was moving the placement of the microphone, pushing it towards the sound, was effective for the sounds of the water rushing under my feet.

However, I think that if I had used an additional mic for the ZooM H4N recorder, something like a directional microphone, this would have been great for the sounds of vehicles, water, walking, chatting etc. Despite my initial ideas, I was pleased with a few of the sounds that I managed to achieve and I have started to play them back, thinking about what I could improve on for future recording and I have filed the correctly, re-naming the ones that I would like to use for this specific project. 

Ideas and Concepts - 29th September

Tuesday 29th September 2015

Course Module - BAFI103                          Ideas and Concepts                       Lecture - Dan P

Location Scouting 

Since we finished early on the Tuesday, my partner and I thought it would be a great opportunity to go out and look for iconic places to feature within our Super 8 Film, thinking about camera angles and different effects that could be applied.

We started of by walking to the barbican, lovely sunny day and we decided to take pictures of the harbour, using the reflections in the water and the ripples, experimenting with ISO and Aperture. Keeping to the harbour wall, we walked around the barbican up to the Hoe, looking into the types of camera shots that could be achieved i.e. a shot overlooking the channel with boats and vessels appearing across the frame, play with depth of field by bringing the boats into focus and the background out of focus.

Here are a few shots with possible camera ideas, my partner and I have still agreed to film the piece like a journey, places link to each other and it has a playful element to it as everything filmed is what we came across on our journey around Plymouth. Started to generate final ideas and came up with a lot more as we adventured through the city looking at objects, buildings and locations that could be interpreted by the audience in different ways.

Camera shots/angles

Types of places visited Hoe, Park, Barbican... wanted to become imaginative with places and shapes, experimenting with shadows and light.

 











Photographs above were taken by Luke Curno and Jay Austin on our mobile phones - PCA Students - September 2015 - Portrays The Hoe, Barbican, West Hoe Park

Introduction to Ideas and Concepts BAFI103 - 28th September

Monday 28th September 2015

Course Module - BAFI103                          Ideas and Concepts                       Lecture - Dan P

Week 1

 Lesson 1 Objectives:

• Setting up a blog
• Show rough work - Get feedback through group discussions 
• Competition and co-operation

Introduction to 'Super 8 City' 

Our lecturer Dan introduced himself to the class, we gradually got to learn about his background and how he got into film, from just a young age he admired Punk as a music genre and he frequently took his camera along to music gigs where he filmed closely alongside a band called Napalm Death.

During the morning session, we were told to set up our blogs which would be used to record and display our research/post production ideas and of course our Super 8 project with an evaluation, 1000 words to talk about our piece, why did we film this, what was the message we were trying to get across.

Group Discussions happened throughout the day which helped to generate lots of ideas from which myself and Jay took away with us to discuss further, we researched into Super 8 films which previously had been created by Plymouth College of Art students. One specific piece of the students work which caught my eye had a native feel to it, shot in the form of a journey where we could see artefacts, caves, plus it contained a soundtrack of someones footsteps, they were on a journey through a native place (Didjeridu noises (instrument) - which linked back to the native atmosphere, which in my view, the film could have been set in Africa or Australia.

My partner and I started to research further into the types of effects that could be used, how they can be used effectively i.e. Bleaching, Grain, Tone etc and we looked into how the camera can operate effectively to make an aesthetically pleasing product. We looked at others work on sites such as Youtube and Vimeo to see the sorts of films that could be produced with a super 8 camera. 

Research Links

Super 8 Film by ONA - Format Vimeo

ONA. (2014). Super 8 Short Film . [Online Video]. 2014. Available from: https://vimeo.com/92069466. [Accessed: 28 September 2015].

This short film was shot on Super 8, I really like the way that it was edited, the fact that it didn't have a certain continuity i.e. the film was sped up to show the journey and slowed down during the parts where we see the camera's, made to be a point of focus. I also really liked the way that the camera angles led on to each other. i.e. there was a montage at 16sec's where we see a lady walking down the street with her camera, cuts to a short clip of her holding a camera and then cuts to her walking down the street. The filmmaker (cinematographer) worked well to establish New York City, portraying a variety of camera angles showing movement i.e. local transport and members of the public.

Other key elements that stood out for me were, height of the buildings for the establishing shots, low camera angles used to look up at the subjects, the piece appeared like it had been shot at various times of day (day and night) which worked effectively against the black and white collage, all contributing to enhance the videos message of a film being made of a tourist with a camera (my personal opinion).

Personnel Ideas - Storyline and possible locations: 

Take a variety of shots in the city, go out beforehand and think about they types of camera angles that could be used, using a few ideas that I picked up from my background research during Post Production.

Shoot the footage from a hand perspective, the idea behind that we use our hands for near enough everything, I think that this idea would help to create an element of suspense as the viewer won't see the character, could be anyone.

From the Super 8 film which I talked about above, I would like to explore the possibility of the film being shot in the form of a journey, perhaps the actor could be a new student, unfamiliar of the scenes and iconic places in Plymouth. However, I have started to think about the types of shot locations, I've asked people what comes to mind when they hear Plymouth, the majority said 'The Hoe, Barbican, Theatre, Vue Cinema etc so to appeal to this demographic I think that I would like to include footage to portray these landmarks, an idea that sprung to my mind would be to shoot a short piece of footage from a 1st person perspective, pull hands apart in front of camera to reveal Smeaton's Tower.

Camera angles and sound:

Wide angled shots - Use iconic places to help establish the place, time of day for the audience.

Mixture of High and Low angled shots - Idea of a low angled shot to show someone walking into frame, taking off an item of clothing, sunglasses or checking their watch, next perhaps we see them taking out a map, zoom into the name on the map but don't see their face... Welcome to Plymouth... cut to a collage with a close up crop on the name of the map, enhances the location for the short film.

The sound will be recorded using a zoom mic, try and pick the sounds up whilst on location, discussions, birds, sea, transport, sounds that we make with our hands i.e. the opening and shutting of doors, clapping and the rusting of paper.