Link to 'Lighting, Composition, Texture' Photographs

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Report and Evaluation of first Group Project: Continuity Cutting Assignment

Infinite Sky – Group 2

Report and Evaluation of First Group Project: Continuity Cutting Assignment

Group 2 Members:

Infinite Sky

Kathryn Lunt

Beckah Hornsey

Steph Bates

Mido Ringer

Soph Edwards

Brief:

'Produce a short sequence (2-3 min) in continuous style. Your sequence must use a range of traditional camera framing techniques, (such as CU, MS, LS etc.) and camera moves (pan, track, zoom)..and include an example of POV...The sequence will be in the style of Bond/Mission Impossible/The Fugitive/Indiana Jones/
Tomb Raider/Uncharted 2'

Day 1 – Monday 31 October

Present: Sky, Kathryn, Beckah, Steph and Soph.

We started by discussing ideas and whittled our style-choices down to an Indiana Jones style pursuit along the corridors of the Regent Street building or a Tomb Raider style video. This was partly based on the fact that all of the Group Videos we had seen so far had been in the style of either Bond or Mission Impossible and we therefore wanted to try something a little different.

From the outset, Beckah stated that she wanted to play the part of Lara Croft and dangle from a tree! Since no-one else particularly wished to appear in the video and to do something in the style of Indiana Jones would require a fair amount of prop-making that we don't have time for, we have decided to go for Tomb Raider as our choice of style for the project.

Notes from Brainstorming Session:

What are the key elements of the Tomb Raider game and film?

a) Features a 'female Indiana Jones'

    → she is rich (heiress)

    → has a butler

b) She goes on missions generally featuring lost treasure 
    (usually referencing a myth)

    → some outdoor scenes – mostly athletic

    → some indoor featuring stone rooms, locked doors etc.

c) She wears a distinctive costume

    → Black vest, black fingerless gloves, shorts (leather?), boots, arms belt and  
   also weapons strapped to thighs.

d) She says 'Ugh!' when she lunges for something and misses!

e) Colours in the game:

    → browns, golds, greys.

    → subdued lighting mostly from the side

    → mostly dark backgrounds

¹

Lara Croft 
 

http://tinyurl.com/6x5q3vo

Ideas for possible storylines

1. Girl sees cat up a tree. She rescues it Lara Croft style and it turns out to be a stuffed toy.

2. Girl chases cat through the wood:

    (a) it has a special jewel on its collar or

    (b) she thinks it's her own, lost cat.

3. Switch 'cat' for a 'device' that she has to find before someone else gets it.

4. Girl gets a call on her mobile and has to run faster towards a device located in  a tree than someone else who is also after it (perhaps they see her taking the call and know she'll lead them to it?)

5. Girl gets a call on her mobile. We can hear the voice on the other end (ring modulator filter applied to the voice). She looks around and spots the target - a device of some kind - and starts walking towards it. Camera pans to a person watching her (POV shot) who sets off following her.  She looks round and sees his reflection in a shop window or mirror (POV shot) and begins to run (cat and mouse thing for a while). She starts running towards a wooded area / tree. She sees an object (hanging from the tree?) and they both run towards it very quickly. She fetches the object down from the tree and he snatches it from her. She falls as he runs off. She shoots him.

Possible Locations suggested:

Acton Park

Bellevue Park

Eagles Meadow

'Silver Curves' by roadside (beyond clubs)

Wepre Park (distant but Soph has offered to drive us)

Props (cost to be divided between six):

Gun

Object ('device' of some kind or jewel - something which can dangle from a branch)

Mirror (compact mirror)

Mobile phone

Arms belt

Costume:

Leggings (black)

Boots

Black Vest

Arms belt

Equipment:

Camera

Tripod

Props

The brainstorming session complete and the outlines of our basic story finalised, we split up on various missions to locate and buy props and costumes, meeting up at lunchtime to explore Bellevue Park to see if it would be a suitable location for our film. Following instructions from a lady at TK Maxx we found our way there very easily and instantly recognised it from one of the videos made by another group. 

Unable to find any trees suitable for Beckah to hang from, we instead experimented with the metal and wooden 'adventure playground' style play equipment sets to see how they could lend themselves to our plot.

We attached a piece of kitchen roll to a green 'climbing hoop' and Beckah was able to retrieve it with a leap, which meant that we could hang our device or piece of jewellery from these hoops. 
 

A stroll around the hill brought us to an area of seating in front of the bandstand, opposite an avenue of trees behind which 'Lara's enemy' could dodge and hide whenever she turned round.

We could envisage Lara running up the hill that lay further along this path with him in pursuit.






Based on this and the park's proximity to 49 Regent Street, we decided that there would be no need to look further for suitable locations as Bellevue Park would adequately meet our needs.

Back at Regent Street we developed our storyline further and arrived at the following:

Final Storyline:

1. 'Lara' (played by Beckah) sits on a bench beside a leafy pathway (near the bandstand).

2. She receives a phone call on her mobile*

* later amended to a text which the audience can read - wording yet to be    discussed – instructing her to find some jewels.

3. In response to this she starts to make her way along the path towards the centre of the park, not noticing that she is being followed by a man in a hat (played by Mido).

4. She feels uneasy but each time she looks around there's no-one to be seen: the man has dodged behind one of the trees lining the pathway.

5. She eventually stops and using a compact pretends to apply lipstick, thereby catching sight of him behind her in her mirror.

6. Seeing him she now sets off at a run and he chases after her.

7. She runs up, over the hill, pauses and looks about her, searching for the target she was told in the text to find and sees it - a collection of necklaces - hanging from the green climbing hoops in the adventure playground area.

8. She runs towards them, jumps and pulls them down from the hoop.

9. She runs off with them, pursued by the man.

10. As he closes in on her she does a few rolls to evade him.

11. She climbs the horizontal pole frame but

     (a) gets trapped upside down or

     (b) the man shakes her from the pole to the ground by lifting it (it may be too
     heavy for one person to lift as they are stout poles so we will decide at the  
     time.)

12. The man grabs the jewels from her, she leaps up and they tussle over them for a few moments.

13. He pushes her to the ground, steps over her and looks as though he's going to kill her, perhaps by crushing her neck with his foot.

14. At the last moment she reaches for her gun and shoots him.

15. Closing shot is of a triumphant Lara walking away with her back to us.

We also discussed ideas for shots (using the numbers from the storyline above)

1. Establishing shot of Lara on bench in park sitting in profile to the left, the bandstand behind her and the tree-lined pathway to the front, right of frame.

2. Close-up of text (from behind which shoulder?)

     → POV shot.

3. Front-on long-shot of Lara on the left walking towards camera, man dodging behind trees on right.

5. Close-up of man's image in her compact mirror (from behind which shoulder?)

     → POV shot.

7. POV shot.

13. Man is seen from the ground up towering over her, his shape silhouetted 
     against the sky.

        → POV shot → her reaction.

15. Closing Long-shot

We researched music that could accompany the video and arrived at the following shortlist:

Prince of Persia & Lara Croft

Hadouken! - Bombshock

Darude - Sandstorm

Noisia - Machine Gun

Back home that evening I typed up my notes from the days' work and uploaded them together with my photographs to our Facebook Group so that everyone could have access and begin work on their storyboards for the following day.

 Day 2 – Tuesday 01-11-11

Present: Sky, Kathryn, Beckah, Steph and Soph.

It was a beautiful sunny morning when we all arrived at Regent Street. Beckah got changed into her costume and make up and we then fetched the camera and tripod and made our way to Bellevue Park. We were initially concerned about a jump in continuity if the weather conditions changed so we checked the internet for the forecast and read that the weather was set to remain fair for the next day or so which gave us some confidence.

We captured the first two scenes without a problem. Mido (who was not feeling well) arrived at lunchtime and in the afternoon Marisse and Stewart very kindly allowed those of us who were making videos to continue filming. We were consequently able to to complete our footage as far as the scene where Beckah and Mido disappear in silhouette over the brow of the hill.

It was decided to eliminate the scene where Beckah catches sight of Mido behind her in her mirror. The reason for this is that it would have necessitated 'crossing the line' to film and posed all sorts of problems capturing the image without including the camera in the reflection. We could have done it but the general consensus was that we would have then needed several more shots to get us back onto the right side of the line and the light was beginning to go at this point and people were getting tired. Instead we waited until Beckah was just beginning to climb the hill for her to finally glimpse her enemy, causing them both to run upwards and out of sight.

The sun was beginning to set as we returned the equipment to Regent Street and made our way homeward.

This was my first experience of filming with a group and to my surprise I found myself directing a lot – if only to stop people erupting into laughter while the camera was on them - the light was fading quickly and I was concerned that we should not have to re-film ordered sequences the following day in a different light with different shadows.

Day 3 – Wednesday 03-11-11

Present: Sky, Kathryn, Beckah, Steph, and Mido.

Three of us were feeling pretty ill (sore throat/chest infection etc.,) so we started the morning by dosing up on Lem-Sip Max, Cocodamol (not together, mind!) and Vitamin C tablets. We then tottered somewhat deliriously to Bellevue Park to complete our shoot. 

Contrary to the promises of the internet, the sky was overcast and threatening rain. This meant that our actors would appear to begin running up the hill in golden autumn sunshine and crest it in grim, grey November drizzle. There was nothing we could do about this however – the project-time was too short to risk either re-shooting the previous footage thus delaying this day's shots, or waiting to shoot on a better day, should one come along. We decided that if the worst came to the worst we could de-saturate the finished film slightly and even put a mild sepia filter over it in keeping with the colours of the original game to subdue the continuity jump.

All of us who were present took turns at being behind the camera in order to gain experience both in filming and directing. Based on the fact that our two stars were feeling poorly we shot the easiest scenes such as chases over short stretches of ground first and tried to space out takes of the more demanding material so that they would have the opportunity to recover in between.

I found keeping both actors in shot during the pursuit scenes the most difficult aspect of this day's filming. If they were a realistic distance apart, one of them would run out of walking space or even leave the frame altogether; running too close to one another meant that although both stayed in frame the drama was lost since all the pursuer would logically need to do to fell their quarry is lean forward a bit and I didn't want to insult the audience's intelligence. In the end I had to pull back further than I would have liked in order to keep both actors in frame and this meant that some scenes lost a little of their emotional impact.

Despite their colds, Beckah and Mido were enthusiastic and willing actors and it is thanks to their attitude that most of our shots were completed in two or three takes; by the end of the afternoon we had the whole of our sequence filmed.

Day 4 – Thursday 04-11-11

Present: Sky, Kathryn, Beckah, Steph, and Soph.

We spent all of the morning and the second part of the afternoon – following the lecture at Plas Coch - in the hub, editing our uploaded footage. Only Beckah had any experience of working with Final Cut Pro, the majority of us having either used Premier Pro or Moviemaker, but the principles were so similar to those we already knew that it was not difficult to pick up the basics.

We took turns at editing, but the bulk of it fell naturally to Beckah simply because she was so much faster with the software than we were, with the rest of the group sitting around the screen offering our ideas, suggestions and comments as she worked.

We cut away all footage that we weren't happy with and our movie was effectively complete by 4pm, but our celebrations were somewhat subdued by the discovery that we had been a little too ruthless - the entire sequence only lasted a little over a minute and lacked an Establishing Shot. None of us being available for further work over the weekend, we will probably have to edit back in some of the discarded footage in order to bring our movie to the required length on Monday, when we will also add the transitions, titles and music.

Evaluation

Our task was to create a 2-3 minute sequence in continuous style in order to demonstrate our understanding of both traditional camera framing techniques and editing for continuity. Thanks to the lectures, group videos already shown for this assignment and related crits which preceded our turn for this project I believe we have succeeded in meeting this objective, my one concern being that the our finished film is slightly shorter than it should be.

During the course of this assignment I have learnt a great deal about continuity and 'crossing the line'. With so many people present during the actual filming process it was easy to stay on the 'right side of the line' and in spite of the fact that we were not filming in sequence, by the second day the sense of where 'the line' was had become almost automatic. I also learned a great deal by watching how other group members envisaged and filmed scenes for subsequent editing and now feel I have an improved grasp of the way that shots such as POV can be edited together as a seamless narrative.

Although this is the first time I have worked on the creation of a video with a group, I have worked on group projects whilst at my previous college and seen them being de-railed through poor communication, unrealistic aims and personality clashes. Because of this, I initially found myself approaching this project with some trepidation. I needn't have worried however; the whole experience of working with Group Two was enjoyable, largely due to its members' enthusiasm and willingness to participate.

The balance between people with strong personalities and those of a quieter disposition was extremely good and communication between us was excellent. Feedback from all group members throughout the project was clear and if people said they were going to do something, they could be relied upon to carry it out. A mutual respect grew up between us during the course of the week as we began to see one another's skills in action. Despite the fact that these skills manifested in different areas for each person, no individual hogged any of the more enjoyable tasks and everyone was given the opportunity throughout the course of the project to express their opinions and take a turn at each stage of production. We consulted one another about every aspect of the project as it developed and were able to swiftly negotiate our way through any problems we encountered. I hope that our audience will enjoy watching our little movie as much as we did making it.

1http://software.emule.com/fondo-final-fantasy-x-tidus/