Prelim Task - The Filming

We were split into to groups to film our prelim task, my group consisted of myself, Charlie, Seb and William. I was the director, Charlie was cinematographer and Seb and William were actors. We used about forty-five minutes to film our task in its entirety. We had to follow a specific storyboard and follow the shots and lines exactly. The storyboard looked like this:

For our set we used the editing suite and had the large plasma and a computer screensaver as background props. The idea was that Darth Vader walks into the room and puts a light saber in front of a storm trooper. The light saber was our lead object that gave the film its context. The costume emphasized the context.

We shot the whole scene in wide; this enabled us to cover about four frames and also aided our continuity. This prevented any stop-start editing.  We tried to move the camera as little as possible; this was for a few reasons. The first was to make it easier for Charlie, so she didn’t have to lug the tripod and camera around the set. The second reason was to aid continuity, had we moved the camera every time we needed a new shot the likeliness that the continuity would be smooth is low.   

We then filmed an over the shoulder shot, this is a device used by filmmakers to let the audience feel like they’re in the scene and closer with the characters.  From the same camera position we filmed the close up, this was to capture the emotion of the character. We then swapped over to the second character for an over the shoulder, and then again from here we took a close up shot. 

Other close ups we took we of our object (the light saber) being placed on the table, this was to add detail to the film. We had to do this carefully for continuity purposes. We also did a low angle close up looking up Darth Vader’s cape. To do this we took the camera of the tripod and Charlie lay on the floor and angled the camera up whilst Darth swished his cape over it. 

The experience of shooting this scene was quite a frustrating one. This prepared me a little for what filming my main task would be like. I now know that if I want to direct I have to be strong and not feel bad for ordering actors around the set. Obviously, there are limits but you do need to be determined to get things done, especially with a time frame.