Fiction Film - Reflective essay PDF

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Reflective essay for my final film. ...

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Fiction Film: Reflective Essay

I am the cinematographer and Assistant Director for this production. I am working with Becky (Director and Camera operator), Rachel (Producer and Script Writer) and Elle (Sound and Editor). This production has been really challenging due to time scheduling and role confusion. I have had many concerns and challenges however, I have structed methods to overcome them.

Becky, Rachel and myself were the initial members of our production, however due to circumstances Elle joined our group without any verbal agreement. This did confuse our existing plans, but we carried forward with delegating roles. As this is my final year project, my priority role was to be a cinematographer. As I am taking the Documentary Production module alongside Fiction Film, I didn’t want to take the same roles that I have for Documentary – Producer and Editor. Working with cameras is my other strong skill, as photography and videography are my passion outside of University, so I wanted to use my existing skills in that area and bring them to this production.

The first thing we did after deciding out roles was a location scout of Nanteos. Instantly, I started visualising shots and sequences and took notes and photos throughout, to story board later – an example below of the walking upstairs scene.

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The grand stair case was the first thing that drew my attention, I instantly thought of The Woman in Black (Watkins, J., 2012). The staircase is conveyed through slow shots and wide angles, which brings life to it as a character. The staircase is central to the house and is the only means of escape for the characters, which is why it is a convention that’s highlighted in horror film houses. To bring the same technique to Nanteo’s staircase I wanted to use my gimbal to create a slow walk up them – mimicking Elizabeth’s actions but also allowing the viewer to admire the staircase.

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I also took inspiration from The Shinning (Kurbrick, S.,1980) where Kurbrick has a long Steadicam shot, tracking Danny on his bike. I think the smooth tracking sequence made the viewer feel uneasy as it isn’t a natural movement and I want to carry this technique into our film.

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Following the story boarding process, I worked closely with the Director to create a shot list. This helped organise our visuals into an order, which then helped us create a rough time schedule, to make sure we covered everything we needed. We planned to film the end of November/ start of December, however due to storm Dianna we were limited to what we could shoot outside. We rearranged a couple of days where we could film, but unfortunately the Editor/Sound operator couldn’t attend due to a series of cheerleading commitments. We decided it wasn’t acceptable and agreed to shoot in January after Christmas – which we did have concerns about the weather conditions, but we had no other option.

When I first saw the landing in the house on the location house, I knew I wanted to use a Dolly Zoom - the combination of a zoom in one direction with a simultaneous tracking movement in the other direction. ‘When timed correctly, the effect of this technique is one in which the characters in the frame remain the same size while the foreground and background become compressed or de-compressed, depending on which direction the camera is traveling’ (Hardy, R., 2014). This effect was used by Alfred Hitchcock in Vertigo (Hitchcock, A., 1958) for example.

This particular shot has always stuck in my mind for a reason. When the technique is used in Vertigo (Hitchcock, A., 1958) it stands out because of the sensation it gives the viewer. It makes them feel uneasy and puts them in the shoes of the character, which really makes an impact. I wanted to use the same technique for the mood piece to create the same emotion and disorientation for our audience. However, as we had to film in January, it meant that I didn’t have the opportunity to practice with the tracks over the Christmas holiday for the Dolly Zoom. When it came to the shoot, the effect wasn’t coming across in the image – the zoom ring on the 24-105mm lens was too stiff and despite using the 18-135mm which had the smoothest ring, the effect still wasn’t working. I talked to one of the technicians the following morning, wondering if we could try another camera with a digital zoom, even though I knew there would be a quality difference. But they were convinced it was just a case of practice, but unfortunately there wasn’t any more time to do this on the schedule we had. I made the decision to leave this shot for the mood piece and suggested to the Editor that they can cut it differently so it still makes sense without the shot. I still intend to use this technique in the final film and practice with the equipment in the meantime to master the effect.

Regarding cameras, I made the decision to shoot everything with my DSLR, apart from the interviews. I already knew that the C100 is able to shoot in a LOG format which I originally wanted to shoot everything in, as it gives more flexibility in colour grading. However, our Editor, who wanted to carry out colour grading, informed me right before the shoot that they didn’t feel confident enough colour grading without a pre-set. As a result, I decided to shoot everything on my DSLR to be safe, as I knew the quality of the image well, but I changed the format on the C100 and used that for the interviews as a test to see how 5

different the images were to the pre-set on my DSLR. Another reason for using my DSLR was I already had a compatible gimbal for it, which saved us time on being trained on the RONIN for the C100. The only worry I had about my camera was the cropped sensor, as we originally were shooting at night. As my camera is not able to perform as well as a full frame sensor in low light, I wanted to use the lowest aperture lenses as possible. This did help, but inevitably in low light conditions there was still a slight amount of grain which I wasn’t happy with – I wanted the quality of the image to be as perfect as possible. I resulted in making the decision to shoot day for night to eliminate this problem which worked really well.

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Lighting is a huge element of cinematography and this year I wanted to use the BI-Colour LED Lights, as it enables you to adjust the kelvin and brightness. They are also portable as they have rechargeable batteries, which means no wires – cutting down on trip hazards. The only issue I had with these lights, was when I used them on the landing (before deciding to shoot day for night). The pillars were coated in a gloss paint which reflected the light source and didn’t give a realistic image. To overcome this, when shooting in the day, I just used the day light as it considerably softer and it worked really well. I want to experiment with diffusers and the LED lights before shooting the final film, as I believe it will make a

considerable difference. I did intend to use blue filters on the lights for the mood piece, to really exaggerate the colour blue like the colour pallets used in The Haunting of Hill House (Flanagan, M., 2018) and Lights Out (Sandberg, D, Sandberg., 2016).

However, for development purposes, I wanted to see the result of how the mood piece would look without and physical filters and just purely colour grading edit. I am pleased with the visuals so far but I will want to experiment a few scenes with coloured filters for the final film.

Regarding the overall production for the mood piece, I did feel at times I had to cross over role criteria just so targets were hit. For example, our Director wasn’t always confident in

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their creative vision and wasn’t always making executive decisions. Sometimes I had to make the final call on decisions to keep us on schedule rather than wasting vital time. I feel this is only because the Editor/Sound whilst on set, was over stepping their requirements and making the Director second guess themselves a lot which impacted on their confidence in their decisions. The Editor/Sound was bringing up cuts they wanted which started to confuse the Director, even though the Editor/Sound knew we had already planned our shot list. The Editor is meant to work with the material given at the end of shooting. Whilst on set, when I am setting up the camera equipment, all members of the crew seem to ask me for help with their own equipment. Ideally, they should research how to use the new equipment outside of production work, so they are familiarised and ready for the shoot. This would have saved a lot of my time and their time setting up. The final extension of my role was regarding the footage. The Director wanted me to sort the footage out into folders for the Editor, which I was happy to do, as I was the most familiar with what was recorded. However, because of the Editors tight schedule, I also selected the best takes from the shoot, cut them down and stabilised them, so it was instant for the Editor to use. Although, this isn’t in my role criteria, we all agreed that it was needed to hit the deadline efficiently, as the Editor was prioritising other commitments.

Overall, I am confident with my roles from carrying out the mood piece production. I am however, disappointed with my interview for the show reel. This was because of the result of my first interview, being filmed out of focus and with the wrong white balance. My interview was the first to refilm the following day and there was a great amount of sound issues. This unfortunately threw me off guard, meaning I hadn’t remembered everything I wanted to say. My only concerns now, lie with the performance of our crew, in order for the final film to 8

succeed. I have targets to work on before filming – practicing the Dolly Zoom, have gimbal training for the C100 and carry out Lighting experimentation. I also want to have a whole month dedicated to planning because Ian Smith’s main word of advice from his master class was ‘the more you plan, the more flexible you can be’ (29th November 2018). Looking at the mood piece and show reel as experience, hopefully our final production will run more smoothly and effectively.

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Filmography:

Lights Out (2016) [Film] David Sandberg. Warner Brothers Pictures: United States.

The Haunting of Hill House (2018) [TV Series] Mike Flanagan. Netflix: United States.

The Shinning (1980) [Film] Stanley Kurbrick. Warner Bros: United States, United Kingdom.

The Woman in Black (2012) [Film] James Watkins. Momentum Pictures: United Kingdom.

Vertigo (1958) [Film] Alfred Hitchcock. Paramount Pictures: United States.

Bibliography:

Hardy, R., 2014 [online] Everything You Need to Know About the Dolly Zoom. https://nofilmschool.com/2014/01/everything-need-know-dolly-zoom [Accessed: 20th December 2018]

Smith, I., 2018. Ian Smith Master Class. National Library of Wales.

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