As part of the one shot short films we were to work in a group to produce a one shot film. Once our group was selected were we told to make a practice short one shot film. We discussed ideas, a blind date, like someone getting stuck in a lift, a day in the life of a student, an advert, but we decided to make a short film about us as a group discussing what to make our one shot film about, we would pretend we had accidentally left the camera running. We tried this out a few times, but it didnt work as it was hard to hear what was going on and the the script was made up and not very natural. But from watching back the film we had just created, it looked and sounded like it was almost like a cctv camera watching as, without us knowing. We then came up with a more choreographed sequence of events. the story was about a girl dropping her purse, which was then to be stolen by a passer by. This idea worked much better as it wasnt dependant on getting really good sound of any one talking, which was difficult with our equipment and location. it also worked well as it was simple, and the camera looked like a real cctv camera as it was filmed from above and with jolted camera movements like a automatic camera.
After the success of our first short film we decided to meet up on friday the 13th to complete our proper shot film. We thought up ideas and talked about the success of our last project and we all really like the idea and the effectiveness of filming as if it was a cctv camera. We then realized it was Friday 13th and thought about making a film about bad luck on four different people in one location in one shot!
We thought about things that happen which seem like bad luck and thought about how and where we could film them. We came up with ideas like walking under ladders, seeing black cats and things like that, but these we difficult to recreate as none of us owned a black cat or had a ladder handy. So we thought about things that we did have or could have for the shot. We came up with things like slipping on banana skins, forgetting keys, having your drink fizz up and spill all over you, and having the a cash machine out of order.
I think the filming went well, and we managed to get it done after a few takes and everyone's movements and acting worked well to achieve their desired outcome of miss fortune. Mine was to slip on a banana peal, this wasnt very difficult to do as they are just as comical as in cartoons as i found out after 5 or 6 takes. The reaction from me is real as every time we did it, I very nearly did fall flat on my face! Everyone was happy with what we had produced, and I was looking forward to editing our film and adding more detail to it to make it look more like real cctv, like being in black and white and so on..
Then it was our next seminar where we uploaded our film onto premiere. To make it look like a cctv camera we turned it to black and white, and played with the contrast. We then added a' noise' filter to make it look grainy. We thought that the film started to quickly, so we copied a section showing the empty hallway and then pasted it at the start of our film and stretched it so it lasted for short time. We also added a beeping sound to the start to make it feel like the the camera was being started by me entering the shot. We then played with the ending to make it quite funny. Caleb slips on the banana here, and we copied it and then pasted it three times to emphasise him slipping, and the third part we stretched to make it slow motion. This i feel gave the film a comedy note to finish on as you see him start to fall over but dont actually get to see the event happen. We then reduced the background noise, but still managed to keep the noise of the drink spilling quite well. We wanted to add sound effects, but we couldn't find a sound that was just how we wanted it and we wanted the piece to look real, rather than having an artificial sound playing though out. We then added a date and a clock to our film that was created in flash to make it look even more like cctv. We also added a title and an ending title to our film. We used simple text just like the font used in the clock in our film.
Overal I feel our group worked well together to come up with an interesting idea that worked well and we produced an amusing one shot short film.
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