Shots, Editing, Sound & Mise-en-Scene

Camera Shots, Angle, Movement and Composition
• Shots: establishing shot,
master shot,
close-up,
mid-shot,
long shot,
wide shot,
two-shot,
aerial shot,
point of view shot,
over the shoulder shot, and variations of these.
• Angle: high angle,
low angle,
canted/dutch angle.
• Movement: pan,
tilt,
track,
dolly,
crane,
steadicam,
hand-held,
zoom,
reverse zoom.
• Composition:
framing,
rule of thirds,
depth of field –
deep and shallow focus,
focus pulls.

Editing
Includes transition of image and sound – continuity and non-continuity systems.
• Cutting: shot/reverse shot,
eyeline match,
graphic match,
action match,
jump cut,
crosscutting,
parallel editing,
cutaway;
insert.
• Other transitions,
dissolve,
fade-in,
fade-out,
wipe,
superimposition,
long take,
short take,
slow motion,
ellipsis and expansion of time,
post-production,
visual effects.

Sound
• Diegetic and non-diegetic sound; synchronous/asynchronous sound;
sound effects;
sound motif,
sound bridge,
dialogue,
voiceover,
mode of address/direct address,
sound mixing,
sound perspective.
• Soundtrack: score,
incidental music,
themes and stings,
ambient sound.

Mise-en-Scène
• Production design:
location,
studio,
set design,
costume and make-up,
properties.
• Lighting;
colour design.

G322

Extract from BBC comedy-drama “The Thick of it”            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIzx_Z-TGe4   0:00 – 5:00

Age
Sexuality
Ethnicity
Class and status
Physical Appearence
Regional Identity
Disability

All of the major characters involved in this segment, of which there are four, are of an equal age span- middle aged, 50-60 somethings, all involved in politics, although with very apparent differences in status. There is a clear bridge between the statuses of the two main characters, with one of the participants having a clear lead in power over the other, which is apparent from the viciousness of the traded dialogue. During a particularly intense part of the dialogue traded between the two, a close-shot of the powerful participant, previously a long-shot, is used to further illustrate the divide in status between the two, showing the moment where the first participant realises his place and backs down. 

Sexuality is represented somewhat typically- the two women who feature minorly in the scene appear to have jobs as personal assistants to the male roles. The male roles, on the other hand, are boisterous and aggressive. The entire duration of the scene uses a steadicam; used to show and illustrate the ramshackle, giddy-paced rawness of the volatile backdrop.

Easter Break

Ideally for the Easter break we will be aiming to finish our video; filming the remaining footage and creating the finalised edit. At this stage in the project we are neither behind nor particularly ahead of task, unsatisfyingly, and working throughout the easter break will merely allow us to stay on-track, timewise- therefore it’s vital we work during the first week of the break.

Sunday Shooting

On Sunday the 22nd of March we began shooting the initial scenes of our production; Coffee and Ciggies. Liam Cairns had hired the camera from the media department and so we were able to film the latter scenes of our production in and around Sawbridgeworth, our home town. Specifically we filmed around the woodlands of the town, also getting shots of the railway station for another scene.

We began our shoot at 3 p.m, ending two hours later at 5. The locations were ideal for our production- we found a suitably vacant area to film, well away from the busier side of the town. The conditions were great- there was a good source of light, not too dark/bright, ideal for the style of our production. We did however have to improvise a prop for our cigarette, rolling a piece of paper… I did have concerns about being in front of the camera, although without any spoken dialogue and lots of long-distance shots, this proved to be easy!

Link to our first preview!

http://feebleweed.blip.tv/file/1913527/

24th of March: Tuesday Session

Above is the link to a short minute long preview of our main video production! For today’s lesson, Liam Cairns edited the footage we had taken the previous sunday, creating a short narrative of the second half of our video. I, meanwhile, decided to scout for a short piece of music to layer over the top of the footage, which itself will fit underneath the voice narrative. I bared in mind that we needed to find something inside the Public Domain to avoid breaking copyright law- this apparently was necessary! However, my search on the internet wasn’t producing results, strangely, and so i decided to search through the College library’s blues, jazz and classical section- figuring these recordings would be old enough to slip into public domain.

I picked up a compilation of the Italian film composer Ennio Morricone and a blues compilation of Robert Johnson songs. Amazingly, the blues music of Robert Johnson has a strange fit with our footage, and so we saved what we had done and aired the preview on Blip.TV. Amazingly, I think at least (!), the music soundtracks our footage fantastically- a rather strange contrast of Mississippi blues mixing with rural England!

At this stage, when we have much, much more to film, nothing is set, and so we could still change the soundtrack. However, we have at least recorded a preview of our progress this far.

Coffee and Ciggies: Storyboard

2

Coffee and Ciggies: DVD Cover

 DVD Cover (front)

This is the front-cover design for our production. Kept purposefully simple, the cover illustrates the two central themes of our production (excluding the central protagonist, of course ) Unusually, we’ve stated the genre on the front-side “surreal drama” with a purely estimated age certificate!

Location Scouting: Scene 01, Classroom

During today’s lesson I, along with my project partner, scouted the College grounds for possible shooting locations. As the majority of our video production is to be filmed off-campus, preferably in Sawbridgeworth, we only needed to scout for a classroom on-campus, which is included in the opening scene. Gradually the production gets further and further away from the College grounds. I remembered from the previous project that the E block is usually reasonably unoccupied, and so we decided to head-off to scout that part of the College. We found a small (ideal ) room which was unoccupied, as it had been when we’d previously scouted the area for the preliminary project. I also observed out of the rooms window a grubby looking pathway and took down the locational details (Stansfield Court).

(*Screen shots of scanned location sheets to come, as well as location shots*)

Coffee and Ciggie’s; Talent, Locations..

For today’s session we are going through the script and dividing it into segments. Hopefully we’ll be able to devise a rough script by the end of the day. 

_{Talent needed for production:}

• Main character
• A class of six(ish) students
• A tutor for the teacher role
• Two authority figures

Roughly, we need about 10 roles for our production, including the central character. We will also need figures in the background for some scenes. Fitting the dialogue (with video footage) inside a minute’s running length should prove to be difficult…

Locations: At the moment (presuming we’re going to edit the original story) we have five locations, set in this order:

• College campus
• Field
• Train Station (this scene is most likely to be cut or chopped)
• Town
• House

If we decide to cut a scene from the production, one of the locations would also be cut.

The video will be based on the short story, which i wrote. The story purposefully skips the question ‘is smoking right or wrong’; it’s simply about smoking, rather than any kind of morality to do with smoking. The story itself is pretty nihilistic, as is the storyline- there is effectively no set meaning, unless taken under interpretation. The main character acts withdrawn and poe-faced, occasionally getting annoyed at the situation, although this is indicated rather  than shown. He is aware and suspicious of being looked down on by others, which is a central theme hit upon by the authority figure’s who feature throughout.

Genre Research

To start off today’s lesson, me and Liam Cairns devised three genre’s for our main task:

1. Horror

(We figured the horror genre would by far be the hardest to nail on both script and camera. Research wise we had watched a clip titled Reaper which, if anything, steered us away from the genre. However, we were inspired by the 1992 horror/drama Ghostwatch. Ghostwatch was, for its time, a relevantly innovative show, broadcasted on BBC on the night of the 31st of October (92). On its first showing, the show attempted to dislodge viewers as to whether or not the footage was streaming live, taking advantage of external factors such as the broadcast date (halloween night) and viewers presumed in-built trust of the British Broadcasting Corporation. It turns out that the apparent on-the-set mise-en scene of the production is pre-devised; it is infact entirely pre-recorded. The show was relatively unconventional for its time and has effectively took on new meanings with the emergence of ‘live’ ghost hunt shows such as Most Haunted. I think it would have worked as an effective spoof if the show was broadcasted after the emergence of these sorts of shows. Ghostwatch, in terms of genre, is pretty unconventional: the ‘ghost’ isn’t directly shown, instead the production relies on tension rather than any form of release. It’s worth noting however that viewers (extremely analytic ones, mind) can spot ghostly outlines during certain parts of the show- devices such as these have given the show (now 17 years old) a strong cult following. 

(Above: The ‘expert’ panel on the set of Ghostwatch)

2. Comedy

(The second genre I focused on was comedy. Towards the end of the initial preliminary project, I had an idea about creating (for the then upcoming main task) a short, comedic film purposefully breaking continuity rules, as well as skewering other accepted filming standards. This idea remained just that though- an idea, and so a script/storyboard wasn’t devised. An off-putting aspect of this genre was the weight of reliance on the audiences reaction: I didn’t especially want to make a video intended to be funny if it wouldn’t go on to achieve that desired effect! Through the use of feedback slips we handed out to the class, we found that comedy was the most requested genre type for our production. 

3. Drama

(We both figured that the drama genre would be the easiest to write and film, further encouraged by the fact that I had devised a short story in my own time which we could simply set to a script. Liam Cairns suggested that the genre would be a popular one, as the highest-figured (in-terms of viewers) TV shows use drama to convey stories (Eastenders, being a prime example).