P2(d) Following Production Processes

P2(d) Following Production Processes

Production Journal

'Hidden'

Callum Monro

How I realised my Vision:

During the preproduction process I envisioned this film to look and feel creepy, claustrophobic and tense, so when it came to production I had to ensure that the shots being captured would realise this vision. As director I had the responsibility work with my cinematographer to express how I wanted to capture each shot in terms of their framing, focus, length, angle, movement and most importantly camera settings as these factors contribute to expressing the directors vision. 

When preparing for a shot I first consulted my pre-production material to remind myself of what I wanted to achieve with each shot. I then briefed the cinematographer and actors on what the shot was about, as the actors got into position then I began directing the cinematographer in terms of his positioning and how he should frame the image, often I wanted shots to be close ups and the actors faces to capture their reaction and create tension. When directing camera movements I would demonstrate where I wanted the camera to move, why it was moving and why we were capturing the shot in that way, I also did this when explaining what angle we were going to shoot from.

Camera Settings:

The Canon750D is a DSLR camera, this allowed me to use manual mode to adjust the camera's ISO, Shutter speed and aperture, also known as the exposure triangle. To realise my vision in this production I wanted the visuals to be darker and contrast to be higher as this is a look often seen in horror/thriller films and makes the scene look cold and miserable.

ISO:

ISO is the level of sensitivity of your camera to available light. It is typically measured in numbers, a lower number representing lower sensitivity to available light, while higher numbers mean more sensitivity. More sensitivity comes at the cost though, as the ISO increases, so does the grain/noise in the footage. For this production we had to adjust the ISO based on how much light there was however to keep each shot dark without affect the focal length we lowered the ISO to 320 in most shots and 400 when it the location was slightly darker.

Shutter Speed:

Shutter Speed is the length of time a camera shutter is open to expose light into the camera sensor. Shutter speeds are typically measured in fractions of a second, when they are under a second. Slow speeds allow more light into the camera sensor and are used for low-light and night photography, while fast shutter speeds help to freeze motion. In this production I wanted to use faster shutter speeds to capture crisp and still looking shots, I felt this would add to the effect that the boys were being watched.

Aperture:

Aperture is the hole within a lens, through which light travels into the camera. The larger the hole, the more light passes to the camera sensor. Aperture also controls the depth of field, which is the portion of a scene that appears to be sharp. If the aperture is very small, the depth of field is deep, while if the aperture is large, the depth of field is shallow. In many of our shots I needed the cinematographer to focus on specific objects in the frame, to do this I directed him to widen the aperture to create a more shallow depth of field, I felt that this could make some shots feel enclosed and claustrophobic which would make the audience uncomfortable and on edge, especially if the shot then racked to another object.

White Balance: White balance (WB) is the process of removing unrealistic colour casts, so that objects which appear white in person are rendered white in your photo. Proper camera white balance has to take into account the "colour temperature" of a light source, which refers to the relative warmth or coolness of white light. 

For the majority of shots in this film I wanted a cool look as this look would match with the genre and theme of the video, in order to do this I had the cinematographer set the white balance to 6000K as it gave the cool look but also gave us flexibility to edit the colour in post production.

During the indoor shoots I wanted to create a contrast between this scene and the previous scene by making the indoor shots look warmer (increased oranges and reds) as I was shooting under tungsten lighting I decided to leave the WB on its default setting and this resulted in the footage looking yellow. This meant avoiding having to make the corrections in post production and made the footage look warmer.

Setting up Equipment:

Tripod:

The DV6000 tripod is a simple tripod to setup. I extended the legs to their maximum length and the  removed the baseplate to screw it onto the bottom of the camera before slotting it back into place.

Day 1:

The first day of filming consisted of shooting the entirety of scene one which mostly took part on the outer edges of the forest and on the Kent College Farm, this benefited us as it took us less time to move our equipment and people from the school .

We also shot some cinematic footage of the location that could be used in between shots of the actors to give the audience more understanding of the location. As the director I also took responsibility for ensuring everything and everyone was organised and that we were keeping up with our planned schedule as any delays one the first day would have to be compensated for on the second day which would cause us to rush thus lowering the quality of the filming.

We began the day at 8:30 in the film room in which we prepared our equipment , planning materials and discussed the plans for the day. We arrived at the farm for 9:15 to shoot our first shots which turned out well even though it was foggy, which was not expected. These first few shots did not take long so we were ready to collect the camera crane at 10AM only 45 minutes later as planned. The crane took around 15 minutes to setup and another 30 minutes to film the shots that we required and then another 15 minutes to pack up so we could move onto filming the next shot.

By 11:45 we had moved further into the woods and had shot all of scene 1, we had to then stop at this point as one of our actors had to return to school for an hour, during this time we decided to have lunch and discuss what shots we should do next. After lunch we began shooting the beginning of scene 2, however I decided as we were ahead of schedule it would be worth investing more time in improving the quality of our shots instead of doing more shots because if it rained the next day then we would have to re shoot more content.

                                   

Day 2:

 

Day 2 was far busier than the first day as we had planned to shoot much more footage than day 1. As this was the case I wanted to get to our location as quick as possible. Since we'd done everything the day before we were definitely faster in preparing our equipment our actors also had time over night to learn their lines, which sped up the filming of all scenes.

During day 2 I also focussed more of my attention towards each scenes lighting, camera settings and mis en scene to ensure that the final film look would correspond with the genres that we had developed during the planning stage.

As the film is a mystery/horror and thriller I felt that each shot had to feel atmospheric and really capture the creepiness of the woods, to do this I worked with my cinematographer and adjusted the cameras ISOs, Shutter Speed and aperture to find a look that was dark but still well lit and seemed to boost the greens of each shot, I found this change made a huge difference in how the shots looked as they gave the film a far more professional and intense cinematic look, this combined with the ambient audio track I recorded in the woods made for an excellent days shooting, I also used the tripod to great effect unlike during the previous day, this meant that shots were still thus more professional and gave more focus to the characters and environment they were in.

Day 3:

On the third day we had off for filming we had to abandon the filming because in spite of carrying out a detailed risk assessment one of our actors had sustained the day before.

To not waste our time the Editor and myself sat down and began to build the foundations of the film in a rough cut using Adobe Premiere Pro Film Editing Software. First we reviewed the rushes and renamed the clip filenames into alphabetical order in Finder, we used our script and storyboard to order the clips so we could quickly cut them together to create our rough cut.

Final Shoot:

The last shoot was the easiest to organize and film, as it was shot in the film room at school. This allowed us plenty of time in the morning to prepare ourselves and our equipment. Using our floor plans we set up our camera equipment, in this case just a tripod and camera, however we forgot to turn on the microphones. Once we found this out we thought that we'd have to reshoot the entire scene, however luckily our cinematographer had left a mic on behind the iMacs.