FLM235 - 1000 pages, Test shooting and more

In the last blog, I spoke about a little short film called, '1000 pages', that my crew and I put together in about a week for the MIFF/Powershop 'Powershorts' competition. I would just like to give another shout out to those guys as we actually managed to get the film placed into the Top 8!

This was exciting news for us when I received the email saying we got through, as we weren't really expecting much to happen with the film considering how quickly we put it together.

Placing in the top 8 meant that we had progressed to the final round of the competition, where a Judge would choose the best film to win the $4,000 prize. There was also an audience award for $1,000 that was decided by a voting system for viewers.

Thus we tried to gather as many votes as we could because, well, why not? We had already gotten this far, so we should see how far we could push it. Everyone we told about this little achievement was very excited and gave praise, I even got the opportunity to do a quick interview with the National Content Officer for SAE Institute when they got wind of the film.

However, we were still falling behind on votes, unable to keep up with one particular film that reached a total of 159 votes and took the audience award. Fortunately though we managed to come into the third spot! With a total of 50 votes, just behind second place at 51 votes.

We did not manage to grab the judges prize either, as that went to the film that had got the 51 votes. Which I will admit was fairly annoying.

But in the end the whole experience was great and I am glad that many people saw and liked our little film.

After that whole competition situation, our class in FLM235 roughly split up into new groups as we pushed on to start pre production on our 'scene 2 projects'. And when I say 'roughly' I mean that the groups were pretty much the same give a take a few people.

This was due to many of the students wishing to shoot scenes from our Capstone films we are currently working on. Giving us a good opportunity to get some test footage and get familiar with our crew members and particular roles for these capstone films.

The scene that I will be working on is from the upcoming film that I will be director of photography for called, 'For what am I not'. This is a short psychological thriller about an alternate society where reproduction and genetic code is being strictly manipulated and controlled.

The scene we will be testing from this, is set completely in a bathroom where our protagonist has just taken some sort of drug to temporally mask or change her blood type. An excruciatingly painful process that we will be capturing with various close ups with some uncomfortable angles. Giving the audience a sense of unease as they see our protagonist struggle.

This scene contains just one character for the majority, with some interaction towards the end. Although for this shoot I am also considering the 'drug' itself to be another character in this scene, as it is the clear visual antagonist for the scene. Even though we are aware that the antagonist is something else in the bigger picture of things.

I have been looking at references like 'A Handmaid's Tale (2017)' and 'Ray (2004)' and even various indie 'K-Pop short films' to gather the correct tone for the scene. This is where I will getting most of my inspiration for many of the shots and lens choices I will be doing.

At this stage I am not sure what I will be shooting on, however I believe the safest bet will be to shoot on the FS7, as it is what I know best and easiest for me to set up in this short amount of time. I will also be using a steadicam for this shoot as well, just to give myself some freedom with camera angles and movement. I'll be aiming for shots from above the protagonist, as well as pushing the camera from mid to close ups.

This will also be a test for how well I can perform on the steadicam, judging if it would be good to keep using it for when we film the real thing or if we should stick with sliders and tripod.

Fortunately we have just attended a workshop for the steadicam, in which I was able to get it all hooked up and could run around testing the movement and the weight etc. During this workshop we managed to film a quick music video in all one take. To the song 'Allstars by Smash Mouth'.

We managed to take the steadicam throughout the whole school during this four minute take, dancing and mouthing lyrics the whole way. It definitely showed just how prepared and how much you need to take into account when doing long takes like this. However I strongly believe it's worth that extra time to plan it out carefully due to the amount of coverage you get and the enticement from these types of shots.

All that's left for me to do, is to properly finish my shot listing and story boarding for this scene ahead, along with a small lighting plan for the room. This will be the first I actually get to D.P something properly since I have been at SAE so I hope I can pull it all together and get some great footage. I need to make sure I am ready as a D.P for when we start shooting the Capstone films for real at the beginning of next trimester.

Written by

Aedan Bruitzman