Production Diary (10)

Our challenge was to make a 90 second video for the DepicT competition, the video could be on anything we wanted.

  Camerawork

The shots that I like the most was the whip pan (1:04 - 1:08), it showed both students running through two different doors as they split up at the corner. We used a lot of tracking shots for most of the chase scenes to make the film more fast paced and to help the chase scene fit more in with the fast paced music. We also used a few pan shots to again make the chase scenes flow more quickly and fluidly, examples of this would be running through the west block corridor door and the poluson building door. Another effective shot was a locked-down shot, an example of this would be a long-locked down when the students ran away from the poluson building across the parking lot, that shot made the students look like there going a long way and being very extreme in what there doing.
 The over-the-shoulder shot was effective for the stare scene to make it more intense and show what the two students where only thinking about, wining.

 The close up of the two students in the lift was done at high, on the side angle which wouldn't have looked as nice if it was at a normal straight angle however we couldn't have done it as you would of seen the camera in the lift mirror, so we had to persevere.

Mise-en-scene

We only had 3 settings in the whole video which were the classroom, corridors and the lift.
The class room had other students in but we had to cut them out in case of continuity errors, but still got them anyway by the screens on the computers changing. We didn't include scenes that where meant to be establishing shots of the class room because of time wise and people were leaving and coming in out of the class room and wanted to avoided less continuity errors. We only showed the left side corner of the classroom to make it as if there where other students on the other side while the teacher was talking.
The second setting was the corridors, you don't get a chance to really soak up the scenery in the corridor scenes due to them being fast past, sped up and the camera mostly moving. We didn't do anything to change the scenery in the corridor, only used it because it was exactly how we wanted it too look, a normal school corridor. Originally when student 1 stole the spray of student 3 ('Hey!'), student 3 was meant to walk past the lift and down the corridor before. However we used the copier machine that was right outside the lift because it was more covenant and made the route of the race and the past of the video even faster, so that's why we did it. We did had to make that the corridor was free from students and that was quite difficult in the filming time that we had but we got through it.
The third was the lift, again we didn't do anything to change the scenery, however we had an option for having the mirror, we wouldn't of had it in the lift. There was enough space to all fir in and film so overall this scene was okay to film.

Editing and continuity

It turned out the spray was in the room at the beginning, that's a massive continuity error! Also in the class room the computer screens kept changing as we didn't film the scenes in order. In addition, some students were in the class room with their computers on and then some left with their screens off.
We sped up most of the scenes due to it not fitting in the time budget however speeding it up made it more fast paced and made it flow better so it was a good decision to make. We made sure that all actors were going to wear the same thing every time so there was no continuity errors there.

Sound

I enjoyed how the music was brought in when the two students were staring at each other and then ran out of the class. We had cut the music so that the most tense and continuous note was raising with no drum beat while the students were staring at each other to make the atmosphere tense. Overall the 'chase music' (actually named 'volatile reaction') was great for chase scenes to show how serious and tense this race was to the students, it also brought in a little humor due to the level so seriousness. I also liked how the music abruptly stops when the chase has stopped momentarily (waiting for the lift to open) or when the students aren't in shot (the classroom door closes).
The lift music was picked specifically to be the traditional awkward lift music and made the video a little humorous.
There was only one part of the video when the step noise had disappeared and that we when running into the poluson building.
Also you can hear the dolly in the scene when the two students are running in the corridor full on mirrors away from the poluson building (1:00 - 1:02)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Overall I really liked how the finished product looks (apart from the continuity errors and my face being in it) and I really like being apart of the project whenever it was from planning, filming and editing.