OUR MOVIE
AGATA
It was our first time working with the lights and because of the horrible weather conditions Dan couldn't make it to the set and there were only three of us on the recording day. However, we all felt much more comfortable working behind the camera than we did during the previous weeks so it wasn't that much of an issue.
On week 4th, we were asked to create the recreation of the scene from the Swedish movie "Persona" from 1966 and it was a real challenge because none of us has never replicated anything before. Honestly, it was not my favorite task because I love being creative while filming. Also the scene was really hard to understand, but I still think it was a good exercise.
I was supposed to be responsible for the sound, but since Dan was not there, I took over his task and also helped with the cinematography by making sure each shot looked good.
To make our version of "Persona" as similar to the original version as it could be, we printed out the screenshots of every single shot from it and recreated it in the order that required the smallest amount of changing the lights.
I think this week we did our job pretty well. The lighting was good in most of the shots and the actress playing in the movie were incredible. There were a few shots that could be better, but we were running out of time and when we realized they didn't look the way we wanted to it was too late to fix them.
I personally think this movie was by far the easiest to edit. We just put all of the shots in good order, added a little color correction and that was it. Unfortunately, after uploading the film to youtube, we realized there was an issue with the sound. We tried to fix it, but we couldn't make it perfect. We still have no idea what happened and why it sounds that way because we were recording the sound just the way we were supposed to.
HARRISON
The scene from
the 1966 Swedish film titled Persona was a relatively hard scene to understand
as we didn’t know what the context of the scene was. Translating it to English
was not easy, this is a reason why this next film we produced didn’t make any sense.
However, we can talk about the cinematography of the film. For this film, I was
doing the lights. I would say, the only difficulties during the shoot is how to
recreate the low-key lighting with the original 1966 scene. We’ve tried many
ways to angle the lights to replicate certain effects shown in the film and in
most cases, I felt like we did a great job at it. However, there was one scene
that didn’t particularly stand out, and that was the part where the actress was
hitting the table. It captured the shadows of her hands, and in my opinion that
didn’t look great. Another flaw I would
like to pick out was the sound. The sound, even through editing and increasing
the gain of the volume, was too soft. We only realized this while editing the
film, and this did feel like it affected the film heavily. Other than that,
getting camera angles were easy as most shots were put on a tripod in this film.
We manage to capture good shots of only the actress’s silhouettes. There was a
shot when we did a focus pull from one actress to another, and I definitely
think we did a great job in that. The actresses did an outstanding job too! Their
acting was spot on, and we manage to capture good emotions from them in the
film. Moreover, the location was perfect as it was in a private room and there
were curtains to shield the windows from the light coming in. Besides having a
film that didn’t make any sense, it can be justified through its cinematography
and acting. Overall, great film.
THOMAS
This week’s task was incredibly hard to pull off successfully, along with this due to a really bad storm
that caused flooding in the surrounding areas Dan wasn’t able to make it. Being honest this week
during filming we all did a bit of each job, due to there only being 3 of us there we had to do a part
of each job, especially lighting. However, that being said as a director going into this, I realized
that blocking was going to be as important as the lighting this week and attempted, to limited affect,
to get this spot on. I am incredibly proud of this film still even with its shortcomings, the pull focus
shots didn’t come out quite as good as I would have liked but again, I still feel we did well.
The performance we got out of the actors for this week was incredible as well, they did an
outstanding job and really pulled out some great emotions on the day of filming. Our efforts on
getting the lighting right were definitely not in vain either, I was so happy as to how some of the
lighting looked in the majority of the shots.
that caused flooding in the surrounding areas Dan wasn’t able to make it. Being honest this week
during filming we all did a bit of each job, due to there only being 3 of us there we had to do a part
of each job, especially lighting. However, that being said as a director going into this, I realized
that blocking was going to be as important as the lighting this week and attempted, to limited affect,
to get this spot on. I am incredibly proud of this film still even with its shortcomings, the pull focus
shots didn’t come out quite as good as I would have liked but again, I still feel we did well.
The performance we got out of the actors for this week was incredible as well, they did an
outstanding job and really pulled out some great emotions on the day of filming. Our efforts on
getting the lighting right were definitely not in vain either, I was so happy as to how some of the
lighting looked in the majority of the shots.
This week was by far one of the easiest to edit, due to us knowing what shots went where in the
original clip, all we needed to do was number our clips and then drag and drop pretty much.
Saying that however, we had an issue during this process in which when we uploaded it to YouTube
the sound was incredibly lower than what it was beforehand. We attempted to fix it somewhat and it
did improve but not entirely, we still have no idea what happened with the sound during the upload.
original clip, all we needed to do was number our clips and then drag and drop pretty much.
Saying that however, we had an issue during this process in which when we uploaded it to YouTube
the sound was incredibly lower than what it was beforehand. We attempted to fix it somewhat and it
did improve but not entirely, we still have no idea what happened with the sound during the upload.
DAN
In this week, we has to replicate a scene from a film called
“persona”, which was psychological horror which he had to emulate scene by
scene. We decided that I would be the cinematographer and I was going to make a
storyboard using screenshots from the film with detailed descriptions of each
shot. Unfortunately, due to the storms earlier this year, I was stuck in
Shrewsbury when the filming was being done, so I could not do the
cinematography and instead Harrison took over as cinematographer. I still
however created that storyboard in order to help them during filming, and
overall, it helped them replicate the film. I wasn’t there for post-production
either, but from what my team told me, it was difficult it replicates the
editing style of Persona. I was back for the feedback of the film, which got
positive results as it was a faithful replication scene. However, I think that
we could’ve done something unique to the scene from the film. However, we all
agreed this was our least favourite concept as replication is stressful,
although it turned out looking good. Overall, I believe this film ended up
looking decent, but I have opinion either way on this one since I didn’t really
participate in the films actual making.
