Pre-Production: DepicT Evaluation

Camerawork

The camerawork used throughout the film was varied, closely following the storyboard. We wanted to hide the hilarity of the film's situation whilst building tension which is actually easily explained.

It opens with a close up, making it suggestive to the audience as to the location of the film. However we give a number of clues immediately as to the theme by use of sweat dripping down his face. The audience then sees a shot of shadowed feet beneath a doorway - the source of the knocking sounds - as they walk away. In hindsight I would have like to shoot this again as the focus is slightly off and makes it difficult to understand what it actually is. A few seconds later we use a wide shot which gives more clues, revealing the props and more of the setting. Then between 0.16 and 0.19 we used the Digital SLR to our advantage to change focus to develop more tension. This shot was a particular favourite to our audience in the class because it is used in conjunction with a particular sound as part of the soundtrack.

Next we chose to repeat the same shot as the first as our main character picks up the bottle of milk, later this would also serve as our thumbnail for the YouTube upload. The use of the close up is so we don't reveal his intentions immediately, and thus helps develop a tense atmosphere and intrigue. The pouring of the milk in the next shot was planned to be more of an extreme close up in the storyboard, however we were unfortunately low on time. I am still happy with the result of this though as it has good match on action with the previous shot.

We then used two close ups of our main character after showing the other character returning to the door. I particularly like the first of these, as pictured, because it it simple yet allows the audience to know where the threat is. Notably the lighting is different on these shots as they were filmed on different days to all previously seen footage.

Between these two shots we also show a close up of the door handle being tested and opened. Reuben, or second character, was not available to film these shots so we purposely cut back to our main character (Dan) to avoid filming shots with the door open. This also meant we had better control over lighting for the following shot.

We specifically wanted to film the wide shots from the exact same angle to avoid crossing the 180 degree rule, but kept in mind that Reuben needed to be in darkness to disguise himself and the cookies for the big reveal in the next shot. We framed Dan on the left in the spotlight, looking up as Reuben entered in the shadows.


The next shot saw the main lights flicker on with a mid shot on Reuben. After he delivered the line we panned down to the cookies he was holding. Evidently this pan needed some more work, particularly with lighting, but we were running too tight on time for shooting with Reuben to continue perfecting it. I do however think I would keep the pan in future attempts because it reflects the change in mood from the simple cuts used throughout to this point.

The final part of notable camerawork is the credits sequence which I came up with, as inspired by a previous DepicT entry 'Candy Crime'. We positioned the camera on a tripod above the cookies to give a birds eye view shot - being careful to avoid shadows - and the characters each took it in turn to retrieve a cookie from the stack revealing a cast or crew member's name. I a particularly proud of this shot as it works very smoothly and is a nice concise and comically fitting, although abrupt, ending to the film.

Mise-en-scene

When planning to make the film, we realised we needed to put emphasis on creating an ominous and intriguing atmosphere. Before we could even begin the camerawork we had to consider our location, the lighting, costume and props.

The entire 62 seconds of film take place in a single location, with very little movement and few props. The location was called The Dark Room, and even though we had four walls, we only shot about 1½ of them within all the frames that make up the film! The large black wall which Dan sits against is the main part as this is where everything happens. We purposely chose a plain, dark background to set it against as darkness was vital to keeping the mystery and a tense, intriguing atmosphere. The other section of wall surrounds the doorway where Reuben enters. We pulled a white curtain across this to give the element of light, meaning safety and insight, to the latter part of the film.

The room had two lighting settings for both sections of film. Before Reuben enters it is very dim in the room as a whole but with an intense bright spotlight encompassing Dan’s character. The wide shot that shows this immediately draws the audience in, whilst the darkness surrounding him has a mysterious foreboding feel. We used low key lighting for this - a single spotlight - as we wanted lots of dark shadows around Dan, adding to the atmosphere. In sheer contrast to the first section of the film, as Reuben’s character enters he turns on the mains lights to reveal the entire space as it is filled with light. This shatters the atmosphere as it quickly dawns on the audience that it is a comedy twist, not a horror. In hindsight, once again, I would have liked to show a third wide shot from the same angle as before with this new lighting mode just to show the simplicity of the situation at its reality which would further compliment the comedic aspect. However, I really like the lighting overall and am especially proud of the wide shots we do have.

As this was a realistic short film there was no need to spend lots of money on appropriate costumes. Dan is shown wearing simply jeans and a shirt of his own belonging. This informs the audience of the time which it is set in yet also gets them to question the situation his character is in, i.e. what the threat to him actually is. Reuben on the other hand required a Boy Scout costume, although this was simple enough to source for free. His costume was essential to the plot as you needed to know who he was to grasp the plot. Overall we needed the costumes to be simple to not distract from the plot and the atmosphere so I am happy with what we achieved.

For our group, props were the most important thing to carry the plot. We required milk, a glass, cookies and a tray. To keep the space clear around Dan’s character we avoided using a table so the first two of the listed props were placed either side of him on the floor. This was not done with any real intentions other than the fact they were needed in the film when Dan pours milk into the glass in anticipation of the cookies arriving between 0.21 and 0.29. The cookies are later brought in by Reuben on the tray at 0.40, presented as though they were from Boy Scouts.

Editing

The process of editing the film was admittedly slow and tedious for a number of reasons. Firstly we had the issue of our work being filmed on two different cameras each with a different SD Card, so locating the relevant files took up a large amount of our time. In future I will ensure this doesn't happen as it was mostly unnecessary work that set us behind significantly. Also, we had a few days where members of the group were not in class yet had our only access to certain required audio or video files. The absences were not something we could have foreseen happening, although to prevent delays we should have ensured all the files were saved where they could be used by the whole group. Finally there was the factor that none of us had used Adobe Premiere Pro before - the editing software of availability to us - so we had a steep learning curve to overcome.

After gathering all the files, we placed the shots in order of which they appear in the film onto a timeline. We considered using transitions in the shots but decided that in order to create tension they were not required. The shot between 0.16 and 0.19 serves as a sort of crossfade transition anyway, as it focuses in on Dan directly after cutting from the previous shot. In order to get the focus just right for this shot we used a trick by focusing the camera on Dan before pressing record, and then unfocused the camera after a few seconds of filming. Using the speed tool in Premiere Pro we were able to reverse the footage so that it instead comes into focus. The foresight of this technique sped up the filming process a lot, because it would have taken many attempts to focus in perfectly whilst filming especially considering the low level of lighting we required.

In terms of visual effects, there were several issues with lighting that we needed to address. This ranged from having a slightly different setup on the different days of shooting, and wanting to make Dan look more exhausted than was possible without makeup in front of the camera. Ehren had volunteered to do these visual effects having been absent most of the week, but time was against us and so we only managed to complete the first three shots. Obviously, given more time this is something I would look into improving.

Sound

After finishing the visual qualities of editing, we had to consider the sound. We had removed all sound from the film files due to the buzz of lights in the room, and some noise entering the room from the corridor and other rooms around us. Fortunately, our film contains only a single line of speech which is delivered by Reuben at 0.46. This small section of audio was heavily edited in Adobe Premiere Pro to remove as much of the background noise as possible.

In terms of music, we found two soundtracks which we faded into each other half way through the film. The first piece was known as a 'tension growl' which is very quiet but includes a number of hissing sound effects. I have used this music in a previous piece called 'The Handover', and found that it worked very well; Ehren and Dan agreed that it suited the first half of this short perfectly.