For the production skills cinematography module we were
given a brief on guidelines we have to follow for the final film we have to
create in groups, which include all four elements covered in the module
classes. These are considering the use of colour, the sequence shot, lighting
changes and a sequence utilising POV techniques. My group of 5 for this task is
myself, Hannah Grencis, Emily Spokes, Heather Hall and Alex Kentfield. We have
decided to go with Emily’s idea which is a short, dark themed thriller involving two very contrasting
characters who work in the same office space on a daily basis. One is a forty
year old man who keeps himself to himself and is very secretive. The other is a
young girl in her twenties who is always gossiping but is also a hard worker.
When the man overhears the younger girl talking to their work colleagues about a series of missing people from
their same workplace, he offers to give her a lift home. At first, the girl
refuses, but then decides to take up his offer. However, instead of taking her
home he knocks her out and drives her to a wooded area (Grindleford) where he
tries to convince her that she collapsed and tempts her to follow him to his
home. The girl plays along, secretly realising she needs to get away. Just as
she runs up a nearby hill, she trips suddenly and the man chases her. She tries
to fight and shout for help as the camera shows the location rather than the
action occurring, and the next thing we see is her feet dangling, implying that
the man has hung her on a nearby tree.
I think that in this film we have the chance to play with
colour and lighting, creating certain effects by doing so. We have been
discussing that it would be good for the girl to have a colour that we
associate with her, that she always wears whether it’s a piece of clothing,
accessory or make-up. The main reason for having a certain colour that the victim
always wears is because at first Emily’s idea was that this man is stalking the
girl because she is wearing a colour that triggers something in his mind, maybe
a memory of his mother or a past girlfriend he’s still obsessed with. This is
what got us into liking this idea so that we could have a go at subtly placing
whatever colour we choose into the shot. At first it was the colour red, but I
thought this was overused and thought we could maybe use the colour purple. I
have seen that the colour purple can signify something or someone as
mysterious, which my group liked the idea of the victim wearing this colour, as
she could be seen as mysterious to her stalker. We’re not going to overdo the
colour purple either, we have decided that we’re going to show it in really
subtle ways e.g. she will wear purple nail varnish on a shot where we can see
her typing at work, and she will wear either a purple blouse or some sort of
necklace/bracelet of this colour. She could even wear a hint of purple eye
shadow if it won’t look like too much when we get round to shooting it. In
terms of how we’re going to use lighting we have decided that we need to use
darker lighting in the Grindleford scenes. We think that this gives the film a
more dark and thrilling mood and theme, opposed to it being shown in natural
daylight. To achieve this we will have to adjust the iris and lower the
exposure value to what best achieves the right amount of darkness when we’re
out filming in Grindleford. However the problem with wanting to lower the
exposure to create a feeling of it being shot at night, we’re going to have to
light up the subjects faces. We’re also quite limited in Grindleford in terms
of bringing lights since we’ll be in the woods and can’t plug the lights into
anything. To get over this problem we have decided to use one or two battery
powered LED lights and a reflector, which should light the subjects enough so
that we can see them clearly, but it still looks like its being filmed at
night.
We have storyboarded one of the sequence shots we want to
film, which is going to be filmed in Grindleford. It’s also going to be shot in
the man’s point of view which also takes on the first person point of view
technique. The shot is going to start from behind a tree the stalker has been
waiting behind while his victim wakes up, then in his point of view we will
follow the girl from a distance as she finds her way of the woods. This
sequence will probably last around 20 seconds until they are both on a path
that leads to the train station, where the man will shout her name and she
turns around. There the sequence shot will end as we switch over to behind the
girl again, this time as she is looking at him and the audience can now see
that we have been watching her in his point of view. This won’t be the only
time we plan on using a first person point of view, as we want to use this for
the very last shot of the film. We’re going to have the stalker pull up to the
side of the road to ask another girl who by now the audience should get the
idea that he has stalked previously as it becomes known at the beginning that
another girl has been missing. The camera will be in the position of this girl
at the side of the road pointing to the stalkers rolled down car window, while
he looks to the camera (girl) and asks if she would like a lift home. Apart
from these two first person point of view shots the rest of the film will use a
modified subjective point of view which is the most commonly used point of
view.
