Task 3 - Realisation.

After bringing together all my ideas and planning, I finally filmed my realisation to the closest way I possibly planned it to look. Like I've previously said, this is strictly visuals only. I didn't want to focus on sound as I didn't deem it necessary for this cinematography and production design module, so any background noise and general chatter has been recorded from the camera's built in microphone and isn't supposed to be part of the scene.

HANDHELD DOLLY

I had to dolly in with a handheld camera movement rather than on the track, as it proved relatively awkward to do, so going handheld was logistically a lot easier, although the smoothness of the shot suffered as a result. I feel this shot shows the simplicity of my scene and that it doesn't take extravagant props or costume to convey the importance of characters, but rather lighting does. I feel my idea to light the leader's hands worked well, because it draws attention to his hands and his body language can show his authority. The fact that the rest of his body in unlit, clouds the character in mystery, which is what I've been planning to have from the start. I also attempted to implement to notion of lines of perspective - relating back to the Frame section of my Conceptual Tools of Cinematography post, with the lines pointing towards the direction of the leader, further enhancing his importance within the scene.

TRUCKING SHOT

The long trucking shot sprouts from my Wes Anderson inspiration and his use of trucking shots in order to establish a setting or scenario of some kind. Additionally, they could be used to reveal a vital piece of information, relating back to the camera movement section of my Conceptual Tools of Cinematography post.




MACRO LENS SHOTS

With the macro lens, I could go into greater visual detail with shots and add a bit more texture visually, rather than staying with the standard lens. It ultimately gave me good close ups of what each individual drug lord is doing at the table, for the audience to gauge what they might currently be feeling through subtle body language. Small hand movements could be a sign of nervous tension. For example, with the candle light, the fact that the drug lord is waving his hand across the candle suggests he's possibly somewhat relaxed in this situation.










FEEDBACK

After finishing filming and uploading the footage, I asked a few people to objectively watch my work and give me any feedback, be that positive or constructive. One thing many people said was that they could see what I was going for, such as dimly lighting the characters so we don't really know who they are, what their purpose is, we don't know whether to trust them. Someone noticed the fake candle, to which I explained that for health and safety purposes, as well as potentially setting off the fire alarm, I decided not to use real candles. Whilst looking less realistic, I could still produce the same effect I wanted with a fake candle and that's all that mattered to me - as long as I got across the hand movements and what this means, then I was satisfied. A couple of people noticed the unsteady camera movement in the dolly, which made me aware that I should have planned better for a situation where I wouldn't have been to use the dolly track on the table, I need to always have the mindset that the shot cannot suffer as a result of my incapabilities.

The trucking shot received a lot more praise, with a few common comments being that it was very smooth and showcased the element of mystery I was hoping to achieve as a result of low key lighting. There is a lot of darkness and shadows, which is what I wanted in the end. It mirrored a Blader Runner-esque style shot, which I found as a great comment considering I wanted to achieve a neo-noir style, in that I mix classic examples of production design and lighting, with more modern camera movement. Back to the handheld dolly shot, one person noticed the different colour light on the blinds, one being blue and there other being orange. This was a mistake by myself, the blue had been the evening natural lighting I wanted to try and create, and the orange from the other blind is the standard arri lamps with no filters or gels over them, I had just simply forgotten to set those up properly, which was really unprofessional of me and slightly ruins my work. However, I can learn from this in that I will check everything has been done properly before shooting, possibly with a check list of some kind to remind myself.

The macro shots as a whole were aesthetically pleasing to look at, although people felt they didn't really gauge what sort of emotions characters were feeling at that point, which I'm not sure is down to the cinematography itself, or performance. One thing that really irked me was the unsteadiness of the camera movement in the dolly, so for future projects I would definitely plan not just one, but two or three methods of shooting in order to achieve the same shot. I only planned for one and it failed, so I had to resort to the handheld approach.