Planning

I have realised that I have not blogged about the planning of this shoot. This was mainly due to the speed in which we came up with the idea of a lost hiker in the middle of Edale. The idea came from brainstorming and just writing down different things that we could relate to the area and things that we could relate to hiking such as being lost or hurt in the middle of nowhere. We did show our initial planning/idea and got feedback on how to shoot the film sucessful or what would work well. This feedback proved useful and we took the advice during the shoot making sure that we played on the feeling of being lost and how that would create panic. The planning was quite minimal as we had never been too Edale and therefore could not script the film specifically to the location so we had a list of shots that we would like to include in the film and decided on a style to shoot in. On the day we found a location suitable too our vision in the early stages and used this as the basis for our film. I think we could have improved the pre production planning with a trip to Edale before the date of the shoot to decide on a location but the way we did it worked fine as we had a general idea of what most of the location was and also the film was not location specific. We decided early on that Will would be the protagonist as it would be inpractical for us to get an actor to come to Edale for a whole day and he had the most clothing similar to that of a hiker as he had hiked somewhere else on a previous occasion. The only other planning was to aquire either a compass or a map as a prop for the protagonist in our film and that was not hard as Will already owned one. We had also decided on using a tripod for still shots at distance then using handheld for close ups as the slight movement has a way of engaging the viewer and we wanted to go for this style. This moving camera seems to work this way becase people do not tend to sit completely rigid and stare at somebody especially if they are hiking, it was necessary to make the film seem more realistic and engrossing. The main idea of this film is too tell the story of a Hiker slowly getting more and more lost in the wilderness in the most engrossing and engaging way possible without losing the interest of the audience.

Evaluating the Finished film: Portrait of Place

During the editing process we found that the XM-2 fell short of what we wanted in terms of quality and often had vastly different colour balances between shots, which we had to fix in post production. A big problem for us was that we had too much footage and found it hard to fit it all into just three minutes and had to cut out nearly two minutes by the end, perhaps we could have planned the timing better. Looking back over the shots on the Mac I thought that we had been very sucessful in getting the exact shots and style that we had gone for. We also added a Vignette filter and feathered the edges of the shot after we colour corrected to add an interesting style to the film. I thought that this film focused the viewer and made the whole shot look more aesthetically pleasing to the audience. We had tried to mix up the shots and keep them all interesting and engaging to the viewer. I believe we did this quite well because when I watch short films of this kind that do not grab my attention I find myself looking around the room by accident and losing interest whereas I was concentrating on the film every time we played it back. My favourite part of the film was the moving close up or over the shoulder shots because I love the effect and how it makes you feel so close to the protagonist as well as the action. I had to work quite hard to get this shot walking up the steep hills over bumps, dips and a few fallen trees to get the shot and keep it as steady as possible. We tried to get a subtle shakey camera effect, which gradually increased over time. This shake effect creates a sense of panic in the viewer and we wanted the audience to relate to the protagonists feelings and realise how stressed and worried he would be. To improve this film I would like to have got a few more scenic shots showing off the surroundings as looking back through my footage some of it seems like a total waste of a great landscape to shoot in. Also I think that we may have concentrated too heavily on technique and not enough on developing an interesting enough story for the short film as the protagonist just gets lost in our film. Overall the film worked quite well and told the Hikers story in an engaging way with some quite interesting shots that differed from the standard shots you would expect to cover the same action sequence.

Edale Project

We both already had a pretty precice idea of what we wanted to film and the style in which we would shoot this short film. The Storyboards remained quite loose because of the fact that we had never been to Edale before so we had to improvise on a few occasions, which turned out too be a good thing as it made gathering the footage feel like something of an accomplishment. We drew influence in our filming from recently watching a film "The Wrestler" and tried to add a few shots that emulated the style of Jim Jarmusch in the way that some long shots would linger or have the actor walk in and out of the same shot. White balancing the shot was incredibly difficult against the sky on the XM2 as the sky was actually bright white/very bright grey when we were shooting and taking too much of the brightness out seemed to distort the rest of the shot. I found that the location to be even more impressive than I had imagined and made the shots look even more impressive. The scale of the location around us helped to create a feeling that the Hiker in our film was lost in the middle of nowhere. We used a lot of long shots not only to capture the breathtaking surroundings but also to show the audience just how small the Protagonist was and I thought that was something the audience could relate too, especially if they have ever been lost in the same way. The thing I liked most from this film was the over the shoulder or close up shots that we used a gradually increasing amount of "shakey-cam" to achieve. The gradually more irrational camera movement was to create a sense of increasing panic and I think it came off really well on the footage and was well worth the effort of walking backwards without being able to see what I was stepping on.