Example shots that needed to be re-worked

We originally planned to do this:
The first shot set inside the girl's room (the pan from the glass of ater to the open sachet of Alka-seltzers) was originally intended to be a long, smooth opening [scene-setting] pan/track, with the camera moving from the glass to the Alka-seltzers, and then tracking smoothly forward to the framing seen in the actual following shot (of the cigarette packet in the foreground).

However, this happened during the test shot:
We tried to achieve this by mounting the tripod on a skateboard, sliding the skateboard along the floor. However, as moving it in a 'curvy' direction in order to manoevre around the table and towards the bedside cabinet was difficult and compromised the smoothness of the shot, we decided to instead use a pan from the glass of water to the Alka-seltzers [the camera being mounted on the skateboard and stationary at this point], and then to move the skateboard forward in a straight line towards the cigarette packet, and finally keep the camera stationary with the cigarette packet in the foreground of the shot and have her dragging it out of shot.

We also tried to use a 'DIY steadycam'; the camera was mounted on the tripod and we held the tripod at the top and bottom [in a similar way to a boom mike] and moved the camera free-hand, in order to create a somewhat smooth motion through the weight of the tripod. This didn't work, however, as I think the camera was too close to/the framing was too tight on the 3 foreground items [glass, Alka-seltzer packet and cigarette packet], and so any small jerking or shaking movements showed up very clearly and made the shot actually look handheld; not what we intended.


Was this successful?
This worked better, but took a long time to set up and practise. Also, on being able to more closely review the shots during the capturing process we discovered that no takes of this shot were smooth throughout that also had the correct framing.



For the final sequence we did this:
As you can see we decided to put the beginning of one take and the end of another take of the same shot together. We also used a dissolve to give the impression that she had been on the phone for some period of time and emphasise the slow pace of this scene. It was also effective at preventing the cut between the shots look like such a jump.

Angela x