An example of a shot that needed reworking: The pan on the stairs

Originally we planned to have the camera in the corner of the stairwell and have a pan beginning on the open door and moving up looking through the banisters of the stairs, with the girl walking along the landing and the pan stopping on the bathroom door as the girl walks into the bathroom. This shot was going to re-iterate the fact that the front door was left open and create suspense.

During the test shot the shot worked (you can see a clip of this below). However when we got to the actual shoot, we had changed our idea slightly and decided to include the fact that you see a close-up of the girl dropping her keys and you see the front door open again. We felt that it was too obvious to go again to the front door and that this shot would detract from suspense and make it a bit too obvious that something was going to happen. We also had added shots of footsteps on the stairs and the man's hand on the banisters, so we decided to edit the shot slightly to have it starting already on the floor level through the banisters (to create a frame within a frame) which would center the audience's attention on the footsteps and also create tension. The camera would then pan from right to left following the girls movement until she went into the bathroom.

Test Shot:


Final Shot Used:



We were pleased with how the shot turned out in the actual shoot and definitely within the sequence this edited version of the shoot looks much more effective. It also didn't take very long to take the changed shot as it was basically a cropped version of the previous shot which was longer.

Stephanie

Problem Prevention Seminar

We targeted the following key potential issues specific to our group that could present difficulties:

1. Poor lighting
2. Transport problems
3. Time wasting on shoot
4. Not taking enough footage
5. Losing patience
6. Not voicing opinions enough/saying how you feel
7. Transport difficulties
8. Someone being lazy/not pulling their weight
9. Making excuses
10. What was number 10?

[this list makes us look a bit bad actually. also i wasnt actually sure whther i was menat to do it so feel free to delete it or change it as appropriate =) ]

-Angela x

Problem Regarding Bathroom Door

As you can see from Nicks post [Meeting: Friday 16th November] Rebecca's bathroom has a slightly odd layout. And from where her bathroom mirror is, you cannot see the bathroom door - which causes a problem for one of the aspects of our opening.

We originally wanted the main character to be able to open the bathroom door and walk up to the mirror in one shot. However because you cannot see the bathroom door from the mirror, this wouldn't work. So instead at one of our meetings we discussed this problem and came up with a solution, two seperate shots. One of her opening the bathroom door and coming into the bathroom and the next shot as the mirror. We could use a black screened title to connect the two shots together and keep the continuity.

Another issue was that when the main character was bent over the sink washing her face (ducked out of the shot) we were going to have the shot full of the door - because the downstairs door had just closed as a generalisation the audience would expect someone to be standing in the doorway - so by not having it you give them an anticlimax which would keep them interested as to what would happen next as we hadn't chosen the most obvious way of possibly introducing the other character. So to get around the problem of not being able to see the door we decided to just continue to have the shot as it would be - from the position of the mirror - and that the overall effect of the anti-climax would still work because you would still expect someone to be behind her. An example of the villain being behind the hero or heroine is in Fatal Attraction when Dan's wife Beth is looking in the cabinet and then she closes the bathroom cabinet door (which has a mirror on it) and you see Alex standing behind her which makes you jump. However as an audience you expect something like that to happen in that situation.

So overall we've solved the continuity problem within the bathroom by having an establishing show of the location. And the problem with the door and the anti-climax has also been resolved in our opinion.

- Steph