Roddy's Ramblings

Thoughts and tales; some of them may even be true.

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Location: Australia

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Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Learning Process... Making a Film (2)

Day 1

Its the first day of my allocated holiday to allow some dedicated time to shoot the film. I unwrapped my tripod, spend quite a while working out how to turn the camera on, checking the settings and spend more time working out which knob, dial and switch did what on the tripod.

I had already spent some time working out a starting point. There seemed to be 3 main shots; one being the continuity shot that would be base for the film, one a POV change and the other being the dudey shot with camera movement.

So with this all marked on the screenplay (with the margins adjusted to allow for notes), I setup the tripod to capture the shot I wanted for the base continuity. I didn't have a dead body on hand, so I just shaped the quilt to give this impression for the draft.

The first plan was to read through the screenplay to get an idea of timings. I also wanted to show the shadows of the other 3 (well 2 actually, the 3rd never comes into the room) characters moving so I could fiddle with it in the video editor, when I got one. Regardless of being in an empty house, I still felt like a bit of an tw*t (use whichever vowel depicts your upbringing) reading and swearing from the script in different voices. I also realised that I would not be able to do the slight shifts with the camera, lie in the bed nor move myself around the room to give the placement of the shadows at the same time. It is starting to become probable, that I will not be able to do this on my own...

I realised I needed to work out the variety of shots required and how to get continuity between them. I was going to state beforehand on the video which scene I would be doing as I needed an indicator to state which shot was being taken. This, I realised, was what a clapper-board is for.

I then decided to clean those hard-to-reach windows in the house, remove that darned defunct smoke detector (using a bizarre triangulation with the ladder over a very high drop) and mow the lawn, which took in itself over two and a half hours. I then fixed the jukebox software to stop it hanging on a certain CD and fixed up the MP3 tags. For some bizarre reason, Dido's Life for Rent just fails to be read in properly... ah, well.

Tomorrow will be spent on working out how many individual shots are required for the shoot; the kitchen also needs cleaning... as well as my bathroom (the shower also needs some re-sealing) and a hoovering of the carpet is well overdue. Really need to brush the floorboards as well.

Film making is damned hard work.

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