A couple of days before filming I reviewed my animatic and made a few last minute changes to the construction of the narrative in the opening and changed some shots in order to be able to film it all in one day. The main changed I made was to the characters. Instead of having two different characters I used the same character for both scenes, this was caused by me re-watching my animatic and deciding it was too dull. It felt slow and confusing and the scenes didn't seem related at all. I changed this by using the same character in both scenes.
The opening did not change too much apart from that, it began the same with Dylan (playing both character roles now) entering the shot but instead of acting naturalistic I had him struggling and limping as if he was exhausted and in pain. He slowly makes his way into shot before collapsing onto the bench and looking around as if checking that he isn't being followed. After looking, he acts relieved and pleased to be finally "free". I decided to have the chase scene as a flashback where the character in the forest scene flinches as if remembering something horrible and it cuts to a flashback of the chase scene where he is running, desperately.
This helped create a clear link between the scenes instead of leaving the viewer feeling disoriented and confused. I felt like this revised version fit the action movie convention more as it opens with the action and although it is clearer what is going on, you are still left wondering what has happened to this person, why they had to run and how they managed to escape.
I did some reseach into flashback scenes in films and looked at what makes a scene clear that it is a flashback. I wanted it to be obvious that this was a flashback so I noted some things about flashback scenes and I hope to copy them when filming mine.
This is a screenshot of a flashback scene from the action/thriller film "Fissure". I noticed that the colours are hard to distinguish between and the whole shot seems to have a yellow tint. This gives it an aged look that I think fits very well with the flashback and I will try to copy when editing mine. Also, the scene gets darker around the edges with a slight vignette effect that also works very well with the scene, I noted these things and I will try to keep these in mind when filming and editing my chase scenes in order to make it obvious that the chase scene is a flashback as the character remembers what he has gone through.
In our lesson we used the flip cameras to practice filming and learn about control of the camera. Our task was to create a doctors waiting room inside a classroom, focusing on framing to make sure that nothing entered the shot that would give away that we weren't actually in a waiting room. In order to make it look like a waiting room we moved a few chairs into a hall-way and placed them along the sides so there were two rows of chairs with a passage down the centre, like in the picture shown. We used lots of shots including an introduction shot of the empty waiting room, a shot of someone walking in and sitting down and lots of small shots where the person was fidgeting or rubbing there neck to show they were in pain. We also included a shot of a ticking clock to create the idea of waiting, this helped show that it was a waiting room and not just a seating area.
We used tripods to get steady shots and reduce the shake when filming steady shots, this shows control over the camera and makes the video seem more professional. This was helpful because it means that when I am filming my film opening I can demonstrate control over the camera and use more creative shots to help achieve a higher mark. Whenever I am filming I try to use more creative shots or make things more interesting by changing little things. Instead of using entirely still shots from the tripod I used a range of camera shots including tracking shots and even a point of view shot as one character followed another out of the waiting room.
