Story-telling + Workshop | The Chair + Cameras 2 (5th October 2016)

Today we were given a short project in which we had to shoot a short piece focusing on someone walking up to a chair and sitting on it.  Whilst this was a very simple premise, the main focus of the task was to practice framing, and to experiment with using different shots to cover a scene, rather than just sticking with one.

I chose to shoot my entire film without the tripod, so it was all handheld - this was just so I had a lot more control of the camera and the movement shots fit together better with the stationary shots.  One or two of the wide shots are slightly out of focus unfortunately, this is probably down to my eyesight not being good enough to see on the camera display, but next time I will definitely need to spend a little more time ensuring my shots are in focus before filming.  I also altered the exposure slightly, which I don't think made much noticeable difference in the film.

I opted to open my film with a shot of the lighting equipment in the ceiling of the studios to establish the scene, then pan across to the door so I could introduce Jason who is entering the studio to find the chair.  I then experimented with close ups of Jason's face and travelling shots of his feet and the back of his head as he is walking.  I switched between these closeups with medium and wide shots, and tried my best to keep to the 180° rule (may have slipped up slightly in a shot or two).

I tried to add a bit more detail than just 'Jason sits on a chair', so I captured shots of him entering the studio, looking around trying to find the chair, walking toward the chair, checking if anyone else was using the chair before finally sitting in the chair.  I also repeated the motif of panning up toward the studio lighting in the final shot to give the film a cyclical feel.

Here is what I came up with:

Slightly random point, but we spoke about shutter speed and frame rates, and we touched upon NTSC and PAL outputs which seemed confusing initially, but stumbled upon an interesting video on YouTube this evening by standupmaths which clarified some of the history behind why the US uses NTSC, and Europe uses PAL: