A Quick Summary

Set in the outback my scene is centred around two characters, A Killer and an out of uniform Policeman who attempts to bring The Killer a sense of justice and morality.

The two have very contrasting world views ,The Policeman believes in God and Order, whereas the murderer believes in Chaos and Uncertainty. What unfolds is a word driven conflict within the harsh, demanding environment.

A Few Notes

As an introduction to the scene. I want to start by presenting the environment, through a montage of long shots capturing the surrounds-like what you see at the start of most westerns. I intend on having 3-5 shots and within the final shot there are two men at the back of the frame, one man shoots the other, the sounds of the shot pierces through the silent beginning and the screen fades to black with the title of the film fading onto it. I then cut to the main scene.

My Goal/Aim 

When coming up with ideas I wrote something too much material that could never be condensed down into 5 minutes of film, so the focus for me will be to take just one scene and focus all of my attention onto that scene. It would be far better to make a good scene that goes for 3 minutes than to make a 10 minute film that looks horrible.

My goal when shooting this will be to make a very fluid scene without any random shot choices and cuts. I want my actors dialogue as well as my editing to really flow and be as absorbing as possible. I want my scene to be more about the substance of film making, rather than story.

My Approach

Before even beginning to shoot the final product I would like to experiment and test all the different aspects of the film especially the different areas I want to improve at. As Robin put it yesterday I need to  work on various aspects of my scene in order to make it

Demystifying the Nuts and Bolts . 

In terms of approach, I think it would be unfair on myself and on the actors too shoot something all in one day, what I would like to do is look at each important aspect of the scene and work on that before filming the final product, which will be a script based drama.

There are some key things I’ll work on before I start to properly shoot my idea,

For things such as:

Colour grading, Exposure and Setting the Scene: I could go out by myself one day and focus on my landscape shots and try and get the exposure and the framing correct, I could then take these images into the editing suites and try and either colour grade or filter effects through the footage.In order to get a nice looking, distinct but most importantly consistently coloured backdrop.

For Framing/Lighting: I could also go to where I intend to shoot my scene and focus on capturing the characters within the surrounds with some mates posing as ‘actors’ in the frame. During this fake shooting session I would also have the freedom to experiment with lighting and various other filming techniques.

Shot Selection/Coverage: I could do coverage practice, by getting helpers or friends in the frame and experimenting with how I’m going to cover that scene, without worrying about audio or the specific delivery of content. I could also edit this footage which gives me a clearer picture of the most necessary shots to take when or if I’m filming the final product.

Acting/Timing I could also do a session with the actors, without a camera and work on there pacing and kind of meticulously direct them in how to deliver each of their lines and the pauses that they give. By doing this I know that the content I will be film will be strong and rehearsed (as opposed to last time). What I found with my last filming experiment was that the actors delivered it really weakly and without rhythm, and even with editing there was nothing I could do to make the footage really flow.

Basically after chatting with Robin  yesterday I realised that I can’t really pre-conceive what to do and that in turn I should work on executing the various elements.

THE END