Project film #3

In this film I created my own story to shoot, the plan was to film a fight scene with a long take that demonstrating Asian cinema’s action movies visual style, and try to film a continuous shot to let the audience can feel the rhythm and power in the scene that what I have investigated and researched for. The place I chose to film was in Building nine edit suite, it is a good place for me to do this experiment because there is a long and narrow hallway, the effect of the tracking shot would be sharper than shooting in a spacial place.

I shot this in wide shot and shortest focal length to keep the shot as steady as possible, because I just used the simple handheld, I worried the shot would be shaky, but the turn out was good so I didn’t use the warp stabiliser in Premiere when I edited the scene.

As the screen captures has shown that I made a wide shot long take, so while the actors were fighting in the shot, we could still see the actors are in the middle of the frame. Also, the wide shot would let the frame showing the actions of the actors such as punches, gunfire and they die in the shot, it is a good result to me because those are what exactly I wanted to investigate in the project. Action and reaction in the same frame, to create the continuity in a fight scene to let the fight seems more realistic and powerful.

Project film #4

This is the last video I filmed in this project, I shot the same script of the previous video I filmed, so the storyline is same with the previous one. The main actor, which is Henry, tries to escape and has fights with three stages of enemies who are trying to kill him.

This video was a bit easier than the previous one, because the camerawork was not as much as the last one. More than half the scene is just a steady handheld at the corner of the lift, so I only tilted the camera up and down while filming in the lift. With the advantage that fewer changes in camerawork, the footage is more steady than the one which was shot in the edit suite hallway. The sound effects like punches sound and gunfires are a bit playful like action comedy in 80’s to 90’s Hong Kong cinema, so it is a it weird but it kind of works in this scene.

I found this video has created a better pace and rhythm than the previous one because there is more than a half time is a steady handheld shot in the lift, when Henry is waiting the door opens on every level and fight, the atmosphere could be more intense than the hallway one that Henry is walking forward and peeping around to find the next enemy. The frame is so “silent”. I was satisfied with this video because I shot with one take only and I have got what I want in the project. The comparison between the hallway and the lift’s long take is mainly the camera movements are different but both of them have developed powerful and rhythmical fight scene that I have focused in the project.