Establishing Shots

We have planned for our film opening to feature some establishing shots and a few shots of the inside of the garage before the title sequence/ action begins. The establishing shots are to be of the house of the main character, focusing on the garage as that is where the next scene (and title sequence) takes place.

Although our opening is filmed in my garage, we are not going to be using my house for the establishing shots; we want something that looks like a typical suburban house, whereas mine is a town house so does not fit the look we are going for. Instead, we are planning to film our establishing shots at a two storey, corner house, with a red garage door so it is clear exactly what is being focused on. As it tends to be dark at the time school ends, myself and Rachel are planning to film our establishing shots during the day in over the Christmas holidays.

Filming- Day 5

Today was our fifth day of filming and we completed the shots we failed to film last week due to having to re-shoot certain shots. 

The shots we filmed today were:

- low angle shot of reaching for the crisps

- close up of eating crisps

-extreme close up of eyes focusing on polariods

Se7en- Reveiw

During our lesson last Wednesday, we watched David Fincher's 1995 film 'Se7en'. Over the course of the film, we saw the story of serial killer Jon Doe (Kevin Spacey) unfold, and watched the work of Detective Lieutenant William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) and Detective David Mills (Brad Pitt) as they investigate into each murder. At the second murder, it became evident to both the detectives and the audience that each homicide was based on the seven deadly sins, with Doe believing each of his victims had committed one of these.

The title sequence was featured after a few scenes from the film, but was unrelated to the story line. This was an interesting decision from Fincher, as usually titles are integrated into the film.

Filming- Day 4

For 4 hours earlier today, myself, Rachel and Ted got together to film a few more shots. As our last two filming sessions have not been as productive as we'd had hoped, we had much more planned today. Ted arrived at around 5:30 and we worked until 9:30, with a half an hour pizza break in the middle. In the 3 and half hours filming time we had, we'd planned to shoot shots 7-15, but unfortunately only got up to shot 12 due to some continuity issues. We noticed after shooting shot 12 that shot 9 would need to be redone, as our character was wearing his headphones round his neck rather than on his head. As he is wearing them in every other shot we have filmed so far, we decided we would need to re-film this as it would massively break the continuity and lower our grade. Also, we didn't manage to begin filming as soon as Ted arrived as we needed to replace parts of the set that had moved such as the laptops and any posters that had come away from the wall. For these reasons, we ended up losing nearly an hour of filming time, which is why we did not manage to get through all 8 shots.

However, today was the first time Rachel and I had decided to create a shooting schedule, and map out everything we had planned to film. This proved to be massively helpful and improved our efficiency as we didn't have to discuss what we were to film next. 

Shooting Schedule

For the first time, myself and Rachel have decided to plan out what we want to be filmed when we get together with Ted on Thursday 8th December. We are hoping this will be beneficial to our levels as productivity, as out last few days of filming have not been as productive as we would have hoped. During the first day of filming, a plan was not too essential as we had our storyboard, but now it is vital as a lot of our storyboard has changed. We are hoping to film shots 7-15 on Thursday, and have a note of what needs to be done in each shot. It is no longer correlated exactly with our storyboard as some shots have been removed, altered, or added.

Shooting Schedule

• 7   - behind shot of sitting
• 8   - mid shot of putting book on table, must see that the tape is NOT put down
• 9   - close up/ extreme close up of tape biting
• 10 - SRS, mid shot of putting the tape down and picking up the picture
• 11 - behind shot of sticking the picture to the wall
• 12 - close up of TITLE on the picture stuck up.
• DINNER
• 13 - low angle shot from Space Raiders to see reach
• 14 - low angle (different positioning) of opening crisps and taking one out
• 15 - close up of eating a crisp, eyes look round the map as if looking for something, fixates on polaroids.