Shooting Exercise 2

Short Film: Click Here

The task this time round was to capture various shots. Including wide shots and close up shots. For the sound we had to experiment with Spot FX (close up sound) and Atmos sound to create a short 1 minute piece. The main aim was to research into locations that not many people will know about. Meaning that research was a key part of the task. 

I have found that through the use of sound you can pull focus to specific things. For example you can focus on footsteps within a busy atmosphere. We found it very difficult sometimes to shoot some footage and sound due to the weather been rainy. However, to overcome this we made sure to check the weather report and tried to shoot whenever it was clear. To get the best possible outcome. I've also found that sound can help the audience to understand the thing that is being shown to them. However, I believe next time we need to capture more sounds and maybe put more research into the locations. This is because the sound is very subtle and it doesn't create much of an effect for the audience. So I think that the footage would have been better if it had better sound to it. We wanted to make it sound eerie, but we wasn't able to properly do it because we didn't manage our time that well. Which led to us having to quickly put the sound in rather than having time to edit it. 

Our locations could have been researched a little bit more, this is because in the video we have used many different locations. None of them are in one particular location. Which I believe could be improved next time. Another thing we learnt is that our shots are very nice. The reveal a lot of things within the shot such as reflections and angles on buildings that are almost like still photographs. However, the issue with this though is that there is hardly any movement within the frame, which means that it can get boring, especially with the sound not been that great. Next time there needs to be movement as well as more research and sound gathering. 

For locations we mainly focused on the area near the River Don. This is because there was some interesting bridges and a nice looking car. It was a nice location to shoot with not many people there. Which was good because that meant we had no interruptions. However, there wasn't really anything else that interesting here. I think we should have researched a little bit more. Maybe looking on websites like trip adviser, but the issue with that is there is a lot of things that a lot of people may already know about. I think to make the final piece more interesting, then some more research is needed. Although the location that we picked was nice, it wasn't really that interesting, compared to something like 'Junktopia'  Which takes a location that people might know about, then turning it into something eerie and interesting to watch. This was also done well with sound, which can turn a well known location, into something completely different with the use of sound. 

For sound recording I tried to include some folly sound to add effect. I used things like scratching a pen onto some wood to create a scratching sound that when has some reverb put onto it and reversed, it sounds quite eerie and I think that this was done well. The only issue is that I made it slightly too quiet so it was hard to hear what it was. I also tried the clicking of a pen to try and recreate a dropping of water, but this never went to plan and I had to return the recorder not long after. For this to go well next time I need to try and spend more time on the capturing of the sounds. I took inspiration for this style of sound from the tennis ball scene in 'The Shining' Where the ball was recorded externally to the video footage, which helped to make the sound the main focus of the scene. I tried doing this with the pen sound and talking from the outside of a building 0:14 - 0:25.