One shot excersise Wednesday 10th February

On Wednesday we carried out and finished the task that was set on the following Friday the 5th February. It required us to shoot a film in on shot last around a minute. Were not allowed to edit any of the scenes that we shot it all had to be in one motion. Our film was a dodgy deal that had gone wrong it had the characters meeting in a remote location to therefore carry out a transaction.

We filmed by the lake on the University Campus. This exercise was enjoyable as it was challenging because we had to plan and perform the scene before we could actually start shooting.

This meant we had to direct the camera to get the specific positions that we required also the actors had to stand a certain position so that we could capture all the action in the frame and that the actors knew where they were going next so that there would be constant motion within the shot.

We all had a chance to play different roles, for example I sometimes played the role of the dealer then later on we would switch roles as I then had chance to have a practice with directing side of this and therefore have more parctice with using the "figrig" which is a device that secures the camera and stops it from moving when taking close-ups or mid-shots.

This was a good exercise as it encouraged good team working skills and he problems you will face while making a film, for example there were times were there was too much light exposure on the lens and also it started snowing which meant that there were times where there was snow on the lens.

Also we had the problem of people walking in the shot, so we had to plan it very carefully. We focused and based our work on the film "Russian Ark" which focused on specfiic events in Russian history and used the concept of filming a feature lenth film in one shot.

I particularly enjoyed this idea as it was new and original but I also see the challenges that the director had with setting up scenes and filming them all in one shot without any editing and without any mistakes.

Also the Ben Dodd film "Surprise" which both focused on the idea of shooting the film in one shot but this time started with the end of the film with a bathroom mirror smashed and a body in the bath and worked backwards to reveal the "surprise"

scene 1 from mandybriggs on Vimeo.