The Prisoner Evaluation

It was a lot harder than I first thought to produce a small piece of film like The Prisoner which i did with Kirsty. Firstly, we anotated our script so we knew what shots we wanted, camera angles, how we wanted our actors to deliver the lines, where we wanted them positioned etc. We clearly had a hiccup with filming due to our camera, but that got sorted.

My favourite shot in the Prisoner is when Sam (Number 2) enters as you get a silohette of his head and shoulders and he looks very demeening as we used a low angle shot. It was Kirsty's idea to use the Moby music which we'd seen in the Bourne Ultimatium movie. It stsa good atmosphere for our short film and the identity theme which is in both movies was why we picked it. Using the music throughout The Prisoner makes it much more efeective to watch and makes it sound more proffessional thna it did when we cut the music only to the beginning and end.

Another part I love in The Prisoner is the end when we used the effect of cross-disolve in the editing process so Sam's laughing face in close up would gradually appear over Billy (Number 6) crying. We slowed down Sam's laughing to make his voice sound deeper and scarier but also to make the ending much more dramatic. I also like how we bring the volume of the music back up at the end which overall I beleive gives The Prisoner a very powerful ending.

During editing we did realise that we needed a few more shots; we didn't feel we had enough footage of Billy and also some of the cuts we had to make due to lack of footage meant there are jumps in our editing. We tried our best with the shots we did have and the overall finish doesn't look horrendous! Next time though, we will definatly do more repeats of the same shot to esnure we get an excellenct finished product.

The Prisoner...finally here!

Here is mine and Kirsty's 'master piece', The Prisoner. Due to rendering, the film begins 55 seconds in, so don't fear the black screen at the beginning....and enjoy!

Blooper Reel !

Working with amateur actors meant we had a few mistakes made with lines. But lucky for you, we have made them into a Bloopers Reel! Enjoy this tiny taster of The Prisoner...coming soon.

Filming Began...then Stopped...then Began Again!

Yesterday, me and Kirsty filmed our our first scripted & planned short scene 'The Prisoner'. Of course, there had to be some hiccups, the main one being our video camera wasn't fully charged and ran out 15 minutes into filming! But, luckily, the schools FLIP HD video camera came to the rescue! We mamaged the film the entire scene on this camera which meant we got some really intimate shots.
We also did a mini casting session in the sixth form common room and managed to recruit two actors, Billy Bradshaw & Sam Humby, to play Number 2 and Number 6 in the scene which meant me and Kirsty could do the camera work and directing fully.
For the setting for scene, we chose the ambiont drama studio as we could get the room really dark to acheive a mysterious and shadowy effect. It turned out as a brilliant place to film as we could get a totally black background and there was facilities (like toilets!) near by.
We had to do numerous takes of each shot so we could get the right angle and make it look the most effective. we also had to do a few extra because Sam & Billy forgot lines, or laughed, or weren't in the right position (check out our coming soon Blooper Reel for those takes!) We are in the editing stage now, so watch this space for The Prisoner, coming soon....

PS a huge thank you to the dedication of time & effort of Sam and Billy!

Camera Angle's....

Me and Kirsty created some differnt camera angle shots and put them together to improve our camera skills. We created our very own 'dolly' using a wheely computer chair and then stood the tripod on top of the chair to get a smooth point of view shot. It took a view takes to stop the wheels bumping into chair legs, but we got it! We also had to slow it down which gave it some drama too! Hope you can spot the shot in our short video.....