Weather shots write up

18th September 2009

This week we made short films about our given topic the weather. These were all one shot films, in total we did 3: A close up shot, a medium shot and a long shot.

First we had to draw out basic visuals and story boards including the camera framing, angles and movement. These helped with timing of the scene and assists crew members during production for framing the action.

Our first shot included a close up of a man with an umbrella going for a walk in the park on a windy day. As the weather was more calm than windy we improvised by throwing leaves at him whilst he walked and him having to act as if it was windy by acting out a struggle with his umbrella. For our first shot we framed the camera for a close up shot and was on a horizontal angle and showed the characters head and shoulders. We used continuous slow camera movement from right to give the viewer a good feel for the location and mood of the film.

Our second shot was of two people, a man and a woman sunbathing on a bench in the park. As it was a particularly sunny day this was easily done and really portrayed the warmth and welcoming of the sunny weather.This was our medium shot and was a continuous shot starting with a view of the sun behind a tree with its branches waving in the wind which gave a very calm sense. The camera was then slowly moved down on to the people enjoying the warm weather sitting on a bench in the park. The camera was again on a straight horizontal angle for the whole shot. This shot could have been improved by using more slow camera movement as it was slightly rushed and didn't really portray what we wanted it to.

Our third and final shot was a long shot, this included slow continuous camera movement from left to right filming a calm location by the river also including a swan and the cloudy sky. We started filming a cloudy sky at an upright tilted angle and moving down onto filming the whole stretch of the river and a swan swimming past giving the viewer a sense of tranquility and peace.

I think the shot that worked the best was our first shot because the camera movement and angling was done just right and all in time whereas our other two shots we're less focused and some of the camera movement was rushed and filmed to fast, therefore didn't really portray the feeling towards the viewers that we wanted them to.

We had half an hour to film all 3 shots therefore if i could change anything i would have liked more time and to have taken more time in filming, but overall think this was a good try for our first time.