First Day of Shooting

Putting sellotape on the back of the photos to stop them from soaking up water.

A few weeks ago, i began the process of shooting for my thriller opening, Out of Sight. After completing this after 2 days, i decided it was important for me to write a post about the progress and numerous problems i encountered.

Notice how the face and the hands are too red

 With one of my shots, i needed my protagonist to enter a hallway, turn the light on and simply walk down. Ironically, it is these simple takes that can produce the most complications. Firstly, on the left on the hallway is a spare room and further on is a bathroom. Both doors were open producing too much light for my scene as it is set for early morning. After re-taking the shot, i noticed that the environment, even when the light was turn on, was too dark. The red became even more red and all the light seemed artificial. The camera was set to a lower exposure setting and so it takes in less light, making the picture seem dimmer and shady. I decided that changing all the sots in colour correction would be too hard and it would be better to re-shoot the next day and have much better looking original clips.

The fast moving arms and hands created the unwanted 'blur effect'

Another problem which quickly became apparent was motion blur. For my quick action shots, when i played back my clips on the camera all seemed fine. It was when i uploaded the clips onto the big screen that i could see some blur created by the fast moving protagonist. I can only come to the conclusion that the frame rate wasn't ideal for fast paced movement. I would therefore have to correct the motion blur using tools video effects in Adobe Premiere.

My actor providing guidelines and advice for each shot

On a more optimistic note, i found shooting on he whole to be very successful. My protagonist seemed very keen to convey a more subtle but meaningful story in less than 3 minutes, adopting my storyboard simultaneously. My actor, from a professional point of view, was incredibly helpful as problems such as continuity errors were pointed out before he acted out a particular scene. For example, we filmed a scene with a bedroom door open wide whereas in the previous scene (in storyboard order) the door was closed shut. It is vital that errors like these are discovered and eliminated before any shooting takes place to avoid unnecessary hassle and re-shooting.