I chose the cinematography module because, while film-making is a very visual art-form, and I have more experience in camera operating than in any other area of film-making, I have never been particularly confident in cinematography - most of the experience I have of camera operating has been in filming documentaries and live events, and rarely have the chance to plan things such as lighting in advance, and as most of the video work I’ve been part of outside university is often hand-held and/or improvised, I haven’t been able to develop my cinematography skills outside operating camera. I hoped that this module would help me to develop my cinematography skills - particularly in lighting, which I feel I am weakest at overall (since, for improvised documentaries and live events, the best fix for bad lighting is changing exposure) - and overall I think the module has helped me achieve this. Additionally, part of what inspired me to get involved in film-making was the strong visual style of particular directors such as Stanley Kubrick and Michel Gondry.
The ‘casting’ of the group I was put into was quite fortunate - all four members of the group also chose the same theory module, meaning that the only difference between our timetables was one slot (three hours) per week for our Narrative modules. This meant that, when we weren’t committed to filming for other projects, we were all generally available at the same time, which made it fairly easy to arrange filming schedules.
Early in the module, we had a group meeting to discuss ideas for the 5-10 minute film project. Poppy and Jacob both suggested ideas with similar potential sequences: Poppy’s idea was to follow a character suffering from paranoia, who becomes wary of any people around him and of any sound he hears; Jacob’s idea was to follow a character who is convinced he is being chased through city streets, until he discovers at the end that the person ‘chasing’ him is simply returning something that he dropped in the street. Both of these ideas would involve chase sequences, immediately opening the doors to possibilities for point-of-view and tracking shots that could create suspense and tension, and allowed room to use difficult-but-effective techniques such as dolly zooms, which are a common occurrence in suspenseful sequences because of the distorting effect they produce. The two ideas would also allow for a moody, ‘gritty’ visual style typical of British cinema, exemplified in films such as Eden Lake (2008).
We agreed to film Poppy’s idea, as it seemed to be more developed and the psychological element of the character’s paranoia gave us lots of room to give a creative cinematic delivery, meaning we could develop our cinematography skills and to ‘show off’ these skills for the assessment. Once we had settled on the idea, Poppy wrote a script, and we agreed to storyboard the film individually and to incorporate ideas together from each of our storyboards in the final film. I think that some other groups might have given each member the responsibility of filming a different scene/sequence each, but the method that we followed seemed to be the fairest arrangement to us - while our script had four scenes (one per group member), these scenes were all different lengths, meaning that our individual contributions to the filming process would be disproportionate. However, having four different camera operators with different visual styles and varying levels of experience produced somewhat inconsistent cinematography in the film, despite having agreed on storyboard ideas and shot lists before each shoot.
This inconsistency has helped my to learn the importance of lighting scenes to specific f-stops and colour balancing to particular kelvin values. It has also helped me to appreciate the value of having a director of photography - having somebody responsible for the cinematography, on whom camera operators could rely to decide on factors such as f-stops and colour temperatures (although having a single DOP for this project would again have made our individual contributions to the cinematography disproportionate).
As we were aware that we would be filming in Grindleford for this module, Poppy included in the script a scene set in some woods. We went on the pre-arranged recce in Grindleford, having read the script and knowing what sorts of locations to look out for. This helped us each to visualise the scene, and shortly after this recce we produced storyboards for the scene based on the locations we had scouted. Considering the psychological element of the script (the character’s paranoia) and that the woods scene was a fantasy sequence, I took influence for my storyboard of this scene from Scott Pilgrim vs The World (2010). To borrow an explanation from an early post on my research blog:
I took influence in the first shot from a sequence in the first half of Scott Pilgrim vs The World in which the character Scott is in a trance, and the editing cuts abruptly several times through time and place - in one shot Scott is playing bass at his band's practice, before his bandmate's head enters the shot shouting 'Scott!', and the camera cuts to a mid-shot of these characters in the same position only now they're walking down the street.
I used this idea in my storyboard - the final shot of the preceding scene will show the character scrunching up his face with a brick wall as the background - in my storyboard, the opening shot of the following scene will still be filmed against the brick wall, as he opens his eyes again, before cutting to the new location of the woods.
This sequence is probably my favourite contribution to the finished film, as I think it achieved the intended effect and that the contrast between the dark, atmospheric street scene....
... as we see Gary respond to what he imagines he is seeing:
Around the time we had arranged to film this sequence, it began to snow, and became heavier on the morning we went to film on. Initially, this was worrying - mainly because we were unsure whether the weather would stop us being able to get to Grindleford. However, the snow ultimately worked in our favour, as the uniform colour it provided helped to neutralise the colours of the woods, and in Western culture, the colour white connotes purity, which was in keeping with the narrative of the scene, in which the character imagines he is walking through the woods as a sort of ‘mental retreat’. Additionally, the sudden shift in weather helped to clarify on-screen that the scene is a fantasy sequence.
After filming, I produced a camera log sheet - based on the metadata recorded by the camera - for Poppy to refer to when editing the project. In the process, I became aware that the shutter-speed used wasn’t consistent throughout. When I operated camera, I kept the shutter-speed at 1/50 - double the frame-rate - as I knew that the shutter-speed affects motion blur. Aware of this, I tried to remind other group members to keep the shutter-speed consistent when exposing different shots. I think that this is most likely to be because the processes of changing shutter speed and aperture on the Canon 550D, which we filmed on, are very similar.
We next filmed the opening scene of the film, set in a doctor’s office. Unlike the scene we filmed in Grindleford, our storyboards for this scene were all relatively similar, which suggested to me that this scene would be the most visually-consistent of the four scenes in the film. We struggled to find an appropriate location to use as a doctor’s office, and so settled to rent a small edit room inside the University. While an edit suite and a doctor’s office are typically two very different types of room, we reasoned that, with some art direction (in the form of various posters, most of which I was able to borrow from the hospital that my dad works for), the edit suite would look sufficiently like a doctor’s office.
In my storyboard for this scene, I included various shots that would leave room for experimenting with different techniques - particularly in terms of lighting changes. In the scene, the main character, Gary, imagines that he is receiving bad news from the doctor, who begins to increasingly use aggressive language towards him (“you’re going to die alone and unloved”). I felt lighting could be a strong element in this scene, and suggested in my storyboard that we filmed one shot twice - once with normal lighting and once with reduced ambient light allowing for a ‘spotlight’ effect to emphasise Gary’s feeling of being ‘put on the spot’ by the doctor - to cut between in the edit. However, we only realised on the day of filming that the room we were filming in didn’t have a light-switch, meaning that lighting was restricted, and the spotlight effect would be much more difficult to pull off. This was worked around and we managed to include this effect, though with less impact.
The advantage of sharing each of our ideas meant that we could ‘bounce’ ideas off each other, and suggest additions to each other’s visions that they might not have previously thought of. In Jacob’s storyboard for the doctor’s office scene, he included a shot in which the camera zoomed in on Gary’s face. Based on this, I suggested elaborating this shot into having a dolly zoom, which, as well as difficult, proved less effective than we had hoped on the day, as the room didn’t allow much space for the perspective to distort.
The two remaining scenes didn’t require a large amount of coverage, yet we were still able to include sequence shots, such as a tracking shot as Gary walks towards the camera on the street - which took a number of takes to get smooth, and because the daylight changed mid-take numerous times - and a panning shot following Gary as he runs upstairs and into his bedroom at the end of the film. In the latter shot, Poppy and Christi shook the curtains, which were closed, to produce a swaying, unnatural-looking light, to accentuate Gary’s anxiety as his paranoia consumes him at the end of the film.
As well as through producing this 5-10 minute film, I also learned and improved my skills in cinematography through exercises I observed and took part in in workshops within the module. In particular, I became more familiar with equipment used to light a set, such as the Manfrotto Autopole used to mount lights from above. From workshops, I have also come to understand how coloured light can help to add depth and emotional content to a scene - for example, one workshop involved lighting an interrogation scene, in which a CTB gel was used to distance the interrogatee from the interrogators, producing a subtle but very strong contrast between the two parties. I have also learned both why and how to light a set according to a pre-determined f-stop, and the consistency and strength of image that this can achieve, particularly in being one of four camera operators in situations where we didn’t follow a specific f-stop or exact colour temperature.
In addition to my work within the module, I feel I have developed my cinematography skills in my work for another University film, for which I was also cinematographer, and operated a number of sequence shots and was responsible for lighting a night-time scene from both inside and outside a house. From the module, I have learned that the best way to develop and improve my skills is to gain more experience in the field of cinematography.
