Film week 2

The weekend created challenges for us. Originally we planned to have one main character at his desk trying to balance work and his social life, with two characters playing his friend and boss, who visit him in his room to attempt to urge him one way or the other. however it soon became clear that more than half our group would not be present on the day of shooting, meaning, disappointingly that the script would have to be ruthlessly edited and cut down to something far more simplistic and with no dialogue, instead showing a build up of pressure and stress from the protagonist as his phone rings slowly build up to exaggerated levels. Though this was not what we had wanted it was a necessary sacrifice to make the film possible.
However this did give us more opportunity to focus on cinematography, with no dialogue and it all being contained to one room, much focus would be on the look of our film,
the lighting and angles that we use had to be perfect to create the sense of anxiety and stress that our protagonist was feeling when he was simply alone in his room.
This was challenging as the main desk was right in front of a large window that let in warm day light, which created the opposite effect of tension.
To solve issue this we covered all windows and main lights, as i learned from my animation project and mentioned in my blog before, this darkness gave us total control over lighting which we could build off. We used several different desk lamps positioned behind the camera and left the back dark to help give an impression of the glaring, eye burning light of the laptop screen. I felt this was extremely effective as it was highly complimented in the criticism sessions. The only negatives focus on the use of the phone, with the sound playing constantly but the screen only one text being delivered. I intend to learn from that by making sure to go over shots we have taken and checking to see we have everything from the shot list so there is no material missing for when we enter post production.
Overall i was extremely happy with the piece, which we named Balance.