A complicated scene

When it came to filming the last scene in Kirstens house where Nicole finds out her boyfriend has been killed (the tear jerking scene). We had always had an image in our minds of her watching back the video on the handheld video-camera that Luke had been filming on. We especially wanted her to watch part where Luke is talking to the camera saying how 'you only get one chance to do everything you ever want to do'. But the complicated thing was how we were going to show this clip as well as her watching it. What we wanted was to have the clip playing and then for it to zoom out showing that it is on the video camera and that she is watching it, however we weren't sure whether we would be able to get this to look good.

Anyway we recorded the clip of Luke talking to the camera and then got Aimee (playing Nicole) to sit and watch it, we positioned the camera behind her looking over her shoulder and zoomed as far as we could so that the screen on the handheld camera was just about filling the screen on the main camera. This did cause a slight blur but we expected that, then as the clip plays and Luke's speech goes on we started to zoom out showing the camera in Aimee's hand and as the clip ends she closes it. Also the blur goes away when the camera is zoomed further out, the problem was getting it lined up right on screen, as it was fully zoomed in Aimee had to make sure she did not move the camera at all otherwise it went off screen on the main camera. After filming this 4 or 5 times we managed to get one that we were completely happy with.

Now the really complicated part was editing this bit together, because the way we visioned it was to put the clip we originally filmed on and then fade this into the clip of her watching it, this way you get to see the start of the clip and then realise when it fades in and starts zooming out that it is Nicole watching the clip. However the problems were that we needed to make the fade quite subtle and just before zooming out so we didnt have that much time to fade it in, also we had 3 things to match up, we had to make sure the two clips were but together so the flowed on, then we had to match up the sound. This meant the two clips had to be cut together so that there was no breaks or jumps inbetween movement or mouth movement, and then the sound had to match up in both clips. With all the problems we've had this year I wouldn't have been suprised if this didn't work, but not only has it worked but it looks just like we had imagined it. The clips fade together brilliantly and it really does fit the whole scene, we couldn't be happier with this and I can't wait for people to see it. As for the rest of the film, we have been editing sections together and hopefully it will all look just as good.