More Snow Forecasted

On the week of 1st December 2010 Britain was hit by a heavy snow storm and almost every where was affected and many businesses and schools closed and whole towns and cities came to stand still. 2 weeks later after all the first lot of snow had just about melted away another bulk of snow is on its way this may affect any filming plans we have as it will make it a lot more difficult to reach locations.

Snow Delays!

The weather in the United Kingdom in general has been terrible for the past week! The entire country has been blanketed with thick snow, cold days and ice. As a result, our college was even closed for 4 days last week!

Although being students this was a relief, it actually hindered our shooting schedule! We have had to delay the shooting by a week, as around 13" of snow feel within 4 days. This prevented me or Kirsten from getting off of the street where we live, preventing us from even driving on clearer main roads!

This was a picture taken at 2am on the 2nd of December 2010 from my window.

Artists that we cannot use

As we have found it very difficult to find licence free music, we decided try and find music which WAS licensed and see if we could get permission (after we contacted the exam board).

We (Andy and Daniel) have been searching for literally weeks, trying our hardest to get into contact with that artists that we have found. Here are some of the artists that we love the sound of, but haven't got a reply after contacting them. As the deadline is nearing, it may be that we have to indeed find alternative music.

Strained Tendon :X

Whilst at the Gym, I (Andy) strained a tendon in my ankle, which prevented me from properly walking for a couple of days, and driving for a couple more!

Although everyone in the group is quite capable of operating the camera just fine, there were points where everyone (but me) were on shot - So I was the only one as times that could operate it. Of course, this unexpected delay prevented us from shooting for an additional week, ouchies. Although I had to take a couple of days off college, we had allot of editing to do - so spend time being productive

Recreating Europe

In our Film the main character Luke goes traveling to Europe which left us with the problem of how we were going to make it look like he goes to Europe. First we have him going down to Hull where he gets the ferry to Belgium. Obviously we cannot get the ferry but we are going to Hull and will film by the docks as he is waiting for the ferry. Then we are going to film in a local hotel, their corridors are going to be the corridors on the ferry which will be made clear in the narration.


(Image from Alleratt.com)



Once he is 'in Europe' we have a lot of car shots, this is fine apart from that they drive on the other side of the road than we do. Obviously we can't go driving on the wrong side of the road over here, as it is not only illegal - but dangerous.


(Image from Telegraph.co.uk)



So we considered flipping the video, which would be fine but I then realised that the license plates would be reversed, and the car would suddenly become left hand drive, so we can't really flip the video.




(Original image from Mattters.com)

Additionally, the road signs would be flipped around which would be incorrect also



(Original image from Wikipedia.org)


Therefore we started looking for more rural roads that don't really have markings or that you won't be able to tell we are driving on the normal side of the road. We have also added more sections where he stops off, which means less time on the road.

We did however want various road shots - to give the impression that he is indeed travelling. So, we have decided to use allot of 'incar' shots from the passenger window.

Dollying: an interesting concept

Eventually, a point in our film came where we had to decide upon our shot list. In an earlier post, we discussed things that we had learned from last year, one of which was that the camera very rarely stays *perfectly* still - after watching multiple short films, large scale films, music videos.. infact the majority of professional films.

As we studied camera operations last year, we were aware of all the terms used to describe the camera techniques used. In our first AS project, we tried to use many pans, tilts and zooms to not only help with continuity, but to subtly help the film appear, essentially, less boring.

I wondered. Why do students rarely use Dollies?

First of all, we had to understand if the difference between a dolly and a zoom. It is difficult to explain this concept without the use of a moving image, so the video below explains (as well as my interpretation/explanation)

My explanation: With a zoom, although everything in the image appears to be getting bigger (or closer), they are actually getting bigger at a constant and exact same rate. I.e. There is no real indication of distances or perspective. With a dolly, however, things appear to get bigger (or smaller if you're dollying/zooming out), at different rates - the perspectives of objects change.

Identifying a dolly from a Zoom is usually very easy, but I think it is hard to recognise the differences unless you take the time to learn about them.



The Dolly-Zoom effect, or the Vertigo effect has been used in many Movies. They are used for a huge range of reasons (Usually, to make distances really apparent, but I will not digress). It is basically Zooming one way, whilst dollying the other way. The video below shows examples of many movies which have used the technique, such as Jaws, Poltergeist, Goodfellas, and The Fellowship of the Ring (and should make apparent the differences between dollying and zooming)



So why are dollies rarely used, and zooms are used extensively?

First of all. Optical zooming is built into almost every modern camera available on the market today, including the models that Barnsley College has available. Essentially, zooming is easy. You have 2 buttons, one to zoom in... and one to zoom out. It is easy as pie.

To dolly, you have to have a method in which the camera is able to move on the X/Z axis. The easiest way would be to use a tripod with wheels. Although I have seen a few of these around college, they have enormous cameras attached to them, and are huge! Trying to take that equipment to each scene would be a real hastle, not to mention things such as uneven surfaces, lack of room, not knowing how to fully operate the camera and gaining permission.

Essentially, we had sort-of disregard dollying shots (Not by knowingly doing so, but ignorance of not knowing the effects of the two.. or not knowing what is in this post). If we wanted a similar effect, it would have to be a handheld shot, (which has been proven to be extremely difficult). Although, ideas such as using a Skateboard, Push Bike, Cars or Roller Blades were all considered (but promptly disregarded due to the safety of it, and wrecking a very expensive camera).



However, I came across an article just a couple of days ago on TutsPlus.com (They have a network of subdomains, covering a large area of creative techniques for photography, filming, editing, music, Photoshop.. etc). Which explains how to make a dollying platform for around $20 (£15). Here are a few photos of the tutorial, each of which links to the tutorial.







Although it's likely that we cannot use a propper Dollying shot (due to the shot list already been completed, deadlines.. etc) - This is a great technique to bear in mind for when I do projects in the future. It's a shame that naivety has caused the loss of an interesting camera technique that WAS available. But it is all a learning curve so I don't mind too much :)

Schedule Is Starting To Get Busy..

Now with the January exams coming up as we are nearing the Christmas holidays time available for filming and editing is starting to reduce day by day as we are getting closer as our other subjects will start to need more attention. Plus with the snow over the last few weeks means it was hard to get to location and also with what has been mentioned in other posts we had some re-fliming to do and with the snow it made it hard to keep with the continuity of our film.

Our group has a tendancy to film more then we need which is not always a bad thing since we deffinatly have enough footage to make our five minute film but because we do this it means filming takes longer then it should as we are shooting the same shot or scene from different angles and trying different things. This also means editing takes a lot longer aswell since we have to go through all of our footage and decided which shots we want to use out of all the shots we have to use from.