The Bigger Picture

Recently, we developed our absurdist pictures taken in Sheffield city centre into a 3 minute one shot film. We then developed these films over the next week in order to make them as intriguing as possible in regard to camera angles and movement sequences.

https://youtu.be/jqt65aR2duo

Our improved film

In a larger group of people participating in the task, we then watched everyone’s film back and provided each other with feedback.

When watching other people’s films, I realised that we could have tried out some more interesting camera angles, instead of it just being landscape the whole time. We also could have played with our environment more, interacting with it rather than just being in it.

I think the movement sequence at the beginning was a strong point for our film because it created intrigue and set the tone as well as drawing the audience in.

Then, the plan for the remaining three weeks of the project was revealed: we were going to combine our film, with everyone else’s, creating one long single shot in and around Sheffield, that transitioned between and went through our characters’ lives. This ambitious project would be called ‘The City’.

The main location for our new film - Saint Mary's Church

To begin with, we had to set up our locations. On a large map, we decided were the best place for each group’s film would be in regards to their proximity to other films and the location they had to play with.

We were initially concerned as to how we were going to attempt the transitions between locations and how we were going to keep it interesting if we were, for example, just sitting in a car.

We decided to put this problem to one side for now and spent the next week playing with our new locations, communicating and planning with other members of the larger group as to where we would begin and end our part of the one shot.

As soon as my group found out where the previous group finished the transition to our location, we began to organise our part of the performance.

We found the location around the church that we were in quite interesting and acted on the previous feedback of experimenting with our environment more by passing the camera through gates and brushing it against leaves – as well as trying to get the church involved as a landmark of the city.

This is what we came up with in the end:

https://youtu.be/zCDaxaTpDgQ

I do think the film involves quite a lot of walking, which is not especially engaging so it would be good if, next time, we used a wider variety of camera angles to make that part of the film more interesting.

In the next week, we will look at all the films together as one so we get an idea of what the whole shot will look like, just without the transitions.