6 shot

8 Jan 10 am

Finally shot my six-shot exercise on Friday.

Had thought of the idea about three weeks ago, and had constantly been honing and changing it in my mind. Funny, I thought I woulda been the kind of person to write down the script and shot-breakdown meticulously, but it didn’t happen like that. Strangely, I felt that I would lose the story if I put it down on paper. Finally did draw a story-board of course, and was surprised to see that a story I had visualised in mainly long shots turned out to be mostly mids with one close-up. This was due to the six shots only restriction which would have made it difficult to show the action in long shots. Discussed this with my teacher, she suggested replacing the close-up with a top LS, but then we both realized that this would not convey the mood since camera movement is not allowed, and it would be better to have a close-up where you can see the character’s eyes and face.

The shooting itself went a little haywire in the beginning, completely my fault, I forgot to take the tape from the previous person, and there was a problem with a prop, started an hour late. On the other hand, my actor turned out to be absolutely the correct choice, a certain prop which I thought would be better in black but could only find white actually worked much, much better, and a glass which was supposed to have shattered did not but rolled in a very interesting, dramatic way. There were certain mistakes I made, completely due to impatience, a few extra shots I should have taken, should have fiddled with the contrast a bit - though this will be correctable at the edit stage.

I am completely in love with my story, my frames, the action in them, my actor! I can’t stop thinking about it and keep discussing it with the actor and the classmate who assisted me - think I better shut up before I started boring them to death! All I want to do today is look at my footage again and again and again. But I have promised to help some seniors with a script and need to submit four scenes tomorrow - about a village, completely uninspired, don’t know how I’ll get through it :-/

The edit is tomorrow - am excited and nervous - hope it falls together well. Also quite scared of Prof. C, apparently he likes simple stories and mine is anything but, there is a high possibility that he will tear it to shreds when he views it next Sat. Need to brace myself for that.