In the piece we created, I believe it turned out very well for many reasons such as framing, continuity and composition techniques.
Firstly, in the scene we chose it was all shot using a dolly, so to recreate this without a dolly was found to be quite difficult, but the next-best-thing I could use was a Steadicam, which turned out to work very well, if not better than a dolly in my opinion. Using a Steadicam, it appeared that holding a steady shot is harder as you need to counter balance the weights correctly which I tried my best doing, but it turned out quite steady but it could have been slightly more stable at points. I could have overcome this in post-production by using a Camera Shake plug in like SmoothCam in Final Cut Pro.
I believe we framed each shot right, using different composition techniques like the rule of thirds correctly and continuity to make sure everything flows. I made sure especially using a camera, more or less handheld must be perfectly framed especially when a character is walking so I had to make sure all the distances were kept the same between me (as a cameraman) and the actor walking. We also made sure by doing this each shot type was the same. It was a lot easier with long shots as we kept the camera on a tripod but when moving with the camera, keeping the right shot found to be quite difficult but we overcame this, like before, keeping the same distances between the actor and the cameraman.
In the editing stage, it was quite beneficial that I had already thought about how the shots would flow into each other in the production stage, so post-production seemed to be quite easy for me. When editing, I needed to make sure continuity was correct, and everything flows. This turned out very well, by editing all the shots correctly, and cutting when necessary in order to make everything flow properly. I didn't use any transition effects, because I felt it would have made the overall impact of the film different than it should be, but for the beginning when the camera is panned to the trees, a fade could have been used there to show time passing instead of cutting straight to a scene where the actor is walking somewhere completely different.
As we only used one actress, we needed to make sure she was dressed correctly and as closely as the original film we are doing. Even though in the original film the gender of the character is male, we used a female actress, solely because her drama skills are extremely good and that she could portray that character very well. The main character in the original film is dressed exactly like our actress, and using the Test Shot, we could get an idea of how everything would look on her. We felt changing any clothing would ruin the overall impact of the piece, as a costume is very important especially in such a simple film like the Psychological ones. We also had to make sure, the location was almost like the original, so we went looking around for different types of woods locations to use, but after looking at me and my partners Recee sheets, we decided my partners had overall the better look, light and feel to the whole piece.
I had many roles in the making of this piece. Firstly, in the production stage, I mainly manned the camera and made sure each shot was correct and everything would flow correctly. Also in the post production stage, I edited and cut the final version of our piece.
If I could have done any improvements, the main problem I had was using the 180 degree rule in Production so when it came to editing some shots seemed to jump, and this could have been overcome by simply thinking about the location in a plan view and keeping to one side of the actor at all times, or reviewing the clips again and making sure everything was shot right.
When it comes down to the final coursework, I think I would have a bigger cast because creating a horror piece with one actor is quite hard, as you can't have that much impact on an audience unlike a cast could. Also I think I would use other types of shooting like using the Dolly and the track, but I do like the feel of a Steadicam, and handheld shots. Also, I think I would make a piece which includes more events happening, which can keep an audience interested.
