Equipment

The main piece of equipment that I made more use of this year was the mini dolly. After using it for a couple of shots in our LAFTAs production, I realised what I was able to do with the small dolly. It was particularly effective for tracking across low shots and round objects. In previous projects I used it to track footsteps across the floor and around the dead body in ‘Uninvited’.

I planned to use this when drawing out my storyboards mainly when showing the young girl’s tea party. This worked really well because I was able to adjust the axis to create a curved path for the camera which meant I was able to track all the way around the action. I was also able to use this to create my hidden cuts because I could mimic the same movement in another shot.

The Steadicam was a little more difficult to use, balancing the equipment was very difficult however I did get there in the end. I used the Steadicam for the shots with movement that were more at eye level. I used it particularly for the shots of the mother in the kitchen and on the staircase as the camera moved through the floorboards because I needed to reduce the shakiness of the shots. I was unable to produce a completely smooth shot although it wasn’t all bad because it kind of gave the impression that something was coming through the floorboards and spying on the mother, which again added to the ambiguity of the shots.

For the remainder of my shots I simply used a tripod to achieve a steady shot when filming outdoors and in the young girl’s room.

Update

In the lesson, we spoke to the class about how far we ad got with planning and what we still had left to do. This did help me to organise what I needed to do and it helped to need to speak about this rather than having a big list in my head. Here is my status update:

http://vimeo.com/108460344

We filmed eachothers speeches in order to get some experience using the steadicam, Ben Ayres filmed mine whilst I filmed Ben Stockdale. Although I’d already practiced using the steadicam it helped to use something with a heavier weight on top which meant it was more balanced. I was able to see how the other students held the piece of equipment and how this helped to keep the shot steady, I found that keeping a finger on the weights stopped the camera from swinging and spinning round ahead of the handle.

Here is the pitch that I filmed: