For my film
the initial idea was different from the outcome, my original aim of the film I
found required to wide a variety of locations and props to be an enjoyable and
realistic presentation of what I outlined in my proposal, I felt that I did not
have the necessary resources to faithfully depict my idea and so instead I
opted to change it. My second idea differed greatly from my original proposal,
although some similarities can be found in the themes. When planning my new
idea I took into account more closely the resources at my disposal and made
judgements based on what I could accurately achieve. Once I settled on the
current idea, I was fortunate enough to already have a location that fitted the
vision of what I was trying to detail, when I was originally thinking up the
idea I decided an older grizzled looking man would be appropriate, but finding
someone matching that description proved difficult and in the end I settled on
my own Grandmother who also had a good location in which to present the idea of
an older person who is shut away from the world as my Grandmother’s house is
rather old and the interior is exactly what I had in mind when deciding where
to shoot the opening portion of my Film.
To begin
with I began the shooting at night, the location of where I was shooting had a
small fireplace which I used to create a more natural looking light rather than
the harsh orange like glow that you can often get with an artificial light like
a lamp. I felt this idea helped with the presentation of the scene as it left a
lot of the room dark and obscured which led to a sense of mystery in the
viewers who have seen the film. On the first day of shooting I shot the indoor
scenes at night but as I made my way outside I again was faced with the
realisation that I could not adequately shoot good shots in such low light,
especially as most of the outdoor shots were set in Rural areas where there is
no lights from streetlamps of other houses. I decided to keep the indoor scenes
that I filmed that day and implement it into my final edit as I felt that the
dark helped with the idea that the lady was a shut in and had her curtains
drawn to allow for as little light as possible. When I came back to shoot
during the daylight though the light cast into the room was far too bright and
made the scenes I filmed during the night look unrealistic, to combat this I
had to cover some windows and turn off the lights. This made it look good
enough that people couldn’t tell without prior knowledge.
The next
issue I had was making the shots of walking through the woods match up properly
as they were filmed at different locations; I had to edit it in a way where it
seemed progressive when in fact it was not. You could tell it was not
progressive in the shot down the muddy track but at that point I decided that
the audience would assume it was a time later as I felt if I was to show the
whole journey it would become monotonous and wasn’t entirely necessary as those
shots were the just to established the fact that it was a rather arduous journey
for someone who does not leave the house often, to accentuate the difficulty I
got my Grandmother (Who was playing the old woman) to appear more hunched and
have a more laboured gait than would naturally come to her, I felt she did a
good job given her limited experience with acting although in the final scenes
I decided to cut out the part where she speaks as the sound wasn’t right and
she couldn’t quite match the tone I was looking for, what she was saying
mattered less as she was speaking Italian but overlook her tone and opted
instead just to remove the scene.
In
conclusion despite the difficulty in getting the right locations and having the
correct resources I overcame this by adapting my idea to the constraints I had,
I felt I handled It well and still managed to come up with a competent film
that was close enough to my idea.
