Thursday, October 14, 2010

Because of lack of experience as a proper cameraman, Arif was unable to vary focusing angles on me, mainly keeping the camera still while I(the subject) walked. Occasionally he panned it a bit, like an arc shot. But because the pan was having some problems, he didn't manage to show proper panning. Also, when I entered the office, the dialog sharing between the counselor and me was not shown properly, due to the fact  that close-ups weren't done to signify our roles. Although, the establishing shot of the office was nicely done, the shooting of the actual important part of the scene was flawed. Realizing our mistakes after entering a heavy discussion on it with our practical teacher, we decided to re-shoot the scene.
It was the third scene which flawed our movie. Having been eager to shoot it, Arif and I decided to do so alone since our team members were busy with their classes. Arif managed to acquire a camera stand for still movie-making and quickly fixed it onto the holder on top of it. Because the second shot had ended with me(the subject) walking into the school building, it was necessary to show me walking into the counselor's room, ensuring that continuity remained in the shots. The fact being that the counselor's office was situated towards the left of a corridor's end, Arif decided to shoot me walking down the corridor by placing the camera ahead of me, starting with a distant shot of me walking and slowly coming closer towards the camera.
The second camera, which was ahead of me would then pan slightly left, bringing the whole platform into the background, which is shown surrounded by a closely huddled group of school bullies. Upon seeing me, they attack me together(though not violently, it's just acting!) and the camera starts focusing mainly on me, occasionally showing a small close-up on my shaking figure. After I am thrown to the ground, the scene fades out. The second scene begins with a long shot of me sprawled to the floor. Then, as I get up and slowly limp towards the school building, I come closer to the camera and it pans slowly to show me entering the building. The second scene then fades out.
Now, after making the script we decided to immediately deploy it into action. Since it was our first time, we were afraid that any background noise might destroy the movie. But since we had decided to shoot the first scene in an external background( somewhere in the school's back alley or playground), we had to take the risk. At first we decided to take our establishing shot the main school ground:

  Arif Hussain decided to shoulder the responsibility of acting as part director and camera man while the other fellow members( Ibrahim and Sabtain) acted as advisory directors and main camera men. I was the producer, and took turns with Arif in managing and directing the script. It was to be decided later as to who was going to edit the movie.
  It was decided that I was going to act as the miserable bullied boy while some of our friends were going to be acting as bullies.
  I(the boy) walked straight towards a raised platform starting with the end of the school alley. The moment I started walking, a camera activated from my behind, and captured my back which was hunched in a moody sort of way. Then when I was about to come near to the platform, another camera ahead me activated, showing continuity in the shots.
After learning about camera angles and shots, it was decided by our practical teacher that in order to get the hang of it we should try making a movie of five minutes, sort of like a basic preliminary video. After the groups  were made, I decided to construct a theme for the short movie, a theme which was both simple and related to school/college life. Since the OCR requirement was to have a dialog shared between two people, while the subject should travel from one place to another to get to the other person. During the whole five minute movie, the subject and his/her environment should be shown properly to the viewer using different camera angles and shots. The mise en scene should be appropriate, making the viewer very much aware of the genre of the particular movie.
  My fellow group members readily accepted my idea on basing the theme to school bullies and victims. It was decided that we would entitle it as A-Lone(making it clear that the subject in this movie is miserable) and after showing a scene of him getting badly beaten up, it was decided to show him walking into a school building and enter a counselor's office, where he would share a dialog with him and be consoled by him. Then the scene will fade, and the next scene will show a later time, at which the boy is happy and surrounded by friends.