The Clip Club

Session 5: Ideas into Team ‘Action!’

It’s amazing what can be achieved in 50 minutes when you work as a team…. All the clip clubbers get a letter asking for permission to use their ideas, photos, video clips, interview info for my research. It seems that everyone agrees it’s OK and hopefully their parents will too. They also get a user name and password to be able to contribute to the blog. We’ll be doing more on that.

We recap on our storyboard pictures and discuss the different shots, especially the importance of shot number 4 which is when the story changes and becomes more scary – the camera needs to build tension. Leonardo writes the shot list. We then establish who’s in front of the camera (acting) and who’s behind the camera (production crew):

• Director (Nimbus) decides: what’s going in the frame and what’s not going in the frame; how the actors and props are positioned; if, how, when and where the actors move; roughly how long the shot will be; he also watches the view finder as the shot is being taken and decides if another shot needs to be taken
• Assistant Director(Gman) works closely with the Director and organises (shouts at) the actors to move into position
• Cameraman(Dual2) works with the Director to film the action and discusses camera position, angle, height, distance and movement
• Next time I’d like someone (Gman?) to be the production Photographer and take some still shots to document the production
• When we get a microphone, we’ll also be needing a Sound operator, to record the sound separately

We run through how people behave on set, what they say and the order of events. The shot is set up and the camera positioned:

• The Assistant Director shouts: “All quiet!” (production crew gets behind the camera)
• The Cameraman starts filming
• The Cameraman shouts: “Camera rolling!”
• The Director shouts: “Action!”
• The Director shouts “Cut!” (after leaving the camera rolling for a few more seconds than perhaps will be necessary)

We go out to the playground and get the establishing pan shot in the can. We find a classroom with black out blinds because we need to make it as dark as possible. We get the shots we need without having to do any retakes. Everyone works together. Well done team! Here are the rushes that we’ll be editing next time and remember you can decide – and shoot – how the story ends. Why not make some comments about how you might use the rushes in your film, what you like about them or what you might have done differently:

Establishing shot 1:

Establishing shot 2 (more zoomed in):

Classroom long shot, high angle (on a chair):

Empty chairs, same camera position, black out shot (post-production on this?):

Reaction shot, camera moving towards actor:

Extreme close up: