Production Day 5/11/21

Introduction 

On the Friday 5th November, I was given a production day to work in a group of 4 and learn about Alfred Hitchcock films and his technique, by experimenting with different camera shots and styles. As a group, we were given a series of these to replicate:

- Experimenting with lighting

- Montage

- Axial cut

- Dolly zoom

- Moving close up

- Silhouettes

Lighting

Working with lighting allowed us to understand blending of colours to show different emotions or to present what is going on in a character's head. We experimented with using red to show anger or create an evil or murderous character, and used blue to create sadness or tranquility, contrasting between the two. When we combined the two along with green we decided to move them around to make a shot look more chaotic or to show a character in madness. I learnt a lot about combining colours and showing emotion with them to really show what a character is thinking in a scene.

 Reverse tracking shot

This was the shot I found the hardest to film because the pacing of the shot was difficult to recreate and difficult to film. We found the close up of the character with the person behind them hard to recreate and the walking shot was difficult because we had someone spotting the cameraman as they couldn't see behind them. However, this technique helped us understand how to keep pacing in a scene and create tension.

Dolly zoom

This was a shot we spent a lot of time working on because of how tricky it was to get right. This was because the zooming out wasn't smooth as we were moving the camera back on the dolly as we did the shot and the camera kept panning up as it went back, which meant that I wasn't in the shot for half of it. So we decided I should stand on a table so the shot worked better and so that the Hitchcock films were in the background which created a nice effect.

(My group trying to use the rubber for the dolly zoom, we used the metal bars instead)

Silhouettes

Out of the techniques, I found this one the easiest to recreate because we just used the natural lighting from outside the window to create the silhouettes and turned the brightness down on the camera as the shot went on.

Final products

Overall montage of footage

By Clementine

Show don't tell

By Olivia 

Silhouette 

By Mia