Treatment- Cinematography

Maya's entry

I am cinematographer for the group, so will be responsible for directing the positioning of the video camera for each shot that we film, in order to achieve the appropriate effect for our video whilst ensuring we adhere to the various codes and conventions of filmmaking.

However, as we are aiming our promotional package for this video to be towards young people who enjoy alternative music out of the mainstream, I would like to incorporate experimental cinematography into the video and challenge some of the codes and conventions and perhaps break a few of the guidelines! I am hoping to include several "unplanned" shots in each of the locations, that when we are filming on set we can experiment with different angles and shot sizes with the camera in unusual places, to create a really edgy and interesting music video that pushes the boundaries of what shots you normally see in your average music video (mid shots of the artist etc).

As our artist Lawrence King is not featuring in our music video, we do not need to worry about including lots of close ups and shots of the artist in our video. Instead, we have a storyline of two characters meeting by chance throughout the day, culminating in them meeting at a bar later that day. The main point we need to convey to the audience is that these two women are attracted to each other.
To do this, I plan to use multiple close up shot-reverse-shots in the bar scenes to show their reactions when they first meet and talk in the bar and the fact that the close ups with show they are giving each other alot of eye contact will suggest that they are indeed attracted to each other.

As well as shots of our actors, I want to include lots of wide shots of our locations such as the college, the beach by the river, and the bar to show the environments the actors are in. We are lucky to have found a beach to film on with such pretty scenery so we need to make sure we show it off it its full advantage with wide panning shots! I also want to try to capture some birds flying over the rivers water using a panning long shot. We will film a low angle wide shot of the college entrance as the girls enter the building (at separate times). This will show that the college is a big place full of people and that there’s only a small chance they would meet each other unintentionally in such a big building, and that they are a “small fish in the sea” if you get what I mean!. When Jessica is walking her dog on the beach, we will use a panning wide shot from left to right shot, which will enable the viewer to see both Jessica, the dog, and the scenery they are in.

There is a scene that we are going to have where one girl is waiting at the traffic lights outside of the college waiting for light at the pedestrian crossing to go from red to green. For this I want to position the camera so we have a lot of depth in the frame – the “green man” on the traffic light in the foreground, and the college in the background with the marina with its many boats in the distance, all whilst there are pedestrians walking past and cars driving past in the frame. This will create a much more interesting shot than just filming a close up of the traffic light itself turning from red to green.

The bar scene is where I really want to try some unconventional shots, as well as dutch tilts perhaps to make a somewhat boring shot of a girl walking into the bar a little more interesting for the audience to watch. I know in the bar we are filming in there are metal chairs with thin slats all over them, I was thinking perhaps we could place the camera behind one of them and film, perhaps creating a voyeuristic effect, or maybe film through the translucent windows of the bar so it will be like the audience are drawn into these character’s worlds.

We are also hoping to include some time lapse of one of the girls driving along the road (with the camera rested on the dashboard so it will look like the drivers point of view as they are driving along the road), which will create the sense of a passage of time which, under normal circumstances, would take too long or would be extremely boring to watch in ‘real time’. 10 minutes of footage should be enough, and then in the editing room we will speed up the footage so it will only be a few seconds long. We could also like to incorporate a point of view shot from the front seat of the car while the car is driving but obviously this poses problems as to how we film this whilst driving the car! As a little touch showing attention to detail, I also want to include a big-close-up shot one of the girls holding a iPod (that’s playing a Lawrence King track), and also near the end when we see them saving each others numbers into their mobile phones, to show to the audience that they will hopefully be seeing each other again and that this is not the end.

As I learnt last year in our AS Project, I must remember to obey the Rule of thirds. You imagine breaking your image down into thirds (both horizontally and vertically) so that you have nine parts. The theory is that if you place points of interest along the lines then the image becomes more balanced and enables the audience can interact with it more naturally.

I must continue remember the basic guidelines such as the 180 degree line rule. The 180° rule states that two characters (in the same scene) should always have the same left/right relationship to each other, and that the camera should not cross the imaginary axis connecting the two characters. I watched this video on YouTube to refresh my memory of it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdyyuqmCW14

Also, I need to make sure I obey the 30° rule. This is a basic film editing guideline that says the camera needs to move at least 30° between shots of the same subject. This makes the shots different enough to avoid a jump cut, however too much movement around the subject may violate the 180° rule.