The card game

It is important that before we begin shooting the thriller the group and I practice using the camera for scenes as much as possible, and this is what we were told to do during my previous Media lesson with Dan. After having a learning session on how to use the cameras correctly we were asked to plan a scene where there is a game of cards in progress, this scene had to include various shots including Extreme close ups, tracking and an establishing shot as well as having a sense of tension and anxiety within the scene. This didn’t come to be difficult as we all had a large amount of ideas that made the scene successful. After brainstorming our ideas and making the final plan of the shots within the scene it was then time for us to find a location and start shooting.
After short deliberation the group and I thought of a perfect location which was the college common room, we thought that this was the best option as it was dark and had the props needed for our scene and as we where the only college students permitted to be in their it was silent allowing us to focus on our filming.

As a group we decided that Layla and Ufuk would play the two characters playing the card game and me and Nasima would focus on shooting the scene and work behind the camera. With this planned we quickly began shooting as we had limited time before the common room would be inaccessible.
We did the shots that we planned on shooting which are as follows:
Long shot (LS); We planned on using this shot as an establishing shot allowing the audience to gain the knowledge of the setting and this shot conveys the characters in relation to one another
Close up (CU) on both characters; We planned on using this on both characters to give visual effect on there facial expressions
Pan to over the shoulder ; we thought this would be a great shot to use as it enabled the viewer to see the cards in the characters hands as well as facial expression.
Extreme close up (ECU) ; This shot builds up the tension in the scene allowing the audience to see the intensity and atmosphere within the scene.

The planning in class was done well enough that there were not many difficulties apart from the fact that we where aiming for quite a dark effect but with the lighting in the common room it was either to bright or much to dark, we worked together and managed to solve this problem by pushing the curtains up and placing the scene in an angle that allowed us to gain additional light. We also had an issue with a shot that we desperately wanted in our scene which was the pan to an over the shoulder shot, as we where unable to slide the tripod on the floor without creating a shake this was a major problem but was quickly solved this as I thought that this could be done by placing the tripod on a table that easily slid on the floor without any shakes and push the table in the right direction to create the pan during he scene.

I feel the group and I worked well together and looking back on the footage I feel that we where successful in filming but the final edit was not complete and it is there where we will find out how good or bad the footage really is.