Process Diary: Put the Sword Down

WEEK 4 OF GOA FILMMAKING:

In week four of GOA Filmmaking, I continued to build my way up the camera skill tree. The assignment was to recreate a scene from a movie of our choice. I chose Wonder Woman. Here's this week's product: 

For reference, here is the original scene from the movie Wonder Woman. The scene I replicated begins at 2:33 in the video below:

At the beginning of this week I didn't know what to research. Eventually, I went on YouTube in search of examples of videos that recreated scenes from movies. I found the video below, which showed me that the two most important things are the camera angle and position of the actor. The assignment was supposed to focus on the camera angles, but as a perfectionist, this video helped me to not worry so much about the rest of the scene.

Furthermore, what I learned during our discussion on lenses recently really came into play here. After shooting my scene, I discovered that the shots are wider in the original scene (from Wonder Woman). As I use my iPhone, I'm not sure there's much I can do about this; maybe I can buy an attachable lens? I have to do some research. In general, I learned firsthand this week how important lenses can be, which was big for me since I had never thought about them before this film.

I need to do a bit of research, but I would like to figure out a way to achieve wide shots that doesn't require buying expensive equipment (it will take me a little while to save up for a camera). A few people have already posted articles and videos on previous discussions that will be helpful, so I'll make sure to take a look at those. 

In addition, I'll try to work on making my films more appealing. Since films are made to be seen by other people, making them interesting is a very important skill. I wasn't proud of or satisfied with the outcome of this film, and I didn't receive a critique this week in class. My belief is that both are a result of my film being less polished and attention grabbing than I hoped for when planning this project.

I have some acting to do now!

-Emma