Research into moving shots

(Done by Petr Zheltov from my group)
While thinking about the way we would want our thriller to look we understood that we want it to be very smooth and literally flow like the song which we would have in the background. This could be achieved by using moving shots, but moving shots are quite hard to film, so we looked through many films and information in order to understand how to film moving shots correctly.


Here I took 3 movies as examples of moving shots.
The first one is Inception and here a robot and lots of equipment was used to film the moving shot. As a result you can see a perfect moving shot which makes the scene look very smooth and appealing.










The second clip is the opening title sequence of the movie Touch of Evil. This is the opening shot of the movie and it was filmed as one moving shot which looks absolutely amazing. Here also lots of equipment was used to make the shot more stable, for example a crane was used to capture the shot from the height.










This is also a video from a movie by the name of Boogie Nights. You can see how pleasing to the eye is this opening title sequence because of the moving shot which just makes everything flow and makes your mind flow into the movie and concentrate on the plot. This is what we want to achieve.

We had some ideas of how to film perfect moving shots without shacking the camera at all, but we understood that we do not have enough space in the studio, so would just have take the camera into our hands and move around. Nevertheless we learnt how to move around with the camera correctly in order to get good shots. At the end of the day our video can and should be a bit rough and shaky because we have young actors who do not think a lot and do all sorts of stupid things. This can be also represented in the camera movement in order to sell this idea, but the mixture of moving shots and a bit of rough/ shaky bits can be just perfect.

Research into shading into black

(Done by Petr Zheltov from my group)

We want to make our shots as smooth as possible and we want to make the cuts invisible. We have looked into many different ways of making the cuts. We looked at such things as cuts on movement, but this would not work for our film as we want to moving shots which go from one side of the studio to the other and we only want to cut when we are at he end of the shot. Cutting on movement would mean cutting in the middle of the shot and this would disturb the flow of our opening title sequence.

We have also looked at such transitions as dissolving, but this just did not seem appropriate for our thriller and would distract our audience.

We decided to fade into black in each shot as you can see in some of the shots from the video below. We will end and start each shot on something black and in our opinion this will be the most suitable way to do the transitions between shots as it is not jumpy, it is very calm and there is literally no disturbance to the eye. By looking at many different videos we were able to understand that if we would use this effect in our thriller than our audience would just flow from shot to shot. This would allow our audience to concentrate on the action in the shots as they would not be disturbed by the cuts.

Research into shooting of the computer

In our open title sequence, we are going to show how the main character is going to receive an email on the screen of his laptop. In order to make it look good and professional we decided to research into how it was already done in other products.

Shooting a computer screen may sometimes be a problem because of the likely flicker issues that show up on the footage. 

The computer's monitor runs at a certain frequency. Macbook, which we probably going to use, usually runs at 60Hz. So, to avoid

flicker image, the shutter speed should correspond to what the computer screen runs. However there is an information that even if the shutter speed is right, there might still be issues as the screen alternates at times.

Another method is to use a green screen. It can be displayed on the computer or place a green paper over screen. Then it it replaced by needed information when editing

Research into soundtrack

(Done by Max Lieberman from my group)
Sound track


For our idea we need a soundtrack to have playing in the background. After feed back from my group about the last song I proposed, I decided to look into darker and more aggressive beats. I came up with these song:

These songs were produced by Clams Casino, a famous producer in the American Hip Hop industry who is well known for specializing in this type of beat. He has worked with members from A$AP Mob (A$AP Rocky, A$AP Ferg, A$AP Nast, etc.) and other artists such as Vince Staples, Travis Scott, Mac Miller and Lil B.

I decided to look into a related artist, Wondagurl, who has made several songs in collaboration with rapper and producer Travis Scott. They have made successful dogs togeather, such as "Antidote" and "90210". These songs have received mainstream success and have individual sounds in both track and lyrics. They follow the dark nature of rap beat which we set out to achieve.

Research into scenes in music studios

(Done by Marina Waldron from my group)
We researched online to find any scenes that included shots of music studios. This meant we could see what personal music studios look like, how people act in these situations and places, and some popular shots.

Most scenes we looked at came from the film 'Straight Outta Compton' which is a 2015 biographical film based on the lives of the group N.W.A - a gangsta rap group from Compton, California in the late 1980s. Scenes like the one below show shots of the group of friends hanging out together in the studio, playing their music and drinking. This scene uses short panning shots which we were influenced by in creating our pan to black shots, which make up the majority of our title sequence.

In the clip above, we liked the related atmosphere portrayed as the music making was being done in someones home. The props and set were relaxed, which in turn made the characters more comfortable in the room. This gave exactly the picture we inspired to have, of a group of friends listening to music and hanging out together.

We also looked at a lot of 'Behind The Scenes...' videos, however a lot of these were done professionally to show the hard work behind music making and therefore didn't have the same atmosphere we were trying to achieve in our thriller.

Research into products with computers

I was looking on different episodes of films and TV series when the computer screen was filmed. This is quite common shots as we use computer in our every day life.
I was looking on some quite old examples like "You've got mail" , "Sex and the city" and modern ones like "Cyberbully" , "Arrow", "Flash", "Mr. Robot", "The Big Bang Theory",  "The Social Network" and some others.

There is usually some common shots used to show computer work.
For example over the shoulder shots:

This allows the viewer to see what is happening on the screen, but also to have a link with the character. The importance of information is shown by the focus, how close it is and the duration of this particular shot. Looking at the examples above, it is clear that the director doesn't want us to know what is in the computer in the scene from Mr. Robot (on the bottom right) but wants on the others. 

Another quite spread form of showing the information on the screen is a close-up of the particular word, sentence or even object. This was widely used in "You've got mail" and "Sex and the city". It is the oldest examples I have been looking at, so may be in the past the quality of the image was poor so to draw an audience attention, close ups were used. However this method was also used quite common in "Cyberbully". When watching these shots, the viewer will read it subconsciously.

I found that one more well-spread method of showing computer screen is just having it on background. This allow to create needed atmosphere, like working or awareness that character is communicating with somebody.

The last subgroup that I can think of is just filming screen, from different angles without even showing the people in the scene. This image on the screen may move, show video or just show relevant information. Usually such picture followed up by sound like voice or music.

Coursework: main idea and planning

Finally we agreed on our idea:
 Starts with a shot of a music board equipment. We hear someone entering and opening their bag. We hear the Computer switching on, and the music begins to play.

We see the DJ from behind and it begins to pan out. We see the rest of the studio. It begins to pan to the left slowly and we see other parts of the studio.

The shot glitches and the DJs clothes change. There are more glasses and cups. We see another person sitting on one of the coaches. The shot begins to pan to the right.

It glitches and the clothes and room change again. There are 4 people in the studio. The DJ and three friends. The friends are dancing, laughing and interacting whilst the DJ still works. The camera begins to pan to the left again and shot glitches. 

The DJ is sitting by his desk with a girl leaning on his shoulder. The studio is slightly cleaner. The camera pans to the right again.

It glitches and we see him with his friend as they listen to the track together out loud. His friend is pointing out stuff that should be changed.

It glitches and we see him with a different girl leaning on his other shoulder. The camera begins to pan back to the friends chilling in the room on the couch just talking. They get the DJs attention and he looks around. As he does it glitches.

As it continues to pan. We see a constant glitch between the two girls as it begins to pan the other way.

As it comes back to the centre it stops and it glitches back to the original shot. The song ends and the DJ takes his headphones off. He stands up and begins to walk away. We hear an email notification ping. He walks back and opens the email. We see the message and it blacks out. We see the title.