production
medium shot in front of the girl
This is a medium shot of the girl holding the “bone” she is going to use in the ritual. To film this shot, as the table was originally placed against the wall, we moved the table backwards leaving enough space between the table and wall for us to place a tripod while at the same time, we need to make sure all positions of the props on the table maintain the same. Then we adjust the tripod and camera to the same level as the candles and tables. This position, in front of the character, portrays another perspective creating a contrast with the previous shot where the audience is guided into the character’s perspective. This perspective portrayed through the position of the camera is trying to imply the perspective of the evil spirit, presenting the fact that there’s a spirit watching her action. Whilst, this shot was filmed with a wide depth of field, positioning the character in the center and highlighting the importance of the character. At the same time, as the shot length was at average length, the wide depth of field provide time for the audience to spot small details like the color of her hoodie, and the bone she is holding to generate enigma codes. Furthermore, the composition of candles in front of the shot builds up the mysterious atmosphere as the candle flashes implying an unstable situation whilst at the same time it also demonstrates the nervous feeling of the character as all the light flashed on her face highlighting her facial expressions.
lab shot of the flame
This is a medium shot of the flames in the lab. Firstly, this shot was filmed with us placing the tripod high towards a position where it creates a high-angle shot. This is due to safety issues and protection as the experiment involve fire and explosive chemicals. But as we want this shot to be a normal medium shot rather than a high-angle shot, then we tilt the camera down and zoom in to make it look less of a high-angle shot. As the chemical reaction in every trial is different and is small details of chemical reactions just like how this shot has green flame with red flame. When shooting we used two lenses to shoot different frames including 25 frames which is the normal frame used for the opening sequence and 50 frames which if we changed the speed of 50 frame shots to 50 it will turn into slow motion. This could provide us with more interesting shots of the reaction. Moreover, we also used another hardware technology which is the microphones, with the microphones as I’m in charge of the sounds I point it directly towards the flame to record the sound of burning. With the sound of burning added to the sound tract, it makes the sequence more realistic while it also increases the tension and atmosphere as the sound of burning could also mean that the sequence is reaching its climax. Furthermore, as we filmed this shot in the same position as the previous shot it helps to make the cut in the middle of the two shots invisible just like there hasn’t been a cut which made the experiment looks more realistic changing from sparks to red flames.
Wide shot of the girl sitting on the floor
In the last shot of the sequence, we are trying to build up the atmosphere by using camera movement to get closer and closer to the character. To do this, we need to start up with the widest shot of the girl sitting on the floor using the hardware technology Black Magic 4k mini Ursa. When doing this shot, we found some difficulties, as the room is really small the only way to do a wide shot is to shoot from the corners of the room. While there are difficulties placing the tripods in the corner as it limited our position of shot and for every shot, we need to adjust the camera to the character's or object’s level to tell the story. For instance, in this shot placing the camera to her level, it could make the audience more involved by showing every detail of her action and emotions. Therefore, we do this by taking off the camera from the tripods and placing the camera box in the corner of the room while the person who is in charge of the camera holds the camera while filming. But the camera, is really hard to control, which leads to one small error we made in our final sequence, where there’s a small shake in the wide shot this is since we didn’t use the tripods which helps the stable the camera.
Last shot of a closeup of the eyes
This is an extreme close-up of the girl’s eye where the camera was positioned directly in front of our characters. By setting the tripods to match her eye level to provide an eye line match through the shot. In this shot, when we shoot using the camera the light source in the camera will look extremely dark and is not like how bright we see in real life. Therefore, it increases our difficulties when filming this shot, so to show the character’s face in the shot our cast need to hold the candle in her hand with the flame shining towards her face, so in the shot her face will be lit by the candles showing details of her eye, additionally we also use a light stripe and hold it under the camera. On the other hand, the frequent flashing of light on the character’s face also increases the tension affecting the audience to experience terrified emotions. With this extreme closeup of the eye positioned in the center of the shot covering the whole frame, it guides and forces the audience to focus on the eye which makes the sudden jump scare more effective. Furthermore, we also used another hardware technology which is the microphone, while the girl closes her eye she continues chanting, then with the microphone capturing the sound of her chanting it provides us resources and material we could add to our soundtrack