Film Foundations

Our short film was created to showcase the 180-degree rule. The idea of the film was to have two friends camping when one of them stumbled upon a bear, which they would proceed to look for. The filming went very smoothly, yet I believe that we could have gotten more continuity in our shots. I personally believe that for a lot of the filming, we did not use our time effectively, which led to the rest of our filming feeling kind of rushed.  Our film lacked a real narrative as well, which is something I wish we had worked on in the initial stages of filming. Instead, the film feels directionless, without any real tension beyond the possible sighting of a bear. I do think that most of the shots turned out pretty well, and we kept the 180-degree rule in mind the entire film, which helped the viewer orient themself with the space it takes place in. In future projects, we should focus more on continuity and not wasting any of our time, as we found ourselves running out of time pretty quic...

 Mudbound is a film about race in the South before, during, and after WWII. The overall theme of the film is about how racism is an inescapable force, as evidenced in how the character Ronsel, despite having fought in the war, was treated when he returned. I believe that the film did succeed in getting its message across.  The plot of Mudbound was about two families, one white - the McAllans - and one black - the Jacksons, in the rural South in the 1940s. The McAllans move to start a farm, hiring the Jacksons as sharecroppers. Midway through the film, two veterans, from both families, who served in the war return to the region. Upon arrival, the local white population does everything they can to stop out their burgeoning friendship. The film's use of mise en scene helped set the tone of the film. The film used a drab color pallet and empty shots, which I feel helped lend it a constantly oppressive feeling. Initially I found the first half of the film kind of pointless, but upo...

We used camera movement in the film to represent the tone of an overall scene. When I ran downstairs in the film for example, we used a handheld camera to convey a sense of urgency. I do believe that the camera movement was effective, but at times the result was unsatisfactory. When we were using the gimbal to film Dylan walking, there were moments where he was out of the frame, for example. Technically, the camera movements were easy to shoot. The only difficult shot to get was the gimbal shot, as the weight of holding the gimbal up made it hard to carry. Next time, we will use the shots more effectively, and make sure that the subject does not wander out of frame.