#mastershot

Shoot day was a success!! Yes, it was raining. Yes, it was muddy. But we had fun (Laura’s arm workout, pictured below, from holding the umbrella up for 2 hours).

We ended up taking over 500 photos, which gave us a lot to choose from. Euan edited the photos as we took them in daylight, therefore, he had to darken them to work more with our chosen genre of horror/thriller. We went from bright greens and and yellows to dark murky blues and greens. Shown below are the 2 final images we narrowed it down to.

I’m pleased with how the colour pallete reflects the eerieness we intended. The cold tones really make the shot and costume tie in, making the shot more asethetically pleasing. Out of the two images, we chose the first as we felt having my head turning to look behind me told more of a story.

I’m really happy with how our film still turned out. 

We chose to do a horror/thriller genre, taking aspects from 80s horror classics like ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ and ‘Friday the 13th’, both of these films having chase scenes through woods. For costume we wanted to use cold tones (blues) to match the cold colour grade for the shot to help both the character and background come together. We also used contrasting patterns of the striped pyjamas and the tartan dressing-gown to create more texture and dimension to the shot. We chose this shot out of the hundreds we took as the composition is interesting. Having the character slightly off-center creates an uneasiness to the frame, enhancing the tension of the shot. As a group, we decided it was key to create the idea of motion in the shot; having the character running from left to right, but also having the camera pan with them to create a blur/zoom effect of the surrounding trees. We feel that this enhances the tension of the shot and conveys that the character is running from something. One thing I think we could’ve done better is to have shot slightly later in the day, making our shot darker to enhance the horror genre elements. But overall, I’m extremely happy with how this turned out. 

The feedback from the class was really positive. I’m glad people liked the zoom effect we created. I’m also glad that Zoe likes my hair, my confidence has never been higher. I really enjoyed getting to see everyone else’s shots, they were all very different. I loved group 6′s dystopian shot. The rusted colour pallete was so interesting and cool. And group 5′s coming-of-age shot, the posing was so on-the-nose and I loved it. 

I present two versions of the same mastershot. The process of creating each can be seen by examining the left and right columns from bottom to top.

I selected the cell, demonstrating my character's muscular arm lifting a dumbbell, from my storyboard for detailed work as a mastershot. The left column shows the first version of this mastershot, which I first painted in watercolour and then detailed with coloured pencils on top. On the right is the second version of the mastershot, which I created using a black sharpie, fineliners, and coloured pencils.