Close Up!

1. Close Up! Production Best Practice Day December 2nd 2009

2. Order of Day • Scriptwriting: Your Experiences • From Script to Screen • The Shot • Filmmaking Do’s and Don’ts • Breaking Down Your Script • Shot Lists and Storyboards • ‘In-Camera’ Filming Exercise • Share Session

3. Feedback on Scriptwriting • Group Discussion: In groups consider: • 1: How did you go about generating ideas for your film? How did you decide which idea[s] to develop further? • 2: How did you develop your idea[s]? What methods did you use? What worked well, what worked less well? • 3: How did you consider the relationship between subject [content] and filmic style?

4. From Script To Screen • Taking Your Script Into Production • A complex creative and logistical task! • Use shot lists and storyboards to visualise your shots and sequences

5. Visualising for the screen • Visualisation is a way of coming up with new VISUAL and NARRATIVE ideas before shooting begins. This may be a single arresting image in a scene, or the decision to stage action for a long sequence rather than fast cutting. It may help find the dramatic centre of a scene or it may reveal a dishonest line of dialogue. It helps focus the vision for the final film. Make every shot and every sequence count! – Steven Katz on Directing

6. Shot Types and Movement • Know your Shot Types terminology! Use abbreviations [CU, MS, LS, MCU] hand out • Know your Camera Movement terminology! Pan, Tilt, Zoom

7. The Shot • Is the basic division of a film or TV programme, in the same way as a play is divided into scenes or acts, or an orchestral piece into parts and bars. • A shot must provide the viewer with a number of key elements. • Each shot has a particular function within the overall story of you film. • Visions of Light [1992]

8. Elements of the Shot

9. Filmmaking Do’s and Don’ts • The Six Elements of a Shot: • Motivation – Karel Reiz On Editing • Information • Composition – framing: isolating a view • Sound • New camera angle – [see hand out] • Continuity – That Fatal Sneeze [1907]

11. Breaking Down Your Script • Marking Up Your Script • Overhead Plans – hand out • The aim is create Shots flow

12. Shot Flow • Shot Lists • Storyboards: • Shot Number • Shot Type • Shot Information: action, dialogue, sound • Camera Movement • Use arrows to indicate movement [hand out]

13. The Shoot • Slates [Shots] and Takes • Blocking • Rehearsing camera and subject • Production Logs to record takes

14. In-Camera Filming Exercise: Creating The Shot! • Storyboard, Shoot and Share the following: Someone sits in a chair, silently reading. They hear a sound nearby and are suddenly interrupted by something unexpected. • Make sure you devise your shots according to the Six Elements. Make the sequence as engaging as you can. Make every shot count!