Production Tips

Diegesis:

Diegetic material is something that exists within this world and its something we can hear that has not been syntheticly put over something else. Examples of this are Dialogue and Thunder.
However Non - Diegetic material is something that is placed over the film for the audience for example: Music or Sound affects.

Some types of sound can be both! A characters thoughts as a voice over for instance, its diegetic because we aware of the thoughts but non - diegetic because other characters are not.

Micro and Macro Origination:

One thing when shooting appropriate material is to use the Micro-Macro strategy. Best not to dive right into filming at any stage planning is important. You need to follow three steps which are:

. Research into the type of film you are making.

. Comprise a story line that will be recognisable from the start.

. Plan how you are going to edit and film the production.

Camera Work and Framing

Using tripods is very important unless a shaky FPS shot is what you want, its very difficult to hold a camera extremely still with your hands. Zooming is best to be avoided as its not every professional and hard to pull off. Using a widescreen resolution is more appealing to the eye and avoiding Extreme Close Ups is recommend due to people nowadays can afford larger TV's. Use mainly Mid-Shots and Long shots.

The 'rule of thirds' is all about imagining the screen is spilt into 9 squares (3x3) and the eye is often drawn just of the centre square and this is the best place to have the character or object.

The stages in which you change the camera angle is important, its much more easy for the viewer to understand the film if you go from long to mid to close ups rather than long shot, close up and then mid shot.

High and low angles and important as well, low shots will enforce power upon the character and a high shot will show weakness.

Mise en Scéne

Mise en Scéne means what type of mood and atmosphere is within the film. Mise en Scéne will be one of the hardest elements to catch in our production due to the lack of time and expensive equipment we will not have at school. Although using props and the correct lighting it is still possible to catch the right atmosphere.

Lighting

As student it can be very hard to get the correct lighting for our production but there are some things we can do to get good lighting:

Use natural light - Sunlight, shadows, mist and rain

Use cheap and cheerful artificial lighting - using candles and street lights you can obtain the right effects for a thriller.

Colour Filters - Shining light through coloured liquids vases and ornamants.

Position of lighting - Using lights to shine from above can create different types of atmospheres.

Combining sound, image and titles

Titles plays a very important part in our production it can sometimes introduce the movie and if its not visually appealing it can put people off the film from the start. Also we will be using music in our titles and thus this can also affect the mood and atmosphere of the film.