Ays- Wallace And Gromit ' A Close Shave'

Camera Work

The point of view shot was good when you were in the view of what Gromit when he could see the sheep falling on him which gave a nice feeling of what he would be seeing. The picture to the left was a nice shot because it then went to an extreme close up of both their hands on one another tounching the wool as some romantic music came on at that point giving it a love feeling. In one shot the bad dogs eyes are shown in the car mirror showing only his expression through his eyes.

The Set-Up

In the beginning of the film they are doing a normal morning routine where they get ready and go for breakfast and everything seems normal eventhough they use inventions to help get ready which shows us what the main characters are like and what their interests are. Also they have things in the scenes that represent what they are into and what they like.

Confrontation

A new character turns up and disrupts the main characters normal routine. The new character ruins the house and brings trouble upon the characters. Wallace and gromit have to find a way to resolve what is happening and make it better and so they can return to normal.

Francesca's Research -- Wallace and Gromit- A close shave

Wallace and Gromit: A Close Shave

Wallace and Gromit, a close shave, is a thrilling story of a dog, gromit and a man called wallace getting caught up in a criminal act where sheep are taken, shaved and turn into dog food. The real villain behind the scenes doing this terrible mishaps is a robotic dog, howevere he ends up being hard to catch and expose, plus unfortunately he manages to frame an innocent character while doing this. There is also a love story which adds to the already very interesting storyline. But there are four main aspects which make this episode a true success and they are: Sound, Mise en Scene, Editing and Camera Work.

Sound


The episode starts in the night time, and there are some back ground sound effects to create the creepy night, like some thunder and lighting. Plus throughout the whole episode whenever we see the evil robot dog we hear some sinister music, to show that theres something a bit scary about him. We hear this when theres creaking floor boards and rustling when Gromit and Wallace are awake downstairs. Gromit will look at something, and then we look at what hes looking at through a new point of view shot but theres always nothing there, and theres the music to make you feel suspense that maybe something may pop out or appear. Near the end of the edisope when theres the climax of the action and the bit then its very dangerous as the evil dog nearly has them, theres music which is very much quicker paced then before, reflecting how the danger and time to stop it is rushed and time urgent.


Mise en Scene

• a knife
• facial expressions like nervous eyes, or a close up of evil eye brows like...>:/
• cellar, dark dingy, dripping
• long sharp nails
• chains
• robotic metal dog
• red sign with red writing
• shadow of characters silhouette

Editing and sounds

• creaking of floor boards
• sinister music when evil dog comes in
• fades inbetween night to day time
• silent with a sudden clicky sound
• depth of feild change
• echo of foot prints in cellar
• quick music when dangerous or a chase

Camera work

• shot of close up on eyes
• low angles when shots of evil dog
• shorter shots when more dangerous
• shots of shadows to create darker mood
• shot of bad dog peeking out makes it feel like hes spying and plotting

Does show many traditional aspects of thriller.

Preliminary task- teacher feedback.

Editing- When editing we broke up shots such as walking shots so that we cut from it to something else then back again so that it didn't go on for ages and get boring. we used a bit of special effects at one point which did look good but we need to be careful not to get in the habbit of using them or go too over board with them as it could make the clip look tacky or out of place. Our match on action was good when we opened the door and had someone walk through it because it's all on time and we cut it in the right places, however when we did the match on action for the brief case when it got turned around we didn't cut it in the right place beacuse the shots look out of sync and as if its a repeat from the other side but seconds before hand because we didn't cut the shots well enough to make them flow in time from one to the other. With the 180 degree rule we are pretty sure we broke it because we shot from one side of one of the characters but then with the other character we changed sides so it was going diagonally instead of keeping it on the same side for the new character. The sound we used we just flicked through random ones and found a nice sound taht fitted with the clip, and by chance it got quieter when the characters were talking and also it built up suspence in the right places. We also kept it at a reasonable level so that it wasn't too in your face but loud enough so you could hear it and get a feel for the clip.

Camera work- Our framing was good as we didn't worry about keeping the whole of somebody in the shot but made sure we got most of the other character. We used the space well and mo0st of our shots like close ups to the face were positioned to the side but still with little background to the other side. the colours we chose for the table cloth was a green/tourquise colour because to us that represented a poker table but when we came to filming the character was wearing a black shirt which went well with the cloth.

Jon's Evaluation

Throughout this task I learnt various filming and editing techniques, and what is the easiest and most effective technique to use for different times.

The way we filmed our short wasn't in the conventional bit-by-bit way. In most shots, we filmed the whole scene from one position, and then again from another. This presented a continuity challenge, however it was easily overcome by planning each action, and rehearsing everything until our actors could do the same actions, over and over again. This allowed more flow into the film, and we found it easier when editing.

The markers at the beginning of each shot I found were really helpful, as when we imported it into iMovie, the shots were split up and we knew exactly which shot was which.

One problem we realized after filming and editing, was that we had got the 180 degree rule wrong. We had filmed 'diagonally' instead of mirroring, however it was too late to change, so we just had to leave it like that.

Another technique we wanted to achieve was dollying. However we found when using a wheelie chair, that it was very difficult to achieve a smooth fluid motion using that form of makeshift dolly.

Editing wise, I thought it worked well using Premiere Pro on the laptop, as it allowed us to work on it outside of lessons and not have to book a computer. However in future I would most probably hope to use Final Cut on the desktop macs so we can keep everything together. We put each shot on a separate video and audio track, and then cut the best bits out of each, and mixed it with extreme close ups of the eyes, among other miscellaneous shots. This helped maintain fluidity in the film. We also experimented with the RGB colour correction, however we decided that we should leave it natural.

Personally, my role was the location scout, and camera operator. Although, Tom and Ays found the location as I was away for that lesson, and as Tom (director) also acted, I also did a small amount of directing.

In future, I think we should try and prioritize things a bit better, for instance the first time we filmed, we concentrated on getting smaller shots that weren't very significant (for instance a coin being tossed), rather than getting all the essential filming done first. This then meant we had to rush the filming slightly towards the end.

Ays' Evaluation.

Through out this task i learnt how to use the video camera and the tripod and how certain things such as the height of the tripod and angle of the camera could make a big difference in the shot you take. I learnt that at the beginning and end of each cut it was extremely helpful having what shot it was written on the whiteboard which helped immensely when we came to the editing process as it made it easier and quicker to find the shots we wanted and didn't want. Also the fact that we said 'speed, rolling and action' and then 'cut' at the beginning and end of each cut helped because it gave us plenty of time to edit so that we wouldn't cut off any parts that could have been good. We tried to include good shot and angle types but some didn't work out. For example we wanted to do a dolly shot from one character around the table to the other but we tried it by using a wheelie chair and balancing the camera on it, however this didn't work because the camera kept slipping and the floor wasn't smooth enough making the shot look shaky and un-professional, so in the end we didn't do a dolly shot as it just didn't look good enough to present. Also after we had finished filming and started editing we realised we had broken the 180 degree rule.
For this task my personal input was to find a location and get props, i was also in charge of the whiteboard writing which didn't seem to be very important until we did our filming, i also discussed what shots and angles to used with Tom and Jon so we all agreed on what we were doing. When it came to the editing although i wasn't very good at using the actual software i gave in my ideas and made decisions with the rest of the group. I also spent a good part of the first lesson going round the college with Tom trying to find the perfect place to film and eventually we found a room but had to go ask permission to use it and make bookings so nobody else would disrupt our filming.
because all three of us had missed alot of lessons due to Narnia it was quite hard for us to completly understand and put into practice the three continuity editing strategies. We tried to do the 180 degree shot but we got confused as to where the line was and which sied the camera should have been kept so we got that wrong. We set up shots such as close ups close to the persons face because the zoom made it go out of focus, also we did it at a sideways angle at eye level because it looked more effective when we watched them back. When editing we immediatly deleted the shots we knew were not good enough or the ones we had decided not to use. we then put all the ones we wanted in the right order so we knew what would be connected to the next clip making it easier to edit and fit together.
In our next task i think in our group we will try to get started quicker as it almost took a whole hour just finding a place to film. Also we will take more time on the filming as we kind of rushed them at points because we were running out of time. I think our editing was good and well organised which helped us finish it reasonably quick and had time to fiddle about and experiment on things we could use.

Editing...

Once we had filmed all the shots we needed and wanted we uploaded them all on to the mac and then decided that it would be easier to put it onto jon's laptop so that we could have more time and access to do the editing. luckily Jon knew alot about the software we used as I hadn't a clue so Jon went through the basics so i could help. first of all we got rid of shots that failed or didnt work well and didn't fit in with the other clips. we then put the clips we were going to use in order so that we had a base and knew what would go where. we then started to edit the clips by cutting them and deleting parts we didn't need such as the beginnings where we said action etc. and the end where we said cut. We also played around for a bit with some of the clips to see where to cut them in places that would be most effective. once we had done that and put everything in order we found some music to go over the top as there isn't much in the way of conversation between our characters. once we had found a suiting piece of music Jon showed me some good effects that we could use, so we used slow motion and rewind in some parts to add effect. lastly we fiddled around with the lightin exposure as we thought we should make it a bit darker to give the full effect of a poker room but in the end we agreed it would look better keeping it how we had filmed it because our white balance was really good.

Evaluation by Tom Lawrence

during the filming process i learned that everything has to be the same in every shot, which was very difficult because using playing cards they had to be the same in every shot. also i learned that you have to be consistent in every shot, shooting the same shot many times because if not then the scene looks scrappy and unprofessional, also using the 180 degree rule was a challenge because we started filming without thinking of it then once we watched it we discovered that we had to redo it.

Ays and i were in charge of finding where we should film and that was a huge responsibility because if the place was wrong then the filming would be too, so after hunting around for over an hour we found a small room which worked perfectly, we were aiming at a small room with a circular table, making it look like a gambling table.

I was the directer of the piece, this was a challenge because i had to write a script for the piece, adding in character movements and verbal direction, also i had to tell an actor that we used what his motive was, what his back story was and what his mindset was. also creating the story of the film from scratch was difficult because you had to be very creative and specifically say what you wanted.

During the editing i learned that you have to be patient with the footage, watching it many times and deciding which shot is the right shot for the film, because when a shot didn't work we had to pair it up with different shots, making sure it made sense. also i discovered that holding the card up before every shot is important because in some shots we didn't know where it went in the sequence.

at the start we tried using a red head however it looked horrible in our room so we took it out and used the ceiling lights, which worked allot better because the red head only lit parts of the room and created shadows and even when we put different gels on it it still didn't look right.

i would defiantly improve my personal directions because although i did write a script, i personally don't think it was as good as i am capable of, also i would work on different lighting in the piece because we tried to incorporate a "gambling atmosphere" by having an overhead light but i didn't know how to create that so we left it out.