The continuity piece

As part of making preparations to create the opening to a Thriller film, myself along with a group of my friends collaborated to film a short piece so that we could experiment with our creativity and look into what would be possible/ what made good ideas for when it came to coming up with the Thriller opening itself. We wanted to keep the narrative behind the piece relatively simple so that we could focus more on what we could achieve with the camera and how we could go about creating a tense atmosphere.

The first thing that we had to do was to come up with an idea for what was going to happen within our Continuity piece - and for only a short piece of film there was a decent amount of scope. We pondered over a wide variety of different ideas such as hearing back the results from a recent test (whether that be an educational test or a medical one) as it would be simple enough to create tension around such things) but in the end we decided upon the idea that is presented here.

The final idea for our continuity piece continuity piece follows a cloaked character (acted by James Howard), walking to get to a location where he must deliver some important information to his superior (played by me).
Once we had that, we could begin to put together a plan, and this took the form of this storyboard:

Now that we had the storyboard down we could finally get on with the filming. 

The filming was a relatively simple task, it was just as case of making sure that everybody was where we needed them to be - both in terms of the filming and in making sure that everybody was at the filming sessions.

As a journey from one location to another, the setup that we wanted did not need to be too complex. In fact, we were able used the hallways of our school and the drama studio for the final encounter (although we did have occasions in the former of the two in which we needed to pause in order to allow other pupils to pass through). Isaac directed the piece and controlled the camera while both James and myself (the man in the shadows) acted. We tried experimenting with camera angles, for example we filmed a shot from a balcony across the hallway in order to give a high angle/tracking shot which worked well.

It was very enjoyable getting hidden in shadow, it gave me a feel of power that’s much more difficult to get in a real life scenario (which I suppose is one appeal for being an actor, being able to do things that aren’t possible in the real world); It was Isaac’s idea to create this kind of scene which can be found in films such as 'The Godfather'  and 'Spectre'

(and many other, similar, scenes) where the antagonist is sitting in the dark and cannot be seen so there is an ambiance of fear and power surrounding him.

We filmed this in the drama studio so did not have perfect equipment in order to perform proper backlighting. Backlighting is a technique where you direct the light from behind the subject into the camera, similar to something such as the very first scene in 'Skyfall' (where Bond is walking through the corridor and there is light coming through the shutters to create the effect).

Isaac, as the director and having looked into it himself, explained to the three of us that normally in films, directors use a technique called 'three point lighting', where there are three lights for three different things. The 'key light' is the strongest light and has the most influence on the screen; the 'fill light' is placed opposite the 'key light' and is not as bright and adds shadows to the subject(s) in the shot; and finally there is a 'back light' which is placed right behind the subject and adds definition and subtle highlights around the subject's outlines. 

Thankfully, despite the not quite perfect equipment granted us by the Drama studio, we eventually managed to angle the spotlight in a direction in which I was barely visible on camera and so the only hint of me was my legs which I had leisurely rested upon the table. 

After the filming had been done, we just needed to put the pieces of film together and the continuity piece would be completed. It was my job to find the soundtrack that we needed and seeing as I listen to that kind of music on a daily basis the job suited me perfectly. After some considerate searching for the right music that would fit with the video, I was able to find the track that goes with our piece.

Finally, with all of that work rounded up and completed, I can now present to you the piece that we had worked on (I hope you enjoy):

Unfortunately, post edit, we realised that we had made a mistake in the editing process: between the 30-40 second mark in the piece we managed to break the 180 degree rule in that the character seen in the frame walks left and then in the next shot walks right. Having made that mistake here, we decided that the  best thing we could do with that is that we would make sure that a similar mistake was not make when it came to editing the Thriller opening piece.