Preliminary Project - Test Shoot

Introduction

Filming the footage for this short video was quite the adventure. I rode my bicycle to a nearby forest, and walked around looking for good places to film, trying out multiple ways of filming the same scene, playing around with the angling of the camera and the composition.

The Process

Before I got into the actual filming, I first took some concept photos. The first one I took looked alright composition-wise, but I wasn't satisfied with the lighting at all. It was way too bright to properly fit the scary atmosphere I was going for.

concept photo, bright lighting

So I took another photo, but this time I played around with the settings of my camera a little, and made it darker. I also decided to shoot everything in landscape instead of portrait, because I thought it would help give the viewer a broader image of the surroundings, making everything more immersive.

concept photo, dark lighting, landscape

You can see in the second concept photo that the horizon line isn't perfectly horizontal anymore. It's partially askew, making the whole image look more eerie and unsettling.

I chose this portion of the road in particular because it's not straight. The way it winds and deviates ever so slightly from a straight line helps to visually create a feeling of imperfection, of wrongness. I shot some footage of this part of the road standing still, trying to capture the rustling of the leaves, but I also shot the same place while slowly stepping forward, making sure my steps were audible.

me filming at the shooting location

I carried on with this method of shooting the same location in multiple ways, just to make sure I had enough variation in my footage so that I'd have plenty to choose from when editing everything together. I also filmed some first person videos of me running through the forest, trying to really capture that shakiness and agitation that I want to portray. I filmed some extra footage too, of the trees swaying in the wind, of leaves being torn from the trees by the wind and falling in front of the camera, of the still forest; I plan to use these as ambience and to help paint the picture of the location; once again I tried to capture different parts and angles of the same things so that I'd have plenty of footage to work with when editing.

After Thoughts

Overall this was a very fun process, I really enjoyed adapting as I went along, coming up with ideas on the spot and filming one shot multiple times to try to perfect it. I'm very excited to try out a video editing software; to take everything I've filmed and put it together into a video, which will hopefully live up to my vision.