Chess Film: Production begins

 

The chess board used in our film

When we started production, at first we started filming our clips in order. For our opening shot, I decided on an over-the-shoulder shot which is used to highlight both the main character and the chess board shown. After we got the shot, we realized we needed to film all shots with our other actor (the investigator) because he would not be able to make the second day of production. So, I quickly snapped a picture of the chess board (shown above) to remember the correct placements of our pieces so we could pick up where we left off later. Shooting the shots out of order was a little bit confusing. This was because in the process of shooting, some of the shots I had planned out on my storyboard were disregarded or changed, which made it a little hard to keep track of what made sense to shoot next. 

The ORIGINAL idea for a death scene 

On my storyboard, I had an idea of including the shot of the investigators arm filmed on a tri-pod. My idea was that the stillness of the shot would help viewers focus on the chess piece falling off his hand and not have the camera movement being distracting.

The NEW idea for the death scene 

My team brought up an idea which we ended up deciding was a better idea. Instead of keeping the tri-pod set up, they wanted it to be a tracking shot moving from the top of the investigators arm (not including his face) down to the evidence folder with the chess piece falling on it. In order to shoot this and prevent shaky-ness, my editor assisted me. He held the front of the camera, as I stabilized the back and we tracked it down together. After watching it back, we decided this was a better idea and liked the execution better than the tri-pod shot.