Chess Film: Scouting Locations

     Before deciding on a location for our film, my team and I discussed important things to keep in mind before choosing our spots. As cinematographer, the main factors I considered was consistent lighting and a subtle background. For lighting, we wanted a more shady spot. This is because of the environment we live in which has extremely inconsistent weather patterns. On days were it might be super sunny the shade of the trees can cover it so our actors don't look like they're glowing. On rainy days, it wont be as significant of a change since we wanted our spot already shaded. The table we selected for our opening and closing shot is shaded well with minimal distracting background, which is exactly what we were looking for in order to hide any inconsistencies in the weather as well as having things or people in the background. 

Problem #1

Original Shot Idea 

    The first dilemma faced by our location was the fact that you could see other groups in the background. Although we were told this was most likely inevitable since we're all shooting on the same patio, we wanted to eliminate it as much as possible. Since the genre of our film is horror, it's very important for the audience to keep their attention to small details which may help further explain the plot. We also wanted the viewers to see the chess board that the main character has laid out, which cannot be seen in the original shot shown in the picture. To fix these problems, we changed the height and angle of the camera.

New Shot Idea

    This shot allows us to not only eliminate the background noise, but to also give watchers a better view of the chess board and the significance of the girl playing it. This also allows us to turn this shot into a tracking shot since we plan on not using the tri-pod, and instead filming by hand with the smartphone video rig for this scene. By having both hands manually moving the camera rig, it creates the shot to be more steady and appear as a true tracking shot as it gets closer to the actress.

Problem #2

    In order to make this a true horror film, my group wanted to include a murder mystery theme. With murder mystery comes death, which can be hard to appropriately show especially in an extremely short film. So, instead of showing someone getting murdered, I decided as cinematographer to instead use other visual cues such as camera angles and lighting to imply a characters death without directly showing it. One technique I plan on incorporating is low-angle shots when shooting a quick death. This shot makes the character appear small or vulnerable, which can help imply the power that the main killer has over them. Another technique that can be used to show the deaths is symbolism. After a victim is shown dead, there will be a chess piece found somewhere in the shot. This may be on the victim or around them. This symbolizes the characters cause of death is clearly due to the main women shown in the opening shot. Dark lighting can be used to show the death and disparity of the scene. This may be hard to achieve since the film is outside, but it is possible with editing and using filming software on low exposure.

    The purpose of this shot is to show the death of a character. As of right now, we didn't bring the chess pieces but we plan on including a pawn in the characters hand, as a clue left behind by the killer. This shot will be taken with a more dramatic low angle, but overall shows the idea to not include an entire body which is easy to look cheesy.