Analysis of POV used in the music video for "The Stampede" by Biting Elbows

Test of Nikon D3300 Camera

 We decided to use the Nikon D3300 as we were both quite familiar with the camera having both shot a film using this camera. The Nikon D3300 is one of the entry level dslr's made by Nikon which are perfect for beginner's film making. It shoots in full HD with a lens which can push and pull focus manually and had a wide range of depths of fields. In our film we will use the D3300 as our primary camera whenever we are not using the SONY HDR-AS15 fro our POV shots. After some time testing the SONY we decided that it could be used for some shots but not for all of them because the footage was too shaky and some of the shots were too grainy or over exposed.

Test of Sony HDR-AS15 Camera

Overview of the SONY HDR-AS15-

As we had the idea to shoot a film from the protagonist's perspective to give the film a more immersive first person feel we decided that an action camera would probably be the best option. Action cameras are often used for sports such as skiing, cycling ,parkour, etc. They are used to show The POV of the people using them. They have also featured in "I'm a Celebrity get me out of here!", in which they are attached to the helmets of the celebrities during bush trucker trials. Despite being heavily used in sport videos and occasionally used in T.V., they are very rarely used in films.
My partner Francesca has an action camera for recording her ski holidays. The action camera she owns is the SONY HDR-AS15. It is a small, compact camera which can be mounted on a persons head using the strap shown in the picture above. One thing that I immediately liked about this camera was the fact that it is mounted on the side of the head as opposed to being mounted on the top of the head which is how GoPros are often mounted. I prefer using a side mounted camera as it can be put in the exact eye-line of the protagonist which gives the spectator the feel of having the protagonist's exact view, whereas mounting a camera on the top of the head looks a bit strange to an audience as the camera is not in the eye-line of the protagonist. The SONY HDR-AS15 shoots in full 1080pHD which is ideal for our purposes as it is what we are used to filming in. The big downside to this camera is the inability to change the focus manually which means that we won't be able to get the exact shots that we would like to as some of the shots may be slightly out of focus and may not have the depth we are looking for but unfortunately a lack of control of focus is something that is evident in all of the action cameras which we have looked at.

Analysis of our test footage-

There are some aspects of our test footage which I am very happy with such as the general feel of the more immersive POV perspective. However, there are also some aspects of the camera which I feel aren't right for our film. For example, I thought that when I shot footage outside the shots were all too over exposed but this might not be a major issue as we will be filming at night. I also thought that at times the shots were quite grainy. When walking with the camera on I thought that the camera was shaking too much however, I think that I should be able to fix this in post production by using a warp stabilizer. I also thought that the audio that I got of the camera was very bad so I have been considering buying some external audio equipment such as a rode shotgun mic. Overall I was pleased with the footage which we got of the camera however I have changed my mind about doing the film in a couple of long takes abd using only this camera. Instead I have decided that it would probably be better to use our Nikon D3300 for some of the shots as well as using our action camera.

Analysis of POV shots used in "Being John Malkovich"

Analysis of distortion and surrealism used in "Skins" series 3 episode "Effy"

Initial planning and surrealist research

Pictured above is our initial brainstorm for our thought and ideas about our film. This includes ideas for the genre, narrative, cinematic style, editing techniques and misé-en-scene.

-Genre

-Narrative

For the narrative of our film we were influenced by many other films such as "The Great Gatsby", "Birdman", "Inception", "127 Hours"

-Cinematic Style

-Editing Techniques

-Misé-en-scene