OCA Assignment 1: Framing

For this assignment we had to produce a short sequence of no more than five shots, that tells a simple story using images alone.

Planning:

• Write a simple story:

Thoughts:
Given that I was on holiday in Spain, I wanted to take advantage of the location to shoot the sequence. Spent quite a lot of time mulling over ideas, and thinking back on what stories people had chosen for project 1. Many of them were fairy stories or nursery rhymes which are simple, sometimes moralistic and often have a bit of magic in them.

Story:
A rich greedy man hears about a sacred temple in South Spain called the 'Ermita of Terque', where all deserving wishes are guaranteed to be granted. He travels all the way, and pants up the steep hill in the little village expecting to be granted his wish of a million pounds.
On the way, he meets a poor girl in a cave who is begging for food. He throws a stone at her like a dog.
When he arrives at the temple, he says what he wants and holds out his hand for the money, but instead of money, an orange rolls out.
He looks at it in disgust and throws it down the hill. It lands in the lap of the cave girl, who is delighted to have received an orange.
Instantly, the orange transforms into bread and money, and she is never hungry again.

Storyboard:

 1. Shot is taken from eye-level angle to the girl. Shot starts looking down on man walking up the steps. When he gets to the girl he throws a stone at her and walks past the camera. The camera pans up the hill to the temple.
Need to show - the girl in her cave, her begging. The business man. The temple.

 2. Shot starts by looking down on the man walking up the last bit of hill towards the temple. He walks past the camera and on up to the temple, where he stands at the door asking for money.
Need to show - the business man demanding his wish.

 3. Low angle shot at the temple. He demands his wish and is rewarded an orange. He sits down in anger.
Need to show - the sign saying that all deserving wishes will be granted. The orange. His anger.

 4. He throws the orange in anger over the side of the hill. And begins walking back down.
Need to show - the orange going over.

5. Eye-level shot. The girl catches the orange and it is transformed into bread and money. She looks up at the temple in gratitude.
Need to show - it's the same orange. The transformation.










The sequence:

Here is the finished sequence:
OCA assignment: Ermita of Terque

Critical Evaluation:

It was great fun recording this, though I did need to use quite a bit of bribery to persuade Kani to act a cave girl! I was lucky in that the light and the colours of Spain were so brilliant!

Frame one:
I liked the shot of him walking up the steps, his suit out of place in the dusty village. As I followed him up the steps it is unclear whether we are on his side or not. The shot looks down on him until he reaches the girl. At this point, at eye-level he throws the stone at her. The shot stays with the girl which I think works, as though we have transferred allegiance to the girl.
I'm not sure whether the panning up to the temple is quite right. Perhaps I could have lingered slightly longer on the temple.

Frame two:
Here I have used the same technique of looking down on him walking up and then past the camera to the temple. I had wanted to give the impression of it being a long way up, but on reflection I think I should have utilised another angle to build on what we have begun to feel about the man. Perhaps I could have taken the shot from the temple and looked directly down on his head, or I could have done a close up of his feet on the gravel walking towards the temple.

Frame three:
The orange gets a bit lost in this! Partly because Dan put his foot out to stop it from rolling down the hill, which it did on the first take! But also because of the set up of the shot. Again, I think an angle that focused on the orange somehow - close up at ground level? with his feet and the orange appearing - would have been better. My problem was that I wanted to get the sign in as well, to explain what he was doing up there in the first place.

Frame four:
I like this shot - it's very clear what's happening, but again I wonder if it could be improved by using a different angle? In an ideal world, a high angle shot looking down on the man. Something to indicate that there is a higher being at work here!

Frame five:
Actually this is five and six - I only realised after we got back from Spain that I had zoomed in on the final shot of the girl with the food. Another lesson there!
I felt it was important to shoot the scene from a similar angle to the first shot to show that it's the same girl in the same cave. We tried it from that angle, but the orange kept on falling too far away and rolling down the steps! So it's a slightly different angle, which seems to work just as well in terms of making the story clear.

Overall, the sequence tells the story but on reflection the angles of the shots are very static and unimaginative. They don't play enough of a role in telling the story or in telling us about the characters. I think I need to experiment with very low angle and very high angle shots to get a feel for how the 'steepness' affects the mood of the piece. Also I had for some reason got it into my head that I needed to stick to a particular angle that I had chosen, but of course, that's not the case. So I think I need to try out mixing a variety of angles within a film.