Previous Attempt at the Prisoner Project

Last year my attempt at the prisoner project was fairly amateur in its execution, this year I can use this as a reference to see where I went wrong, and avoid certain mistakes found in the video. The video can be found below. Below the video should be a series of issues that I have found and how I can use this to my advantage in trying again.


Issues and Solutions

I= Issue
S=Solution

1. I- The shots of the mobile phone are incredibly blurry and hard to read.
S- Try to refrain from recording electronic devices with digital screens, The result is almost always very blurry.

2. I- The Framing on some of the shots is particularly unbalanced and characters often lean out of frame, or stand up out of the frame. I.e. Jack standing up, Me outside before the ending shot.
S- Run through a scene a couple of times before doing it to make sure that the actors can properly work in the room that they were given, I could even make markings on certain areas of the floor so that actors are perfectly clear about where to stand.

3. I- The first time my character gets out his phone, the way that he pauses and just stands there, seems so robotic and forced. There is no fluidity to his actions and it ruins the immersion in the scene.
S- In future I would try and run through the scene with a number of attitudes and styles. This way I could see from the pick which one is the best to use in the situation.

4. I- The scene in which the camera zooms forwards is noteable for its poor regard for the position of the sun. The sun itself casts something of a fuzzy glare to the scene, throughout the shoot, I remember having to move constantly because of the glare.
S- Consider the movement of the sun, East to west. from here it should be possible to see where the sun will move and move the camera accordingly, There is no scientific aspect to this as I can visually interpret where the sun will be and in fact where it currently is.

5. I- Bags with filming equipment can clearly be seen in the background of some shots. Namely the shot in which my character first puts the phone away, and again in the scene where Jack gets out of the building, in which a bag is clearly visible by the step.
S- Bags should be placed behind the camera at all times to ensure that they never bcome part of the scene. There is a real sense of lazy recording shown with their appearence.

6. I- There is essentially a plot issue with the film, after my character puts his phone away, there is a brief moment of him walking, then suddenly he is running in the next shot, the change in pace has no relevance to the plot as he simply walks into the building all the same and doesnt even run that far anyway.
S- Stick to the story, Making a few minor alterations here and there is okay from time to time but one should be careful to avoid creating issues with the plot, as I evidently did here.

7. I- In the story, My character goes to see Jack in 'Containment room 5'... Which is in a school for some reason. Only after I shot this does it become clear that perhaps this seems a bit ridiculous.
S- Since a number of shots show the place to be a school, then perhaps the story would fit better if we simply said that he was being held in an unlikely area. Not an established 'Containment' Facility. The key thing here is that plots can become fairly silly rather quickly if they arent looked at thoroughly.

8. I- The random child that walks though the scene, has no reason to be there. If it was a school scene, then surely there would be many more children to enforce the point, but there is but one.
S- Dont Record Random people walking around, in most cases the indivuduals will attempt to mess up the shot, but sometimes you capture unwanted pieces of information.