The scene from our film shows the confrontation between a son and his mother. For this project I decided to take on the roll of cameraman. I chose this role because I have a strong eye for composition and my work in photography and media studies helped me to frame all the shots.
Dan and I always had a strong idea about what type of genre we were going to carry out are film in the style of. As big fans of the Arthouse, low budget films we decided, with the restricting equiptment and setting this was the best idea.
As we were both interested in the genre films to research were at the forefront of our minds, we looked into films such as;
Dead Mans Shoes (2002) Dir. Shane Meadows, Made In Britain (1982) Dir. Alan Clarke, Ratcatcher (1999) Dir. Lynne Ramsey, Snatch (2000) Dir. Guy Riche, This Is England (2006) Dir. Shane Meadows
In detail we looked at Ratcatcher which really embraced the style which we were aiming to go for. The long held shots with little camera movement and dreamy surreal soundtrack with not a obvious direction where the action is going to take you.
I would say this is similar to the start of out video when the character is walking to the house, echoing every similar to the scene in Ratcatcher and poses the same questions; Who is he? Why is he running? What is he doing?
For the main body of our film I decided to look at conversation scenes from This Is England
The simple lighting and tight shots was the similarities which I wanted to use to enhance the conversation scenes
When we had done our research into the genre of the of the scene we were going to carry out we started to storyboard our sequence, we tried to do the storyboard more of a rough idea to how we were going shoot the scene, as we both had a strong idea about the kind of style we were going for it turned out rather similar.
The location was then next on the agenda, it was known that we had to have a rather dated setting and just so happened that the lady that was playing the mother (Maxine Kent) lived in a flat that was built and dated around the early 90's so was perfect to film the interior settings, and the village where the house is situated (over) is a small rural village that was perfect for the walking sequence at the start of the scene.
The filming of the sequence was all done over one day, the weather, obviously was not avalible to be manipulated, but it transpired that it was snowing and that gave the start sequence that dreamy feel. In particularly the shot from the other side of the road, when the character crossed past the camera, and a slight movemement from the camera also gave the carefree free soul that the character seems to be, however being contrasted to the quite eerie music makes the audience think that at the end of the walk there may be trouble.
Another shot that I was pleased with the outcome of was the shot through the garages when the charater.
