POV Shots

Point of view shots are incredibly crucial to scenes. They determine who the audience is going to identify with, and who they are focused on. Working alongside something such as framing, it determines also how much the audience interacts and how involved they become with the character on screen.

Stephen D. Katz said, "Point of View may be the most important aspect of a directors contribution but - apart from some familiar subjective techniques - the way in which camera placement, composition and editing shape the Narrative Stance of any scene is generally overlooked. This probably accounts for the fact that Point of View is handled indifferently in so many films'  and he is correct. Without the proper framing, and employment of other techniques, Narrative Stance simply becomes just another shot.

Most films are presenting in the POV of the 'ideal observer' it is not always the sole viewpoint but it is the best one that  the audience could have. POV shots give this a more personal feel and involve the audience further and more directly. It means that the audience may be 'truly omniscient' (perhaps also including narration or voice over so that we know what the character is thinking)

This also includes levels of identification.

• The most powerful 'cueing device' is the line of sight of the actor, especially in a closeup. This means more identification with the character. 
• SHOT 1 - Subject - Eyeline Established
• Transition with Spatial/Temportal Continutity
• SHOT 2 - Object from OR close to Subject Position/Eyeline

Generally speaking, the closer the line of sight of a player is to the camera in CU the greater the degree of viewer identification with them.

Colour in Film

'If it's Purple, Someones Gonna Die' by Patti Bellantoni provides the perfect examples and definitions of why colour in film is so important to both the audience, and the maker.

Red's can range from romantic, to angry, to powerful and are a very dynamic and easy to spot colour signifier. Whereas blues are a little harder to place as they are very detached, and often used to signify very cold spaces. Colour is extremely important in film as a visual signifier, and not just in hue, but also in chroma as this can signify different moods within a colour.

Colours are also extremely important when considering a story arc or location rather than a scene. For instance, if you are using reds as a signifier of danger, then it may appear before the dangerous scene of the film as a warning to the audience that there will be some trouble ahead. Films also tend to stick to a colour palette, so that they are consistent throughout and the audience knows when a deviation is used for effect. 

Characters will also wear certain colours that may signify their personalities or foreshadow arcs to come. Therefore the choice of colour in film does not only extend to location and setting the scene, but also to setting the characters and therefore attention to detail needs to be paid. This all shows how important colour is in film.

Inspirations for script

Most of the inspiration for our film came from the brief itself. While we knew that we were limited in terms of location and casting, we thought that a news reporter being lured into Grindleford would be a good idea as it would not only be original but fun to film and an easy storyline to create. 

Nightcrawler is a film that I watched that partially inspired me when writing the screenplay, although to an opposite end. The killer would be the one moving and placing the bodies to make sure that the reporter was in frame directly to be framed himself. The mixed nature of 'live found footage' in the genre is something that we experimented with. For example, when our female character picks up the camera that he has dropped in the woods in shock at actually finding a body it then switches between the camera's POV and a normal camera view. This is something that we are going to have to play around with a lot to make it look realistic. 

Woods are often a place where serial murders occur, and when Lauren and I spoke about this we automatically thought of the 'mushroom' farm in NBC's Hannibal. Although too far fetched and also out of our league to recreate anything similar, this was our inspiration for setting the serial murders in Grindleford and the Peak District area (as mentioned in the script and dialogue)

As for the ending shot, we were influenced by Psycho where the camera is tracked out of the face. We are going to be attempting to do the same thing with a slider and two tripods instead of taking the track. 

Grindleford Recce

Our group made the trip to Grindleford to seek out possible locations for our cinematography film. We left with a few other groups and arrived in Grindleford with the idea of choosing the ideal vantage point for our possible film. 

As the topic of our film is a news reporter who is lured to Grindleford, we wanted to film it in places where a potential killer would be able to have a good view of the reporter. This would be for the POV shot, as we would be filming some of this from the POV of the killer. 

We also looked for possible ambush points, where we could have our  key lighting change as discussed in the brief. The amount of green in Grindleford means that we were considering a change from green to blue to reflect the change from the greenery of Grindleford to the colour of the stream.

We found the recce to be useful as it helps us to visualise and storyboard the scenes that we will be filming in Grindleford. This also helps me to script the film and means that if something goes wrong with our preferred location in Grindleford on the day that we know enough for backup location to become instantly unavailable.