Shot Analysis
The shot I chose is an LS of Ella, however due to her body position it can be framed closer to the subject. It was taken in the school's basement, where there was a complete absense of natural light. We turned off the bright ceiling lights and lit the shot dimly but glaringly with two pag lights to pinpoint the subject, facing her from the sides to create shadow. One light was not enough to sufficiently illuminate the shot. The frame is tilted to create an eery, mysterious effect, in addition to the revealing of only half the subject's face and the solemn, staring, intense facial expression, which can be seen in enough detail but not extreme detail from the shot type used. Full focus is not used here to create a sligihtly blurred, ghostly effect on the subject, and a sepia-tone effect is used on the camera to bring a nostalgic feeling. The fact that she is withdrawn into the storage space among the boxes connotes fear and timidness, making her character compelling but illusive, with our intention of presenting her as a kind of tortured spirit from the past, justifying the effects we used. In Hindsight:If we discovered the set sooner we would have been able to spend more time perfecting the shots we took there and experimenting camera techniques. With better planning we could work chronologically with some kind of system rather than shooting whatever came to mind without as much thought. Also, we would be enabled to take more shots of more subjects in more compositions in order to optimise the likelihood of great results. Other shots were constructed of good ideas but what we could see did not quite work out when translated to digital image. A sharper focus could be used with this shallow depth of field for a more impactful character, but this may be difficult with the very short foreground/background distance we shot at.
