A college project which was made by my team and me.
We had a mission to do a remake of any scene from a movie we choose.
As we all are amateurs and have never done such of a job it was quite hard to start, you wouldn't imagine. We have a luck that our university is well equipped so we had a chance to use their equipment which was pretty useful and I'm thankful for that.
We, as a team, had contemplations for a long time, around 2 weeks, because we couldn't pick what movie and what scene are we going to film and remake. After a lot of thinking we decided to remake a scene "The Box" from a movie called Se7en.
Our task was to do as similar as possible scene, which includes:
- Cadres and frameworks
- Camera position
- Image quality of the film
- Sound
- Montage
This is our version:
The 'accent' was on video production processes because we are, at least, we will be, IT designers, so acting wasn't important and in the first place.
Although, did you know that if you just replace editor (the one responsible for the montage), the whole movie usually looks absolutely different.
As the name says 'video production processes' it's a really long and tiring process to make a whole team agree with plans and that everyone's opinion is appreciated. I'm glad I was in a such a great team with my friends and that we didn't have too much problems with agreeing each other. In my opinion great, confident team is half of the work.
The first step was brainstorming. It's a process in which every individual writes their thoughts, in our case on a paper, whatever comes to your mind. There's no dumb solution or idea and that really helped. At the end we all agreed on the scene "The box" because of many reasons.
2 most important was that we had a team of 5 people (4 male and one female) and the movie had 3 actors. It was perfect for out team - we had 3 actors, 1 cameraman and 1 video editor. The second one was that we all agreed and were excited because it's iconic scene from iconic movie. Most of our colleagues said we took a big bite, but that motivated us even more and in my opinion, we did an excellent job.
One of the toughest tasks was to find the perfect location. Especially because I insisted to find a location with transmission lines to be consistent. Firstly, we spent days on finding a location, we even used Google maps, but in the end everything has come to its own.
We've split the roles depending on how me match the real actors in the movie, at least we tried to.
It was needed for us that we gather our materials and props so we can get ready for filming.
When the plan was worked out and well-planned we headed to our location with all the stuff we needed. The worst part had been that I was playing John Doe (Kevin Spacey) - the prisoner who was in a shirt with short sleeves. It was January and freaking 2 °C!
I didn't have a prison uniform or orange pants so we had to improvise. We couldn't stop laughing on the beginning.
At the beginning we were calm and cool. Everything went smoothly but few hours after we were freezing and the night was coming. Weather was changeable which is not good at all for filming because then in 2 cadres which should be connected you get different weather..
We printed scripts with sentences for every role and sometimes it was hard to learn it.
It was going smooth, because we prepared ourselves very well. Good preparation means a lot. It really solves every possible problem in the future so there are no unexpected situations.
The struggle of learning text. On the second photo I got really mad because after 5 shots I didn't make it right. There's always 6th try, right? :D
This is our great team. We had a lot of fun!
The equipment we used:
- Camera model Canon EOS600D
- Lens Canon efs 55-250mm and efs 18-55mm
- Stand Manfrotto 055
I had such a great time filming that scene. We learned a lot, we came together as a team and became better friends. Started from a zero, but with all planning we did together we achieved a lot.
That was direct touch with professional world of filming and that was such a great experience. This knowledge will surely help me in the future with some jobs.
Of course we got the best degree for this and passed a college without a hitch.