One Shot Film: Business As Usual

We filmed our One Shot film yesterday and I am really pleased with how it's turned out. We had backgrounds painted onto bed sheets which were held up, we had a camera on tracks which moved slowly through the sets along with the character who pulls them down. We used three lights, one with an orange gel and another with a blue gel. The basic idea was a guy going through a bit of his life, having arguments with his girlfriend, and wanting go out to get away from it all. We decided to bed sheets instead of creating walls, I really loved this idea as its like a solid wall that becomes weightless. The way it drops is really effective, I love all the ripples you see as it falls which I think works a lot better that using a material you could break through. The first sheet was a living room, the actor was about to light a cigarette and then hears music, he pulls down the backdrop to get to the next one which was the kitchen where the argument took place. After he pulls down the kitchen backdrop he gets to a club which we created by playing a video of a live performance on the projector, which worked really well. We orginally was going to use a black sheet and use the lights and gels to create the club but the projector was much better, he really looked like part of the crowd. There was a few problems in trying to hold up the sheets so we had to get more people in to help, if we had lots more people we could of used more sheets for the backgrounds. We decided at the end it would be quite funny to turn the projector off and turn the lights on showing he is just on his own in a room and that it wasn't real, this looked quite good but we ended up getting a box on the screen saying "Power Off". I suppose because we turn the projector off anyway it doesn't really matter, but I would prefer it if that message didn't come up on screen. Also the second sheet wasn't held high enough so you can see some of the video behind it which is a bit disappointing.
Some of the group did a quick edit adding the titles and credits with the music on top, all I would do is perhaps change the font as its very basic and see how I can cut it to make it more interesting and engaging.


Business As Usual from Chris Thorby on Vimeo.