My idea

So as the focus of my work has been on David Fincher in particular the film Se7en there were a number of ideas I thought I could have done. My initial thought was to do a scene with a few actors in a room with some narrative and use motivated lighting, like the scenes in Se7en where Somerset has dinner at Mills' house and also when Somerset meets to talk to Mills wife in a cafe. However I soon realised this was a little too adventourous and I wouldn't be able to write the script, get actors and some crew together.

I had a re-think, watched the film again and came up with a revised idea about using outdoor motivated lighting ridding the need for crew and and also shoot some natural light footage to meet the traditional style as asked in the brief. The idea also involved the one actor, no script and some locations to scout and a camera to choose to shoot with. A more realistic task.

Shambles - York

This is a very picturesque part of York and also very historic, (in case anyone is interested I will put a link with some information about the streert). It is a street and it is fairly narrow and would work well for the film. What is even better is that on a night time there is a lot of lighting from shop windows that have their lights left on when the shops are shut up. This would make a great location for the evening shoot and below is a picture of the Shambles in the evening.

The camera - Canon 550D

The Canon 550D is a cheaper alternative to the 7D, and possible a more attractive option also. There has been less issues with moiré from the 550D compared to the 7D yet it still has all the benefits that the 7D has great depth of field and ease of use for a "one man band such as myself". The 550 was designed by Canon for the film makers that cannot afford the £1000 plus price tag, and there were minimal changes from the 7D to the 550D in the movie mode. I think now the University has these in resources for us to use, I shall use the Canon 550D to shoot my final piece on.

Testing video

So before the shoot itself I decided to go and test the camera out and do scouting around York where I live. I had a few places in mind that would be good for the film but I also wanted to find somewhere new as well. The place I had already known was the Shambles one of the most historic streets in York and this would work well for the evening shoot as there are shops that more than often leave their lights when they shut up.  As well as the orange lighting from the street I found a number of old alleyways around the city centre, some that had no lighting but there was one that had quite a bright light which lit up the alleyway making it perfect for the film. Some of the test footage ended up going in the final piece which I was pleased at getting right first time.

Cinematography Technology Testing footage from Andy Stelmach on Vimeo.

Overall the test footage was very useful for testing the low light capabilities of the 550D, with ISO settings being changed and also the white balance settings. The ISO setting testing showed that 400 ISO was the best general setting for low light meaning anthing under was too dark and had no colour information in it and anything above 400 ISO e.g. 800 produced too much grain. The AWB Shade setting was wonderful, it was exactly what was needed for what I wanted to produce and meant I was shooting for grade limiting the amount of tampering to be done in post prodcution. I'm glad I did the test footage as I find out things I needed to know before I shot the film, which if I hadn't have known would have left me looking at a re-shoot which is never a pleasing sight.