In many movies, long takes are considered as a complicated skill method to objectively capture the time and space and avoid directional intervention. The long takes in Children of Men and Gravity, both directed by Alfonso Cuarón,impressed me deeply. However, shooting a long take is a rather complex process and needs slideway, rocker, gimmick design, image matting and other technology or equipment assisted. After analyzing a lot of long-take clips, I found that the directors use long takes to tell or enrich a plot perfectly. The shot often clarifies the story background, introduces protagonists and supporting roles as well as paves the way for the following plot if the long take appears at the beginning of film, or that becomes a connecting link between the preceding and the following if appears in the middle of film.
Success as a theme can be represented in many ways, which can be described as a scene of cheering or winning, or catching a loved girl, even succeeding to steal a wallet for a thief. However, our group has a deep understanding of the theme success, and we might even add some elements of horror to make it so different.
Our video tells a horror story called Take My Everything, which describes that a girl loves her boyfriend so much, however, his boyfriend tends to break up with her. And she succeeds to murder her boyfriend in vengeance.
During process we had up 15 takes and picked up the best one. From the beginning, the camera started from some chicken with fresh blood, and then moved to half cup of red wine, to a photo tore up printed with the protagonist. Next, the camera moved in on the hero for a close-up sequence, meanwhile, the rest of the photo and an empty bottle of red wine were in the foreground to increase layered. Actually, this part of lens was for introducing environment and story background. The tore half photo implied the broken relationship of both, and the chicken with blood played up a horrible atmosphere. Next part, two characters had a big argument and he boy ejected that girl from his house. Finally, the girl murdered his boyfriend in a pet and pulled two heavy suitcases with corpse from house and left bloodstains. In this part, we used number “13” on the door as a symbol.
The use of black and white photography with only specific red color added make for a far more dramatic effect, which is like the movie style of Sin City (2005) directed b Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez. When we shot, exposure compensation is disabled in manual, its function can be duplicated by skewing the ISO setting as necessary. That’s because the shot was taken from indoor to outdoor and light intensity was ranging. If exposure compensation is on, the frames would be exposed and affected. Our final cut is a little shakier, however, we have already avoided the unnecessary shakes. As for the selection of camera, iPhone is as the shooting equipment installed with FiLMiC Pro that is a professional cinematographic application and Final Cut Pro to complete final editing and color modulation.
We are very weak at acting, so many mistakes happened because of weak acting and we need to improve it next time.
Single shot : Take my everything
shot by Naizhong Jiang (John)
Actors: Chengming Zhong (Jason) & An Chen (Ancle)
Written by Zihan Zhang (Fred)
Youtube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egK5qSDRp50
jasonzhong891108 