CREATING SHOTS FROM A SCRIPT

On 21 November 2013 I learnt how to come up with shot ideas just by looking at a script. This was a very useful skill to learn as it placed me in the director’s shoes of how he would want the shots to be.

Although it was not easy, a lot of things had to be considered when coming up with the shots and so we did it in pairs.

Firstly there was understanding the script and where it is going in terms of the story. The script we looked at was from “The Goodfellas”. I’ve seen the film before a long time ago and had forgotten about it which was a good thing as I would come up with new ways of presenting the shots which are not similar to the movie.

After reading the script, we got an idea of what was happening in the narrative. We then deconstructed the script on how and what we would want to do within the shots. We had a shot list sheet where we organised on how we were going to take the shot(s) and what the shot(s) will look like.

This sheet allowed us to consider the number of shots we needed to take for each scene. It also helped us think on how the shots related to each other and the flow of the narrative.

We also had a Schedule Pro Forma sheet where we included the details of when and where we were going to do the shots and the different conditions that were needed during the shooting.

When we had finished with our shot ideas we then saw the actual clip of The Goodfellas and how the director shot it. The shots that the director had chosen were totally different from the shots that we had in mind but they all portrayed the same story. We also compared our shots with those of colleagues and realised that we had different shots as well. This gave me a clear understanding of how different directors have their own view points when it comes to filming and the conditions I need to think of when filming my experimental film.