P1. Sequence

Napoleon Dynamite Sequence

The challenge of this project was to recreate a sequence from the film Napoleon Dynamite, mirroring Munn Powell's cinematography but using our own resources.

Firstly, we watched the clip, and copied each shot onto a storyboard, naming the shots and writing any relevant information about them underneath. 

If given extra time I would have added more detail to each of the shots, including shading so it's made more clear where the lighting is. I should have also gone over each image with darker lines so they are clearer to see when scanned in. What worked well where the proportions, as the shots I drew on my story board matched the stills from the original footage. 

                                          

Once the story board was done, I then began making the shot list, which is where I wrote down each shot and their properties, including the location of the shots, what props would be needed, the shot types, any movement of the characters or shots, and what happens in each shot.  After I had complete these two tasks, we split of into groups of 4 and used our shot lists and story boards as a references to help us frame and produce each shot. 

Working in a team was handy, as when deciding on the location of each shot we shared and considered each other's points, and also shared the responsibilities. We used my documentation as our group decided it was the most finished and descriptive. We faced a few problems during the filming process, firstly, in the locker scenes, the long shot was extremely hard to copy, as the corridors where extremely small so we couldn't move the camera further enough away. Also in some locations -such as the corridors-, students would constantly be walking past, so we had to keep on re-shooting the scene. The locations and props were extremely hard to copy, as some things we didn't have assess too, or weren't positioned in a similar way (such as the office next to the lockers). One last problem we faced was that the tripod we picked was slightly broken, so this made the camera and our frames wonky. 

If we could re-do it, I would have made sure we used a better tripod, as this had a large effect on our cinematography/framing. Also, there were several shots we missed out, so if we had more time, we could have included these. Lastly, we could have paid more attention to the script, as we missed out lots of dialogue, and had the wrong dialogue in some shots. 

When editing our sequence on Adobe Premiere Pro, I named each shot according to its order and take. I also added a description of each shot so I could quickly read what happens in it without having to click on the shot and watch it. Also, on the successful clips I planned to use, I wrote 'best' before them, so I could see or search this word to save the trouble of finding them individually. 

(add footage here)