Single Camera Short Initial Ideas

My short is going to be based around a patient having a session with their therapist. It will fall under the genre of drama. It will play out as any average therapy session until the end where there will be a twist. There will only be one or  two actors and two or three characters. The patient and the psychologist will be played by the same person. This plays into the twist of their not being a psychologist and the entire conversation being played out by the patient with himself. The third person will notice something strange from outside the door and come in to ask what the patient is doing. This is around where the short will end.

I will most likely film in the college where I can use a desk in an empty classroom to act as a therapists office. I can then use the hallway as the hall outside of the office. I only need two actors and someone to operate the camera. Obviously as the patient and the therapist are being played by the same person they cannot appear on screen at the same time which means there will be many cuts between them. I won't have any sound effects because the short will be entirely dialogue based and there probably won't be any backing music. It will most likely be filmed in and around a classroom in the college that I can make look like the inside and outside of a therapist's office. There are many classrooms throughout the college that would work as a backup plan should something come up in the media corridor when I need to film. There won't be much camera movement  except for following at least one of the characters walking as a filler shot and most scenes will use eye level angles and medium close shots. I also won't use any props apart from a two chairs. I will use natural lighting in the scenes and maybe the lights already in the classrooms. There shouldn't be any risk with my short because of the fact the majority of it is just someone sitting in a chair. The only other scenario would be a second person walking through a corridor and opening a door, which again shouldn't pose any risk.

Adding Sound Effects Evaluation

This assignment required me to add sound effects to a film or TV scene of my choice. For my first example I chose a scene from 'Reservoir Dogs' where there is a mexican standoff between three characters. The original scene had sound effects of guns cocking and also being shot. I muted these points of the scene and replaced them with sound effects that i found on a website called freesound.org. I used garageband to mute the original sound effects and combine the new sound effects with the clip and to export them to a .mov file. I chose to replace the sound effects with similar ones because there isn't much room for other ones in the scene as they are in an enclosed and empty warehouse. I noticed that there were two separate types of gun used in the scene so i made sure to use sound effects of two separate types of gun to signify this. I feel that I managed to time the sound effects well so that they fit the scene. I do also however feel like one of the gunshot sounds that I used sounds a bit unrealistic.

For my second example I chose a scene from 'Silence Of The Lambs' in which the main character, Clarice Starling, meets Hannibal Lecter for the first time. The original scene didn't really have any sound effects in it apart from the sound of Clarice sitting in a chair. I, again, used garageband to add the sound effects and export the clip to a .mov file. The setting of the scene was a prison hallway that seemed quite dirty and dingy. I added the sound of dripping water to signify a leak to show this problem. I also added the sound of rats squeaking because of this. I then added the sound of a chair being pulled out just before Clarice sits down to signify that the chair was there and a part of the scene. I feel that the sound effects that I put in the scene added to the mood and overall atmosphere of the prison setting. I added a low pass to the water dripping to make it sound like it was happening in the distance rather than near them.