This project was weirdly hard for me. I think this project sort of documented some of my recurring problems as a filmmaker -- getting impatient and dancing around too quickly between images, not spending enough time in one place, focus issues, cutting off peoples' heads, spending too much time on minutia like hands and games pieces, occasionally forgetting about making purposeful camera movements, etc. -- and it was frustrating because I couldn't just cut around these issues and hide them with other footage. I'm unhappy with in this video is my lack of movement (actual movement around the table, not camera movement). It's funny, because I have 30 more minutes of footage where I'm marching around the table and experimenting with zoom, but this was the footage I chose to work with and it's pretty dang static. I really, really, really wish I would've swung around to the other side of the table -- just taken four or five steps to the left -- to capture a head-on shot of the Dungeon Master behind his little fortress of charts and plans.
That said, I'm happy with some of the framing -- the CU shot on the Dungeon Master's cheek with the rest of the table out of focus worked nicely, I think -- and I'm also happy with the way the "story" worked out. I think one of my biggest motives in choosing this specific moment out of all the footage I got was that I captured the various important layers of the story within these few minutes. For instance, I think you get an idea of the actual game that they're playing -- and there's a little bit of suspense and intrigue based on what the Dungeon Master is saying and how the players are responding -- but we also get a sense of the story of these friends and their close relationship from the jokes they make and the way they work together.
Overall, I'm not completely thrilled with the way this piece turned out, but I think for a one-take it's a nice little vignette about this group of interesting friends playing Dungeons & Dragons and I'm not upset about it.
2/22/16, 12:11 PM
