The Walk

60 Second Film Competition Entry And Evaluation

The Walk: 

A 60 second movie I created for the A-level Media studies course. This is my first try at Cinematography. I chose to base this video on a walk with my dog to a local Quarry. The walk took about 2 hours and in the meantime a total of 48 shots were talking in the process of filming this clip. Within the actual video, only 24 shots were used. There is no moral or message with my clip, it is purely a documentary which samples what a walk is like with my dog. I chose to make my dog the main focus because I have a massive passion for nature and animals; by filming my dog on a walk in a totally natural environment, I feel its links my persona and the things I enjoy.
Due to the fact it was filmed outdoors, there was lots of wind noise. This meant the diagetic sound was not viable to be used for my film and therefore had to be muted. To add a calm but up-beat feel to my clip I chose to add non-diagetic sound. I chose the instrumental to the Indie song- 'Sweet disposition' by the Temper tap.
The criteria asked for this movie was to include atlas 5 basic camera shots, at least 2 basic camera angles and at least 2 camera movements. In my video, I believe I included 6 camera movements, and a variety of 21 camera angles and shots. Some of the criteria overlapped one another by being used in the same clip. For example, the 8th scene shows a tracking shot, whilst also a establishing shot. As well as the criteria asked, I also managed to involve some post-processing effects, like slow motion, which occurred 6 times. I also added 2 titles, stating "The walk" at the beginning of the clip and "The end" when the clip finished.
My awareness of Mise en scene was shown by the fact I included multiple scenes just showing where we were within the Quarry. This involves scenes of the trees, the ground and the pathway. Some of these establishing shots included the 'Leading lines' technique, which helped to notify the viewer of what the walk was like and where we were going.
As my first try at producing a short video, there were obviously a few amateur difficulties. For example, I found it quite difficult to keep the video stabilised. I used a Camera cage in order to help this, but still found it tricky on such an uneven surface. Another difficulty was capturing the camera movement shots, like Arc shot and tracking shots. This was because I was using my dog, I cant tell her were to go or to stay still. So I kept it natural but she did indeed keep suddenly moving and I could not keep up with her in the process. And finally, I had an issue with focusing. I was using my DSLR camera which had a manual focus lens on, this meant that when my dog moved, she went out of focus and i had to quickly get her back into focus- which I was not used to. However, this did allow me to include a another technique called 'focus pull' within the movie, which I did often.
Overall, I really enjoyed attempting cinematography, as well as the final editing in Adobe Premiere Pro. If I were to do this again in the future, I would look at 'stabilising' the video within the editing process, and also try and cut the video more to the beat; I successfully did this towards the end, but not in the beginning. I would also try create more of a story, for example, short clips of me attaching a lead to her collar and more clips to create more of a 'vlog' style.



Taken on a Nikon d7200, with 35mm prime lens f/1.8