Filming Angles and Levels! (Implementation)

Sweding/Production

The purpose of a swede is to recreate a scene from a famous movie with significantly lower budget. It teaches the importance of how films create emotions with their limited amount of equipment.

During production, I made sure to have my camera in the right position to match the shot we were recreating.

We began production on 11/23 at 13:50 and finished 11/24 at 15:36

Here are side-by-side stills from our final/good shots compared to the actual scene, two of which I drew for our storyboard! (These are stills from raw footages without any editing)

Example #1

Here in this shot, Forrest falls to the ground after being fit by multiple rocks from the bullies. It is a low leveled and angled shot. It makes Forrest look inferior to bullies as they tower him. The camera is much closer to Forrest as this is a memory he shares to someone (we’re in his perspective).

Example #2

This shot displays a near ground-level shot of one of the bullies chasing Forrest. It contrasts size as Forrest is shown to be much smaller than the bullies. It demonstrates Forrest’s fear as he is being chased and makes us share his fears as well. The bullies are also moving quick and steady while Forrest is limping and slow.

 

Example #3 (with videos)

In this shot we struggled with blocking, getting the right angles and timing. It shifts focus from the bullies to Jenny. Moving from a lower to higher level in a short amount of time. This is one of the best shots I have, even though the timing is a bit off, it still carries out its message.

All of these shots are definitely not 1:1 perfect replicas of the originals. Nevertheless, putting them side by side has helped me see how close I actually got. Even with differences in framing (and timing) each shot still carry out the same visual effect the original scene from Forrest Gump does. It showed me what details mattered to the emotional impact and what difference in my shot didn’t change the meaning. For example, in the first example, the camera was not as low as the original, and it cut off some of the bullies’ faces but the emotional meaning remained the same despite that.