180 DEGREE RULE

THE DARK KNIGHT (2008) INTERROGATION SCENE REVIEW BY MICHAEL C. BUNGAY

 

I worked with Ellouise Marney, Ryan, Scott, Tom Joy and Adam on recreating the interrogation scene from The Dark Knight as part of our session on learning about the 180 degree rule of filming and how it works. After a lot of searching for a suitable location, we finally decided to film our scene in the trees behind D Block. Ellouise immediately appointed herself director with me as the cameraman, Scott and Tom doing the acting as Batman and The Joker and Ryan and Adam handling the camera mike and the boom mike. I also helped Ellouise to decide how to finish the editing and provided her my copy of the script to help her find the points where she had to show the camera switching focus between Scott and Tom but she mostly did the editing herself.   

The main communication problems related mostly to listening and concentration as Scott and Tom kept laughing and talking a lot about things that were not related to the task at hand and more often than not, Ellouise, Diane and I had to remind them to concentrate and only talk when we filming and also concentrate on reading their lines. Also, not all of us were always aware of what our assigned position requires us to do and not do as I sometimes gave instructions that were not mine to give as I was not the director.  

The filming went very well considering we had to film the scene five times each from different angles but keeping within the boundaries of the 180 degree rule, consisting of an establishing shot of Scott and Tom and an over the shoulder shot and over the shoulder close up shot from each other’s point of view.  

Trying to find a location to film our scene went very badly, we could not find an unlocked or unoccupied classroom or a space outside that was dark enough or wide open enough. In the end, we had to move one of the benches outside D Block further into the trees out of the glare of the sun so that we could film our scene in a reasonable wide-enough and dark enough area. Trying to get the camera mike and the boom mike connected up to the camera and working successfully was also notoriously difficult and fiddly as we also had to make sure they were out of shot.

I learned how the 180 degree rule works and that it is used to establish the connection between two particular characters in a particular scene and that once the characters’ positions have been established, they have to remain in their original positions no matter what angle they are filmed from otherwise the 180 degree rule would be broken. I also started to gain a better understanding of how the Canon XF100 Camcorder works as I had to be reminded to close the viewer so that I could see the display through the eye-lens.

Next time, I would personally attempt to do some of the editing myself instead of relying on another student as Ellouise did most of the editing even though I was working with her. I would like to further develop my understanding of how to use the Canon XF100 Camcorder as well so that I can improve my skills as a cameraman. However I would also like to give the other responsibilities required when filming a chance so as to further develop my skills in future.   

We used a Canon XF100 camcorder and tripod as provided by the Media Section and we also used a boom mike for the first time. We had to be careful how to properly position the boom mark as we had to make sure it was not in shot while we were filming. We used our hard drives to upload our raw footage onto Adobe Premier Pro, using the computers in F308. Ellouise did most of the editing but we ended up running out of time to finish it before the end of the session as filming had taken a lot longer than intended so she did the editing at home over the weekend. We did have a little trouble deciding what to put in the Opening Credits and Closing Edits as we could not remember everyone’s surnames which left our final edit lacking a bit in professionalism. We also had a lot of trouble trying to find a suitable location to film our scene in as there were no unoccupied or unlocked classrooms going spare and most of the space outside G Block was already occupied by other groups and we had been specifically instructed to stay out of the car park. Adam and Ryan also had some difficulty connecting up the boom mike and the camera mike to the camera and getting them to work.    

I worked with Ellouise after we had finished filming but she did all the editing herself despite crediting me with doing some editing as well. Once she had finished editing, she transferred the finished footage from her hard drive to my hard drive and we both exported our footage onto Youtube and emailed the link to Ollie Samuels once the footage was uploaded.     

I need to learn to not get too excited or impatient when filming as these things are going to take time anyway even when we haven’t got a lot of time to do all the required filming. Also, I need to learn that it is not always my place to take charge and especially when I am not in charge. As much as I enjoyed being cameraman, I also need to attempt to take on the other responsibilities required when filming and to learn more about the skills that those other responsibilities involve. We all also need to learn not to get too distracted and take direction during filming, I certainly need to do that and to stay focussed and to improve our time-keeping so that we have more time to do our editing.