The final Lumiere that Claire and I turned in was vastly different than what we originally planned on creating. Our original Lumiere idea was filming life in a dorm through a peephole of a door, however it was screwed up when a friend knocked on the door and rattled the camera. The peephole also didn’t offer much in the way of visualizing anything. The circle of the hole caused most of the shot to be black around the hole, making it a very small field of vision. In the end Claire and I abandoned that film and decided to walk down to the track and see if we could quickly find something that we could make a video of that would satisfy the project. We walked to the backstretch of the track and placed the camera on the ground, using the lens cover to prop the camera upward. We filmed for about 3 minutes, and we took the middle portion to create the Lumiere. This portion was the man running by, and the women walking by as they chatted.
Since we were scrambling to get it done I was pretty happy with the result, I thought it looked nice, especially with the person’s head being visible in the background as they continued around the track. What I would have done differently was to go to the track at a busier time, that way we could possibly get more people running and give it an even more natural feel.
I was very nervous showing my film in front of the class, mostly because we scrambled to make it and thought it would be harshly criticized. Luckily we were spared of any negative criticism, and once everyone started noting the positives in the film I felt much better about it.
I thought the Lumiere that Matt Rudkowski and his partner made was a very good example of a slice of life sort of mentality that is embodied in the creation of a Lumiere. I liked how the angle they chose was very direct, and that the crossbar caused a divide between the goalie and the rest of the field. At points the ball left the shot and the goalie would scramble around, it created a feeling of uncertainty and nervous apprehension. I thought that the usage of the net was a great way to set up this shot. With the net and goalpost between the camera and the field it gave it an appearance of being at the game and watching it from behind the goal, perched up against a tree as they said they were. What I thought didn’t work too well was that the goal that was scored was not that easy to see. The ball was kicked along the ground, and since the ground was not visible the ball disappeared and then everyone ran away. It was a let down not to see the goal, I was hoping that the ball would come directly towards the camera. If the camera was just a little bit lower so that the shot would have been visible then I think this would be as good of a Lumiere as they could have made.
