Pre-Production & Celtx

In this session we looked at some of the techniques behind the pre-production of filming a sequence. We looked at a car chase scene from the 1968 film 'Bullitt'. Our method was to deconstruct the scene, break it down into individual shots with a view to broadening our knowledge of how scenes such as this are put together and the thinking behind it.
To help us to this we used a application called 'Celtx'.
Celtx is a fairly simple program that is specifically designed to assist with pre-production:


"Celtx is the world's first all-in-one media pre-production system. It replaces 'paper & binder' pre-production with a digital approach that's more complete, simpler to work with, and easier to share."

quote from the website.


Crossing The Line:

When filming sequences such as chases or running there is one rule which stands above all; the '180 degree rule'
This rule, in its simplest form, states that when filming a number of shots following a moving subject, all camera angles should have the subject moving the same direction, i.e. camera left to camera right. This prevents our audience becoming confused with the action.


For the work we were put in groups. I was working with Mike and Kirsty. Here is an example of what we managed to achieve:



I have learned a lot from this exercise. Celtx can be used for more than just story-boarding and planning a scene, it can help to deconstruct and understand what we watch. My only issue with what we achieved was that because we were working on an older film the car chase was fairly slow. Although this made it easier for us as our first project of this type, I felt the sequence was too long...the process became repetitive and tedious.