Creating Scenes

Creating the Scene

Video shooting ain’t just shooting. Simple Media will take you to the process of attaining a good scenery which can impress all your clients. Both selecting and taking control of your scene is crucial if you want to be able to successfully capture your actors or host. So selecting a scene where you can control various elements is important. For instance, let’s say you want a scene of Otieno and Njeri near the chemical plant talking about pollution discharging into the river. The feeling of the scene is that they have secretly discovered where the chemical plant is dumping waste into the river. But when you arrive at the actual chemical plant to make your scenes, you see that the employee parking lot is too close to the river because of all the traffic distractions. It won’t feel like a secret place at all. Next, you go to the other side of the plant only to find the county park near the river with all the distractions of park users. So what can you do to “create” a scene of Otieno and Njeri secretly discovering and talking about the discharge pipe dumping pollution? Try this approach of using several scenes to create the impression of one setting.

Focusing Camera

Scene 1 – Otieno and Njeri riding their mountain bikes away from the camera toward the chemical plant in the distance. Wide angle shot.
Scene 2 – Medium shot of Chemical Plant with company sign (Otieno and Njeri are NOT in this scene but we create the impression that they must be nearby)
Scene 3 – Tight shot of Otieno and Njeri parking their bikes in a quiet wooded setting and looking uphill (we already assume they are very near the chemical plant, yet the real scene can be shot in a quiet place far away).
Scene 4 – Medium shot of Chemical plant smoke stacks or processing side of building. (Because Otieno looked uphill before this shot, we assume he is seeing the chemical plant up there)
Scene 5 – Quiet location along river with no distractions – This can be far from the chemical plant, county park or other distractions. Close shot of Otieno and Njeri sneaking along edge of river. Here is where they talk about the pollution from the plant and what they can do about it.
Scene 6 – Tight shot of a pipe discharging fluid. Even if there is traffic or people noise nearby, by simply having Otieno and Njeri’s feet or hands near the pipe, we can use the footage over top of their dialog in Scene 5 to create the impression that the pipe is in Scene 5 in their secret place of discovery.

Sometimes you’ll get lucky and the scene that you want to shoot will be free of visual or audio distractions that could disrupt the feeling you’re looking for. But more often than not, you’ll find that the setting that you want to shoot all the scenes in doesn’t work for everything. That’s when you begin improvising with other scenes that in combination with camera angles create the impression that you’re looking for – like we did in the 6 scenes above.

In telling your story with scenes, it’s also important to note that many productions follow a simple rule of getting from general to specific in developing a setting. For instance, pay attention to the next time you watch a TV show to the first couple of scenes. They are usually very wide-angle shots showing a city, buildings or countryside. Then they get progressively closer to the unfolding action until we’re right next to the actors in action. By doing this, we know where we are and what’s probably happening. So here’s a list of some possible progressive shots to take your viewers from afar then closer and closer into the action:

• Aerial views or shots from high places such as hilltop or tall building.
• Pans of countryside or city showing setting maybe include landmark
• Medium shot of building or site where action will take place
• Medium shot of room, or location with characters walking into
• Close shots of faces of characters in dialog from different angles
• Extreme close-ups of items characters are focused on – for example, if we only saw the close-up of the pipe discharging pollution while we listened to otieno’s and Njeri’s dialog, that alone would give us the feeling we were looking for that something sinister was happening.
• Keep in mind that the real world also contains very small scenes within the larger scene. So don’t overlook things as small as insects, plant leaves, tadpoles, water droplets, and the other elements that together make the greater scene.