Director Trial Run

Luke and I decided early on that with the lack of dialogue, we are going to put emphasis on the visual tone of the film along with building a rich soundscape. I want everything from the sound of the footsteps on gravel to the wind blowing through the trees to be the soundtrack to the film.

We went to the location in the Dublin Mountains where the film will be shot to get more of a feel for what way we are going to shoot it. Luke took some photos which really helped with visualising the shots and creating the storyboards.

For research purposes, I watched some films and TV shows such as Into the Wild, Wild (2014) and Vikings to get an insight into what ways the film could be shot in that sort of terrain.

We went back up the Dublin Mountains with the equipment to do a test shoot. I took this time to get familiar with the best combination of shutter speed and aperture to use. I also found that although the picture seemed dark, the sky was usually over exposed so I had to find the right balance by bringing down the shutter speed. I experimented with static shots that were zoomed in order to get a shallow depth of field to give the film a more cinematic look.

Luke wants to shoot the film using entirely static shots to put emphasis on the final shot which pans from the caveman to the hiker, bringing them together in the same shot for the first time. While I can understand his reasoning, I feel like it may restrict us in terms of the way it can be shot and it may feel like the audience is already in the location as the character arrives into it as opposed to the audience discovering the area with the character. We discussed this after watching an edit of the test footage and we both decided we'd shoot it both ways which will leave us with options if one doesn't work out.