The Twilight Gathering - Men of Convention

 

This is one of my favourite scenes of the film, Men of Convention. To be honest, I thought many of the scenes were excellent, but let us concentrate on this one for now.

For this scene, there were three camera angles, the one above being the main one. It was not intended that we film in such conditions, but we met late for filming (like I said all the actors were called up without any notice nor any knowledge of what they were walking into), and sunset came and then the twilight. I didn't expect the cameras to be able to pick up much and I had brought no lighting along.

This angle here, obviously did not capture much as the camera was distant, up a hill and aimed at the 'gathering' with the grass as the background, so all the ingredients for a barely visible shot, in fact I had to brighten the image in post production editing. However, the murkiness of the picture does not destroy the sequence as again, it adds to the implication of surveillance and the symbolism of covert activity, as well as the multi-dimensional and multi-layered scene portrayal. This was shot on the Canon FS200, but I had not chosen the optimum light capture settings.

This angle above was captured on the Panasonic SDR-S50, and again optimum light capture settings were not selected. The background of thick trees and bushes obviously created the conditions for an even darker picture and less discernible figures. I had to brighten the picture in post production editing.

This though, is the main angle above, captured on the Kodak Zi8. Although the Kodak Zi8 is a high definition pocket camcorder, I did not use its high definition settings, I used it in WGVA (wide VGA) mode, the picture is still good quality and it performed well in the low light conditions. 

The aim of this shot was to capture the gathering silhouetted against the twilight sky and it did that perfectly. Amazingly though, on some displays the brightness of the picture nullifies the silhouetting and all four actors can be made out clearly. When I saw that I was baffled and worried that this shot might be ruined for some viewers if they have bright displays perhaps combined with some software issue that ends up brightening the shot. Therefore, due to this possibility in my final editing of the film I have darkened this shot a little more to lessen the possibility of the silhouetting being lost.