Shot Evaluation - The Briefcase Shot

This was an important shot in our opening 2 minutes as it served to let the audience know that the briefcase prop was an important one, setting up the story of our film. We achieved this effect by making it a close-up shot of the prop, with the briefcase taking up most of the screen. Ideally we would have liked to have followed the briefcase as the character walked along as opposed to a stationary shot so that it was more obvious that the prop should be the audiences focus, but this proved difficult to achieve whilst also making the shot look professional rather than shaky. In the future, we'd hope to have some better equipment that would allow us to achieve tracking shots such as the one we had in mind.

This shot should also help create more enigmas, mainly by the audience being able to see the padlock attached to the briefcase. This makes it obvious that this is not a normal briefcase simply full of office related work but instead a briefcase that holds something important, something its owner is taking extra care of protecting. Therefore one of the questions this shot should raise is 'what is in the briefcase?' The mystery of our main character should also be on the audiences mind at this point, as he is clearly the focus of the scene and the prop he is holding means he has a shady background that the audience would start to question. They should wonder why the focus character of the scene is being introduced to them in this way, with his face not being shown as if his identity is important. This teases them into watching the rest of the film to find more about the characters background and answers to more of their questions.

This shot is also important in linking the 2 locations for the scene. Without this shot, there would be a sharp, noticeable jump from train station to forest with no shots to explain how the character got from A to B. This can be confusing for the audience as they are left to fill in the blanks themselves. What this shot does is have the forest setting in the background, so the audience know where the 2nd location is in respect to the train station. We originally filmed this shot in a spot without the metal fence, but realised that without it it seemed like the character was already in the forest because of all the trees and bushes around him. Because of this we re-filmed the shot in this spot so that the metal fence can show the character is still near civilisation as opposed to deep in the forest.