Research - Phone conversations

We wanted to look into cinematography with phone conversations to see the best possible way we could film the phone conversation in our film. There are a few ways to film a phone conversation. The main way which most people do is when a character (lets call him Character A) is talking on the phone and acting as if another person on the line, maybe someone else could actually be on the line for the duration of the phone conversation to help with continuity and timings of the answers but the main point is that the cinematography is one way and you don't ever see the person on the other end of the conversation because there isn't one, it is only a voiceover. We feel that this is the easiest option to do however there are problems that can occur, for example an obstacle we encountered when writing the script was that if it is a one way cinematography the character would have to be doing something because just on the phone doesn't look right. In our script we overcame this by having our character come up with a dillemma (such as spilling tea) but we are still debating what way to film our conversation.

The second way we found was to do something similar to a shot reverse shot in the terms of a conversation but with the character being on the phone. This is when character A is talking there is a shot of him and then when character B is talking it cuts to her and it constantly does this until the phone conversation ends. Now this could be hard to film and you could break continuity with the timings of the conversation or even something simple with sound can go wrong. To make sure this doesn't happen you could use a boom mic but then again with the continuity we would just have to make the scene continuous.

The final way We found was to have a sort of split screen with parallel editing as both characters are on the screen talking but they are in different setting. This seems to be the most effective way of showing a phone conversation between two people. This is because you can see both characters having a conversation in one shot so you don't have too many back and forth shorts. This is important as it doesn't get too boring switching from character to character. Also another effective point is that you can see the characters reactions whilst the other person is talking. This is good because it shows more about what the character is feeling and thinking. Also you can have more freedom with the conversation as you can interrupt the other person or have them talking at the same time and not worry about which character to focus on. Personally I really like the split screen method and feel it is the best way to explain everything you want to without confusing the audience or having too many shots in the scene. But regardless of my opinion it has to suit our film and we have to decide as a group what we feel is best for our film.

We wanted to look at an existing phone call split screen scene and unfortunately due to copyright reasons we couldn't access one that we knew of however we did find a scene which was used for an advertisement for 'Think'. It is a phone call within a car and it is actually really useful in showing reactions. For example, as soon as the man crashes you can see the woman's reaction to what has just happened. In our opinion, it doesn't show a quick reaction as it is a development as she realises but we presume that a quick reaction would be similar. Also you can see what is happening to the man also and see how he is reacting to the event (in this case you can't really analyse that but the point still stands). But this just reinforces my theory that the split screen is the best way to do it and this clip did it in a way that isn't comedic which would suit our own sequence.

We then wanted to look into the phone call in the film 'Taken' as that is the closest film to our genre and it is a one sided conversation by which I mean is focused on character A only. This gives a mystery feel as the man on the other end of the phone is an enigma. That is important to their storyline therefore works really well. But personally because our film is a drama and there isn't a secret identity maybe this type of shot isn't the one for us.

As a group, we have decided to use the first way of doing a phone call due to the fact that we don't really have enough time to edit the shot reverse shot being as we are filming a short film and we also thought that the split screen would give the wrong idea and make the film seem a lot more comic like than it actually is which isn't the vibe we were wanting to give out. So after a healthy debate we decided that we were going to film the scene in a one way kind of style and have him make a cup of tea to quench his thirst.