Filming 3: Hatta mountain range

I was sitting in the living room watching TV with Stuart when an advert came on for the Marriot mountain resort in the Hatta mountain range. About halfway through the advert I turned to Stuart and said, "mate we are filming there." We printed out directions and the next day we drove the 3 hour drive through the desert to Hatta. I think this is the most fun I had during my project, just driving through this amazing landscape, the open sand dunes and then into the rocky mountains. We both had an amazing time.

Below I am going to show you a couple of clips from both the Marriot resort and a small mountain we climbed located next to it.


The premise for the FIXER being in Hatta was that he was there to assinate a target. This first shot was one of several shots showing the FIXER walking up to the hotel and then entering through the front door. I choose the show you this clip to give you a sense of just how amazing the Hatta is. In this first clips you see two mountains. a huge mountain range at the back and a smaller one in front of it. we climbed up the closest one to take several more shots., 3 of which are below.



In most professional shots there are always non obvious things that give off connotations about the film as a whole or one particular scene. Ideally you should always try to make every shot mean something. When we climbed up to the top of the small mountain (or giant hill for all u picky people) the first thing I saw was the bigger mountain range ahead. I looked at the formation and saw it was jagged and increased in height at equal interval up to the peak. the First thing I had Stu (the FIXER) was stand up side on to the mountain in the distant. I then position the camera carefully to match his shoulder height with the mountain range in the distance so it looked like the top of the mountain range was in line with his shoulder. look at the clip again to see this. The connotation of this being that this shot shows the FIXER has an uphill struggle ahead of him. This is the emphasized when he looks at the mountains.




I then tried something similar using the mountain range behind us. By using camera angles to make him seem bigger than the mountains it give the impression that here is a guy as powerful as a mount in. Little cheesy but the idea is there.

After taking several other shots we then went slightly down the mountain to a flat plateau and i decided to film FIXER shooting a bow and arrow with a desert backdrop. As seen in the clip below




Here is the first take of this shot that.... well went a little wrong shall we say.