CAMERA

In class we worked on our Pre-lim tasks. We had to film a small dialogue between two people from different camera angles. I was in charge of placing the camera in the right place, as well as making sure we abided by the 180 degree rule, having the right exposure and making sure the shot was white balanced. I was also responsible for continuity. We filmed a long shot of the dialogue. This was a challenge as we had to make sure every single move they made with their body and every emotion they portrayed was paralleled in every take. The only major issue I came across when shooting from this angle was the movement and position in which the actors came and went from. This kept changing which was a problem with
continuity, this was my error as I only began to think about continuity after we had already shot the scene with the long shot twice. In future I would pay closer attention to continuity and make the actors more aware of it before shooting begins. We then moved on to the over the shoulder shot. When doing this I had to pay close attention to where I place the camera and the actors to be abiding by the 180 degree rule, I also had to readjust the zoom, camera placing making sure it was stable and bubbled, as well as readjusting the focus. This went very smoothly and only found slight difficulty when I wanted to hold the shot for a little longer b
ut a member of the group shouted cut before the end of the take, so slight problems with communication occurred. A problem we came across when shooting the over the shoulder shot was when we decided to shoot from the rooms, through a glass door, that one of the characters was coming in from. The glass reflected the camera in it and it is very obvious, this I believe was a waste of shooting time and space, however we continued it in case there may have been anything that looked really effective. After having shot all the angles that were part of the task, we decided to shoot a high angle of the protagonist as they fell to the ground crying. This not only was a high angle shot but was a moving shot as we followed the actor falling to the floor and continued the camera movement onto an eventual fade out, which will come in during the editing process. Overall I think this shoot was a success as we only had to stop the camera from rolling once throughout the whole shoot, we had no major continuity faults and we managed to get a dramatic and different angle that will make the sequence come alive when edited.

EDITING

When it came to editing the Pre-lim task I came across a few challenges as i was working with a new software that i was not familiar with. Matt taught us to first put all the files that we shot into a bin called rushes. This simply means they are the original shots that we took when filming. Then we watched them all and began to rename them to identify them easier. We also renamed them with the best parts of the shot to use. We then made another bin for the files that we were going to use for the final piece. We had to remember to copy and paste the files not drag them as they would not duplicate, my partner and I forgot a few times to copy and paste so we ended up with a half empty rushes bin, this was definitely something we could have improved on. As well, the editing process was a little difficult when it came to synchronizing the sound to the movement and the cuts. However Im rather happy with our final piece as it still has a combination of the different shots and angles we used as well as showing continuity throughout.

OVERALL

I felt very confident whilst filming the task, however I found some difficulty in editing which I anticipated having never done any of it before. It was good practice for the thriller production and getting used to the software as well as the camera and its functions. It was also good to get used to working in a group as we will be doing with our thrillers and sharing our creativity and ideas.

Second Practical Camera Lesson

Today in class we got the opportunity to set up the camera on our own and set up the tripod, we then learnt about the 180 rule, which is basically an invisible line that the camera cannot cross and not confuse the audience. It is important to stay consistent to the rule to make the scene more fluid, its also important to keep the same character on the same side of the screen. Matt showed us this by creating a visual aid with a ferrari phone showing us the 180 degree rule and keeping it on the same side of the screen, he did this by putting down a white line of tape to create the 180 line. He then let us do the same thing on our own with different objects to abide by the 180 degree rule. We then filmed different views and perspectives and we also shot from different angles.
This is important for the editing process so we can have different angles to create some contrast within the sequence.

Today we had our first practical lesson with the cameras. We started off with adjusting the stands and learning about the locks and making sure that the stand is stable to then put the camera on it. We then learnt to bubble the stand to make sure that stand is straight so we don't end up filming at an angle.

Then we put the camera on the stand, to do this we had to click a button on the right hand side, slide the camera on and then secure it. We also learnt to bubble the stand.

Then we looked at the camera to find the zoom, focus, and exposure. We spent a couple of minutes adjusting the zoom and learning that to create the best focus you must zoom in completely, focus, then zoom out.

We learnt to white balance, where we had to focus on a white surface, click the white balance and it would adjust. This would tell the camera if we were filming inside or out.