After experiencing Media 1 protocols of using Sony Handycam, it was time to move onto the next big thing, Sony Ex3. I entered the class with a warm welcome of Sony Ex3 and tripods. I knew at that instant that we would be doing something practical with these machines. After Robin gave us a brief intro of EX3, Constance and I went out for class exercise to shoot or document a place, event or a activity in a single 50 second take.

I was thinking as we walked out of the classroom the best place to shoot and to capture a precise moment, it should be interesting what matters the most to me. Constance then pointed me towards a dance activity that was going on Bowen Street. We rushed at it and placed the camera at a suitable position because one of the constraints was to shoot at a fix zoom of 12 mm with no panning or tilting. I quickly adjusted the focus and exposure settings but somehow it didn’t work well, the whole dance routine changed and thus the framing wasn’t doing justice with it. We were not satisfied with the output so we decided to capture the same activity but placing camera to another area. It turned out well for us, there were movements into and out of frame, significant activity going at the foreground and background, good exposure but the white balance was not adjusted so overall the tone of the image was blue.

The thing that bothered me was why 50 seconds of shooting? Why not the whole minute or 30 seconds or may be even less than that, it was later that I discovered was that we were trying to practice what the famous Lumiere Brothers did in their time. They had just 50 seconds of footage to shoot and thus we were imitating their technique to capture quality moment.

Things that I came to know/ discovered:

1, Setting up EX3 and how to mount properly on tripod

2,  It’s not about the quantity of the footage, it’s the quality that matters.

3, The points of interest and the activity within the frame is important to engage with the viewer.