Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts. 

Most applications reserve keyboard shortcuts for the functions that use most often. It is really good to learn all of these as it will speed up your editing and additionally alert you to functions that the software developers and other users find important. (You can learn much about the software by looking at keyboard shortcuts). 

Find the keyboard shortcuts for Adobe Premiere and note two or more functions that you’ve never used before that may be invaluable to editing.

 

Next in Sequence – shift+

Render Effects in Work Area: Return/Enter

Export frame Shift+E

Apply video transition Cmd+D

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Blow up

 

In this scene from the film “Blow Up”, Michelangelo Antonioni directed to use a variety of panning shots, from different angles, which follows the actor movement.

 

He uses tracking motions to follow up the actors walk through doors and up stairs. Varieties of different shots like top angle, side angle, etc are used in the scene at the studio. Camera movements such as tracking and panning also accompanied in those shots.

 

Use of track and focus pulling was used. As covered in the lecture, three persons will be by the camera, a camera operator, a focus puller and someone who pulls the camera across the tracks. The focus points will change as the subject moves, that’s why the focus puller is very important, as the subject will be out of focus at certain points during moving. The best example will be in shot where (2:08 – 2:32) Jane walks back and forth at the purple screen before Thomas pulled down. A panning movement with zooming in and out was used with its focus on Jane. The focus puller will have one point of focus as the camera zooms in when Jane is on the left and another focus point when Jane walks to the right.

 

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Developing a crew

From week 6 reading about developing a crew, there are two points that I find excited and interesting:

 

  • Rabiger discusses how a crew work can make a real difference in a production. It’s important not to just assess their technical expertise and experience but also their ideas and values. As production is such a team work, crew members’ attitude, maturity and values are equally important that can affect the quality of the production.
  • Rabiger also discusses about the role of producers. A little bit different from what I thought, producers are not only manage funds and overseeing the project but their taste and artistic side are also somewhat important arbiters of the film’s artistic progress. He states that the ideal producer is a cultivated, intelligent, and sensitive businessperson.
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Lighting lecture

From the lighting lecture I got some useful knowledge about lighting for a film set up is about the different between key/fill/back lights. I myself actually put on some effort to set up the lighting for my group project rehearsal. It isn’t easy to analysing how a scene has been lit or should be lit and the actual work of preparing a light set-up itself but the lecture helped me out a lot with the work. And I didn’t burn my fingers, thanks to the warning about the hotness of the lights after usage.

The C-stand is another great point from the lecture. It is such an useful accessory for setting up all the lights. Beside that, other tools like black boards to cut light and white boards to bounce light are useful to know.

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Lenny ex 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsiqPzYnNSw

For the Lenny exercise, our first attemp went quite wrong as the weather was really bad and we didn’t know how to operate the filming set in an effective way. Over the 1 hour we had, we didn’t finish half of the script. However, in our second filming attemp, we needed less than 2 hours to finish everything, even had some extra time to try out different angle and techniques. We still have some issues with the sound recording skills as our Lenny film has a lot of noise from surrounding which makes the film a bit less in quality.

 

Overall, it was fun and exited excerise to do in the course. It helps a lot in preparation for our up coming final project.

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Lighting

From the lighting lecture, I learned a lot new things about the way lighting can be used to create time and space in a film set. It’s very interesting how the cinematographers can use lighting to condense moods and times even when they may not represent the reality on set. Normally we don’t aware of the importance of lighting effects while watching movies. After the lecture, I’ve gained a better knowledge of the effects and techniques of using lighting to create time and space as well as encapsulate the moods of the movies.

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his long goodbye

His long goodbye (Korsakow 2012)

by Georgina Wills, Emily Watt, Cinzia Sammassimo and Sacha Stephan.

 

 

His Long Goodbye is my favourite Korsakow film from the students’ work. Even though its genre is experimental but it still has a narrative, a fictional story is partly introduced to audience through a undefined voice over and a series of slides that loop around irrelevant brief fragments that somehow supports and interact with the sound. On the sound track, I hear anonymous voice of a man telling the story of his death in a nonlinear order.

 

In the film, non logical connection groups of moving images are showed, from the city, doors, windows, outside, day, night and empty space. However in each group, a pattern is used to connect the images with similarity. For example, in figure 1, a pattern of repetition about the image of tree is used to connect the four interfaces together.

 

Screen Shot 2014-04-03 at 9.24.51 pm

Figure 1

 

 

 

The pattern of repetition is used throughout the film to connect everything together and hold irrelevant subjects in the film as a whole. The filmmaker also uses black and white, which also creates a pattern of familiarity for the film.

 

 

His Long Goodbye is a clear example of associational form in experimental genre. The film is built out of shots of widely different things: cityscape, windows, lights, trees and empty spaces. The juxtaposition has no narrative connection but the continuous sound track help to create a fictional nonlinear narrative for the film. However, the shots evoke the idea of impersonal, sameness and longing memories that in a way support the story I hear from the voice over. It almost feels like the man is looking through his memories of his time with the woman one last time before he dies as the spaces in the shots orderly go emptier and emptier.

 

The interface is set up very clever that it connect all the non-connective shots together. Shots of the back of a figure, a lock, and lipstick mark…give me a sense of mystery and secret (fig.2). Then shots of a door, a hand and a lock again appear like the secret is unfolding (fig.3). My favorite sequence in the film is the one with shots of flowers dying (fig.4) . The interface leads my to the end of the story, the death. Not one shot but 4 shots of dying flowers are put on the interface which to me represent 4 times the bullets hit the man in story. They show delay, it makes me as the audience feels like the man is trying to prolong his death, trying to recall best moments of his life before he actually stops living. The fact that I can interact with the interface and choose my direction to unfold the film makes me feel very interesting, as it’s different every time I watch it. Sometimes, my direct of choosing interface makes it seems like I can actually prolong his death and open up more of his memories and secrets.

Screen Shot 2014-04-03 at 9.43.07 pm 

 

Figure 2

Screen Shot 2014-04-03 at 9.44.21 pm

Figure 3

 

Figure 4Screen Shot 2014-04-03 at 9.41.46 pm

 

 

His Long Goodbye is a good example of a associational experimental film which the images and sound are juxtaposed prods us to look for some connect, the association that binds them together. The film also shows how a continuous sound track can drive connection amongst everything else. . In a way, I find it really abstract, as sometimes, it’s quite hard to understand the connection between the interfaces and link it with the voice over to create my own meaning of the film.

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