Exercise Eight

This time, we are to film two same short scenes at each entrance of building 9. For one entrance, the interior is dark; and the other, the exterior is very bright. Both cannot be filmed without some design.

I think, in some ways, this is an exercise on dynamic range and camera coverage. The reason for this is that we’ve spent time looking at how filmmakers deal with the problem of the camera’s dynamic range and the different approach to camera coverage for the same event. Again, the light in the images is crucial to control. We need to compensate light where necessary and choose the approach to avoid overexposure.

Part A

For part A, we were supposed to film in the west foyer of building 9 but we changed the location due to the lack of light inside (and that we couldn’t get the light on). I think we should have stayed to try to solve the problem in other ways.

       

As one can see the obvious color temperature difference here, the cool ones are filmed with a Kino Flo light. The simple one-light treatment from Jacky’s back gives us more freedom in camera coverage than filming at the west entrance. We have one MCU of Jeff and Martine, one close-up and one long, panning shot.

To look at the clip from the start, I don’t like the highlights on the elevator. I’m not sure now what caused it but it is very distracting. The duration of Jeff’s close-up is a bit longer than it should be. Yet, I love how it takes slow for viewers to spend some time with our main character and observe him. It somehow creates a bit of suspense to the scene. Although the exposure is quite good in the earlier shots, I think the lighting is not quite consistent. The third shot of them conversing is brightly lit and the hard light shadow is evident. But the close-up of Jeff does not keep up with this lighting effect. It should either be natural (less evident shadow) or stylistic. I guess it was the elevator has concealed a bit of the shadow so that we did not notice the big difference during filming.

After a brief exchange of words, the scene cuts from the cool interior to the warm exterior. In class, Robin has pointed out that the discontinuity in their movements is exactly what makes this cut seems more plausible. I agree with him completely. The last shot is still a bit overexposed despite our endeavor to avoid it by turning down the aperture while panning. I think to solve this, we could’ve not pan so much as to need to adjust the exposure. The actors can pass beside the camera and finish the scene with an empty shot.

Part B

The second part of this exercise was shot at the east entrance. This is a long take—an approach we learned from previous class screenings of some movie clips. The lighting on actors’ faces is good and consistent, but it will look nicer if we could keep Yolanda stand more to the lift side to avoid the overexposed exterior. As the camera panned to the right, the exposure went out of control. I think it still comes down to how we engineered the scene. If possible we should: 1. to get actors standing to the left a little bit. 2. to get a bit of light compensation. 3. to pan and adjust the aperture. It’s just we simply did not have enough time for the above. We did waste quite a bit of time on the first one. Also, the camera angle here is looking up but I would have preferred it to level with the actors’ eyesight. Matthew’s back has covered too much of this shot due to this angle.

Conclusion

  1. I think for both scenes, we can still devise a different camera coverage, or even achieve a far better result than the one we use. We could try two long takes for part A and change its camera angle. We could use mostly close-ups just for the actors. For part B, we could film them from the door side and track them walking out. There are myriad ways to do this one scene. However, what’s important is to keep the lighting consistent.
  2. The acting actually is a craft that also influences the eventual look of the scene. A good performance may make someone overlook the tiny inadequacy of the cinematography. I find our performances are quite good, but they still open to improvement so as to really convince the viewers.