Class 10.

Robin was right. If everyone sticks to their own role and treats it seriously, then the cooperation will be efficient. It is like everyone has their own place, their own responsibilities to fulfill so that every system in the society will run smoothly.

In this class, Robin assigned roles to half of the class and planned to switch the roles after one hour. It was ambitious but proved to be unrealistic. I guess it happens all the time during actual filming as there just always seems to be something not right. Even though I didn’t get the chance to do anything, there was still much to learn from my observation.

Here’s a timelapse. (It’s very short.)

Here are my two findings. I won’t go into analyzing the shots. The reason will be found here in my first finding.

1. The first significant thing I noticed was that the practical exercise as a class has brought our learning to a different level. Before this, we were just analyzing the film scenes in detail; and now, in relation to that, we will need to devise our own methods to achieve certain lighting effects. It is unlike the group exercise we did before when we only tried to get the right exposure without considering the many alternative ways of lighting for one scene. So now, it is about more than just lighting a scene right, but about choosing the lighting we want.

2. For our inexperienced practitioners, sometimes we feel a sense of strangeness when using the equipment so that we forget the essence of them. This phenomenon can be well explained by the fact that we were amazed by Robin’s method to create soft shadows on Max’s face. Here, we have completely forgotten that the reflector board can be cropped for other usages. This suggests an intriguing and important finding that our creativity and ability is somewhat limited by the lack of the understanding of the essences of objects. To avoid this limitation, we could try to get familiar with the equipment through more experience in filming; or we can try to have an open attitude towards each object and equipment. The issue here is about solving the problems that we encounter during filming with a limited condition.

Note: Robin, I wonder how did you scan the camera sheet we used for this exercise? It is amazing when I find that I can highlight the written words on the sheet. I thought it would be just like a picture.