– Monday Class –

In this class, we’ve learned about how to make sure our viewfinder works efficiently before we start filming. We have also started a new topic on camera coverage.

I found this very interesting and I was also very surprised that we were actually going to touch on this topic in film light, but I really like this topic because I am always curious how the filmmakers/cinematographers chose where to set the camera. The first exercise we did on camera coverage was Robin given as few scripts to read first and then let us see how does the director actually set the camera, the purpose of this exercise was to let us experience how differently can the camera coverage being designed in those scenes.

Question: the relationship between camera coverage and light

It is always important for a light person to give a functional suggestion on lighting to the director, whether the director wants the scene to be done as quick as possible, or wants the scene to be perfect with lightings. Remember an example Robin showed us in class, by looking at script only, I thought I would shoot this scene as an over-shoulder shot from the boss’ point of view, or I would divide the scene into two different shots one from the actress’ perspective and the other would be the boss’ over-shoulder shot. The cinematographer’s idea was very well arranged and I was very surprised that how this scene was arranged to a one-take shot. Think about I am the cinematographer who needs to arrange the lightings and set for this scene, and the director wants to shoot it nice and quick in a one-take to keep the lightings be the same throughout the scene, this will be our job to work out a functional way for the director to shoot the scene.

– Exercise 8 – 

The purpose of this exercise firstly is to experience the dynamic range in an actual shooting or film producing process, secondly, learn to solve problems on the dynamic range during real shootings, probably solve it by editing (post-production) or using film lights to improve the over or under exposed problem. Thirdly, I guess is also an exercise for us to experience camera coverage because Robin has divided the class into two big groups to see how each group will arrange the camera.

The first shot which is the first challenge we faced and took us a long time to solve it. The camera was supposed to pan from the left to the right when two actors walk from the lift to the exit door. Although the light outside is too bright even we tried to use indoor lighting with different angles to improve the overexposure. Whenever the camera pan towards the door, the exposure will suddenly turn overexposed. We ended up to understand the fact that the brightest area cannot be evenly exposed with the darkest area in the same shot, so we did post-production which is editing to refine this scene, we cut before two actors were about to enter the brightest area which has effectively avoid any overexposed in this shot.