March 2015 archive
Found Scene
My found scene is from Spider-Man 2 movie, the pizza delivery scene from 6:02 to 7:45.
Shot1- A over shoulder shot from woman’s back. Audience can see the door from the way woman is looking at, at the same time hear sound coming from that door. This makes audiences wonder and potentially introduces man character-spider-man. The camera coverage here is the long hall way of the company which establish two characters’ relationship.
Shot2- A middle shot of spider-man dealing with mops from side. Then there is one cut when he turns around towards the reception lady. It is a good cut because it makes the ‘turn around’ after cut, this will make it very clear for audience to watch. Then it still a over shoulder shot of spider man pulling off his web.
Shot3- a full size shot of spider man walking to the reception lady. Audience still can see the reception lady from spider-man’s back. The framing is good here, firstly only a part of spider-man is in the shoot and with he walking forward, walking down few stairs, audience can see the entire spider-man. It is s good way to introduce or use the stairs.
Shot4- A middle shot of spider man and the reception woman talking. Camera chooses a good frame of the elevator, spider-man just kind of walks into the frame. Because spider-man is standing up and reception lady is sitting down, so they are not at the same level, but it looks not wired, a good balace between different levels. There is a quick panning of the reception lady looking at the clock behind her which is very good pan.
Shot5- A slow pan forth and back of spider-man walking and using the elevator. The last pan stops at perfect spot, audience can see the reception lady’s back hair, part of the pizzas, and spider-man in elevator saying goodbye.
Lots of cut to edit-repeating-close up shots of the reception lady’s face expression. every time spiderman is acting strange or awkward, there will be a reception lady’s face expression cut, chewing a gum and looking at him in a scorn way.
The entire scene, the camera coverages are the hall way, the reception, the elevator and the clock. They are all well introduced through the camera panning. There isn’t lot of camera movements in this scene. For me as a audience, it is very pleasant to watch this scene.
Shot to edit
If you are not shooting a single, then it’s shot to edit. You can keep the camera rolling and act whatever you like, different style, different location, different motivation, afterwards you can pick up whatever you want and cut everything you don’t want.
In shot to edit, we can get control of
1. time
-cut back and forth
-repeating
-stretch time
2. motion (SHOT SIZE)
-over shoulder shot
-close up shot
-middle shot
Framing
We didn’t have a good frame in last week’s shooting exercise. When pre-producing and checking the locations this week, tutor asked us to use our phones to take pictures to chose a good angle and frame-a brilliant way to choose a good frame.
Pre-production
Guess tutors want us to be more familiar and organized for shooting films. So this time every group have two teams.
Executive team
-three actors
-one DOP (cinema photographer)
-one director
Support team (keep shooting process being safe)
-sound
-camera
-assistant
In this exercise, every one work as individual director. And we can have other help us with camera operating, acting and sound.
Technical problem
When I was operating the camera for Jason (group member). I didn’t do it well. All he needed is that to pan the camera while two people talking. The problem was that I could not predict very well when panning the camera. One of the objective reason was that two actors were talking with small voices, I cannot hear them clearly without headphones. So when one of them talks, i need to pan the camera. When another one talks, I need to pan again. I have to pan the camera back and forth between two characters. Sometimes when I cannot catch what they say or when they say it, so pan it too quickly or too slowly. That is the big technical problem occurred to me in this exercise.
Directing
So in this exercise, everyone need to direct in their own shot. Directing is everything, it decides the how this scene will be presented, expressed in front of audience. Directors need to communicate with camera operator, what angles does he/she want the camera to be, what size of shootings does he/she want to use, does he/she want the camera to pan up and down or back and forth, what kind of camera coverage does he/she want to use… A director also need to communicate with actors, tell them what kind of motivation they get in the scene, where do they stand and what should they say and so on, what is their personalities and how they express it well in the scenes… A director need to organize the support team like sound well to keep the entire team running well as well. Directing is a very important and arduous work in shooting films. Direction is the leadership in making films, using other technical help and actors to express certain idea, inspiration and theme.
In shot exercise 3, everyone in the group participated acting, camera operating, directing and editing. We got 7 shoots in total finally.
Shot1-A wide angle shot (kind of middle shot) of two characters sitting opposite each other, the woman stands up and looks outside the window. In this shot, camera cove rage is very simple and clear, man and woman sitting opposite each other. Two characters are introduced. And the camera pans slightly when woman stands up. About directing, we make man read a magazine by himself to show audience that they don’t know each other.
Shot2-We have a middle shot of woman looking outside the window. Then she get something her eye and sits back to her seat. When she sits back, camera pans all the way with her movement and stays on the level of a over shoulder shot. Over shoulder shot is taken from the angle of man’s back, from there, audience can see the face expression of woman. In shot1, we also shot woman sitting back to seat, but there are some overlap in shot2. This is OK, because this is shot to edit, not a single shot, and this will also leave us more choices of cutting and editing.
Shot3-A simple panning. Woman takes out her phone to check her eye. Camera pans from her bag to her face. The only thing in the frame in this shot is woman’s face, hands and phone, so it’s a close up shot. I shot this one, I might pan the camera a bit slowly at first. What I should do is to pan camera as quickly as her hand movement.
Shot4-This is really a good one. I did the direction for this one. So we need to move camera to a different location, shooting from a different angle where we can see man’s expression. We have a over shoulder shot. the clever thing about the shot is that audience can see woman’s face expression from the reflection of her phone very clearly, also audience can see man’s face expression from woman’s shoulder.
Shot5-A middle shot from man’s back. Man stands up and forces helping woman. man is kind of blocking woman, audience can see a bit of woman, but can hear her clearly. They two struggles a bit. This makes audience imagine and wonder.
Shot6-Explanation!-camera moved, shot from flank (a different angle from last shot) again. A middle shot, man and woman still struggling, and man saying, ‘nearly, nearly, in your eye…’. Woman keeps screaming. After man sits down too. camera stays still all the time in this shot.
Shot7-A close-up shot of man give the coin(the thing in woman’s eye) to woman. This close up shot makes the whole film more comic (personal thought).
Individual editing
This time, we shoot the scenes together, but edit it individually. After looking at mine lots of times, I found some cuts are awkward timing. This will make the film lack of wholeness and continuity. Also I learned that repetition of some footages is ok. To get the good clips you want, when shooting we could actually keep the camera rolling, and just act again and again in different ways. It is shot to edit anyway. So that is a good way to get good clips.
My found scene is the beginning of Forrest Gump. It is a long single shot, camera gently and aimlessly move around with the feather. We could know it’s a small town from church, buildings, people walking, trees and so on. Finally, the feather is picked up by the leading character, Forrest Gump. Because he is picking the feather up, we can see his shoes, his suitcase and stuff in that case. Finally the camera has a close up shoot of his face. The character is very well and naturally introduced. Also, the shot of his shoes and suitcase make the audience feel curious about this character. I also want to talk about the next scene. The camera zooms in very slowly focusing on the bus station, at the same time the main character starts talking and introducing himself, ‘Im Forrest Gump…’. Gump is talking about his childhood, the camera zooms out this time, which is a very good transaction from last scene.
In this week’s class, we need to cut three times to make a whole small film. We did two visions, they are from different perspectives.
First vision
1. Susan and Linda talking
2. Antonioni walking
3.Antonioni talking to girls
4. close up shoot of Linda saying ‘no’!
Camera position changes while shooting different scene. Antonioni needs to walking from very far away to get a good cut of walking. Zoom out for the close up shoot.
Second vision
1. Susan and Linda talking
2.close up shoot of Linda’s face expression and end with ‘what’
3. Antonioni walking close and talking with the girls
Camera shooting from a high angle to introduce characters, panning to establish the relationship between characters.
Hey, It’s new semester!
I feel excited, curious and ambitious about the course. Last year I was doing cinema study and broadcast media and so on. I’m crazy about films, and I want to be in filmmaking in the future. In my opinion, filmmaking is a very artistic process. In this course, we actually get the chances to shot scenes by ourselves! It is different when you actually operate the camera and film. In that way, I really want to develop my skills of operating cameras in shooting scenes and my own style of shot and directing. Since we do group work, it will also be a great opportunity to learn from each other and get some improvements.
First week in tutorial, we need to complete a single shot without zooming, we can just pan and tilt. We are given different script and we need to block and film. There are two characters in this scene. We pan the camera while the female character walking into the office and then the camera stops, continuing filming their dialogue. Finally, the female character walks out of the frame and that’s the end. It is one single shot without zooming. However, when we watch the original film clips, the coverage and construction of the camera is more artful. The female character walks in and talks to her boss, the camera didn’t move at all, first it’s the door knocking, then the female comes in, we could only hear the voice of the boss. Then she talks with her boss, the entire process, we can only hear the boss’s voice and the camera still hasn’t move at all. Before she leaves, the boss stands up and walked into the frame and shakes her hand and say ‘we are not gonna lose you,are we?’ then the camera moved a little bit. Then it expresses the whole meaning very well.
To establish the relationship between characters or to introduce a character, there is no need to pan all the way, you can focus on one person, the other one can walk into the frame to reduce the camera moving. Also the camera perspective is important. For example, the scene we saw on the lecture, shooting from the side of the bus driver, we can see the passengers getting on and the street view, at the same time, the shopping girl is on that street, then the character is well introduced and character relationship is well established.