Week 5 Reflections

This week in class I got to direct a one shot scene. I based the blocking off the scenes we’ve watched in class, using the depth of the frame and panning to create 3 unique frames in the shot. I was pleased on how it turned out. Robin wanted everything to be tighter, but I like my frames to have a lot of space in them. Maybe the location didn’t suit for it, considering it was a pretty busy background (lots of shapes and random colours and reflections that can’t be avoided from that position). Had I known we could zoom on this, I may have considered using that as a technique but I wasn’t aware. Personally I didn’t like the zoom. Sure, it made the last frame better (in terms of the busy background), but I liked the characters being smaller in the final frame because based off the context of the scene, it seemed appropriate. Also, I only remembered afterwards that there is a zoom button on these cameras, so next time I don’t need to manual zoom.

I generally don’t like zooms unless its got a strong purpose. In the future, I don’t want to zoom to purely be for aesthetics. It needs to add to the story, the characters and the emotional journey of the film, not to “tighten up” the frame. There has to be a better reason than that.