Camera lesson 2

Last week, we were shown the different types of camera and how to set them up s well as how to use zoom, white balance, focus and aperture, so this week we were shown different shot types and how to use basic heights and proxemics to create a simple scene.
As an example, Rishad volunteered to play the actor in a short scene that Matt planned out. Matt told us that the simpler the movement and idea, the easier it will be to edit afterwards, so to show us what he meant Rishad had to walk up to a table and pick up a toy motorbike, look at it for a few seconds and then put it down again.

The reason why he wanted the sequence to be so basic was because we needed to film the same sequence over and over again using different shots, and if we didn't have continuity, the scene would look very bad and confusing to the audience.

Afterwards we were split up into groups, I was with Rishad and Vogue. We originally came up with the idea of Rishad shaking my hand once I walk into shot and we filmed it from many angles. We started with a wide shot to establish the setting, and then we used an extreme close-up of our hands shaking to show a variety of zoom. We also stayed within the 180 degree line while getting different angles of the sequence for when I entered the scene and for when I left.
We were very quick to realise that we had a major continuity issue because we didn't keep the actions exactly the same each time and because Rishad stood up from the sofa in different times for every shot.

We didn't want to go to the editing suite the following week with a bad sequence, so with 10 minutes of the lesson left, we made another short sequence. We chose to make the action more basic so that it would be easier to keep continuity and to only use one person in the sequence as we wouldn't have to try to catch different shots for each person.

All our sequence involved was vogue, sitting up from a sleeping position, looking at her watch and then going back to sleep again. Just as we did before, we started with a wide shot and shot some close-ups of Vogue's face. As the shots seemed too easy, I wanted to try and show off a bit by shooting a POV shot looking down at the watch. Fortunately it worked and we knew that we would have a good sequence to work with when it came to the following weeks editing session.

From this session I learned not to overcomplicate the sequence and to make sure that I figure out a specific time for each action so that we have continuity.