Week 5- Frame

This week was all about working with the camera.
Learning how to zoom, white balance, the camera iris, and the different camera functions in tut.
As the 'camera person' of my group, I have to say, I'm rather overwhelmed by my responsibilities.
We did a practise exercise trying to film a Lenny scene, and my group helped with my fidgeting of the camera, but the end result was quite pathetic, prompting us to rent out the camera on a practise basis before we actually get down to any filming.

Sound is going to take some work too, with all the wires and knobs. Thank goodness, 4 brains are always better than one!

From last week to thsi week, importance was placed on the frame.
Be it a wide shot, a mid shot, a deep or shallow shot, it was up to us to decide what kind of shot inside a frame would best capture the emotion and character of the scene we were shooting.
"Whatever is in the frame is all there is. There is nothing else." (Oumano, 2985)
Drawn from the week 5 reading, it helps us understand the importance and emphasis we place on a frame. Why we draw out story boards in preparation for a shot, etc. It tells us to play with the frame, to play around with the space of the frame to our advantage. It tells us that due to real life situations we expect things to be a certain way in real life, but with frames, we can play around with that to cause suspense or relief in a movie.

As a camera person, I will have to master these different techniques to suit what we will decide in a group to do.
This is a useful list I have found to help me with working the camera.

Basic Camera Moves

As with camera framing, there are standard descriptions for the basic camera moves. These are the main ones:
Pan: The framing moves left & right, with no vertical movement.
Tilt: The framing moves up & down, with no horizontal movement.
Zoom: In & out, appearing as if the camera is moving closer to or further away from the subject. When a shot zooms in closer to the subject, it is said to be getting "tighter". As the shot zooms out, it is getting "looser".
Follow: Any sort of shot when you are holding the camera (or have it mounted on your shoulder), and you follow the action whilst walking. Hard to keep steady, but very effective when done well.

Different Kind of Shots

• extreme wide/long shot (subject is not visible, used as an establishing shot)
• very wide/long shot (subject visible, but emphasis is still him in his environmenmt)
• wide/long shot (subject in the full frame)
• mid shot (shows a part of the subject, but impression on him as a whole subject)
• medium close up
• close up (certain feature or part of subject takes up whole frame)
• extreme close up (shows extreme detail on that part, gets right in)
• cut in (shows other parts of the subject in detail)
• cut away (shows a shot of something other than the subject)
• two shot (shot of two people, framed as a mid shot)
• over the shoulder shot (looking from behind the subject)
• noddy shot (shot of the interviewer listening and reacting to the subject)
• point of view shot (shot from subject's perspective)
• weather shot (for, wait for it.. the weather! Can also be used for the background of shot)

I think the point of view shot and over the shoulder shot would sound different from a typical shot and rather interesting to film.

This is just a video describing the different kinds of shots I went through previously in visual detail.