Skills learned: Camera

During the course of making the title sequence I have learned many things about how to use the camera and the multiple different shots that can be used.

Extreme Close, Medium and Extreme Long shots

When we were learning about how to use the camera for the first time we also learned the multitude of different shot types that are available and used in films. The three most important I think are the extreme close, medium and long shots. For example extreme close ups emphasize emotions on a character's face or the detail in a scene or highlight the important of certain aspects of the mise en scene. Medium shots help the audience to identify the location that a character is in and the character and location are often related. Long shots are often used in the beginning of a film to show the environment and general location that the scene is to unfold in.

Shots looking up and Shots looking down

This issue was how to create the feeling that a particular character was more dominant over another when creating our film. And the answer was in the position of the character and its angle. For example a camera looking down on a character from the point of view of another character symbolizes the inferiority of the character that we are observing. We used this principle in at the end of our film where we have the man open the door and the girl who is hiding in the cupboard looking up at him. This shows the strength of the intruder over the victim.

Using the Camera in dark conditions

When we were experiencing using the cameras for the first time we were told that they didn't shoot video very well in low-light conditions and this was very true when we tried filming our sequence for the first time. Even though we did try and compensate for the camera's problem with low light by shooting at dust that meant we still kept the feeling of darkness in the scenes but when we looked over the footage later we found that this did not work at all. When we next filmed we used lighting equipment to help light the characters and certain aspects of the scene so that the audience still acknowledged that it was night in the scene but could still clearly see the scene and the characters.

Focusing and tracking

When it came to focusing we were all not very sure about how we could make sure that the scene we were filming was in focus and we learned that before filming to always zoom in on something far away in the scene and make sure that that was in focus and then zoom out again. Now anything between there and the camera would now be in focus and the shots should be clear.