2 Feb 2009 - Reflection

Today, we did, primarily, a re-cap on cinematography. The recap was useful, as, for me, it did remind me of the various techniques we learnt about last year, and their various applications to film in order to alter the look and mood of a film or of a clip. We were asked to form a group of four and do various scenes.

The first scene we were asked to do was a scene making a difference between a sharp-defined shot and a documentary-like shot. To do this, we decided that for the sharp-defined shot, we would shoot with a tripod, whereas for the documentary shot, we would shake the camera as if we had been standing wearning shorts and t-shirt in a refigerator for an hour. It is noticeable how the steadiness of the camera has a tremendous effect on the feel of the shot.

Other important shots included our conversation shots, when we were asked to shoot according to lighting. I remembered a useful technique to change the lighting. When one wants lihgted characters but dark background, you do just that: light the characters, and place them in front of a dark background. To do the opposite, however, one can just silleouhette the characters in front of a bright background. We did this on a CIS staircase by shooting from different angles.

I think that today we experimentated and tried to apply skills learnt from over a year ago to some short clips, and I think it has helped me remember my cinematography.