Keyboard shortcuts. 

Most applications reserve keyboard shortcuts for the functions that use most often. It is really good to learn all of these as it will speed up your editing and additionally alert you to functions that the software developers and other users find important. (You can learn much about the software by looking at keyboard shortcuts). 

Find the keyboard shortcuts for Adobe Premiere and note two or more functions that you’ve never used before that may be invaluable to editing.

Next in Sequence – shift+

Render Effects in Work Area: Return/Enter

Export frame Shift+E

Apply video transition Cmd+D

In this scene from the film “Blow Up”, Michelangelo Antonioni directed to use a variety of panning shots, from different angles, which follows the actor movement.

He uses tracking motions to follow up the actors walk through doors and up stairs. Varieties of different shots like top angle, side angle, etc are used in the scene at the studio. Camera movements such as tracking and panning also accompanied in those shots.

Use of track and focus pulling was used. As covered in the lecture, three persons will be by the camera, a camera operator, a focus puller and someone who pulls the camera across the tracks. The focus points will change as the subject moves, that’s why the focus puller is very important, as the subject will be out of focus at certain points during moving. The best example will be in shot where (2:08 – 2:32) Jane walks back and forth at the purple screen before Thomas pulled down. A panning movement with zooming in and out was used with its focus on Jane. The focus puller will have one point of focus as the camera zooms in when Jane is on the left and another focus point when Jane walks to the right.

From week 6 reading about developing a crew, there are two points that I find excited and interesting:

• Rabiger discusses how a crew work can make a real difference in a production. It’s important not to just assess their technical expertise and experience but also their ideas and values. As production is such a team work, crew members’ attitude, maturity and values are equally important that can affect the quality of the production.
• Rabiger also discusses about the role of producers. A little bit different from what I thought, producers are not only manage funds and overseeing the project but their taste and artistic side are also somewhat important arbiters of the film’s artistic progress. He states that the ideal producer is a cultivated, intelligent, and sensitive businessperson.

From the lighting lecture I got some useful knowledge about lighting for a film set up is about the different between key/fill/back lights. I myself actually put on some effort to set up the lighting for my group project rehearsal. It isn’t easy to analysing how a scene has been lit or should be lit and the actual work of preparing a light set-up itself but the lecture helped me out a lot with the work. And I didn’t burn my fingers, thanks to the warning about the hotness of the lights after usage.

The C-stand is another great point from the lecture. It is such an useful accessory for setting up all the lights. Beside that, other tools like black boards to cut light and white boards to bounce light are useful to know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsiqPzYnNSw

For the Lenny exercise, our first attemp went quite wrong as the weather was really bad and we didn’t know how to operate the filming set in an effective way. Over the 1 hour we had, we didn’t finish half of the script. However, in our second filming attemp, we needed less than 2 hours to finish everything, even had some extra time to try out different angle and techniques. We still have some issues with the sound recording skills as our Lenny film has a lot of noise from surrounding which makes the film a bit less in quality.

Overall, it was fun and exited excerise to do in the course. It helps a lot in preparation for our up coming final project.

From the lighting lecture, I learned a lot new things about the way lighting can be used to create time and space in a film set. It’s very interesting how the cinematographers can use lighting to condense moods and times even when they may not represent the reality on set. Normally we don’t aware of the importance of lighting effects while watching movies. After the lecture, I’ve gained a better knowledge of the effects and techniques of using lighting to create time and space as well as encapsulate the moods of the movies.

In the Clown Train, the sound helps to create the ‘horror’ and the scary mood for the film. It supports the visual and make it fit better with the genre features of the film. At the start, where the screen is all black, the audience can straight away identify and expect what will happen in the film with the sound effect of the moving train. Throughout the film, the sound during the black screen transitions also create the same effect. The soundscape also challenge the audience that they have to question why the train is moving while the black screens and stop when the characters talk.

With such sound design of this film, I can only link it to horror and thriller films.

Dialogue style in a film needs to suit its genre so we can define the genre straight away from a few lines of the script. Dialogue is used to explain what we cannot see; it presents to support the visual and helps to reveal the inner characteristics of certain characters/ events in a film. A few rules for dialogue using in a film are:

• don’t tell what we can see
• less is more
• dialogue shows characters’ personalities

Narratives in photography

It’s interesting to explore narratives in different media and how its work for each medium. Due to the nature of the media (photography, cinema, radio, comic strip,etc) and the technologies,  the narrative form is slightly different for each one. 

I never thought of such thing like narrative in photography, especially singular photos. Just in a frozen moment of time, a story is told from camera angle, the subject, the acting, the lighting, the exposure. Every single technical part of the photo contributes to the overall narrative of what the photo wants to tell, creates a mood, sends a message.

The influences of computer culture

Contemporary Hollywood cinema is mostly produced by huge conglomerate companies with interests in the spin-off computer games, music tracks, clothes, videos, CDs which their films may help to market.

The narratives of the blockbuster movies now also can be developed to become a money earning tool with by-products like games, books, music tracks, clothes and literally everything they can think of. The idea of how the producers utilises the plot to make other things excites me so much. Just think of how powerful the computer culture is.

I love watching movies, all kind of genres and so learning to know how they are made is so interesting. It isn’t as easy as it seems. 

Film TV 1 is where everything unfold and starts. Taking this course, I want to know more and know deeply in details from A to Z how a movie is made, regardless its length. Not only the theory but actually practice through exercises will surely help me to understand how each part of the production works and co-operates to create a whole film. At the end of this semester, I desire to know all the basic process of each part of the production  and find out which one suits me and my abilities best. And of course,  making some short films!