The exercises within class this week allowed us to focus on the more technical aspects of filming and using the camera. We worked off a handout which required us to run through five different exercises, focussing on focal length, focus, exposure, neutral density, gain, and white balance. We went through the fundamental technical aspects that we needed to know for the camera and Paul told us a good acronym to remember them- P.O.W.F.F.E.R (power, on, white balance, frame, focus, exposure, record). We didn’t manage to get through all of the exercises on the handout but the task was really helpful in allowing me to understand how to do a focus pull when the subject is moving around the frame. I learnt that it is good to use markers on tape on the focus pull and to block out where the objects and characters will be within the frame throughout the shot. Paul also reminded us how important it is to keep the frame ahead of the action. It is better to be too far ahead of the action than to be lagging behind otherwise the shots look awkward. When working as the camera operator, it is helpful to get someone to pull focus for you so that you can focus on the framing and the camera movements.

In Friday’s class we went outside to film ‘The Person with the Headache” (from our handout).

There were three main aspects we had to focus on within this task

1. the way in which the actor was walking towards the camera-we wanted to make sure that we lit up the off-side of their face and two being

2. getting the exposure correct-it was sunny outside. Did we need to use ND filters?

3. pulling focus as the actor walks towards the camera from a Medium shot to a Close Up.

We had a bit of difficulty getting started with this task as we couldn’t get the actor in focus-we then discovered that this was because it was on auto focus- oops!

All in all, this exercise really helped in our understanding of how to pull focus and how to have the correct expose in an exterior setting.