The second studio class of the week has helped immensely in calming my fear over knowing next to nothing about proper film cameras/techniques since it was a very practical session on how to manipulate focal lengths to create different effects in ratios or depth of field.

An interesting point came up when we reviewed our footage from the last class. There were students/pedestrians in many of the shots we filmed, and yet almost none of them reacted to the cameras, which are as tall as me and a stark black. This phenomenon has answered one of my questions about film making, which is how directors can shoot a shot on a busy street, full of civilians, and not have any flailing about on camera.

Everyday in this course I am learning through doing, and uncovering things I never even thought to think about. This was apparent in the next exercise, which was to capture the essence of a space through recording sound on a directed microphone and the Zoom H4N. I had never even stopped to think about the audio recordings that go into film making, and once I got out there I was overwhelmed with how much sound must be accounted for. My only experiences with sounds in filming was the problem you get when filming on a windy day and you get interference in your microphone. Having professional sound equipment helped, but then again I haven’t even heard my recording yet so I’m sure there’ll be plenty of mistakes for me to learn from!