The exercise 2 we did on the Wednesday in week three but I was not there since I suddenly had the painful stomach trouble. Really thanks to Jialu Cheng, she is a nice girl who told me what happened in the studio, and gave me a copy of the exercise 2 document.
Exercise 2 mainly focus on three factors directly determine depth of field. It really similar to photography, to some extent, it’s the common area between film lighting and photography. So the knowledge is easy to understand to me because I’m interested in photography, and I self-study it.
Although I wasn’t there, there are many clips I can watch to analyse and reflect.
Obviously, the first video scene includes more background than the second one, and it’s clear to see the details of the background. The second one zoom in on the main subject so there are more details we can see on him, by contrast, the background is foggy. The first film scene is the large depth of field while the second film scene is the small depth of field.
As we can see in a film, if we want to outline or describe the background or location in scene, just need to make it in a large depth of field. Then there are more details can be showed to audiences. On the other hand, if we want to outline the main subject, just adjust it to a small depth of field.
I personal thinking that flexible to use the depth of field in a video or a film is very helpful to express the story. For example, small depth of field can make the focus point switch between different subjects in a screen, which can outline different subjects on by one or in the other ways.
Like this one, now the boy is in focus but the girl is not. If the director wants to outline the girl rather than the boy then he/she only need to easily adjust the focal length to the girl.
Video and film don’t like the photography, they are dynamic.
Regarding the exercise three, this is really a formal shooting but it seems like we didn’t do really well. I know that Robin always mentions and stress that there is no right or wrong here, but go to read the instructions is really serious.
I also did many record this time, and all of these are mostly about the location of each equipment like where is the light, where is the camera, where is the windows and sunlight. This is really helpful to let me remember how this screen was created, then I can try it next time. Day by day it will be my precious experiences.
Except reading the instruction, the problem that we were facing was the sunlight/daylight from windows. When we were in the process, we don’t want to put down the blind because classroom should be full of comfortable light. All the blind is up here so the sunlight is full of the classroom, then it comes to be hard. The idea we had at that time is using the additional light we have to light on us (Jialu and I were the characters) to complete that sunlight. However, the result is not as good as I imagine.
Right now there is a weird idea just came out in my mind that if there is enough blue gel or yellow gel, why don’t we try to stick the gel on all the windows? Once there are filters on the windows, the sunlight will be softer. Maybe we can try this idea next time.