In this week’s class, we go through several shooting technique, focal length, focus, exposure, neutral density, gain, white balance.

Follow focusing

In this exercise, I learned to chose the spots you want to keep focus on first, then mark them. Let the object stand at the spots marked before, crush zoom in, then focus, after that, mark the focus and focal length on the stick tap sticked on the lens before.

When object moves, there have to be a focus puller who change the focus from one point to another. This person can be camera assistant. Also he/she also need to be familiar with camera movements, so he/she can keep it same with DOP. and then the process can be more smooth than without any preparation and communication. When I support mona to be her focus puller and camera assistant in her shooting exercise, it happened, when she moved camera very quickly, I didn’t prepared well and realize it, so I failed to pull focus well. Next time in shooting exercise, I will be prepared for that, and ask my camera assistant to be prepared as well. What’s more, if there isn’t a deep depth of field, there is no need to do the follow focusing. It is also found in exercise, there is no big difference if there is a shallow depth of field.

Exposure

To choose the right exposure, there is a way to test, turn on the zebra code button. The standard is the appearance of zebra code on object’s forehead and nose. Then you can tell it’s the right exposure. However, during the shooting exercise, I found that it is better if you choose the exposure amount under the standard exposure, the standard exposure is a bit over exposure. Also I learned a little tip about lighting and exposure during the exercise, when camera is tracking and the light is changing and become darker and darker, we can pull the exposure circle to gain the light. So there must be a ‘exposure puller’ for this. And remember the right direction of pulling the circle. This manner also works when you want less lights when tracking.