This semester is nearly over. During this semester, we keep make things, write about and reflect on it after we made it, do researches related to it. In this semester, I learned a lot about filmmaking, directing, camera operating and how to be one of the members in a filmmaking group, also I was reminded all the time of being an independent filmmaker, express your style in a special way you found.

mix cut of shooting exercises

Generally about filmmaking

Filmmaking is a big and complicated concept. Before I am attending this studio, I don’t know too much about it, all I have is a general and blurry idea about filmmaking. When I’m doing this subject, I realize gradually that I am in filmmaking, I am one of the members who come together to make a scene. There are director, director of photography (DOP), camera assistant, sound man, boom holder, actors in a small filmmaking team. These positions are necessary in a small team of making a scene. As a team, every one has a job and every one needs to stick on it, be really concentrated on it. Doing well their own jobs make the entire team more efficient. Also good and timely communication needs to be established as well. To work as a team, everyone should talk about their own opinions or advices that make the scene come out better.

Filmmaking is not only a cooperating thing, but also a technical thing. How to operate a film camera properly, what to do with audio kits, how to make a connection between camera and audio kits, how to hold a boom, so it will be in the perfect spot that record the best quality of sound, how to deal with the mixed wire when packing up… These questions appears one by one during the whole semester, all I need to do is to deal with it, get over with it, learn everything related to these stuff, also practice, practice and practice. After plenty times of practicing, I am quite familiar with these technical problems.

There is a big awareness that you need to keep in mind all the time as a filmmaker, safety and risk. As a filmmaker, we should always be aware of that and keep a serious attitude about it. Every time we want to shoot a scene in anywhere, we need to ask for permission first if it is needed. Then all we need to do is write a safety report that concludes all of the shot lists, the description of these shots. Also the risk and safety problem might occur and the solutions. And mark them by the level of risky. A first-aid box and the numbers of hospitals and ambulance need to be prepared in advance.

I am aware of that we are just doing a university subject here, all we’ve been through this semester is not enough for a professional filmmaking team. But all we did here is keep learning and experiencing, keep making progresses and improvement on ourselves. Also nowadays there are lots of independent filmmakers, they make films in their own way and style. All we need to do is to find a way to express ourselves’ style of making film and expressing self.

Pre-production

From lots of practices during this semester, I realize that pre-production is a significant part of filmmaking, it is the outline of what you will make.

Shoot list

Without a shoot list, everything just seems to be disordered for me and I don’t know what to shot first, what to shot second. The shoots that you imagined are different when you actually shoot sometimes. There are lots of ways we can use to make a shoot list like drawing a blackboard, writing down the shoot list. For me, storyboard doesn’t really work, so every time I spend lots of time to make my shoot list more specific and detailed. It includes different shot angles, shot size, perspectives, compositions, framings and so on.

Mise-en-scene

Mise-en-scene is very important for a scene, all it does is to make scene prettier. My shooting experience tells me to observe the shooting location carefully before choosing it. Location is important, when you choose one, you need to have a general sense about where you will put the camera, is there enough room for support team, does this place look crowded when everything is set up, how is the lighting, too bright, too dark… You need to think about these kinds of stuff when choosing a location. About lighting, natural lighting is always no good. I once read a sentence which said ‘all of the natural lighting in films is not natural’. We can change lighting in editing, but we’d better to make it good when shooting as well. To do so, we can borrow extra lights equipment and use a reflector board. The background setting is another thing. To be more sensitive and critical about it, frame it up, looking from a frame, get rid of everything unnecessary and ugly. Framing is like a filter to background setting. Of course we can also add something in that is suitable for the scene. If it makes the scene more attractive, even the item itself is not pretty. Speak of framing, when checking the location, we can just use our phone to frame a bit, take some photos, have a general sense about what kind of framing will be used in shooting. When it comes to actors, costume and make up. These two things will influence the first impression, so they are important. They are reflections of characters’ personalities in some degree.

What else in pre-production

• preparation of stage property
• good contact and communication with team members, send them script, shoot list, safety report and set up schedule
• good communication with actors, tell them how they are expected to be, also give the room of improvisation

Directing

A director is the author of a film, he/she is the leader of all the members in the team. Even though filmmaking is a process involving plenty of team workers like DOP, sound man, actors and support team, but the film is expressed in the way the director want it to be. So directing is hard work because he/she needs to establish communication with everyone in the team. Sometimes conflict happens, sometimes common sense happens, but in the end, everyone is on the same page of processing the film.

Director & DOP

A director is the lead of the film, then a DOP is the lead of the camera. DOP operates camera in filmmaking and this is an important job because the way camera moves is the way how this film is presented to audience. In all my shooting exercises I am both director and DOP. Every time I was filming, I thought about what kind of shots do I need here, wide shoot, close-up shoot, in which way it will transfer the message to audience better? What kind of shot is better in this situation, how the camera movement here represents character’s personality? This kind of communication needs to be done between director and DOP. DOP must be very skilled with camera, from his/her perspective, he/she might find other ways or even better way to bring this shot to audience, at this time communication is required again. All I need to do here is be more skilled with camera by practice again and again.

Director & actors

In all my shooting exercise, I didn’t work with experienced actors once, so maybe there are some differences when I actually work with real actors. However everyone can act, so I believe there are must be some common problems as well. My practices tell me sufficient communication needs to be done between directors and actors. Before the shooting, director needs to talk with them about who are they, what do they want, where are they, what are their motivations… During the shooting, sometime actors are not in the right mood, then director needs to remind them of that, how do they these words, in what kind of tone, how the connections between actors be presented… However sometimes actors has their own thoughts about how to express this character. Then they should talk with director about it and director should also give the room of changing and improvisation.

Camera coverage

How a scene is covered nicely is the subject I explored for the whole semester. I have deeper perceiving than before.

Single shot-‘being invisible third person’

a great idea about single shot is to pretend camera as the invisible person in the scene when shooting, everything audience saw on the screen is from the point of view of ‘invisible person’. This kind of way of shooting make audience more curious about what is happening, or what will happen next? It makes audience feels like they are standing right in the scene.

Panning-two kinds of panning

Based on my shooting exercise, I found out there are basically two kinds of panning. The first one is panning aimlessly, to get the big environment around characters, audience will pay more attention to what the characters are talking about. The second one is when one character is talking, pan to the other one to show his/her face expression to audience. In this way audience would pay more attention to what they are talking, what would happen during the talking, what is connections and relationship between characters, intense? happy? excited? terrified?…

Tilt up/down-coming with a surprise

Usually tilt up or down comes with a surprise at the end. When camera tilt up from bottom slowly, audience will make a quick judgment based on what they’ve seen. Even though they haven’t seen all of the information, they will think what is in their imagination. So the effect of a tilt-up is to surprise audience, show them something totally different from their imagination.

Over the shoulder and point of view-dialogue

When shooting dialogue scene, we usually use over shoulder shot to keep audience perceptive about the existence of characters and the connections between them. ‘Over the shoulder’ is just a typical angle, actually there are lots of other angles we can use like from arms, a part of face… Another great angel is from one characters’ point of view to shoot other characters’ expression. In this way, a special connection between character and audience is established, when audience sees and hears what the characters see and hear, they will feel the same way the character feel.

Tracking-move like character moves

For example, when you are tracking a drunk person, you can shake the camera a bit to make audience fee the way the character is going through.

Close-up shot follows by a wide shot-continuity and explanation

Usually a close-up shot is followed by a wide shot, this is because a close-up shot has a very tight frame, there is much less information audience can get from the shot, however if it is followed by a wide shot of the continuity action, audience will understand what the character is doing, where is the character, what will happen next… If the wide shot is missing in the scene, then audience will get confused by what happens next because they don’t see the connection between action to action. Speak of explanation, sometimes different shooting angles on the same action will also explanation a lot to audience. For example, when you shooting someone from back, all we can see is he is moving, but we don’t know what exactly he is doing. Then a shot from his side, or front will tell the truth.

Static zooming in or out

Zooming in or out is usually terrible, it is hard to have a very good zoom. It is unsteady and not smooth. However static zooming is nice, at least in the scenes I’ve watched. I watched two scenes before about static zooming, one zoom in and one zoom out. The zoom in example is a couple is lying in bed and talking, the man is talking something horrible and the woman doesn’t believe him at first, and she gradually realize that what he is talking about is real. The camera starts zooming in very slowly and steadily while the woman becoming more and more upset and shocked by the man’s words. Finally camera stops zooming when it is a close up of woman’s face with tears on it. At the same time of camera zooming, the sad and soft background music enters. Another example, starts with extreme close-up of human eyes, all audience can see is a pair of eyes, with no emotion in it. With camera zoom out gradually, the eyes looking around with panics, then we can see it is a male character, there is a stick tape on his mouth, he can’t talk, his hands are tied backwards, he is kidnapped! Finally audience gets the message.

Editing

The most important thing about editing is not to confuse audience and make the scene look better from color, audio effect and after effect. If the lighting is not good enough when shooting, there are still chances to fix it when editing. Also sound effect can shows what dialogue cannot show, for example, when someone get caught and feel embarrassed, audience can see character’s face expression which says he/she is embarrassed, also we can add a funny and stupid sound effect to make the atmosphere more strong. Choose the right time spot to enter and end the background music, usually when something else happens the music need to stop immediately, then audience will aware that something happened, coming out from former situation and get into next one. It’s like an alarm for audience. The timing of cut is also important, audience don’t want to spend their time watching the same, repeated actions, so give it a brief show, move to next action. There must be continuity between cut to cut, like I mentioned before, a close-up shot followed by a wide shot, a shot of actions from back followed by a shot of action from side or front. However sometimes jump cuts are better in some situation like dancing around. When someone is talking, a cut to their face would better than a wide shot.