In this week’s class, we screened our work we’ve made so far and went through some editing techniques. After watching other’s work, I feel that it is not about quantity, it’s about quality. If you just focus on one scene, and keep working on it, it will be better and better. For example, Aidan’s night landscape is really great, I liked it a lot. He worked a lot on the audio, some of them are really creative and real, like the typing sound on iphone, the sound of people walking by, etc. Also Corey’s research is really interesting, and there is indeed big difference when there is background sound and there is not. The lighting and depth of field are all great in his shots. Kenton’s scene of making tea, the framing and angles are great, the lighting is also wonderful. Fabiana’s shots of the place look so filmic and beautiful.

For my screen, I showed the purse one. Paul said the depth of field in mine is really good, also it is very well stylized and cut. Also it is funny at the end.

I realized that my problem is too many scenes. What I should do in the future is to be more focusing. work on one specific scene and make it better and better, consider all of the elements, mise-en-scene, location, lighting, color, camera movements, editing. To make a scene filmic is hard to achieve.

editing technique and notes

keyboard shortcuts 

more about post production

note

one may not attack their editing methodically enough, it can get chaotic, confusing

your projects, sequences and bins will be diabolically complicated unless you are organised within your project

In this week’s class, we screened the work we’ve made this semester. There is lots of great works. For example, I really liked the Kenton’s clips on different numbers. The idea is brilliant. The color, shot construction and camera movements are all good. Also he captured lots of city landscapes during the shooting as well. Ella’s scene is very filmic, it perfectly creates the horror atmosphere through those close up shots and dark lighting and color. The locations are also well chosen. Especially the door. Sam’s dream scene is awesome. The mise-en-scene is great, I really like the red sheet just hanging on the car window, it looks like nonsense, but it is in a dream, so it totally fits. Also the lighting and depth of field is great. the music matches as well.

In this week’s class, we did some exercise on lighting, audio and camera techniques. We were divided into few groups and did different scenes applying these techniques. I was in charge of camera. Again we used DEDO KIT for the lighting, there are key light, background light and fill light. For the fill light we can use some white reflectors to help. There is a big difference. Because I was in charge of camera, so I learned something about camera movement. My group was doing the scene where Corey walks in and sit next to Samantha. This scene is a single shot, the camera should be moving along with Corey’s action. For the first time, I just moved the camera exactly along with Corey’s action. It turns out to be wired, it seemed to be slow for my camera movement. I didn’t show the existence of Samantha well enough. Then Paul gave me some advice of moving camera a bit faster, and move along with Corey when he enters the room, then move quickly to Samantha and let Corey walk into frame. While doing this, you should always keep an eye on framing and head room. To get a better shot, Paul ask Corey to slow down a bit to work with my camera movement when acting. Here is another way to improve.

In this week’s class, we went through some lighting techniques. Paul introduced DEDO KIT to us. There are three lights in it, there are also different colors of filters we can use. In lighting, there are three main lights, key light, background light and fill light. In the class, all of us worked like a crew to finish one short scene, ‘look at Aidan’. It was a simple scene, but we spend the whole class working on it just to get everything right and good enough. Everyone got some practice and gained experience from it. First we set up cameras, adjust audio, connect to audio kits and boom. Then we did the white balance, exposure and focal length on camera. When everything is ready, The assistant is calling the shots, as I remembered, it was something like audio set, camera rolling, slice in, frame, slice out, and then director calls annnnd action. Secondly we use the lights equipment, the key light is hanged over Aidan’s head, the background light is placed behind Aidan, the fill light is a white reflector some one holding and standing at the side of Aidan. when the lighting was all set, we can see a soft wrapping lights and a clear glaze side of Aidan’s face from camera lens. The lighting was good, next thing was about camera movement and construction. When we took the first shot, the camera coverage is quite wide and loose. The movement is bit slower than the action. After Paul suggest to make the frame tighter and ask the actors to slow down a bit, the shot improved a lot. We spend the whole class to finish this one simple scene, this makes me understand the importance of a scene with good quality. There are always areas that we can improve in one scene. So keep digging and improving.