I researched the way to capture a person’s emotion, personality and environment through close up shots and tight framing. AND I got an actor to play myself.
Statement
In my research of capturing emotion, personality and environment on camera, I ask my good friend Phoebe to be my actor, who is playing me in the film. It turns out it is not just a film about me but also about her somehow. In my research, I shot six different ordinary events in daily life. As I said in my proposal, I will emphasize on the actions more than the big picture, it is about capturing details.
My camera coverage are quite limited, they are mostly close up shots with tight framing. During shooting, all I was thinking is to find good, interesting and unique camera angles. For the camera movement, I used a lot of hand held which is more convenient for me to shoot from any angles I want. Hand held is good for motion picture, however when it comes to still image shots, hand held is not a good optional for me. It causes too much shaky which should not be there when it is a still image shot.
Few things about lighting I ran into when shooting. Firstly, always remember to do white balance before shooting. Once you did the white balance, do not take camera out of the place, otherwise you need to do white balance again. Secondly, get the exposure right using the zebra pattern. Thirdly, basic rule of three-point lighting (when you trying to use a DEDO KIT).
The most important one in mise-en-scene, setting. What I shot is a girl’s daily life, the environment around her is very important to express her emotions and personality. Even though my framings are tight, I always try to show some images of the apartment in the background. To enhance the environment and to create the atmosphere, I create some sound track like water boiling in the kitchen, washing machine running in distance, the sound from television and radio, the sound of mumbling and whistling, etc. To make a strong connection between the character and the environment, I made another montage scene of apartment.
Also I learned a lot about cutting and editing. When the lighting and color of the original footages are not right or good enough, a color corrector and grade are always needed. The timing of cutting is significant. For example, the time of cutting in the purse one is perfect, there is no unnecessary actions at all, it is neat and clear. Sometimes we need to cut back and forth to make it more visual for audience like the getting dressed one.
I reflect upon every shooting exercise deeply, here are the links to the reflections.
The reason I decide to shoot this scene is because all of other scenes I made this semester are all focus more on specific events than the environment and atmosphere. So I made this scene to show audience around my apartment. Again I focused on small things, and the frames are tight. However they are just still images of my apartment without people in it. Some of them are stilled related to events.
I shoot this with my Canon 700D and edit it with imovie. During shooting, I was trying to use tripod to get some shots to reduce the shaking, however because my shots are mostly close ups, I found very inconvenient to use the tripod. So I just carried my camera around finally. When I showed it to Paul, He suggested it’s better to use a tripod because it looks shaky. What I should do is to make it stable or shaky enough. But too shaky doesn’t really work for this scene. I shot the same objects in different angles and from different position like the wardrobe shots, the washing machine tube shots, the wall and desk shots. I was trying to show audience different perspectives by doing so. Also, I tried changing focus out during the shower nozzle shot. First audience can see a clear image of the shower nozzle, then the focus starts changing, followed by the filthy shower window. The slight changing is perfectly associated with the big still image, and it feels so real!! Another thing I kept paying attention to during the shooting the depth of field. I found a point and pulled focus to create depth of field in every shot.
For audio, I chose a slow and a bit sad piano royalty free music. I was trying to bring out the loneliness, sadness and the feeling of real through the scene. The music perfectly matched. when video finished, I made the audio go on for few more seconds with the black screen. I don’t know why, just feel like right.
This scene is divided into three parts, putting on make up, putting on accessories and removing make up. I started with three still image shots of bath room counter full of make ups and accessories, tooth brush, bottles of face cream, cleanser, etc. Again to show the environment. Before shooting, I did some staging, I put make ups, accessories and all these stuff to create a little bit messy looking. In my presentation before I said I will try not to show the face of the character, but a blurry one is fine. So I showed the blurry face with make up on at the end of the first part. The second part is made up by a series of montage shots, These shots are all close-ups and stylized. The third part is just a simple event, removing make up.
During the shooting, the lighting is tricky. We shot in the bathroom, I found it’s necessary to shut the bathroom door, otherwise there will be a slight influence on lighting. Also after you do the white balance, do not take the camera out of the place because the lighting will change immediately, then you will do white balance again. That’s why there are some slight differences among the first three shots in the scene. I used the color corrector later to fix that. another thing I learned is to mark the position of camera if it’s necessary. This works better for continuity. Or you can choose keep rolling and shoot to edit. What’s more, get familiar with the location. When shooting, I felt like not comfortable with all kinds of angles and camera movements. The reasons are firstly it is difficult to shoot in a narrow area with a big film camera, secondly I’m not familiar enough with the location, at least I didn’t check it and rehearsal in advance. If I did so, it will be better. What’s more, I learned one more thing about premiere, how to copy and paste the effect from one clip to another, right click copy on the clip, then right clip paste attribution on another clip.
For the audio, exercise ‘making tea’ reminds me of sound from radio in distance. Then I ask myself what I usually do when putting on make ups. I usually leave the tv show playing on my laptop while putting on make ups, and I can still listen to it. So I get the idea for audio. Again I used the microphone in the edit suit to record the sound of a Chinese tv show I usually watch and used it as the audio for this one.
When I showed it Paul, he suggested to cut down a bit more to around 40 secs. There are some time problems in it. For the shots that shoW Phoebe’s face, I should cut it like one longer than the other. Between the shots of she put on lipsticks and the shots show her face, there should be more shots of her choosing make ups.
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.
Objects are usually shaped by highlights and shadows in lighting. Audience usually can see the texture of the surface through highlights. If the surface is smooth, then the highlights will be gleam and sparkle. If the surface is rough, the highlights will be more diffuse. It is the same for shadows. Lights have a dramatic influence on both texture and shape of the object. For example, if we see a ball lit from front, it appears to be round. However if we see it from side, it appears to be a half-circle. ‘The proper use of light can embellish and dramatize every object. (Stenberg, J, V) Lighting shapes our sense of space in some degree. It also shapes the overall composition of shots. For example, we can see some off-screen space through the shadows. In some films, the main character is emphasized by a clearly lit and frontal figure.
Quality
There are generally four major aspects that filmmakers exploit and explore in lighting, its quality, direction, source and color. Quality refers to how intense the illumination is. The problems hard lighting may cause are clearly defined shadows, sharp edges and crisp textures. By contrast, soft lighting creates a diffused illumination. The noonday sunlight is usually hard lighting, an overcast sky is usually soft lighting, there are lots of lighting situations are between these two extremes.
Source
In making documentary films, filmmakers usually use lights that are available. However in fictional films, extra light source are needed. These extra sources help to obtain greater control of images’ look. The original lights in the set are usually not strong and varied enough to create the great image effect on big screen.
Color
We usually imagine that there are two basic lights in filmmaking, the white sunlight and the yellow lamp light. In fact, filmmakers use the as purely white a light as they can, then they put filters in front of the light sources, they can design any color of fashion as they wish.
The highpoint of classic Hollywood cinema is from 1930 to 1945. The conglomeration of Hollywood and advertising and marketing, people do not care about which movie they need to get financed but which movies they are going to sell (Godard and Kael, 1982, pp.174-5).
New Hollywood was from the late 1960s to the early 1970s. It was whole new cinema adventure linked to traditional classic Hollywood genre filmmaking with the stylistic innovations of European art cinema. No one was sure about the directions that should be taken because it is a new idea. The success of the musical film, The Sound of Music touched off the ‘youth audience’ and ‘youth’ and ‘alternative’ films in late 1960s and early 1970s, all relate to ‘anti-heroes’. It was descried as a cinema of ‘alienation, anomie, anarchy and absurdism by Sarris.
Then the ‘movie brats’ arrived, it is a film-school-educated and/or film-critical generation who began making commercial American cinema with an elan. It was considered to be the moment of symbol of critical practice of auteurism within American filmmaking, resulting in a self-consciously auteurist cinema. This moment is dubbed by Noel Carroll to be a ‘cinema of allusion’, according to classic Hollywood cinema and European art cinema. Based on Bordwell and Staiger’s claim, the new Hollywood directors are not youthful and technologically competent than their predecessors. They grafted art cinema conventions on classical traditions in a genuinely new aesthetic. ‘In keeping with the definition of a non-Hollywood Hollywood, American films are imitating the look of European art films; classical film style and codified genres swallow up art-film borrowings, taming the disruptiveness of the art cinema’ (Bordwell and Staiger. 1985, p.375). ‘Most American commercial cinema has continued the classical tradition and observing that the New Hollywood can explore ambiguous narrational possibilities but those explorations remain within classical boundaries’ (p.377)
Reference: “New Hollywood” in Pam Cook (ed) The Cinema Book. 3rd Edition. BFI. London. 2007. pp. 60-67
The scene starts with few montage shots of Lau walking further. These few shots are full of urban space elements, for instance, Lau’s reflection from the glass curtain wall, the extreme close up shots of the construction with Lau walking in the blurry and extreme bright background, the wide shot of harbor and buildings in distance, the close up shot of buildings and the bright sky… These shots are all so bright that makes people feel exposed and frightened.
After Yan handcuffs Lau, Lau laughs and ask, ‘Do all undercover cops like rooftops?’ Yan answers, ‘unlike you, I’m not afraid of light.’ The conflict outburst when Lau say to Yan, ‘Who knows that (you are a cop)?’ With music becomes strident, the framing changes from extreme close up of their heads to a wide shot contains the entire rooftop which audience can clearly see and feel the unsolvable antagonism between them.
Then followed by a medium wide shot, then Yan raises his gun and points at Lau, followed by an extreme close-up shot of Lau’s eyes. These changing framings shows Yan’s anger very well, when his anger hit the limit, he raises his gun. Then it is followed by a slowly zoom out. This shows Yan’s hesitation well and promotes story developments.
When Yan takes Lau as his hostage and comes downstairs with another police officer, the shot is followed by a wide still image shot of sky and clouds. It is so bright and unsettle, especially with the music. Lau’s mixed feelings and their indefinable live and death is very well shown.
mise-en-scene
The mise-en-scene is great, the location is rooftop, a place full of sunlights, a place where sky meets the ground, it makes people feel like falling, it looks over exposed which is good for the scene. Everything is under expose, the truth is about to come out. The urban space is also experienced emotionally. The big glass curtain wall, the harbor in distance, the clouds and the sky are so bright. The tension and the mind game between two characters is shown very clearly.
sound track
Another great thing about this scene is the music, it’s brilliant!! It totally goes with the character’s emotion and experience. When Lau is looking for Yan, the music is slow, gentle but a bit unstable, when Lau suddenly turns his head, the music goes intense as well. When Yan points his gun at Lau’s back, the music doesn’t get out of control, instead it gets louder gently and slowly, it creates the perfect atmosphere for their conversation going to happen. when Lau says Who knows that (you are a cop)? The music hit the peak.
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 exercise I used several montage shots to express the entire scene. The shots of typing, scrolling on the screen, change-shaped apple, mouth chewing, feet shaking. The shot of typing is a bit out of focus, I cannot get the right focus somehow and I don’t know why. I was thinking is that because the distance between camera and the hands is too short. Also I found the change-shaped apple shot a bit wired and brusque to watch. The short jumps cuts and un-continuity are just annoying. I think it is hard for post production, it is something needed to be considered in pre-production. I thought about it for several times, what can be done in pre production is that firstly put camera at a fixed spot and at the same height. Secondly prepare three apples, these apples are bitten in different shapes. Thirdly camera assistant changes different apples while Phoebe is checking Facebook on her laptop. when editing, the problems might still there, but it will be very slight and small. There might be some better ways to do this, but this is what I can think of. Another thing I’m not that satisfied with is the mise-en-scene. The blot on the laptop, the placemat, the background in the apple shot and the black box in the feet shot are the things I need to get rid of.
Since there have been several cons already, I decided to work well on audio. It took me a while to think of something. Finally I create something like ‘being home alone, doing some laundry, making some tea and checking Facebook in a noisy city apartment’ sound track. For my audio, I searched for some free sound of boiling water in a kettle and washing machine. The sound of water boiling is not that obvious, so I found another boiling water sound and added right before the switch turns off. The sound of the washing machine I found is really good because it also contains the noise of the city in distance, the sound of washing machine is also in distance which is perfectly for me to use. I put the washing machine sound through the entire sequence, and turned it higher after the water sound.
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.