The Scene in Cinema Assignment 1

Reflection 2

3.8—3.14

As a film shooting tool, the camera has many usage methods and related knowledge that are worth studying and learning. In the second week of the course, we still discussed and learned about the knowledge and usage methods of the camera in the film production process. But unlike the knowledge about camera positions learned in the first week, this week’s learning focuses more on the selection of camera angles and choices of long and short focal length lenses.

The choices of the camera’s long and short focal length lens have a certain impact on the film shots like the camera position, such as using a long focal length lens to capture details in the distant views, or using a short focal length lens to shoot more scene contents. Therefore, choosing the right focal length lens is also a very important part of film shooting, so choosing a different focal length lens often means that the content that the photographer wants to present is also different. Like last week, the professor still played some movie clips for us as an exercise to build and improve our ability to judge long and short focal length lenses. 

By watching these movie clips and the professor’s demonstrations and explanations, we understand what the long and short focal length lens is and the difference between them. The long focal length lens has a smaller angle of view compared with the short focal length, but it can play the role of magnifying the subject. Therefore, the long focal length lens will have an advantage when shooting distant subjects or zooming in on local details. Compared with the telephoto lens, the short focal length lens has a larger angle of view and can also capture a larger range of scenes, but its image of the details is slightly inferior to that of the long focal length lens. In the movie clips for practice, we can see that the photographer used a short focal length lens to take a close-up shot of the party, which allows us to see the whole scene of the party. In another segment, a large number of long focal length lenses were used to shoot from a distance, thus showing the facial details and action details of some actors.

In general, long and short focal length lenses, like the camera position, also affect the filming and content presentation in various aspects. Choosing a suitable focal length for shooting is also an extremely important part of film shooting.