This location was perfect for shooting in, as it was quite and lit in beautiful way. I found myself drawn to a smaller location and I think there something really interesting in the emptiness of a bathroom. I directed Annick to sit and read from her phone and captured isolating images of her within this small yet open space. The dark walls and reflecting lights gave it an static/ambient aesthetic and didn’t require much alteration in post. The space forced me to be more creative in terms of angels and how to work in the space. I found myself draw to the different facilities and how they sat in the environment. Shooting in a mirror proved interesting, but I think it worked well in a bathroom setting as it helped reflect the emptiness of the small space.

In terms out sound, the space had a lot of echo and so I’ve cut the original sound and overlayed a buzzing sound and differing sound effects. It was also by chance but I thin Annick’s clothing matches the environment and blends her in, in a way that is aesthetically pleasing. I like that she doesn’t seem to stand out, but almost become apart of the space.

The thing I like most about this is watching a person interact with their environment. I’m slowly realising that I love location and character and seeing how these work together.

This shoot was a spur of the moment sort of experience because of the interesting smoke we came across when filming outside of class. It forced me to think how you could film smoke in a high-lit environment. I found myself shooting from a lower angle in order to see the smoke rise and drift over the pavement. Again I tried to colour grade these shots as our white balance was off in a few of the shots. I’ve noticed how quickly I move through the set up before filming and don’t put enough emphasis on adjusting the white balance in order to get a perfect shot. This exercise had some sort of time limit as we didn’t know how long this truck would be there, however it would have been preferable to get one perfect shot than a lot of lesser quality shots.

This shoot was beneficial because I learnt how much lighting can effect each shot and how you have to adapt to the light. I think bad lighting really ruined these shots and draws the eye away slightly from the interesting smoke visuals. However I understand more how to frame each shot and cover more bases in terms of how many shots I’m shooting. I don’t think I want to focus on outdoor shooting for the moment as the lighting was difficult to adapt to and the environment isn’t as intimate. Overall I don’t really like how this shoot turned out, except for maybe the framing of the truck within the shots.

The same goes with the second shoot we did on the same day. I don’t think enough effort went into obtaining the white balance and taking care in each shot. Im not a big fan of the zoom we captured and how we didn’t seem to have a focus.

I was sort of unclear about the expectations of these exercises and what we were supposed to achieve as a group. We decided to begin be filming some experimental shots and locations as this may be our only opportunity to experiment and perfect. A location that involved interesting lighting was chosen and Tim, Gabe and Mia walked within these lighting panels that appeared on the ground. It was difficult to know how to position this shot, I would have liked to get a few more variations of the same action maybe, and even more angles of the same location as editing this footage became hard. Post production becomes a lot more difficult when you have fewer shots to actually cut. We decided to not focus on sound and just record footage but again I feel in hindsight that sound would have been helpful to connect these images and create a cohesive set of visuals. I’ve turned down the sound in the final edit as it didn’t add anything to the final product, and replaced it with ambient sound effects. I attempted to colour grade this footage and darken the shots to highlight the shadows rather than the people, however I’m not sure how much this actually works.

This particular shoot made me realise that you need to go in with a plan when shooting. We sort of just started filming anything and then ran with it, but for myself this proved difficult because I didn’t know how many shots we would need or even what we were trying to achieve. I did enjoy the experimentation of lighting and how different visuals were created with people walking amongst this lighting. I think the key for this shoot was to experiment as much as possible, however I would have like to have gotten more shots within the same environment in order to make editing a more interesting process.

I’ve always really enjoyed watching films that are artistically and visually beautiful. The set and costuming that work together in a way that makes you look past the actual narrative or even the acting. Along with the framing of the shot I think its so important that the character within a shot matches the environment that they are within. This of course is only because I want a shot to be aesthetically beautiful an to make it known that I as the director have thought about what is important to the visuals of the shot. Wes Anderson is an obvious example, in his ability to create a clear colour palate and style his films around a certain set of colours. I admire his attention to the artistic visuals of his films and I really would like to investigate this too. It’s interesting to see how the location and costuming work hand in hand. The textures of the elements within the frame seem to highlight and frame the character and the same goes for the costume.

I’ve come to realised how much I can’t stand poor costuming choices. I think costume is as important to the mise-en-scene as any other element and adds so much to the aesthetic of a shot. I find that costume must work with the location that it’s within, whether it be through similar colour pallet or appropriateness to the setting. Costume doesn’t need to be too extreme or wonderfully crazy just as it doesn’t have to be overly grungy and tattered however i believe it has to work within the location and environment it’s in. Again Wes seems to do costuming very well and his location and colour pallet all work hand in hand.

https://vimeo.com/123576331

This video essay is really interesting and highlights a lot of the parallels between Wes Anderson and Yasujiro Ozu. I find both of these directors have exciting and beautiful ways of showing narrative. I love the hard angles and tracking that is executed in shooting and framing of each shot. The formulaic way that Anderson presents each shot and the visuals within it is striking, it almost highlights each and every element of the mise-en-scene so that audiences don’t miss a thing. As the essay states, we have a sense of spatial awareness and I seem to link this to the beauty of the location. These particular camera movements give focus to the location and characters moving within the location, and to me there is something really exciting about following a character.  I haven’t seen much of Yasujiro Ozu’s work however after watching this essay I began to watch more of his work. What I found enjoyable about Ozu’s work is the aesthetics of the location in the shot and the structured nature of each scene. What’s actually in the shot is just as important as how it is shot, and i think this is going to be more of a focus for me as i continue to experiment. Maybe this is something I could learn to appropriate and maybe adapt in my own way.

This exercise was a lot more interesting to me as it had a creative prompt. I found it helpful to direct a scene that enables an action and an actor. As a group we found the most visually interesting location was a lot of elements within it to position out shot within. The stairs of building 13 allowed for a lot of abstract shapes and angles within the shot. We directed Mia to walk down the stairs and talk on her phone. I realised in editing that we should have coordinated and planned out the entire scene and with angles we were going to shoot before we actually shot them. In editing the blocking that was decided halfway through shooting, wasn’t matched in each shot that was recorded. So out actress (Mia) was walking in different directions and it didn’t seem to flow as easily in post production. Another thing I noticed in post was our inability to notice everything in the frame when shooting. A tripod leg can be seen in shot and we didn’t notice this on the small monitor when filming, I think a lot more care should be taken before we start recording. I’ve learnt how important the preparation of a shot is through this exercise. Whether is be, blocking, framing and even extras coordinating (which we didn’t actually have a lot of control over this time, but could look into for the next exercise).

In post production I’ve found royalty free music to match with the footage. The 3 shot footage, enabled me to make more of a ‘story’ or ‘narrative’ and I think music confirms the narrative. I feel as if an element of mystery is confirmed through the music. The audience must drawn their own conclusion in what is happening between the character and whoever they are talking to on the other end of the phone. I didn’t choose to colour grade or adjust an lighting settings as I really like the way the footage has turned out in an aesthetic sense.

I’ve realised another reason why I liked this 3 shot footage more than the previous footage because Mia’s clothing seems to match the environment that she’s within. I’ve noticed that the visuals within a shot are very important and part of those visuals includes costume. I’ve noticed in crappy music videos and a lot of bad short films the costume doesn’t seem to be considered much or when it is, it doesn’t it into the environment of location that it is being filmed within. I’d like to work on understanding the aesthetics of a shot, one of which is the costumes in a shot.

• First Experimental Plan

The writing exercise from week three prompted me to look at location, action and person. I had never thought very explicitly at these three element that make up a shot, I always seem to just bunch them together and begin filming something without paying attention to each individual element. Writing my first Experimental Plan forced me to think how these three elements can create something interesting. I wanted to take a seemingly mundane action, location and person and create something interesting.

Aims: Someone has turned up to a lecture early/late. I want to show the disappointment and the solidarity of the character through the environment they are within. I want to belittle the character through the location and use a wide camera angle to exacerbate this. I want the scene to be really well lit, with bright white light that contrasts the character and very crisp, silent sound.

Shot List:

1. INT- Mid shot: Side angle- Doorway

• Character enters shot running, stops once entering the doorway.

2. INT – Wide shot: Front angle – Lecture Theatre Seating

• Character walks into frame from bottom left of the frame. Sits in seat, dumps their bag.

3. INT – Close Up shot: Side angle – Lecture Theatre

• Character opens their bag and removes a bag of chips

4. INT – Wide Shot: Front angle – Lecture Theatre Seating

• Character is eating the chips slowly and sighs

These two abstracts (i.e. sound and footage) were shot separately and I was not able to be in class when the abstract sound was recorded. Thus I found this exercise frustrating in a directorial sense. I was not able to mesh these two abstracts together in a way that I had hoped, I feel like there is a strange randomness to how the images panned out. I understand the exercise had a technical focus but I don’t believe I’ve successfully put these to mediums together in a creative way. However having said this, it forced me to be able to understand how sound and footage work together. I feel as if some sort of correlation in the mediums must be sought, whether it be in mutual location or in meaning.

This exercise was difficult in a create sense, I didn’t feel like I was drawn to any narrative or any meaning when choosing the locations of the shoot. However the locations we did shoot were a lot ore interesting when people were in them. I found it more desirable to shoot people in an environment than to just film an object within an environment. An interesting visual to me it watching how people react to being film and to the presence of a camera. I realised I love seeing this happen on camera.

It was difficult knowing how to start editing this, I found no particular process could be taken. I just overlaid the most sound to opposite visuals (i.e. the running water sound over the visual of people walking around at RMIT). Looking at these shots in post made me understand that I had not yet mastered white balance, and I need to take more care when setting up a shot to get the correct white balance. Overall I’ve realised what kind of focus I like to have when shooting and how I can place myself within an environment in order to get those shots. I will continue to experiment filming people within an environment and capturing different types of spaces.

Action Listen

• Conversation on the phone
• Scrolling on a computer
• Scrolling on a phone
• Sitting on train
• Hitting yourself on the edge of a table
• Running
• Putting the washing on the line
• Writing notes
• Opening your backpack

Location List

• Bathroom
• Lecture Theatre
• Train platform
• Bus stop
• Hallway
• Waiting room/reception area
• Stairwell
• Grocery Isle

Person List

• Pippa: Stuck the middle
• People at work: Daily routine
• Sean: Working towards something

I want to work on trying to find really interesting people more so than any other area. Looking at people I may not know, or are not close to me in any particular way.

Claudia O’Doherty is a female comedian and writer from Sydney’s whose web series I recently stumbled upon. The web series featured on the UK’s channel 4 as 3, 5-7 minute episodes under the heading of “What is…”. ‘What is England’, ‘What is Jack the Ripper?’, and ‘What is time?’, each hosted by the character of Claudia, the daughter of a travel consultant whose business is going under. The series first got my attention because of its great way of integrating comedy through its editing style. The raw and slow pace of editing, for example crappy style, cut out edits of O’Doherty into a scene or even using slow edit transitions, emphasise her style of comedy. It really interests me how much of the editing can create comedic timing and emphasise different character traits. I noticed while watching as well the different types of shooting techniques, the slow zoom in and out. These are powerful ways of entering other elements into a shot and seem to create comedic visuals.

The actual aesthetic of the series is really individual as well, another example of how a sense of hilarity is created. The costume, bright ambient lighting, focal length and characters position within the shot are all done in an almost 90’s style and in a bleak overly dramatic way. It is interesting to see that lighting alone helps to add a comedic effect to the show. In the shot features very few props and a fairly plain background, which highlights the theatrical nature of the character and amplifies the characters desires to the audience. As mentioned in class, I can now see how important it is to understand what you want within a shot and what you choose to leave out. The actual movement and blocking of Claudia’s character within the shot are significant too, and she seems to stay centred, as if she is the protagonist in a theatre production.

The parts of each episodes in which the character ventures out of the studio, for me, are less interesting and lose this raw editing style and aesthetic. Although her character and dialogue are still highlights of each scene, the ambiance of the studio shots and insert editing are lost, which for me are the most entertaining and enjoyable parts of each episode. I forget that so much of the entertainment of a show comes from the format, the shooting and the actual cutting together of it, rather than just the characters and performance. I want to learn more ways to create a shot that amplifies a comedic situation or character through lighting, blocking, camera angels, focal length etc.

Going out and using the camera was such an epiphany for me. I have used cameras and sound equipment many times before but wasn’t at all sure what I was actually doing. Talking through what white balance does and different functions within the camera helped me understand the process of setting up a shot and how you can eliminate difficulties in post production and editing. It was really helpful to know how long it takes to set up a shot and understand your blocking in order to create accurate run sheets on shooting days.

Another thing I noticed was how important blocking is within a shot. The aesthetics of the actual location go hand in hand with the actor within the shot and where they will positions themselves and how they will move and converse. Different focal lengths and camera positions enable different meaning and can focus an audience on a particular aspect of a character or action.

I found that when I was setting up a shot like in our first exercise (i.e. no subject in shot), a certain amount of chaos within a shot was interesting and the background becomes the object and focal point of the shot. However once a subject or person is put within a shot the background can becomes to overwhelming and the subject is lost. This obviously can be the desired affect in some cases, if you want to create a busy scene have you actor morph into a sea of landscape and people, but when you don’t want this, the actual location becomes really important in isolating or capturing the character and to appropriately defining what you want in the character.

This Tuesday’s class saw us film shots to edit, and once again this forced me to think more attentively about how to block and capture the shot. We found that to keep continuity flowing, we need to make sure the blocking had be planned before filming has started and we need to know each camera position and when each shot will occur between the duration of the blocking. It definitely made me think that the more amount of shots we have will enable an easier editing process and a more fluid transition of movement within the different shots.