The Scene In Cinema 2021 | Reflective Writing 4

In this week’s class, we analysis the camera coverage of 6 clips and explore the different ways of making scene interesting. The camera movement design offers interesting to it. In ‘High Low’, the camera coverage is very abundant. There is camera in front and back of the character and detail shots are offered as well. In ‘Night Train’, the use of camera is smart. When girl wipes her eyes, the director let she performance in front of the lens, thus the audience assume she is in front of a mirror, and therefore increase the interest of the scene. Further, the performance of actors are important as well. An attractive performance can really engage the audience and make the scene more interesting.

Furthermore, I also learned that each country has different cultural and aesthetic, therefore different styles of posters are needed to attract the local audience in different countries. For instance, below are the two posters of “Jurassic World” in China and America. The American poster shows the breathtaking size of the park’s newest creature, Mosasaurus and attract the audience with direct visual horror. However, the China poster shows the escaping moment of Chris Pratt, with the most feared dinosaur breaks free and following behind, it’s more storytelling. It might because Chinese cares more about the fascinating plot and sense of substitution and the American cares more about the horror itself.

On Thursday, we discusses the exercise 2. This is my first time to actually film the script and I think I need to improve on the lack of preparation. I just image the camera coverage of the scene in my mind, however, when I’m actually filming, different thoughts just comes to my mind, which makes my work disorder. Thus, to improve, next time I will draw a diagram, floor plan and lists all the scenes I need before shooting. Another problem that Robin mentioned in class, the establishing shot appears twice and the Rachel entry scene appears 4 times. During editing I just put different shot I got together didn’t notice this problem. I like Yuhan Jin’s work very much. I like the old film style, the color and the actors, they are very attractive and real. Although, they are speaking Chinese with english subtitle, there is no big influences. Further, the image proportion, the detail shot and the connection between shots are just perfect! All in all, everyone did a good job!

Thank you very much!

Assignment 1

The Scene In Cinema 2021 | Reflective Writing 1

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/jenna/2021/03/14/the-scene-in-cinema-2021-reflective-writing-1/

The Scene In Cinema 2021 | Reflective Writing 2

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/jenna/2021/03/14/a1-the-scene-in-cinema-2021-reflective-writing-2/

The Scene In Cinema 2021 | Reflective Writing 3

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/jenna/2021/03/19/the-scene-in-cinema-2021-reflective-writing-3/

Descriptive & Analytical Writing 

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/jenna/2021/03/19/descriptive-analytical-writing/

Thank you very much!

In the Mood for Love

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09sYnsT2ENU&t=169s

The scene I choose is from a classical Asian Film called In the Mood for Love, the film tell a story about a women(Mrs Chang) and a man(Mr Chow) whose spouses have an affair together and who slowly develop feelings for each other. I choose this film is because it’s played by very famous actors in China, and I choose this scene because although it is a common restaurant scene, the special camera coverage build the secret atmosphere to the audience.

The director Wong Kar-wai utilize camera movement, the position of the camera and the size of image shows the secret conversation between two protagonists and the inner reflection of Mr Chow. Wong choose to use out focus shot as the beginning and end image of the scene, I think the indistinct image allows the audience to have more space to image and think. There are totally three camera position in the scene, one is at the very back of the restaurant and the other two are facing towards main characters. For the establishing shot, Wong adopts wide angle lens to show the whole environment of restaurant, further, he creates the secret and private atmosphere by positioning the camera behind the chair, with the frame shows almost 1/3 the back of chair and the characters that hiding inside the chairs.

The conversation between two protagonists is showed by cutting two protagonists’ close up shot together, which is a traditional way. At this time, Wong uses a narrow angle lenses showing detail facial expression of two protagonists, which allows the audience to focus on their conversation with no disturb.  However, what different is that Wong adopts a lot panning of camera in the scene. The detail shots of the hands, cigarette and gesture of drinking tea gently is done by panning the camera slowly, which not only shows the gestures of character more naturally but also saves time and machine.

When Mrs Chang asking questions to Mr Chow, instead of cutting the frame back to Mr Chow, Wong chose to pan camera quickly, which enhance the pace of communicate and create anxiety atmosphere to the audience. Moreover, when Mrs Chang asking “what are you getting at?”, Wong makes the camera panning quickly from Mr Chow’s back to inside, which further emphasis this big moment in Chow’s head, this is when he confirm the affair of his wife. I think Wong’s choice of panning shots really makes the conversation far more interesting, it enhance the tension atmosphere and indicate important moment. The far away position of camera in establishing shot and the pan movement of detail shots has been used to disrupt the audience’s attention from the conversation, both way indicates the distance and politeness of the conversation in the scene.

In total, I think different camera coverage helps the director to create different atmosphere and effect he wants. Every coverage is done meaningfully.

Thank you very much!

The Scene In Cinema 2021 | Reflective Writing 3

In Monday’s class, we saw two video clips and discussed how similar situations can coverage differently by different director. Both clips shows a two people conversation at the bar. However, in the gossip girl, the director simply use 4 shots, medium close up shot, close up shot and their reverse shots, through cutting back and forth to show the conversation to the audience, which consist to very traditional way of showing dialogue. The camera position follows the 180 degree rules. The 180 degree rules in the film is basically position the camera on one side of the audiences, in this way, you will get the characters facing each other consist the dialogue scene, otherwise, the characters will look like talking to same side, which confuse the audience. Compare to the gossip girl, the Fire Within shows the conversation with huge amount of different camera angles and positions. Further, it also breaks the 180 degree rule, there is shot connect directly from shooting the front image of two characters to their back but with no strange feeling as an audience. Thus, the 180 degree is can be broken as long as the scene is make senses to the audience. Directors can create similar situations with create different feeling to the audience by using different camera approaches to covering the scene. For the discuss clip Margaret, it’s a more complex situation. I’m a bit confused, the 180 degree changes with the action of characters. From the beginning of the scene, I’m not expecting the shocking accident until the traffic lights shows up twice. Editing the short series of scene together make the pacing quickly and enhance the tension atmosphere to the audience. In the next week, we need to create videos, this exercise focus on the camera angle and position, how to show story with still camera with different position and angle. I haven’t decided to shot which script.

Thank you very much!

The Scene In Cinema 2021 | Reflective Writing 2

In this week’s class, we discussed lens’ angle and focal length of a lens. In Thursday’s class, I understand that short focal length lenses (wide angle lenses) like 10mm will offer a wide field of view, oppositely, long focal length lenses (narrow angle lenses) like 100mm will offer a narrow field of view. Although the narrow angle lenses shows less background image, it allows the audience pay more attention to the details, like the facial expression. Also, the wide angle lenses sometimes will distort the image particularly when you get really close to the object. This can be shown through the clip “I Am Cuba”, the scene start with using wide angle lenses, showing a wide view of the world behind the musicians, also, the image is distorted because the musicians is too close to the lens. In the recommend reading “The Big Picture”, Tom Reilly talks about the constructed of an entire scene and the professional process of film production. From the reading, I understand that there are lots of elements need to consider for director to getting a nice shot, like lighting, acting, camera moves, stage, editing and so on. Further, behind a good scene, the actors have to learn their movement and line timing and the camera operator need to learn the camera moves and the place and every shot detail need to be prepared 3 month ago, which is a huge process. Different approach can be made for getting different effects. For example, in order to get a fast pacing and energy scene, director can achieve it either by performance and shot design or editing. However, the former is extremely important. In my past work, I always focus on the post production part of the video but ignore the early planning and shooting. From now on, I will try to design the shot, consider the camera position, camera angle, the position of characters and their performance to enhance my work. When you are ready in the early stage, you will save a lot of time in the later stage.

Thank you very much!

The Scene In Cinema 2021 | Reflective Writing 1

My first expression of the studio is that it’s a studio talking about filmmaking. I hope to know more technically and theoretical knowledge about filmmaking, especially, the way of achieving esthetic picture through camera position, camera angle, image size, lights and other elements. In this week’s class, I understand the word coverage is mainly means practical concerns that relates with scripts. For instance, before actors go home, director needs to make sure every scenes is covered and there is no more shots need to took. In the class, we also practice to draw floor plan and storyboard depends on the scripts. My group did Exercise D and E, the corresponding video is very similar to what we discussed, except that I missed the word ‘1 single perspective’ and draw lots of different perspective in storyboard. Through the discussion of sharing ideas in groups, I found that although depends on one script, people get different answers. The direction of camera might be different, the way of people moving into the screen might be different, the setting of scene might be different and there is no right or wrong answer. It’s just different ways of showing the story to the audiences through screen and different ways might course different feeling and effects. Further, I realize that it’s also very important to draw a storyboard and floor plan before shooting date because this helps everyone understand what they needs to do and save time on shooting day. In my internship experience, I did lots of video editing job, and my woke mate will always give me a script, includes actors’ lines, camera angles, image size and so on. The script let me quickly understand the kind of video they want to produce and save my times. All in all, I think this class is exactly what I want to learn, the content is very interesting!

Thank you very much!