In this week’s lecture we got into the nitty gritty of fundamental film making techniques. One of the lecturers, I think his name was Liam…? I am terrible with names, but lets get back on track now. He was exploring the idea of changing the order of shots to produce a variety of effects on the audience.

The first image shown was a potato with a large sprout diverging to the right. He then immediately jump cuts into the next image which was an oddly similar placement and shape of Donald Trump caught in the wind. A very “candid’ photo of the President I would add. The switch between photos produced a very comedic effect, and the whole class was in a state of laughter. I had a little chuckle I must admit. Even maybe a little tear…maybe… Does not take a lot to make me laugh to be quite frank.

Similar Idea to Donald and the Potato URL: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/d9/e8/75/d9e87594cd266c8cb7b3832a8a52487d.jpg

If the lecturer were to put Donald Trump first and showed the potato second, I do not think the comedic impact would be on the same level. Having the potato first would set up the Donald Trump photo for a greater punch line, because it would be much more unexpected.

Ploughing through the lecture we were given a narrative exercise to do. A bunch of writing was jumbled up and we had to figure out the order of the story. This was a complicated exercise, and the fact that no one finished further proves that it was not a simple task. We later discuss the exercise and it was common for everyone to use common formalities of basic story writing to fit the pieces together.