For this analysis, I have chosen a movie from Damien Chazelle film La La land. The film tells the story of two people pursuing love and realizing their dreams. The ending is painful but also more realistic.The lens language is centered on singing and dancing, and there are a lot of shots. One is the use of long shots combined with song and dance, such as the opening of the highway segment, the heroine and girlfriends at home in the fragment and party scenes, etc.; the other is the use of color: on the one hand, shape the characters, express the theme; on the other hand Pay tribute to the golden age of Hollywood, make the movie more romantic and dreamlike, increase the visibility.

The film focuses on the story of the male and female protagonists. The actor’s clothing is usually based on black and white gray three-color shirts, suits, and other color tie, from the style to the color are relatively single.But Mia, the actress played by Emma Stone, differed in her personal style from the color to the style of her dress. For example, when she was attending a party, she had a navy blue dress. The high saturation blue had a strong visual impact and was a symbol of noble color. This not only shows that Mia hopes to receive attention, but also has higher requirements as well as reflected the fact that later Mia was indeed returning.

Starting with the appearance of the classic yellow skirt of the film, the bright colors mean that the relationship between the two people quickly warmed up at the party. Miadol in love is then dominated by youthful warm-colored dresses, such as those that appear in shredded cut-apart dating pieces: pink, lavender, and light-colored florals. These warm, romantic colors or patterns coincide with the Mia mentality in love, visually shaping a happy girl in love.

The primary colors of red, yellow, blue, and green are used as the main colors in the film, in which there are both prominent monochromatic features and no shortage of three or four color contrasts. From the protagonist costume to the scene props, including some lights, etc. For example, the heroine is bright yellow, navy blue skirt, colorful costumes of the extravaganza in the song and dance. However, this bold use of color does not give people a sense of abruptness, personally think that the film from the high saturation and hitting the use of sophisticated techniques.

One is the large background of the bottom surface and some of the characters or objects collide with each other. The colors are relatively single, and the collisions are mostly two colors. For example, the top of the hill dances with a large area of ​​the blue-purple base and the hero’s yellow and white costumes are contrasted. The former is less bright and the latter is bright. The combination of front and rear colors is not only unobtrusive, but it gives people a visual impact.
The use of large areas of color and light in the film is deeply influential, as if the entire frame is full of artistic colors. This is not a common movie picture. For example, after Mia’s interview was frustrated and returned to her home to take a bath, she wiped the pieces of the mirror by hand. The red light filled the entire picture. Romantic and dreamy, the failed Mia looked at herself in the mirror and tried hard to smile.

This fragment comes from Sebastian playing the piano in the restaurant. He is not satisfied with the rule of the restaurant owner and plays a favorite song. At this time, a beam of light shines on the man’s body at the upper left of the picture, and the surrounding light is dimmed. At this time, the change in the picture also reflects the change of the male heart. As teacher said, we should think of how to use light and image to describe a story. You will be deeply attracted by the picture and the light and bring it into the scene.

In our daily lives, we will see a variety of lights. For example, at home, we will see a lot of warm light, all the colorful lights in the casino, including warm and cold light. And most of the government agencies are cold in a single color. Different light qualities and colors also produce different effects. The warm yellow light in the home represents warmth and love, while the entertainment venue needs to create different effects to satisfy different people. For example, blue represents depression, red represents sex and passion. The cold light of a single color may represent tension and seriousness. Lighting in the film is not only to illuminate the environment, but also to create an atmosphere that indirectly expresses the character’s inner feelings and also expresses the director’s intention. The movie comes from life and is higher than life. The same is true for lighting, and the lights in movies are hard to see in real life because of the need for post-processing to make the picture more vivid. Although some of the natural light in life can be used, more of the movies use artificial light sources. The reason for which lights are necessary in filmmaking is that film, and to an even greater extent video, does not respond to light the same way our eyes do. Specifically, film and video see things in a much more contrasty way. In other words, they cannot cope with the lighting contrast of real life. In any case, there is more to cinematography than simply making the actors visible and photographing them. For top results, the mood of the film must be carefully crafted with lighting, amongst other things.

This week we did two exercises, one of taking control of the depth of field, another shooting a small clip using Robbin’s script in order to compare two different shots so that we could get inspriation in this process.
As the exercise 2 instruction, focal length, lens aperture and the distance between the object and lens, these three factors could directly influence to depth of field. To achieve the shallowest depth of field, we just follow the guide to adjust three factors at first, while when we play it on the monitor, we found that the depth of field is not particularly noticeable. So we made a small change of people sitting in front of camera. We let Aria sit behind Dan but not close, then camera focus on Dan’s face, so you could see in the monitor that Aria is already in the depth of field.

We think this way could make much more contrasts between the object and background because if there is nothing on the background, there is not contrast. Perhaps you could not seperate which is greater or shallower the depth of field in your first mind. I think this belongs to framing to make setting up first before recording. This method is similar to photography. But the most important factors to achieve the changes of depth of field are focal length, aperture and the distance. We also find the ND filters could affect the greater the depth of field. Nd filter 2 could achieve the same effects that small aperture do. For my perspective of the depth of field, it is likely to make three dimensions on the screen to let audience see more details on the image/video.

For the small clip, we film called “Mullins Returns”, which involves a wide shot and two medium close-up each character. On the first day, We made mistake because we did not completely understand the requirement. We just shoot each character in one location with wide shot and MCU’s. After we’ve done this, we realised that it should shoot in different location and then to match each other. So Brews and I decided to borrow the equipment to shoot again in the next day. However, these two days weatehr is different, first day was sun day but the second day was cloudy. That means we should manipulate the white balacne so that the second day clip could match the first day that we did. Actually we need more color temperature on cloudy day, but we could not use any light sources to copy the first day light because this is in outdoor, it is impossible to do that. I turned the white balance 5600k to 6000k. This time we shoot in different location, still medium close-up. However, one more thing should be noticed for us, the sun light comes from the head top in the first day and we are sit in the shadow area, you can see clearly which is key light, fill light. In the second day, because of the weather we may not shoot the same scene but we could adjust the aperture to make up for the lack of light(F1.9-F4). Also, we shoot a close up with 56 focal length to achieve shallow depth of field, because the more shallower depth of field, audience would get less detail. So it is easy to match other clips，the audience is also hard to find the difference. From this process, I summed two points. One of is if you get wrong clips that can not be used. This approach could be a good way to shoot again. Noticing the light direction and try best to use shallower the depth of field. The ND filter and gain could be pretty helpful to control the exposure. The last thing is change the white balance that could match others. Another point is good editing could trick brain. As we did, we choose completely different location to shoot two characters, we just put these clips together to create a dialogue atmosphere, but the fact is we are talking to the air each other. Although we see a picture／video frame, the brain automatically generates a complete story structure. I think this may be the charm of the movie.

As we did in the last week, we’ve interviewed each other. However, this time we could use the white and black bounce board to reflecting the sunlight from the window. To begin this take, we’ve set up the camera position and make the subject sit in the right place so that the key light hit the interviewer’s face. I believe that the medium shot could be a better way in a frame when we do some interview work. First of all, we used the white bounce board on the left side of Aria so that the sunlight could reflecting her face to be a shadow area. Then, we put the black bounce board to her background to absorb some reflecting light from the back window. Then, we got the Aria facial features clearly. Then we try some different changes of the reflecting angles. However, the results are unsatisfied to me, there is only one angle of reflecting that looks excellent on the screen. I would like to shape more shadow areas between her nose and eyes but the environment light that I can not control.

In the tutorial, we learned some interesting knowledge of how to put the key light, fill light and back light. Even it involves some physics knowledge of the bulb power that I did not understand, but I finally knew how to put the white and black bounce board around the subject. I guess I need do more practical works to grasp this technique. For instance, if I do a interview work, I should know where the key light shot is, put the fill light and back light in a correct place, and properly use a different kind of light.

Upon reflection from this exercise, I believe that this practical exercise has great advantages. We have tried to shot subject without the luminous modelled and shot with luminous modelled, which two different shot environments contain the bounce board. I learned the using way of the board so I can shot everywhere even there is no artificial light.

New year, new studio. First of all, I was excited to study this course because as long as the movie-related topics I like. For this course, I would like to develop an ability of control lighting in everywhere, to exactly know what the exposure is and adjust the aperture. From the last class, I recognized that the lighting is not a simple thing like we seen all day. It was a little complicated, we should know where the light direction from when we are filming. And I think different angles light could shape the characters facial features and inside emotion.

In the first class, we were enabled to take camera and tripod to shoot a single-shot, which is an interview with a fellow group member. In this process, we noticed that there should be a distance between the subject and camera, and also set up the subject position, so that we could put the sunlight properly to the subject face. The result was great, we did good exposure and we can see clearly on the screen, the sunlight across the window and it puts to the human face. There is a triangle shadow between the eyes and noise. Also, the background and subject have a contrast which stresses the key to the image. In the second class, we’ve watched some movies which produced by last century. I guess that is the beginning of the film light. We learned some terminology words for film light, like the soft light, hard light, key light, fill light, side lit, front light and back light. We also talked about the aperture, the high aperture needs more light, low aperture needs little light. I guess the next step we would learn how to shoot people with different angles from lighting sources.

I’ve watched a movie named Schindler’s List which filmed by Steven Spielberg.

This scene is in a church. People are not allowed to do business in the street, so they go to church pretend to pray but for business. In the image, these two guys don’t know each other.
The protagonist wants to buy some merchandise from the people behind. I guess there are two light sources. The main light is from the seller’s head top, and it’s hard light as well. We could see the hard light shoot their shoulder and sleeve, it is very bright. Another light source is on the left of the image, that is the soft light because the seller’s face shot Black and white by soft light. I guess the reason for light setting is to present a kind of insight emotion because this is illegal. He was thinking to do or not. Also, there are shades of the face which causes a kind of tension. The protagonist’s face has more brightness that means he doesn’t scared of the rules.

I like this painting because the light is strong and it shoots more shadow of subjects.
The light hits the statue at a low angle causing the statue to reflect the shadow on the wall. Here represents the mystery of the statue, but also expressed the statue is great in the woman’s heart.