Consider Sandra’s lecture “Directing Actors” and describe at least a couple of points that you took away from it (even if you’re not the director).

In the lecture, Sandra said we have to cast a right person who has a brain and understands the actual story. Also, we should talk with actors in rehearsal but not on the set. In the rehearsal we need to keep it brief, to find out how much the actors know and let them understand what is the about about. Then we have to avoid crossing the line, we need to prepare well in the shot list and the storyboards.

He might direct the staging of the actors to walk slightly slow and did not make any big movement to let the camera can get a right focus on their faces and also different size of shots that wide shot, then mid shot, mid close up shot then close up shot, and also the background lighting could brighten up the background to be bright and clear. The focus has been arranged when the actors walking in front of the camera and they will be in different distance from camera, so the focus point would be changed when they have different distance with the camera.

In the reading of week 5, I found the this reading is very useful to understand how to operate with the camera. I am responsible for the camera work in the filming project and I found bit difficult to work with that big camera by myself. But this reading have taught me to use the camera, such as find the right focus on the subject or face that I want and how to set up the camera when I film in different places like indoors and outdoors.

And in the week 7 reading, it taught me a lot about lighting. I have learnt some basic concept of lighting in the cinema studies but din’t know how to set up different kinds of lighting at all. And the reading has taught the practical skills to set up and how to do the lighting like background light and different angles of key and fill lighting.

In this Lenny exercise, I have learnt that teamwork is very important, shooting a single shot could not be easy and even in a limited time (during class). We have been going well in shooting because we have done a good preparation before shooting, like setting the tripod and camera, also we have checked the mic and sound mixer were working properly and plugged the cables onto the camera correctly, and one of the group mate made a shoot list to find the easiest and fastest way to finish shooting. And the editing was going well as well because we jet followed the script and the shot list, made the order of lines correct and the scene was quite shot so there was not a big trouble in the whole Lenny exercise.

Lenny ex2 film

In the lighting lecture, I found very useful and it would help my coming shooting because I’m the cinematographer in the group. Before going to this lecture, I had almost no idea about lighting and just learnt some of the basic concepts in cinema studies last year such as soft lighting and key lighting. But here, I have learnt more practical skills of lighting like how to use the lamps, how to use natural light to shoot. Besides, I was inspired by the lecture that lighting is one of the most important things of shooting because when there are the same acting, location, props etc. but different lighting, the atmosphere of the shot will be totally changed.