Woooh! New semester, fresh and exciting!

Well, reflective writing again….

Let me talk about what I have learnt in the first class of Media 5. First day class, we started to shoot with a camera and a tripod to create a short scene. This assessment requires us to use a single shot to cover a fictional story through the lens (Techniques: Panning and Titling Only).

Well, this story is about three people are in trouble with a tension. Henry is the boss of a business company. Maria (maybe this is a wrong name, sorry I’m really bad at names), Henry’s wife, is kind of worried. Steve, an assistance, is being panic for the situation.

When I got this task and read the provided story, the first thing came into my mind was mise-en-scene (putting everything into the scene). Because of the technique requirement, I consider the position of characters is able to reveal the relationship of among them. For example, how do I tell audience that Henry and Maria are a couple on screen? I think a position can easily provide these information. Another good example shown on Friday’s lecture was one of those shots in a film called ‘Margaret (2011)’. As we clearly see here, the relationship of the actor and the actress is built because of their  position. A long shot includes the actor on the foreground, and a bus door is kind of a ‘frame in the frame’ to pick out the actress on the background. I think how you compose the shot really affect how audience would think it about.

And the last thing I want to add, which I just realise, is composition. The position of characters actually is composition of the frame, I think. Therefore, in a single shot, a good composition would give a easy way to audience to receive the information onscreen.