In Thursday class, we learned lots of basic camera skills in very specific way, such as the usage of tripod, filter, white balance, focus and so on. Because of last semester studio, so I am familiar with those silks. But I think that is a good chance for me to enhance it. Honestly, after a holiday, I forgot a little bit, such as the usage of color bar. But after this class, I deeply remember those skills of camera operation.

We did one small exercise in class, which is one shot for 50 second. This is really different with drama exercise. We have document one real event or place in one position, no panning, no tilting, and no zoom in or out in recording process. As Robin said don’t be lazy, we have clearly observe the situation, and choose a perfect position, rather than just rely on the automatic way. To some extent, this exercise helps us more close to what we want to document. We capture the real things rather than design it. It is pretty difficult. For example, the sitting of white balance is hard to adjust, because the exposure cannot be one hundred percent correct in every second. The reason is that the weather is changing. In one shot, the exposure might change from the correct one to the dark one because of the change of lighting. For this problem, I think because documentary focus on the “real recording”, so we cannot shot again and again, so the change of exposure must exist. The important thing is we should keep it in a reasonable range.

In Friday class, we learned new audio gear. I think it is pretty easy to use. In the class exercise, we use this gear to record sound to describe a place. In my perspective, the key of this exercise is that we need to find symbolic sound of the place. Anyway, I think the fist week we did a good start, I really expect the next week study.