Today was our first class of The Scene in Cinema. It was good to see Robin again and lug out the ol’ Sony EX3. We started by going through the basics of camera operations. Firstly by setting up the tripod and camera, practicing panning and tilting and then adjusting the focal length, aperture and focus.

Later on we watched a student video which displayed some great creative coverage. I found it compelling not because of what happens within the film but how it goes about capturing it. The shots are quite lengthy but they are made interesting with various dramatic techniques for instance the use of perspective within the film. An example of is a shot where there are a triangle of people all looking at one of each other and switches to each of their perspectives. It’s a fantastic effort that this film was created in one day by students like us.

Clockwork orange displays a lot of locked off wide shots with everything in focus. The wide angle lens reduces the amount of shots they need to cover the scenes. There is so much detail and information in a single shot that it isn’t necessary to quickly cut between various angles etc.

We compared this to a similar scene in ‘A Lucky Man’ where basically the same thing is happening but the coverage is very different. There are a lot more shots, many which are tighter and have a shallower depth of field to direct our focus. Furthermore, the shots aren’t all locked off, there is some camera movement and zoom.

Both of these films depict a similar scene in a very different way. Both are incredibly interesting in their own way. Comparing them reminds me about how the same topic in film can take so many different forms which results in a totally different piece of media.