save: Ctrl+S
import: Ctrl+I
Undo: Ctrl+Z
Duplicate: Ctrl+Shift+/
Link: Ctr+l
Select all: Ctrl+A

As we are colour grading our entire film, paste attributes is a handy shortcut so the same colour levels are used in each shot. The shortcut is Ctrl+Alt+V
Mark In and Mark Out are used all the time so their shortcuts are handy also.
Mark in: I
Mark out: O

In this scene of the Coen Brothers ‘Blood Simple’, there is an enormous amount of ambient sound throughout. The volume of these sounds is unrealistically high, helping to heighten the intensity and uneasiness of the scene. The crickets, footsteps and ruffling of the envelope are all examples of these heightened sounds. Silence makes an audience uneasy but so does an abrupt break in this silence.
All sounds in this scene are diegetic, meaning they occur within the world of the film. Non-diegetic sounds like music are completely absent.

Guest lecturer Sandra spoke of some tips on what to do on the day of shooting our films. She told us how to direct actors, not to be judgemental and how an iron fist will only hurt their confidence and offend them. As a director you must be able to properly explain and describe to the crew and cast exactly what it is that you want. Being able to show them exactly how you want something done would be advantageous.

In this scene in Blow Up (1966) Michelangelo Antonioni would have to have blocked out paths for his actors as there is quite a lot of movement and detailed shot compositions and framing. Each movement would have been meticulously planned, this is evident towards the start of the scene when as the woman steps up onto a gutter the camera zooms in slightly to reposition the frame. Because each frame has quite a lot of detail, with support beams and various props in the foreground and background, Antonioni would have directed his actors to move at exactly the right time in exactly the right position as to have them share a frame with this detail yet keep the focus on them. This is also evident in shots where he pans with the actors. He has also kept a wide depth of field for most of the scene, the props in the foreground and background are in focus as well as the actors, this flattens the image in the frame and maipulates distance.

I have taken two points from the ‘Developing a Crew’ section of ‘Directing: film techniques and aesthetics’ by Michael Ragiber.

The first point I took from this reading was the importance of setting out defined roles for everyone in our group. Previous to this process I thought this would be a diffiucult thing to do, I know I stress about things sometimes if they are completely out of my control. The need to assign people to specfic roles really did play an important part during the filming of our short, the importance of paying attention to one specific role and making sure that that one role was done properly and effectively was evident. I enjoyed being able to concentrate on being a DOP and putting trust in the others to fulful each of their roles.

I enjoyed reading about the role of the DOP in this reading as well, partly because this was my role in the film and partly because I still did not have a complete understanding of what is entailed in that role. Having a photography background I wanted to be the DOP as I have had experience in creating the aesthetics within the frame, the DOP was quite a big role but a very fulfilling one.

In the lecture we covered the importance of lighting, and how to use it effectively in our films. We learnt of the capabilities of the white and black boards, and how these enable us to have maximum control over the lighting. By using these in our film we can either increase soft light or take away fill light. We would will definitely need to use either or both of these during our shoot. Because our film was shot outside with minimal powerpoints and an abundance of natural light already, we did not need to add extra artificial lights to light the scene, white boards were used at some points to soften and balance the light on the actors.
In the lecture we also learnt how to focus pull. On the weekend I was looking up various Hitchcock camera techniques and one that I thought could work in our film was called something like a zoom focus, I thought something similiar to this could work in our film. Learning how to do a focus pull was great as we used that on the day of filming.

Our Lenny ex2 excercise was unable to be completed as the footage was lost, however I have still learnt a lot from this experience and from completing the forst Lenny excercise.

-Back up data. Or transfer it to a safe place as soon as shooting has finished.

-Allow more time because shooting will take longer than expected. It started to rain on the day so this hindered both which shots we were able to film and how long it took to shoot the remaining shots. Because of this we ended up scraping a lot of shots and only shot what was completely integral to the storyline.

-Being an actor is really hard, the role of the director is very important as they need to be able to express exactly what they want the actors to be able to do, as well as communicating this to the rest of the team.

-Outlining specific roles is integral to a smooth shoot, everyone should be focused on their tasks running smoothly and is this happens than everything will most likely fall into place.

In the lighting lecture I learnt that you are unable to learn how to be a good lighting technician by reading about it. Learning how lighting works and how to understand and use it correctly requires you to experience it. It is a hands on practical learning aspect of filmmaking and will take a lot of trial and error and experimentation to fully get a grasp on what is involved in using lighting correctly to not just illuminate or unilluminate but to create and set moods and atmospheres. In my opinion this is a good way to learn something, by physically doing something rather than trying to memorise someone else’s experiences enables you to remember it more effectively and also helps to encourage your on experimentation and intuition.

Another point from the lecture that was relevant to our film shoot was the idea of planning our shots around where the sun will be positioned during the day. Our shoot is going to be entirely shot outside and we are also relying on morning light to set the mood and highlight the fact that the story is happening in the morning. We have gone to our location and outlined a schedule where the most neccesary shots to have morning light are filmed first and those that won’t matter as much will be filmed last.