Three Minute Proposal:
“By reproducing the object from an unusual and striking angle”, writes Rudolf Arnheim,” the artist forces the spectator to take a keener interest, which goes beyond mere noticing or acceptance. The object thus photographed sometimes gains in reality, and the impression it makes is livelier and more arresting.”

I appreciate Wong Kar-wai’s films a lot. Wong’s film’s have developed a number of trademark visual characteristics: the use of distorting wide-angle lenses, the use of highly kinetic, flashy, hand-held camera, unusual shooting angles and camera movements. The audiences’ attentions are aroused. The shooting of hand-held camera highlights the authenticity and impresses others.

In the daily shooting, I always chose the shooting angle unintentionally. in most cases, I haven’t pay enough attention to the expression of camera angles. That is so say, I have only filmed the shape and appearance of the shooting target clearly. As for whether it has any significance or is most impressive or not, I haven’t fully noticed. Actually, camera is usually just a recording tool.

In Bela Balazs’s book –Theory of the film, he wrote:

“Every object, be it man or beast, natural phenomenon or artifact has a thousand shapes, according to the angle form which we regard and pin down its outlines. In each of the shapes defined by a thousand different outlines we may recognize one and the same object, for they all resemble their common model even if they do not resemble each other. But each of them expresses a different point of view, a different interpretation, a different mood. Each visual angle signifies an inner attitude. There is nothing more subjective than the objective.”

Through shooting practice of previous six weeks, I am really confused on camera angles and movement. So, in the following weeks, I am interested in investigating and testing on it, and investigating the importance between them to create a good scene.

To achieve that, I need to view more films and analyze some of the scenes over again and again. I am going to study the techniques of shooting angles and camera movements. How does this influence the audience and the scene. How to express characters via camera angles. After that, I will attempt to shoot some scenes with my learned techniques. Different camera angles, techniques and movements will be applied to help me find my own shooting style and a camera angle that I like. Just like the individual exercise in week6, I attempt to film one shot with the hand-held, a medium close up tracking the girl’s inner world, nervous, do not know what to do. As Wong Kar-wai said, hand-held shooting makes the picture look real and makes the audience feel that they are personally on the scene. In the following few weeks, I will find 2-3 actors to cooperate with me. I will select a script and set up a location in rmit and try to use a different camera angle and movement to complete this script, then edit and have an analysis. After that, I will use another camera angle and movement to re-shoot the same script, then edit and perform analysis.

Overall, I need to do a number of analyzes on camera angle and movement in the scene to achieve my goal. Shoot, re-view, re-cast even, change the location and shot again, edit again and analyze whether it significance or it impressive, in order to found how angle and movement coverage the scene.