Coming into Tuesday’s class, my only real goal was to create some sort of dynamic moving shot and focus on the framing as well. A lot of the time if I do a moving shot the framing falls apart because I’m more focussed on keeping the subject in the shot. I like watching movement on camera especially when the camera is also in motion, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do to explore that idea as best I could. While we were shooting Justin’s scene (which looked ace) in Building 9, I noticed that the lighting in the elevators was pretty interesting and conceived a basic tracking shot that follows a character into an elevator, waits with him, and then departs as he does. I was quite happy with the end product, especially in regards to my goal of maintaining a good frame throughout. The highlights and shadows in the shot interacted together and had an attractive symmetry.

It was also a good experience to work with directors who really knew what they wanted to do. A lot of group activities in class become more collaborative – the director doesn’t specifically have a ‘vision’ as such but is often simply striving for practical coverage, so everyone chips in. These exercises were helmed by directors who had a specific focus, which made everyone’s work easier as it was made more clear.

I think the one major thing to take away from Tuesday’s class was the need to be organised – there was too much of a fuss at the start of class trying to split up into groups and it detracted from our shooting time. We should probably try to get a bit better and organising ourselves before we have to shoot /real/ stuff.