The first workshop of the week, we had a mini consultation with Paul in groups of 5 to express our ideas that we would like to explore for our final assignment.

To be brutally honest, I came out of the discussion with more questions in my head than going in. Which may not be a bad thing actually? I went in with this idea on working with the letterbox and how it functions in making something look cinematic. However, I didn’t have much of an idea on how am I going to experiment with the uses of a letterbox other than shooting something cinematic and slapping on the letterbox and see how it goes. (Obviously, that’s how it works…)

I’m thinking of exploring the other factors that makes an image cinematic, and I would use the letterbox as a platform or an aid.  The previous exercise, made me realised the use of colour could cue various settings, mood, environment, and so on. For example, the colours yellow or orange, could be related to warmth, happy, peaceful, or accomplished and the colours blue, or green, could be related to being cold, hostile, eerie, or sick. And striking a balance of HSL (Hue, Saturation, and Lightness), is definitely something not to be taken lightly in the cinema world, or in any video production. Hence, I would attempt to explore using colour and the letterbox in a cinematic image to see how they function as a whole, and also as individual elements of an image. At this very moment, I’m still struggling to come up with an idea of what I am going to shoot, or how am I going to shoot, but I would like to employ some basic lighting techniques to achieve a properly exposed image, to allow more headroom for colour grading, instead of just adjusting the contrast to the right exposure.