I worked as a cameraman on Liv’s film. From that experience, the hardest part was to track and movement and also adjust the focal length. In the first shot of the film, the focal length had to be quickly, smoothly shortened as the actors were walking toward the camera. Because we were aware of the difficulty of it, we rehearsed a few times before filming. Though we did our best to make sure it looked smooth and professional, it you look closely, there’s still a bit of unsteadiness in the velocity of adjusting the focal length. As they enter the elevator area, the pull on focus length is slightly faster than before. There’s no efficient solution to this, we just need a better tripod or someone who is more trained.
Another difficulty in doing the job of the camera man was to frame in the limited space of the elevator. The camera is placed at the corner of the elevator and I had to squeeze myself into the tiny area so look into the viewfinder. A little problem I noticed is that the third shot, which is the low angle shot of the man coming in with his luggage, does not go well with the previous shot of the two girls in the elevator. I think it’s that the angles of the two shots are too close and it makes it a bit weird and doesn’t seems to follow some kind of cinematic rules. I remember the shot of the luggage is shot from the same position with the camera tilted down. Had it been reset up or filmed from a more different angle, it would have come out looking more natural.
The composition in this shot could have been better if the girl in the middle’s face is shown. She is too close to the camera and takes up too much of the frame that it makes the shot look a bit uncomfortable or unbalanced. But there’s not much I could do to frame with all three actors in the tiny space.
Another problem I noticed is that the facial expressions of the man looks more annoyed than confused and fascinated by the hand cream that it could be misinterpreted as the man is annoyed by the two girls speaking a foreign language. Though it is not what the observation about at all. Had the man shown a more interested look, with less frowning, the cross cutting would have made more sense and less likely to be misinterpreted.