By this time I should have ‘concrete’ ideas about what i wanna do.

I Reckon I have a lead but its nothing that the world hasn’t seen/ explored. I just wanna keep practicing my camera skills and hopefully expand my arsenal of tricks in the end. And getting a positive review of my first scene was encouraging.

So i’ll just pick up where i left off and get as far as i can with it. I’ll make a few more scenes and have different goals/constraints fitted to them.

We learnt about lighting on Wednesday, or at least a bit more about it. Using black and white cardboard for definition and fill lighting. techniques I surely want to use for a ‘tense’ or a climactic dialogue.

I only realised after Paul mentioned it that the camera has to capture the subject in-front of the window and so that it works as fill lighting and its lit slightly. where as if the camera were against the window facing only the subject, it could be overexposed and have no definition and can’t tell the detail of a person’s face.

Spot lighting i think is pretty cool. when the room is dark and the sinister character slowly looks up into camera. you can see everything on his face apart from the eyes. its like staring into the abyss. I don’t quite know how to achieve that affect, but it sure is something i wanna play around with.

In my other class there was a presentation about morality in film. Is it ‘okay’ to show movies of the holocaust and documentaries of murderers, have we been desensitised to take in things as they are given and accept that reality? The topic of 9/11 came up and the teacher said the first time it was presented in the news it was like very ‘stormship trooper-esque’ meaning to say that it was hard to tell the difference between a fictional event or if its the news. Towers falling down and words in bold shouting ‘WAR!!”. It is a funny play on how we accept things and how reality is presented. one of the other questions were ‘is a tracking/dolly shot moral?’. some argue it aids with storytelling, giving the audience a helping hand on where to focus whilst immersed in the world of film.

Tracking shots are also pretty effective when used to its full potential. Orson welles like. Long takes that lasts for minutes then its as if the camera flew away to capture other spaces in the film.

Conclusion:

In spite of my misdirection. Through all my pondering, I realised that I want viewers to feel as if they were present at that very moment. As if we, the viewers, breathe the same air, live in the same space and time is flexible but very much intact. Thats how I immerse myself in movies/series, after a whole week of Game of Thrones I don’t leave the tv room/laptop knowing and realising I’ve watched a well produced finely casted and amazing plot. I leave having felt as if I had experienced, LIVED and survived an evolving middle-earth where everyone you love dies eventually.

So my research will proceed with clearer aims and in turn bolder constraints. the camera work will be based off the fly on the wall technique mostly, and branching from that would be a peeping tom style like David lynch loves doing, very voyeuristic and somewhat intimate? the camera as our eyes, we watch life unfold and bloom whilst you just sit on the side.

I also remember an exercise from earlier in the degree. where we had to record a clip as if we were an animal I did; a fly, a rat and an ant. Having watched Citizen Kane recently, i can’t help but notice his odd camera direction. Low angles and wide frames. But nevertheless marvellous and meticulous by none other than Orson Welles. So I will make a script utilising low angles and make this “Reel”, pun intended.

Fig.1, this shot reminds me of the animal angle exercise. feels like were so small watching all these big important people talk about important stuff.