Today’s class we were in one of RMIT’s theatre classrooms/studios with staging, this is where our Wednesday classes will be taught. It’s refreshing to be in quite a different environment to a regular classroom or a lecture theatre.

In a group of four, we worked on blocking a scene from a set script we were given. I was on cameraperson duties and the three others were the actors. We had put our basic knowledge from yesterday’s lesson put into action again while setting up the camera and preparing for shooting the scene shots.

We were taught to shoot a scene with the most important shot first, the shot which covers the most action. This means that if something goes terribly wrong at some point during the takes, the first shot will have covered the entire scene, but it just won’t have the finer details (eg. mid shots, close ups…) which are secondary to the shot which captures the most action in a scene.

OUR GROUP SHOT LIST ORDER:

1. Wide shot – MAN IN BACKGROUND SITTING AT TABLE, TWO WOMEN AT TABLE CLOSEST TO CAMERA
2. Mid shot – MAN AT TABLE
3. Close up x2 – TWO WOMEN TALKING
4. Panning shot x2 – BOTH PARTIES WALKING IN SEPARATELY

Our group was lucky enough to get some very valuable information from Robin today about contrast and brightness settings on both the camera and the viewfinder. He taught us about camera functions such as ‘zebra’ to measure the correct exposures. We played around with the colour bars to check the shades were right and the viewfinder was showing true to what we would be seeing through the camera. We were also explained the importance of using the manual settings of a camera as the automatic settings can cause inconsistent exposure and add unwanted ‘noise’ or ‘grain’ to a shot.