1.) The disappearing and appearing lady act: panning/ zooming exercise
For our upcoming shoot, our genre is one that is best described as experimental and surreal. I want to create the feel that the Thronbery bowls club is suspended in not only time, but also reality. Some weird things are happening at the bowls club and I think I can convey that with camera movement. For this exercise I had the goal to experiment with panning and zooming with the aim to best introduce someone to a scene. I had an idea how it would look but I didn’t really know how to go about it. The logistics of the actress movements were much easier then I imagined. For the first one – the zoom, I began the shot as a median long shot of my sister sitting beside an empty chair at a table. I had my mum hide behind a pillar out of shot, and then verbally queue her to sneak into the empty chair when I was zoomed in on my sister. (I recorded atmos sound to add over the shot to cover my directions and the sound of the chair scrapping as mum pulled it out.) When I zoomed back out it seemed as if my mum had appeared out of nowhere. I really liked the effect. It worked exactly as I envisioned and has given me the confidence to use it in my shoot. I believe the effect will add to the weirdness of the eerily bowls club aesthetic we are aiming for, and is a much more engaging way to introduce a character then have them just walk into frame. Comparatively I think I like the zoom better then the pan. I feel with the pan it is easier to deduce that the actress just walked to the chair while the camera was panned away.
Since I was interstate for a family affair, and filmmaking was not on the priority list when packing, unfortunately I didn’t have access to a tripod. Consequently the handheld was not a creative decision but one out of necessity. An easy point for improvement, I think a locked off shot would look much better due to less movement in the frame, and therefore look more eerily. Additionally on a tripod the pan would also be much smoother. Also, I wasn’t happy with the joltyness of the zoom, I believe this was a result of using my canon 70d, and could be improved by using the Sonys.
I was happy with framing, I don’t think it was partially good or bad, but was certainly good enough for the purpose of this exercise. I really liked the actress’s decision to act totally bored. Maybe because my family are used to me using them for little films all the time, and they just cant be bothered to do anything interesting when I call action anymore, or maybe now they are just pros. Either way I like it. It makes the ‘appearing mum’ even more weird since no one is acting like anything weird has happened at all.
word count: 515
2.) Light bulb moment
Lighting is bloody tough.
My only experience with lighting has been in interview settings at work, where we aim to light the subject as evenly and as naturally as possible. In class we experimented with using light to convey narrative meaning and add to the cinematic beauty and mood of the shot. We somehow gravitated to creating a moody, bold, dramatic and kinda scary lighting. It was actually really cool. Our end result reminded me on a Game Of Thrones (2011-) season 6, episode 8 scene where Arya Stark Kills The Waif.
The epiphany I had whilst working through this exercise was that I don’t yet have the lighting vocabulary and by extension knowledge. Like at all. It was a quite strange experience to be watching the monitors of the scene, and not be able to articulate what aspects we should change to improve the lighting set up. As an experienced audience member I could, like a robot capable of only seeing the world in 0s and 1s, say if I did or did not like the lighting. I could easily say whether or not it was working, but for the life of me, I couldn’t step up to the c-stand, do this, add that, and change the set up to match my minds eye. It was a weird disconnect. I ended up sitting back and observing the others in the group navigate the lighting set up. Upon reflection I really shouldn’t have let myself sideline myself just because it was hard, I should have jumped in there with the others.
Using light to create a mood, and using light to well… light stuff are two completely different things. The latter is truly an art form and one I am most keen to practise and learn more about.
Sometimes realising how bad you are at something is the best thing that can happen in a learning environment such as our class. I’m looking forward to failing again, and failing better with lighting in the (very near) future.
3.) How exposing
You know how you can have a song stuck in your head for days? This in class exercise did that to me, the song was called “Exposer” – a 2017 Box studio classic.
Exposer is something that is quite foreign to me. I have lots of what sometimes felt like silly, and obvious questions: What is the purpose of exposer? What is exposer? Can exposer be used creatively? I hope to address these questions.
The original purpose of the exercise was to practise pulling focus, however, as we were setting up the exposer, we were recording. (Not quite abiding by the practise of the having everything perfect before hitting record, as Paul told us in our very first lesson.) Consequently, we captured two completely different looks. One where the foreground and subject (Rosie) were exposed properly, while the background was overexposed. The other look was where the background is exposed properly, while the foreground and Rosie are completely underexposed, creating a beautiful silhouette. Can exposer be used creatively? I ask myself again, the epiphany I had whilst working on this exercise was that, yes it can! I totally love the silhouette of Rosie dancing, it’s mesmerising. I can really see myself using this discovery in films in the future. It was also very satisfying to realise through this exercise, that this is how other silhouette scenes are filmed in big movies. It was like finding a puzzle piece that falls into place perfectly- adding to the bigger picture that is my filmmaking knowledge.
More on the knowledge front:
I decided to do a little research into what is exposer. Here’s what I found out. Exposure determines how light or dark an image will appear when captured by your camera. It is determined by three camera settings: aperture, ISO and shutter speed (the “exposure triangle”). I also found an interesting analogy. Comparing achieving the correct exposer to collecting rain in a bucket:
“While the rate of rainfall is uncontrollable, three factors remain under your control: the bucket’s width, the duration you leave it in the rain, and the quantity of rain you want to collect. You just need to ensure you don’t collect too little (“underexposed”), but that you also don’t collect too much (“overexposed”). The key is that there are many different combinations of width, time and quantity that will achieve this. For example, for the same quantity of water, you can get away with less time in the rain if you pick a bucket that’s really wide. Alternatively, for the same duration left in the rain, a really narrow bucket can be used as long as you plan on getting by with less water.”
The imagery of the analogy was really useful in understanding how exposer functions. However, I think there can be no replacing getting behind the camera and, like in this exercise, practising and experimenting.