On Tuesday, Joey, Jaden and I grouped up to explore cinematography and how changing that shifts viewer reactions. We tried obscure angles such as dutch angles and shooting a dialogue scene from the perspective of the persons feet. We also shot a dialogue scene where the person talking was not the one being filmed, and it was solely on the person reacting. We compared a stagnant camera with a moving camera. All of these effects seemed silly in production, I’m not sure if it’s the fact that it’s a humorous thing to do or that we’re not professional actors and anything we do likes objectively a bit silly. I like the concept of using cinematography to shoot something comedic, alike The Office, but that be more form than cinematography? But again it’s more so the camera movement that allows you to see the humour, so maybe it is cinematography. I’m still struggling with creativity around this “uncomfortable” concept, but to be honest I’m already uncomfortable with the fact that nothing seems high quality or creative enough so maybe I’m doing the right thing… I’d just like to create some work that feels significant? Or at least successfully subversive. We’ll get there.
Anywho, we decided to keep the same group for Assignment 2, so on Thursday we explored these concepts further and with better equipment and more planning. It’s nice to have other peoples ideas and skills when creating this sort of content, so I’ve enjoyed the collaborative element. We began planning for our 3 videos on cinematography/performance, narrative structure and editing, starting shooting first for our cinematography video. We chose to shoot a creative POV-esque piece, with the camera acting as the person. I think this is a funny way to approach cinematography, so I suppose the subversive element is there, but it does have its downfalls. Such as, with the mic on the camera it messes up the audio when the camera pans away, however this could be solved by using a lapel microphone and matching the audio, so hopefully we’ll look into that for next week. Additionally it does make transitions stunted, which also creates room for discomfort if we chose to go down that path. It is hard with the time limit and our acting skills but I am looking forward to seeing what we come up with. For narrative structure, we’re looking at exploring my previous idea of a backward’s story. So mixing up the timeline and starting the film at the end, then going backwards but leaving room for plot holes and interoperation. This one excites me the most so hopefully we can pull it off.