Reflection 2
In week 2, we talked about the camera department mainly focusing on the focus puller. And also introduce other crew roles like director and director assistant. This class also discussed about the blocking continuing on from last week’s reading. We tried to block a scene in class as well.
During the class, I was asked to place marks and Robin showed me a good way to place clear marks for actors to sit or stand at a right position which is suitable for prop. I got further understanding how important the block is. In this practice, I found out the prepare work the focus puller should do is to mark the different focus points. So in the actual shooting, focus pullers are able to do the focus without monitor or viewfinder which looks hard for me to do because that need to match actors’ movement and also the speed of their movement. That also improve that blocking is essential before shooting, if the camera operator did the rehearsal with actors. They have chance to communicate with each other about the movement which calls cooperation.
What a director does? Seems like a simple question, but it came out that I only think about as a leader. And then I think of that question, director is the most important part in a role crew of film, as I said, director is a leader who communicate with the other crew members and also he is the only to direct the actor. When I was in advanced diploma, we had a class which is about how to direct, there was a part is，how to communicate with your actors well. This is an accomplish study including the art of language. The first assistant director is responsible to the director, this person begins work during pre-production. He serves the needs of the director.
In general, everyone plays an important part in crew roles for a film. And the most important in my opinion, is helpful and effective communication and cooperation.
This week, I read Decoupage, or cinematic segmentation from filmmaker Luis Bunuelwhich is a step by step map used by filmmaker to produce a film. As Luis wrote: ’A film=. A series of shots, A shot = A series of images.’ What I understand to this article is the process in planning the images give the information and emotions of the screenplay. The point is how to connect a series of images which could be said a shot and we connect these shots to represents things that creates a film. Decoupage is quite a difficult theme I need more time to understand. What I think so far is decoupage refers to the editing process which means to cut up. It is an essential part of filmmaking. It’s a big challenge for filmmaker especially cinematographer.