Camera Workshop Evaluations


The Camera Workshops have been a huge help to me, to our group as a whole. It’s helped build trust, team spirit and helped us decide who is really good at which roles. Specifically, Director, Director of Photography and Editor, as well as actor of course but in the actual circumstance of doing a shoot one of us will probably not be acting.

The Sitting Game:

The first workshop we were tasked with doing was for a scene where a person sat down in a chair, the brief was as simple as that, it was up to us to make the story as visually interesting as possible. For our first bit of work as a team, I think it’s not that bad, rough around the edges for sure, there are parts where the footage is a bit over exposed but this was the second time any of us had used the camera so there was bound to be some technical inconsistencies. We made use of our limited set which had a large number of chairs which we used to comic affect implying that the person in the video is a “chair tester” and is sick of their job and has done this many times. The edit I did here I think is a fine pretty simple edit with some fitting comedic license free music over the top of it.

A moment from Atonement:

In this workshop we were given a scene from a film I’m quite fond of myself called, Atonement. We were tasked with blocking it around the 180-degree rule and capturing the tense emotional feel of the scene. As we did not have a set that looked very similar to what was described in the scene, we found various props such as a table, a cake display and chairs which were around the room and fashioned them into a set, similar to what we did in the sitting game. Our filming techniques had gotten a lot better by this one and as a result the footage is a lot more consistently well shot, due to COVID-restrictions the actors are somewhat further away from the camera and that made shooting slightly more difficult to get a high quality close up. The sound is also very quiet because of this which could have also been better if not for the COVID-restrictions. Still a very good piece of work from us, I think.

Tell me No Test Shoot:

Before shooting our 2-minute script to screen project, Tell Me No, we had to do a test shoot of the scene we planned on shooting from it with all of us working in our selected roles for the project. It was a helpful chance for us to try out blocking the sequence of events and it almost acted as a rough visual storyboard to what we did. We had a few troubles specifically with keeping the 180-degree rule consistent on this one, partly since we went back a few times to shoot scenes we had already recorded, however in the edit I don’t think this shows. The scene has a good pace to it I think and captures the intensity of the situation the characters are in, it does not slog in any way. It’s well directed, well shot and well-acted, probably our most successful camera workshop to date.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TV News Project Evaluation

  Project Evaluation: From the moment our group began developing “U2D News” it was unanimously decided that we would be focussing on stories that concerned people in our age group, mostly big issues and sometimes a way to lessen these issues with good alternative mindsets. We decided that the best target audience to target would be the age range of 16-40 years old and we would go for a light and vibrant colour palette, commonly used on quick, digestible news programmes. We then began researching into issues that were targeting our demographic and we noticed that the most relevant and growing story would be that on the rise of spiking’s in the UK and how they have been affecting people. We also decided we needed to focus on a climate change-based story, so we chose sustainable fashion as a subject, a light but still serious story that people can actively engage in. We then began researching the topics and figuring out the structure of the show, influenced by BBC Newsround and online
Read more

Analysis of concept and content of "The Crystal Maze"

Image
Our idea for the live show "The Name Of The Game" is a live game show where generations of forms of gaming are brought together for a half hour of funny, puzzling and exciting entertainment. The Crystal Maze is similar to The Name of The Game in many ways, it does have the previously listed qualities included in it but many more as well.  The Episode of The Crystal Maze I watched was Series 6 Episode 6: "Celebrity Crystal Maze", this episode was first broadcast in July of 2019. The Crystal Maze is a game show where a team of usually 5, compete in different themed lands to complete challenges solving puzzles, riddles and timed trials. Once completing these tests the contestants are given "time crystals" that secure them time in a dome where they must catch gold tickets that guarantee they will go home with the money they've raised through the game. However if they catch more silver tickets than gold, they lose the money. The show is presented by comedia
Read more

Panasonic & Green Screen Workshop Reflection

Image
  Panasonic & Green Screen Workshop: In our Panasonic & Green Screen Workshops we had the chance to really get to terms with some new equipment. In the Panasonic camera workshop, we got taught the basics, where which button was, how the menu works and some important formatting tips. We spent the majority of the workshop setting the camera up before taking it out to test shoot as this is more complicated than any camera we’ve used before. We shot a brief test intro for our news show we have been devising, U2D News. The footage we shot came out well however we shot in front of a predominantly white background which messed with the white balance and lighting. However, we will not be using a background like this when it comes to our final project. The next day we worked on our Green Screen skills, we spent a lot of time setting up and making sure our lighting bounced well off the model, who was also me. We faced a challenge of setting up the lights in a way that didn’t reflect
Read more