180 degree rule

180 degree rule

We had our second practical class on how to use professional cameras. On this lesson we've learned that we can record the same scene many different times in many different camera angles and then we can edit them and cut into different parts of the scene using different camera angles. This cutting helps intriguing the audience and leaving them focused rather then having them watch one long boring scene filmed in just one shot. But we do have to be careful when it comes to filming the various shots because we have to film is all in a 180 degree radius. The teacher showed us an example of a toy Ferrari being pushed by him in the same direction, but one shot filmed from the Ferrari's left side and the other filmed from the Ferrari's right side. And in the recording it looked like the Ferrari was traveling a different direction. And if we commit that mistake in the movie edit we can leave the audience a bit confused to whether the scene has changed or not, when in reality the character moved the same direction as the previous shot. And that's why this 180 degree rule is so important when it comes to editing.

analysing 3 opening sequences

Upside Down 

"Upside Down" has a very intresting opening sequence where after the narrator explains the theory behind the two worlds we get an extreme long shot of the two worlds. Instantly we understand that there is another world upside down contrasting the world below which is all destroyed and very badly treated. Meanwhile the world above is all futuristic and well developed. Next, we get another extreme long shot that shows us the only way that the two worlds are connected. That tower in the middle was created to take cheap oil from "down below"and transport it up to keep the upper world's economy running. We understand this through the narrator who explains to us the setting and the reason why that connection tower is there.

In the next scene we understand that the person narrating and giving us all that information about the two worlds is the main character in the film. He tells us he grew up in an orphanage and shows us flashbacks of his past. So basically before the actual romance starts he tells us his background information and how he grew up as a child, how he lost his parents. Most of the camera angles are extreme long shots, focusing on the environment    
                                                                                    that the main character lived in.

American Pie Reunion

American Pie Reunion, for sure one of the funniest movies I have every seen has a funny feeling right off the start. The opening sequence starts off by showing us the clothes thrown on the ground in a bedroom, and on the background we can hear a bed creeking. The audience instantly assumes that there is a couple having sexual intercourse in the room, but we are surprised when the camera moves to the bed and reveals that the bed creeking sounds come from the mother while she is lulling her child to try to make him fall asleep. Meanswhile the dad is on his laptop simply ignoring all the environment around him. After the kid sleeps is put to bed, the camera pans to the left and follows the mother to the bathroom. She says she is going to take a shower. The husband thought it would be a great idea to masturbate so he opens his pornographic website. As the lady in the video repeatedly says "give it to me daddy"his son suddenly shows up in the room and completes the phrase by saying "daddy". Startled, the dad closes his computer on his own penis, and very clumsily tries to hide his actions. By this point the audience assumes that he is a busy guy and almost never has any private times for himself. Basically he doesn't have enough sex in his life, thus leading his to wanting to masturbate, and his desperation he got caught in an unfortunate moment by his son. The dad then realizes he is bleeding from his penis and he needs a band-aid, so he runs to the bathroom and finds his wife masturbating in the bath. In my opinion these series of random events actually make a movie more appealing, and also, it catches the attention of the audience right from the start.

The Amazing Spiderman

"The Amazing Spiderman" , a movie from 2012 starts off with a kid, whose identity is yet to be discovered. The kid is doing a countdown and when he reaches zero he says "ready or not, here I come". This suggests to the audience that he is playing hide and seek. All of this has been filmed in one close up. The camera then follows him down the stairs and starts following his to the sofa at his eye level. in one continuous shot the camera follows his to the curtains and films him opening them to check if there was somebody there. The scene is cut and then we get a closeup which slowly zooms towards him. The kid finds himself in what looks to be his dad's office and all the windows are open and the papers have been moved around, the room is a mess. This makes the audience predict that someone was in that room messing through his dad's papers. The kid calls his dad who instantly appears and grabs him. The dad then searches around the room to check if there is something missing while the mother grabs the kid and takes him away from the room. We then see a long shot of the dad erasing the board, it appears as if he is trying to clear some evidence. There were drawings on the board of spiders and lots of information about them. And last but not least, right before the opening sequence ends we get an extreme closeup of  a dead spider which appears to be part of his experiments because it is inside an experiment test tube for no one to touch it. This opening sequence is excellent because it gets the audience ready for the movie. It gives us some information about what's happening but still leaves us, the audience, with a sense of mystery, making us ask ourselves why is he so frustrated about a study of spiders. So basically this opening sequence grabs our attention and makes us wonder: What's going to happen next?

First Day Using a Professioal Camera

First Day Using a Professional Camera

                   

                  Today, Thursday 18th of September I had my first class on how to use a professional camera system. I've learned plenty of new things which I will cover in this post. I've learned about the three key things to get right before using the camera, in other words, three things that are crucial to setup before recording or taking a picture. The three questions you must ask yourselves are: Is the picture in focus? Is the picture too dark or too bright? And are the colours right?

                   In order to focus the right way you must first zoom in the furthest possible into a detailed area using the middle wheel. Once zoomed in you must focus on the object using the first and biggest wheel. That way you will be sure that the image is focused. Next, it is good to check if the colours are right, by doing this you have to adjust the colour wheel which is the last and smallest one. It is also important to play around with the neutral density filter, or ND filter. What this does is it either gives the image more or less colour depending on the lighting in the certain environment. Last but not least there is a white balance. Basically it balances the white colour in the room. if you zoom in a white object and press the white balance button it will fix the white colour by making it a lot whiter. Sometimes we don't notice that an object being filmed is not actually a pure clean white, and we only realize the difference after pressing the white balance button.

                   Apart from all these technical things, we also learned how to setup the camera I the right position, meaning, making the camera as straight as possible when being held I the tripod. Plus we learned how to manage and setup the tripod the correct way. I predict that there will be a lot more to this camera usage process, but for now it is a good fresh start. It was good to learn the basics before we step into the harder stuff. 



Favorite Movie

                    It's hard for me to pick a favorite film since I love so many. I'm a comedy person, and if I were forced to pick a favorite movie I would probably say "21 Jump Street"directed by Chris Miller and Phil Lord. The main cast of this movie includes Channing Tatum as Jenko, Jonah Hill as Schmidt, Dave Franco as Eric, Rob Riggle as Mr. Walters, and Ice Cube as Captain Dickson.

                      In my opinion, this type of comedy usually is easier to write, but the idea of this movie was very well produced. Some of the jokes were a bit out of context, but this randomness is what actually makes this film so fun to watch (e.g. Captain Dickson: Hey, hey! Stop f***in' with Korean Jesus. He ain't got time for yo problems, he's busy wit Korean s***!). Something else I find quite funny is Jenko's stupidity (e.g. Jenko: Chemistry's the one with shapes and s***, right?). 

                      For me, the movies that include more then one main character are the best. Especially those in which each of the main characters have completely different personalities and traits. I also need to be able to laugh at each character and with each character, and "21 Jump Street"is a perfect example for this. Another very good reason why I find this movie so fascinating is that if we set the storyline asside, we actually find a very touching moral to the story, which is  how losers can get well together with the popular kids, because it really doesn't matter!

Here are some short clips of the best parts in the movie! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9jjAer-Mn4

   

 Thriller Research and Pre-Production

 How does the opening sequence build tension? (submerged)

                    Submerged ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmvzxandcJo ), a short 2:06 minutes thriller clip created by Hurtwood House media has used many different techniques that helped it build tension. These techniques include the audio, the camera angles, the dialog, and the lighting.

                    Right at the start (0:08) the viewer sees two bright blue lights underwater, it has a very muffled audio going along with it,  which already starts building up some tension. The viewer thinks to himself, what is going on? A few seconds later (0:20) we discover that those lights belong to a submerged submarine. At 0:28 the setting changes to inside the submarine, where we can see two men working on something yet to be discovered. The oscilating music keeps a very serious and tense mood throughout the clip. At 0:59 we see what's happening on one of the cameras from the submarine, and this actually builds up the tension because it's very hard to tell what's going on. At 1:26 the two men spot something mysterious on camera three, amd they investigate it and find out it looks like a ship. This leaves the audience thinking "why is there a ship there?"and of course, creataing tension and making people curious about what is going on with that ship. It appears that at 1:42 the ship hits the submarine and the two men start hesitating to discover what that was. Next, at 1:47 we discover that the electronic system is down, so they may be in deep trouble. Last but not least, roughly at about 2:00 the screen turns black and we hear shipwreck noises, and suddenly the clip ends making the viewer curious about what would happen next.
                    In my opinion this is a very effective introduction to a thriller, the suspance makes the audience very curious to what is going to happen next due to the dark, muffled, oscilating soundtrack, the dialog between the two characters, and the small use of lighting that creates even more tension due to the lack of visibility in the clip. Tension is built up all throughout the thriller clip with absolutely no moments of relaxation.