To dive straight into the coursework this year we were given a few starter tasks these tasks got us used to planning and the equipment.
The first task was to take commission photos these photos were of; someone looking through a window or round a door, someone entering through a door and someone walking up the stairs. We were given some time to come up with these shots, brought them back to class where we analyzed every groups attempts and then told to go onto flickr and look up staircases, these images showed you how to take more interesting photographs. This task helped understand different angles that work well with different shots. We had a second attempt to create more artistic photos with the commission shots.
Shot one: walking up stairs with both hands on the rail; Then the use of the stairs crossing each other creates a sense of entrapment as you can't see a way out.
Another commission photo was peering through a window
or door;
The second shot is clear the expression is serious and the bars across the window resemble prison bars.
This shot is good but the second shot is more dramatic.
Once thinking outside the box for angles and lighting etc, we headed onto the second task this consisted of filming. We had to film a short clip from a film, we were not told what film this was.
We were given a piece of paper with a grid on, this grid displayed in one column a description of what should be in the shot, in the second, what type of shot it would be, in the third, how long the shot should be and the last column was where abouts the shot should be. For example the first shot was of the top of a building at a high angle shot for 3 seconds outside school.
We filmed each of these shots three times to gather lots of film to edit as too much is better than too little, plus any bloopers can be re filmed and cut out.
Once all of this was filmed, we went back to the classroom to upload and edit the footage on Adobe Premier Pro.
Things i learnt;
I'm a fan of photography and like taking photos so generally I take lighting, angle and background into consideration when taking pictures, so I didn't learn anything major from taking these. However my partner and I, moved one step further than we were supposed to
and took the more artistic photos straight after the commission shots.
Things I learnt whilst filming:
Once I had read through the grid we got onto filming I worked in a group of 3, we discussed who would be acting, filming and directing. We came to the conclusion that those who were confident in acting took on the actors roles where as I preferred not being seen on camera so did a bit of the filming however shots that only required one person the other took over the filming so we all got a taste of each requirement. Whilst filming I discovered that the tripod was too tightly done up and made loud sounds when turning the handle so many takes have to be scrapped or muted. This added more to the task of editing.
The filming process wasn't difficult especially as I had used these cameras several times before I knew how they worked so we ran through it a couple of times before filming with each of us chipping in on the directing, like all videos we had some bloopers which were cut after.
The learning process with this task began once we got back to the classroom. After attaching the leads and opening Adobe Premier Pro I learnt how to upload the video by going onto capture and recorded whilst the camera was plugged in and switched on, without touching it, it recorded all the footage. Once the footage was on the mac, it took a few trial and errors to find out how to cut and move clips. This meant that each mistake could be cut out. To cut clips into pieces i used the razor tool, clicked on where I wanted to start cutting a clip out and where I wanted the clip to end, went to delete it then moved the clips up to each other so the footage ran smoothly without it going black and then the next clip starting. Once I got the hang of it cutting and moving the clips ran smoothly, to make it easier at parts I maximized the view of the clips to cut more precisely. I learnt how to mute certain clips of video and how to play non diagetic sound over it.
A third research task we were set was to create a storyboard. We were given 12 post-stick size pieces of paper with various images drawn on them such as a close up image of a hand switching off a light switch, a long shot image of two people in a corridor etc. We worked in groups of 3 and had to re arrange them into a story of our choice as long as it made logical sense and flowed for example it couldn't go from a close up of someone's face through a door to a close up of someone's feet going up the stairs as it doesn't keep continuity. Once we had agreed on an order we took a camera and set out to capture these shots. We used an actor and one of person in our group in these photos. The process was quick however our camera memory was full so had to return to the class to copy them onto the hard drive and then continue.
To access our photos we've learnt to go onto; Finder, Network, My network, Shared resources, connect as guest. Once connected we could access our groups photos. To put them into a documented story board we opened the storyboard on shared resources and saved it to our own hard drive or USB drive first. To add the first image onto the storyboard I went to; insert, picture, from file then where ever the picture was saved to, to move the image into the boxes we right clicked and formatted the picture to in front of text.
