Intro to Stills Camera

Composition:
Photography brings a visual language that is universal in understanding. We must then understand its vocabulary which consists of shapes, textures, patterns, lines, colours, shade of light to dark and sharp to blurry images. Just as we must learn to arrange words in a coherent order in order to make sense when we write or speak, so too must we put visual elements together in an organized manner if our photographs are to convey their meaning clearly and vividly.
Composition means arrangement: the orderly putting together of parts to make a unified whole; composition through a personal, intuitive act. However, there are basic principles that govern the way visual elements behave and interact when you combine them inside the four borders of a photograph. Once we have sharpened our vision and grasped these basic ideas of principles, then we will have the potential for making our photographs more exciting and effective than ever before.

Preliminary Post Production

After filming, our footage was uploaded onto the Final Cut Sever, by checking our edit proxy(a digital copy of original footage).
Continuity Editing: This is the style of editing that is used the most in narrative film and television today. The purpose of continuity editing is to make sure the scenes look seamless and make sure the sequence makes sense to the audience.
We started by looking through the shots and logging the appropriate shots from each angle as we went. We set up a Log Bin and put the selected shots into the Log Bin. Selecting the correct shots is important as we needed the sequence to flow. We then needed to find the shot that 'best fit' the scene we were trying to create. This meant looking at the shot list and checking how many shots of each type we needed and selecting the best ones out of the ones we had.
Organising our shots we had to then refer back to the storyboard, to see which shots went where and make sure that they appeared in order This was important as if the shots had appeared in any other order the storyline would not have made sense. The editing process in Final Cut was the final part of editing.

Preliminary Task Evaluation

For our Preliminary task, our group filmed in the dead-it suite (old edit suite) above the theatre. This location suited out task as there were pipes along the back wall and it looked quite shabby. This was suited to our script which was a discussion between two characters about murdering someone. Another reason it suited our script was because we needed a door for one of the characters to enter and exit through during the scene, and this room had 2 doors, so worked perfectly. All the members in our group had an equally active role in the task. We all had a go at calling the instructions and filming. We had to make sure we left 5 seconds ‘breathing room’, either side of the scene, so that it is easier for us when it comes to the editing stage. For lighting we used a standing light and a fill light, both of the characters had cast shadows behind them. The lighting was important to our scene as it added tension and was am easy way of effectively creating a more appropriate mood for the scene.

We set up the camera correctly as a group and we all checked that we were happy with how it was set up before we started filming. We adjusted the tripod and bubbled it to make sure it was level. Once we had set up the camera on the tripod we filmed the colour bars to make sure that the tape is working, if we had gone straight into filming and then found out the it was a faulty tape then we would have lost some or all of the scene. The colour bars are a way of checking the tape is working and it also checks that the colours are all set to the correct intensity.

We made sure that the shot was framed correctly each time and that none of the equipment could be seen in the shot. We decided to film all of our wide shots first, then we did over the shoulder shot from one side, followed by the other side. We then did a shot of just the gun, then the eye line of one character from the gun to the other character and we did a shot of the shadows. To finish we did some close-ups of each character and the tried an extreme bird’s eye shot of the scene but in order to achieve this we had to lift the camera and tripod up so it was touching the ceiling. We used the 180 degree rule and did not break it, there were a few times that we had to think about it before we started filming but we never broke it.

As I mentioned before we used all the appropriate terminology to make sure everyone on set knew what was happening. This helped and made sure everyone was working as a team and knew what was going on.

I like this poster because it is simple and effective as it is only uses minimul colours. The skull is placed in the centre of the page as it is the point of focus. The glass around the edge of the skull is smashed which makes the audience curious as to what has happened before. It may also cause some wariness for the audience as broken glass is usually hazardous. The eye sockets are completely blacked out, which creates a colder, less familier and uncomforting feel. The mouth of the skull is open, which suggests that the person who this skull belonged to was screaming before they got smashed into the glass.

The title at the bottom of the poster is made to look like white lights, which is made more effective by the black background. The audience may also find the black background unnerving as black reminds people of the darkness, night time and danger. As darkness is the one thing that we as people cannot fight against.