Images that move
The Rule Of Thirds - What does this mean and is it something I would use in my own filming?
The rule of thirds in photography is a guideline that places the subject in the left or right third of an image, leaving the other two thirds more open. It divides a photo into nine equal parts, split by two equally spaced horizontal and vertical lines.
Close Up shot
A close-up shot is a photograph or movie shot taken of a subject or object at close range intended to show generate strong emotions, signal something important and show an actors facial expressions.
Medium shot
A medium shot, also called a mid-shot or waist shot, is a type of camera shot in film and television that shows an actor approximately from the waist up. A medium shot is used to emphasise both the actor and their surroundings by giving them an equal presence on screen.
Wide/Long shot
A wide shot, also called a long shot or a full shot, is a shot that shows the subject within their surrounding environment. A wide shot tells the audience who is in the scene, where the scene is set, and when the scene takes place.
B Roll - what is it?
B-roll is secondary footage, often used as cutaway footage, to provide context and visual interest to help tell your story. B-roll is a term used to describe secondary footage, often used as cutaway footage, to provide context and visual interest to help tell your story.
Types of B-roll footage:
• Atmospheric shots of location or inanimate objects
• Undirected footage of people
• Establishing shots
• Dramatic re-enactments
• Pick-up shots
• Stock footage
• Archival imagery
B-roll can be used for:
• Setting the tone
• Providing flexibility in the editing process
• Establishing characters or setting
• Breaking up monotony
• Covering up gaps or errors
Breathing room. How much time should I leave at the beginning and end of any take?
Always count 3 seconds after saying ‘Action’ before any dialogue or actions take place and leave the camera rolling for 3 seconds after the Director says ‘Cut.' This then gives you much more leeway in the post-production stage and prevents any harsh transitions or cuts in dialogue especially.
The “heads’ on photographic tripods - are they good for panning/tilting?
Photographic tripods are much stiffer than film tripods due to the head fixture, most photography tripods have a removable slot plate system whereas film tripods have a bowl mount (sphere) which allows for smoother movement.
Rolling shutter
A rolling shutter is a type of image capture in cameras that records the frame line by line on an image sensor instead of capturing the entire frame all at once. The rolling shutter sensor scans from the top of the image to the bottom, so the top of the frame is recorded slightly earlier than the bottom.
Memory cards
When shooting 4K RAW you need a write speed of atleast 75MG/s for it to keep up without dropping frames.
Write speed: How fast an SD card manages and processes files.
Prime V Zoom lens
Prime lenses have a fixed focal length whereas zoom lenses have a wider and variable focal length. Prime lenses are usually smaller and lighter than zoom lenses and they perform better in low light conditions.
From what I have read online, prime lenses are apparently better than zoom for film as they provide a better depth of field and the footage tends to be sharper as they are designed to be sharp at only one focal length.
Zoom lenses are usually not as sharp as prime lenses and they perform at a slower speed. The maximum aperture of a zoom lens is narrower than a prime meaning it lets less light pass into the camera.
Film narratives
There are four main narrative structures used in film:
Chronological/Linear structure
When the author tells a story in chronological order. This structure can include flashbacks, but the majority of the narrative is told in the order that it occurs.
Fractured narrative
The fractured narrative structure represents a linear structure that is broken. Such that the filmmaker can jump back and forth between various events of the story over time.
Framed narrative
A story within a story, within sometimes yet another story.
Circular/Epic narrative
A story that ends in the same place it began is commonly called a circular or cyclical narrative.
Spoken word poetry
Spoken word refers to an oral poetic performance art that is based mainly on the poem as well as the performers aesthetic qualities. It is a late 20th century continuation of an ancient oral artistic tradition that focuses on the aesthetics of recitation and word play, such as the performers live intonation and voice inflection. Spoken word is a "catchall" term that includes any kind of poetry recited aloud, including poetry readings, poetry slams, jazz poetry and hip hop music and can also include comedy routines and prose monologues. Unlike written poetry, the poetic text takes its quality less from the visual aesthetics on a page, but depends on the aesthetics of sound.
Video Poem/Visual Poetry
After looking on Youtube at spoken word I found videos coming up in my suggested which were the exact thing I had pictured in my mind. These are some people's videos that I watched and I took screenshots of for inspiration for my own video.
Ramuna Pun
Gayo Ayang
Santiago Sanchez
SALT
Andrei Purcarea
Poem
To my younger self
I remember
when you were younger and wide eyed
excited at the possibility of the world
and afraid because it was all so big and you,
you were the smallest being in a world full of strangers
Still, you had big dreams and wanted
so badly to write something
so unique and profound
something to make people understand you
understand themselves
see that we are all one
know that we all have the same destination
even if our paths are different
Fear is an ugly thing and it overshadows
and overwhelms
the joy out of life
It crawls into bed with you at night and keeps you awake,
drilling
everything that is wrong
straight through your skull and
into your soul
never resting
There is so much that is hard
to comprehend and make sense of
and it is so much easier to let the fear
take hold of you, wrap its fingers
tightly around your neck
a noose growing ever tighter, strangling
while you struggle
until,
you have no voice left to speak
It left you choking our fragments
and run on sentences into a journal
that no one would ever see
I remember,
when you thought that no one could see you,
so you lived your life like a child
jumping up to see over the counter,
making make shift ladders out of whatever you could find,
so that you could grasp everything that always seemed so far out of your reach
losing yourself so easily
in a sea of people
because they were so big
and you were
nothing
Your words are a time capsule
that brings me back to a place,
when we stared at each other in the mirror
and curled our tiny fingers into a fist
wanting to smash the glass
because,
we were ugly
You are small still,
but the world is not as big as it used to be
and nothing ever comes easy
but your dreams are coming true,
you did not give up despite
believing so often that you would fail
and
I am afraid,
because everyone is afraid,
but
I stand in-front of the mirror
young and wide eyed,
excited about the possibility of the world
and when I looked at you now,
I know
that we are learning to love eachother,
finally.
I have decided to film on my IPhone as it has a 4K camera so can capture good quality video. It is a lot more convenient for me to use rather than a DSLR as I plan to shoot things that catch my eye when I am going about my day to day. I want to have quite simple shots that won't distract too much from the voiceover.
I have found a piece of royalty free music on www.bensound.com titled 'Relaxing' that I think will work well as a backing track and accentuate the emotion in the poem.
These are some screenshots of a few of the clips I have filmed.
I knew that I wanted to use text in my video, but not necessarily as subtitles. I decided to use text for some lines of the poem to break up sections of video. I liked the idea of typing text and erasing it as I thought it might look interesting and I haven't seen it before in a video.
The mid section of my poem becomes more negative so I edited this part of the video into black and white and used clips of rain and thunder as a form of pathetic fallacy that I was able to film in a recent storm.
To make some sections of the video more interesting I have changed the speed of them and for visual aesthetics I have layered clips with different opacities which creates quite a cool visual effect.
Overall I am happy with the final outcome of my video, I think visually it is interesting to watch and the music and voiceover work well together. In future I would probably play around a bit more with with transitions when filming but due to circumstances my filming period was cut short so I had to make the most of what I had in editing.
