Blog The Week #2
Monday 12th
Our first activity of the day was to get into small groups and we were given a sheet with a different character skill on it and how they would improve throughout the two years of the course. I was really surprised that the college encourages this as in secondary school they only teach you whats on the curriculum and it was a nice change that they actually care about what kind of person you become. We had to write on a piece of paper what each skill meant to us. This was harder than I initially thought as it was difficult to word how something meant to me, I wanted to make the definition as precise as I could, so that probably didn't help. After everyone had finished we stuck them on the wall to look at all through the course.
In the next part of the day we learnt about Tony Hill and the camera rigs
he creates. We also got the amazing opportunity to be part of a scene he was filming, the concept of the film was using particular camera rigs to give the impression of a birds eye view of random things. I got to be part of one scene where there were people walking on a street and were looking up at the camera.
In the final part of the day we were shown the music video to Drugs by Ratatat, the task was to recreate it by each picking an emotion and filming it. I decided to go with boredom because I thought everyone else would do more elaborate ones. It wasn't that awkward being filmed as I've done lots of times before but I could see that other people were less confident with it so I agreed to film the shot with someone else.
Tuesday 13th
In the morning we had the library induction and once that was finished we were given a small task of making a booklet with random pictures and sentences in, which we could use later to come up with ideas.
After designing the booklet we then started editing the footage from yesterday. I was a lot more confident using Adobe Premier Pro than the other day so I think this project turned out far better.
Wednesday 14th
Today we were given our first assignment which was to create, plan, film and edit a short film in response to prompts given to us. The film is based around our own individual experiences and opinions on the world around us. We will be working in small groups but we each have to take responsibility for planning, directing and recording both video and sound. We were also given the sheet with the different prompts on it to note down ideas however I haven't had any ideas on what to film yet.
Shot Prompts
1. Something you care about
2. Pull (focus) shift- foreground/ background
3. Everyday observation
4. Unfair perception/ stereotype
5. Important moment in your life
6. Something ‘topical’ in current world news
7. Influenced by another filmmaker
8. Cause...
9. ...and effect.
Optional Shot
Optional Shot
Optional Shot
Optional Shot
10. A brilliant final shot
We then experimented with exponential growth and decay as an editing technique. We found random footage and made each section a twice the speed than the last; this is an example of exponential growth, exponential decay would be halving the speed on each section. I really like this technique and the effect speeding it up gives.