Camera practice excercise 1

Mickey’s camera tutorial

In Andrew’s lesson we were given a tutorial by Mickey on how to use the use the video cameras and the tripods. We were shown a range of different effects that we can create using different camera angles and shots. E.g. we saw that high angled shots made the subject look weak and inferior. In our groups we can use these types of high angle shots to show the fear and weakness of a character(s). We were also shown the symbol for when the battery was low and we learnt how to put in and how to take out the battery. we also learnt how to put the cameras safely on the tripod without breaking the camera or causing danger to ourselves. We also learnt how to basic stuff such as recording, turning the camera on/off and on standby, how to adjust the focus and so on. I found this fiddly but I’m sure as time goes on I will get used to it and become more confident with the camera.A thrilling game of cardIn order to get used to the camera.

Practice excercise
In our groups we participated a practical filming and editing exercise where we were briefed to film part of a card game. We had to create an atmosphere of suspense and mystery through choice of shot distance, choice of camera angle and movement of the camera. We had to include an extreme close up, a tracking shot and an over the shoulder shot.My group decided to shoot the clip in the lunch canteen at the tables. We used the camera and the tripod safely whilst filming and we had lots of creative and interesting ideas. One of the main problems we had was that we were far too adventurous with our ideas and this meant that we spent a lot of time trying to create effects which were unnecessary and inappropriate to the task, I learnt from this that sometimes less in more. Also a lot of our shots were not still and shaky this was because we often forgot to step back from the tripod and leave the film to run by itself. Also as a group we kept changing who was doing the filming and who was being filmed which made us fall behind and unable to capture enough effective and usable shots. I think we should have done a lot more planning and recorded our ideas on paper to prevent us sidetracking.

Editing
Because of our delayed filming process this also meant that our editing time was limited which means that our editing was incomplete and I personally think that we were not able to create tension effectively. The software we used was called 'Final Cut Pro'; which is a professional editing piece of software. Our editing wasn’t very straightforward as there were a lot of unusable and incorrect shots and the shots weren’t very smooth. We didn’t have any sound effects due to lack of time but we did have some diagetic sound through the use of dialogue.

Conclusion
Although are filming and editing attempts were unsuccessful, on a more positive note I feel that our group has learnt from our mistakes and I think we realize that we need to be a lot more organised and we should work to deadlines. We could have had longer shots for each scene as long shots can often help build to a very effective climax and create tension as I have analysed, this would have also made our editing easier. furthermore, we could have used more camera angles and camera movement. In addition, we need to work on our camera handling and filming strategies to make shots steadier, I leant from my media teacher that we can do this by simply stepping away from the tripod when filming. The experience will be very useful in the future for larger filming tasks in which we can apply the skills which have learnt and we can also learnt from our mistakes.