Adding depth to my shots

Available from: http://vimeo.com/videoschool/lesson/159/adding-depth-to-your-shots (accessed 17th July 2014)

The link above is a video explaining all the different techniques of how you can get the mpost out of your shots. Listed below are all the things that I found useful in this video.

1. Depth of field:
From this section, I learnt that turning the aperture up on your camera (making the number lower) will change the focus points in the picture - if the aperture is on f/1.4 it will make the background blurred and the subject focused in the foreground. This is called a shallow depth of field. By making the background equally focused to the foreground (f/22) it can be used for several different narrative reasons, however, it doesn't give much depth to shot because the viewer hasn't got anything in particular to focus on. However, when changing the aperture you need to compensate with the shutter speed and IOS to maintain good exposure.

2. Backlighting:
From this part of the video I learnt that the direction of light on a subject can really change how the viewer see's the subject in the scene - if sunlight or artificial light is cast behind the subject, it will draw a line of light all around them therefore separating them from the background and putting them into a much clearer and focused position for the viewer, which results in more depth within the shot as it draws your eyes to a certain place.

3. Foreground:
In regards to the foreground of shots, I learnt that putting something in front of the main subject in a scene can add context and meaning. From the video we see 1 subject talking in frame, and due to a lack of visual information we don't really know how far away the subject is from the camera, why they are talking or who they are talking to. However, they then put in a blurred shoulder of the person they are talking to within the foreground (making it an over the shoulder shot) which made it easy for the viewer to distinguish who they are talking to and where they are positioned in the scene in relation to who they are talking to.

4. Perspective:
The angle of a shot can really enhance what we see in a scene - in the video a girl is shot in front of a shed window, it was a simple shot and gave information about the location and such in the shot. However, the shot lacked a certain amount of visual appeal and depth, so they moved her so that the horizontal lines of the window frame were beside her, therefore drawing the viewers eyes right onto her in the frame, therefore adding depth and focus to the shot. Simple things like this give a shot that little extra something yet maintains all the information that it needs in order to make sense for the viewer.

5. Parallax:
By changing a boring steady shot to a parallax shot is can shake things up a bit and again break up the background up from the foreground. An example of this would be to use a glider in order to go from one image to another e.g. see the inside of a house to the subject being sat outside (as seen in the video) this then accentuated the main image and allows the foreground the move faster than the background, therefore giving the shot much more depth than it would have had with a plain old steady cam shot.

6. Smoke and Haze:
Despite smoke not being very natural, if used in moderation in the background (not between the subject and the camera) it can give the background a blurred and muted effect which again breaks up the subject from the background in an interesting and unconventional way.

Looking at 'Filmmaking For Beginners'

From watching this video I learnt several filmmaking tips that will give me the tools that I need to make a successful preliminary and final outcome. Below are the main things that I learnt from this video, and what I will be taking on board for when it comes to further shooting and editing.





At this point in the video, Victor (the narrator of video) explains all of the main equipment that I could use to achieve quality footage, some of which I had never heard of before. He then looks at this equipment extensively in the rest of the video.

He first explains how using an ordinary DSLR photographic camera is also very useful for filmmaking - you don't have to fork out a ridiculous amount of money to get a professional looking piece of footage, as a photographic camera has (as shown in the print screen) 'incredible image quality', 'superb depth-of-field', 'interchangeable lenses', 'small, lightweight and compact' and not to mention far cheaper. He also explains the video settings to use when taking a video with a DSLR in order to achieve the best  quality footage, being 1920x1080 (1080p) at

 24fps or 1280x720 (720p) at 24fps and he also

 explains how I can do this in the cameras menu. 

Victor then goes on to give information on what type of lenses to use depending on the shot being captured - it is ideal o change the lenses rather than using a zoom because a zoom can often make the image blurred and be of a lower quality. Instead of doing this, it is best to use a 'wide angle lense' when capturing an establishing shot to include as much of the surrounding area as possible, a '35mm lense' when there are two subjects in the frame, '50mm or 85mm lense' when there is one subject in the frame and '135mm or 200mm lense' for a close up.

He then talks about the importance of using a monopod, as a tripod can often limit the effect of how you can capture footage, but at the same time, it is difficult to hold a camera steady for a long period of time, so the monopod allows that little extra support on the camera and the cameraman therefore making it much easier to capture footage especially in a long scene. The monopod also creates more stable footage, is versatile to hold the camera higher up and to be affixed on different angles to achieve a variety
of shots, has a quick and easy set-up, is ideal for
long shots and great for mobile camera movement.

Next, Victor explains how useful it is to own a light-meter, as it lets you know if the environment you are in has good exposure or not, and exposure of lighting in a scene can really take it from amateur footage to being on a professional level as the scene then looks well crafted and visually pleasing to the viewer.

After explain the way in which to use all of this equipment, he then demonstrates how to use them effectively in some practice shots and how this effects the look and feel of the footage. He also explained during the practice how small few second clips can create so much context for the viewer - a POV shot in a foot cabinet as a person takes food from it doesn't seem to have that much importance and doesn't let the viewer know what the most important aspect of that shot it. So, Victor included a 2 second shot of the food that the character wanted (in this case peanut-butter and jam) and this made the world of difference as it lets the viewer have that little extra knowledge that they need in order to feel more involved in the scene. He also explained how important it is to film the entire scene repeatedly on different angles and perspectives so that way, I would have a variety of choices of what shots and angles to use at certain points of the clip during post production.

Blog Checklist

For the coming months, my blog will be concentrated around these areas in relation to my research and planning around my 3 products - the main music video product and two ancillary products: a digipak releasing the single for the song in the music video product, and a magazine advert advertising the release of the video and digipak single. I will be using this plan to aid me in constructing a research and planning action plan for my blog to determine how many posts I need to get done and a month to ensure I make between 60-70 blog posts that are all relevant and important to my production work.

Preliminary Evaluation

1. To what extent have you adhered to the brief? Explain.

The brief set for our short film was to create some representation of british youth culture. I decided to tackle this brief by not making the short film solely based around British youth culture, but to simply include elements of it as our culture is too broad and general, therefore choosing one element to bulk out an entire story seemed pointless and boring. So, I decided to choose an exciting story line (a girl goes missing) which I then give further meaning to by basing it around British youth culture. I believe that I have adhered to the brief because despite not making British youth culture 100% in your face obvious, I dropped in several elements of british youth culture such as including actors who are in fact young people, representing young people being consumed by technology in our culture of today and setting the short film in a very British area.

2. How effective is your main product?

I think that my final product has a very strong message -  a message of the young people of today being consumed by technology that they become almost 'lost' in it. However, due to a tight schedule I wasn't able to produce the hard hitting ending that I wanted to, leading to slight confusion about the 'Jane' character being missing. Jane was suppose to be found in a completely pitch black room with only the light of her laptop shining on her. She was going to be hypnotised by the technology and the social media. The main male character 'James' was suppose to find her here and close her laptop - the lights would then turn on as the laptop was shut, and Jane would have vanished, leaving the 'Where's Jane' poster behind on top of the laptop. Despite the confusing ending, I still feel that the core message behind the film is strong, and represents british youth in a nicely subtle way.

3. How did you use media technologies in the production and post production stages? What have
you learnt about these technologies and how have you used them?

During the production stages of this short film we used a standard Sony digital video camera, a tripod and a glider. Regarding the camera, we used it on the tripod to achieve steady shots and we used it handheld to get a slightly more rough and almost natural feel to the footage in order to reflect the conventions and plot of the story. When we used the glider for the opening credits, it was the first time that we used it - we basically positioned it where we wanted it and did a practice run by putting the camera on the glider, moving the camera across the glider and looking through the viewfinder on the camera so we could position it on the angle that we needed it on.

For post production we simply used Final Cut Express - we decided to experiment with this software a little more because me and Alex had both used it before and wanted to see if we could really take advantage of what it had to offer. So, we both decided to include transitions that we hadn't used before, mash shots up (at the beginning when 'James' tears down the missing person poster) and we also slowed down and sped up footage to create a faster or slower clip but to also make the clip look overlapped because the software creates a unique effect when you slow or speed up a clip if you haven't used a camera that captures a lot more of frames per second than the camera that we used. Overall from using these technologies I have learnt that I can take advantage of what they have to offer and really play around with how i capture footage and how i can edit it.

4.What have you learnt from this preliminary video task?

From making this short film, I have learnt a lot from my mistakes. I learnt that when it is time to capture footage to do it as soon as possible because problems can arise that means you may not be able to film certain scenes till a later date, meaning that some footage may never be shot if filming is left to last minute. I also learn't that sometimes you have to go back and re-do clips if the original clip didn't look how it was suppose to or other clips were needed to bulk a scene out of if some clips were simply forgotten about and not shot at the initial shooting. As well as that I learnt that it is better to have more clips than not enough, so when I shot and re-shot clips I made sure I had a lot of the same scenes in different angles so that I had plenty of options when it came to editing it all together. Regarding editing, I learnt that it is okay to experiment in Final Cut Express because you can always just save different copies of the clip after you edit it so that if it ends up going wrong there will be a back up of what you previously edited.

Mine and Alex's Preliminary Video

This is my preliminary video (which I created with another media student) - the aim of this video was to experiment with what we didn't perhaps have the confidence to experiment with in AS. For me, I needed to experiment with my use of the camera as opposed to the editing software as the shots for my AS final piece were rather basic. Here I have attempted to use pan shots, high and low angle shots, close ups, steady cam and hand held shots. 

I think that this product could have been much better visually if I had more time to spend editing it and re-shooting certain elements of it, but, the aim wasn't to produce a professional and polished piece, it was for personal progression in gaining confidence with the equipment and learning new things to apply to the final product for A2. From doing this preliminary I am more confident in using the camera and experimenting with new and interesting shots and, believe that my final product will be better because of this small experimentation.

Choosing A Brief

I decided after much thought that I would like to produce a music video as opposed to a trailer or short film due to the fact that I made a film opening for my AS product as well as a short film for my preliminary this year in A2, so it would seem rather tedious and unrewarding to repeat myself with the same/similar task. I feel that producing a music video will challenge me in interesting ways and I feel that  I could create far more artistic visuals by making this kind of product, which is something I have not experimented much with as if yet.