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.