Movies and films use language of moving image and focus on the scale and time of each sequence. We are looking at this to understand the rules and conventions of moving image.
The power of focusing controls the eyes of the audience, through focusing on important objects / personnel to tell a story. In short, in Casino Royale they use rack focusing when Bond realises his martini has been poisoned.
Camera Angles:
- High angle / Low angle / bulls-eye / birds eye / canted angle
- Tracking / Panning / Craning / Tilting / Hand held / Steadicam
- Establishing Shot / Long Shot / Medium Shot / Close-up / Big Close-Up / Extreme Close Up (students often struggle with the first and the last, again issues with SCALE, SIZE & SPACE, so practice is really important)
- Insert Shot – A shot containing a part of a scene as filmed from a different angle and/or focal length from the master shot. In my film, the inset shot would be the gun that the soldier is holding and the letter being written by the commander of platoon 7.
Editing:
Editing is important as it stitches together your camera work into one whole project, through the use of sequences. The editing puts together the BACK STORY, FORESHADOWING, REPETITION, ELLIPSIS, DEVELOPMENT, ENIGMA, DRAMATIC IRONY. Some basic tools for editing involves CUT, DISSOLVE, FADE.
The rules to when editing happens is during:
- EDIT ON ACTION
- EDIT ON A MATCHING SHAPE, COLOUR, THEME
- EDIT ON A LOOK, A GLANCE, EYELINE
- EDIT ON A SOUND BRIDGE
- EDIT ON A CHANGE OF SHOT SIZE
- EDIT ON A CHANGE OF SHOT CAMERA POSITION (+30′)
Parallel Editing:
- Parallel Editing: Two events editing together – so that they may be happening at the same time, or not?
- Flashback / Flash-forward: Allowing time to shift
Montage:
A montage is a short video that has been cut out of a long series of shots. The effect of a montage allows for creators to tell a long story in a short amount of time.
It was first conceptually theorised as the Kuleshov effect, in that adding one element / idea to another actually produces a third idea / element, which if constructed well can produce in the audience an idea that isn’t actually present.
Logical Shot Progression:
A set of shots that create realism through the use of different shot types e.g:
- Establishing shot / ES, moving to
- Wide shot / WS,
- To medium shot / MS,
- To close up / CU,
- To big close up / BCU;
- And then back out again
Shot / Reverse Shot:
These shots are the use of creativity and realism with the use of angled shots when two people are talking. They include both characters – which are called EXTERNAL REVERSES.