Preliminary Exercise 12: Camera Movement Video

Introduction

Welcome, dream team! What better way to exercise your creativity in filmmaking, by putting your knowledge into practice? Today, my group and I intended to put out camera work and camera movement knowledge to the test and express the useful techniques we have been taught and apply it in a creative way.

The supplies our group used were our cellular devices (cellphones) to record each shot for this assignment, a pencil and paper to plan each shot (as shown in the previous blog post), our collaborative minds, and teamwork. Our shots consisted of the main events that summarize our movie plot, we applied the following camera movement techniques and listed our reasons for using them;

©     Zoom-In Shot: “When a camera of photographer zooms in, the lens of the camera is adjusted so that the image seems to be bigger and closer,” Britannica.com. We intended for this shot not only to focus on Lexi left on the theatre stairs, but the vast, open setting surrounding her to create an eerie atmosphere.

©     Static Shot: “A shot that is devoid of Camera movement,” studiobinder.com. The stillness of this shot we chose was meant to emphasize the feeling of the student being bullied by Lexi and her friend, and to create a paralyzed, frozen-in-place atmosphere, in which we intend for the audience to empathize with this student.

©     Dolly Push-In Shot: A dolly is a wheeled cart, used in cinematography, to hold a camera in place as it is pushed or pulled. Therefore, in this case, the camera is being pushed towards the subject. The push in was for the audience to have a perspective view of slowly moving towards a mysterious document someone discovered, which would then set an unsettling tone.

©     Tilt: “A shot that uses a cinematographic technique called tilting in which the camera stays fixed but rotates up and down on a vertical plane,” studiobinder.com. Our group used this technique to create a menacing tone from a new boy who had just enrolled in the school, and we used a low-angle to assert this character’s dominance.

©     Zoom-In Shot: “When a camera of photographer zooms in, the lens of the camera is adjusted so that the image seems to be bigger and closer,” Britannica.com. To capture the dramatic acting and expressions from the student who investigated Lexi’s sudden passing, we used this shot the make this character the focal point as she discovered a shocking truth that answered all her questions.

©     Tracking/Trucking Shot: “Any shot in which the camera physically moves sideways, forward, or backward through the scene,” masterclass.com. The final shot created a somber, defeatist tone, by showing the student sharing what she had discovered from her investigation, being abruptly interrupted, and aggressively dragged from the intercom room by two security guards. Our group used this technique to allow the viewers to have a perspective view of this occurrence, while also following this student being dragged to her doom.

Our Final Products:

§  Title: Video#1: Zoom-In Shot

§  Production Company Name: Milagros Studios

 

§  Action Line: Lexi (the main character), is shown lying in the theatre stairs.

§  Shot size: Establishing Shot

§  Camera angle: High

§  Framing: One Shot 

§  Composition: 

§  Tone: Unsettling

 

§  Title: Video#2: Dolly Push-In Shot

§  Production Company Name: Milagros Studios

§  Action Line: Lexi, and her friend, is shown walking down the hallways of their school. Students around them are distracted on their phones.

§  Shot size: Full Shot

§  Camera angle: Shoulder

§  Framing: Crowd Shot

§  Composition: 

§  Tone: Casual, Lighthearted

 

  

§  Title: Video#3: Static Shot

§  Production Company Name: Milagros Studios

§  Action Line: Lexi and her friend bullies a new student named Kourtney.

§  Shot size: Master Shot

§  Camera angle: Shoulder

§  Framing: Three Shot

§  Composition: 

§  Tone: Menacing

 

   

§  Title: Video#4: Push-In Shot

§  Production Company Name: Milagros Studios

§  Action Line: The student bullied by Lexi and her friend appears shaken and frozen in fear.

§  Shot size: Medium Close-Up Shot

§  Camera angle: Eye Level

§  Framing: Single Shot

§  Composition: 

§  Tone: Anxious, Horrified

 

§  Title: Video#5: Dolly-In Shot

§  Production Company Name: Milagros Studios

§  Action Line: A blurry flashback of a contract stating that Piper High is a cult and that the school covered Lexi’s death, appears on the screen, which then creates situational irony.

§  Shot size: Medium Shot

§  Camera angle: Dutch/ Cowboy

§  Framing: Insert Shot

§  Composition: 

§  Tone: Shocking

  

§  Title: Video#6: Pan Shot

§  Production Company Name: Milagros Studios

 

§  Action Line: After a student at Piper High School, Gloria, discovered their school’s contract and the truth behind their peer’s death, she decided reveal the truth about their school. The intercom blazes in every classroom and hallway, in which this scene shows two students at Piper High school briefly taking notice to the announcement, but eventually continued about their days.

§  Shot size: Extreme Close-Up

§  Camera angle: Dutch/ Cowboy

§  Framing: Insert Shot

§  Composition: 

§  Tone: Hopeful

§  Title: Video#7: Tracking/Trucking Shot

§  Production Company Name: Milagros Studios

§  Action Line: The student, who exposed the truth about her school on the intercom, gets interrupted in the middle of her announcement, by getting escorted by Piper High School’s Security.

§  Shot size: Medium Shot

§  Camera angle: Knee Level

§  Framing: Over-the-Shoulder Shot

§  Composition: 

§  Tone: Weary, Terror

REFLECTION

In summation, a valuable understanding of how to use different camera movement techniques in ways which can be used to change the audience’s perspective and mood of what is being shown has made me reflect of some was various producers use in the world around me. This will overall help our group learn, grow, and gain wisdom from our mistakes in this exercise to ensure we will be prepared for our official movie to come. Each member of our group did their part to make this activity come together; Peyton P was responsible for cinematography and filming, Lexi M was responsible for acting and arranging each scene, Marley B and I were the producers and we both gave ideas for which scenes to film, how to execute the shots, and film arrangements.

Given the environment which these scenes took place, there was a bit of background noise, in which Peyton P used her editing skills to ensure the audio of each video would not distract or lessen the quality of our film. While hesitant at first at the thought of lying at the school’s stairs, Lexi M put forth great efforts to ensure the perfection and essence of each scene, and she used her acting skills to emulate the expressions of her character described in our storyboard. Marley B and I worked together to suggest the locations each shot would be taken, reviewed the videos after they were recorded, in which we would use our knowledge of camera movement to recommend solutions to improve each shot.

As a result of our team’s cooperation, perseverance, and growth mindsets, we were able to make all our skills and ideas cohesive to one another, to form the final product shown above, which displays our understanding of what we have learned so far this year. 

WORK CITED:

-www.britannica.com. (n.d.). Zoom Definition & Meaning | Britannica Dictionary. [online] Available at: https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/zoom#:~:text=zoom%20in [Accessed 5 Apr. 2024].

-Kench, S. (2020). Static Shots — When and Why You Should Use Them. [online] StudioBinder. Available at: https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-a-static-shot-definition/#:~:text=A%20static%20shot%20in%20film%20is%20a%20shot%20that%20is.

-StudioBinder. (2019). The Tilt Shot Effect. [online] Available at: https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/tilt-shot-in-film/#:~:text=A%20tilt%20shot%20is%20shot.

Preliminary Exercise 11: Camera Movement Storyboard

Introduction

American Philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who led the transcendentalist (philosophical, spiritual, and literary) movement in the mid-nineteenth century once said, “life is a journey, not a destination.” This was a mindset Ralph Emerson carried throughout his process of creating innovative poems, lectures, essays, and other art forms of his time. Furthermore, the main goal of this assignment is the emulate those words spoken by Ralph Emerson and use the previous knowledge our team has gained of camera movement (techniques of how cameras are controlled in film) to apply to visual representations of our storyboard that we have previously created. Without further ado, I will explain the process our group followed to complete this ask.

 The Creative Process

First, our group researched examples of camera movement from iconic production studios of our time, such as work produced by Marvel (the Avengers), Disney (live interpretations or cartoon animations), etc. Next, we referred to our original storyboard of sixteen frames which we have previously created to ensure we do not contradict or remove essential parts of our plot. Then, while simultaneously checking our previous blog posts of our story board, we drew the scenes from those blogs and added signals and lines in our drawings to represent movement, or sometimes camera lens movement. For images without lines indicating movement, we made sure to write the camera movement technique we intended to occur for those shots. Lastly, we included other elements of that contribute to camera movement in film to provide further explanations of our illustrations, along with action lines, shot size, camera angles, and framing. 

Doing this activity has only furthered our understanding of film arrangement, camera angles, framing, composition, and now including camera movement.

The videomaker.com website posted an article explaining, “Storyboarding: Methods, Techniques, and Lingo, by visualizing your shots with a storyboard, you can see how your shots fit together before you have shot a single foot of film or frame of video, which will prevent you from wasting both time and footage.” Having a vision of a storyline ahead of time can help producers to create a film much quicker, while also forming a complete idea of what they had in mind, which leaves less room for plot holes.

 Honorable Mentions (Our Team's Roles For This Activity)

Essential tools one can use to create a storyboard are pencils, crayons, a ruler (for a neat drawing), and a loose-leaf sheet of paper, and an electronic device for research and innovation, in which all the above were what our group used to sketch out storyboard in the image below.

By having access to all the resources stated above, each member of our team was able to fulfill their responsibilities which were: Peyton P illustrating the storyboard of the camera techniques we have learned, Lexi M and Marley B providing research of camera movements which work best for our genre and storyline, in which I was able to suggest prompts for our drawings, and annotating each shot with their respective action line, framing, camera angle, and shot size.

Designing a storyboard is important in film being as it is the foundational idea that producers use to piece their ideas for concepts they demonstrate in their film, while keeping their ideas organized and prepared for the day it will be referenced on set.

These are nine illustrated scenes from our original storyboard with camerawork and camera movement techniques applied to them.

REFLECTION

To sum up, our group had learned to take advantage of the knowledge of camera movement that we had been taught and personally researched on. The value of why camera movement is used, which is to guide the audience’s attention on a subject, while realizing that storyboards are a key component in developing the foundation of film. Moving forward, our group is eager to take the knowledge we have gained collaborating on this activity, and put it into use by filming scenes from our storyboard applying camera movement techniques to each one.

WORK CITED:

-Goodman, R. (2003). Transcendentalism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). [online] Stanford.edu. Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/transcendentalism/.

-Roberts, J. (2019). The Cameras and Lenses Behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe. [online] The Beat: A Blog by PremiumBeat. Available at: https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/cameras-behind-marvel-cinematic-universe/.

-Disney Family (2020). Walt Disney Introduces the Multiplane Camera. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kN-eCBAOw60.

-Videomaker (2020). Storyboarding: Methods, techniques and lingo. [online] Videomaker. Available at: https://www.videomaker.com/article/f2/15415-how-to-make-a-storyboard-storyboard-lingo-techniques/#:~:text=By%20visualizing%20your%20shots%20with [Accessed 5 Apr. 2024].