Pics

I found some of the pics that I took in India. Some are edited - the first and the last two. Hope you like them. Enjoy!!

 The Arabian sea!!

 Almost went to jail for taking this pic!! Its prohibited. But it was worth the risk.

 This was a showpiece at my place. I did this using total back light.

Flashback

Flash-backs:

Another important device for the construction of film narratives is the use of ‘flash-backs’, in the sense that the term is understood nowadays. That is, having a scene in the present followed by a scene in the past, and eventually returning to scenes in the present of the story. In the earliest days of filmmaking, this was only done as a representation of a character dreaming about the past, as in the 1901 Pathe film Histoire d’un crime. The first film in which a character remembers the past while awake was Vitagraph’s Napoleon- Man of Destiny (1909). In this film, Napoleon is in his palace after the battle of Waterloo remembering notable scenes of his past life. A superimposed title appears identifying the event he is thinking about, and then the film cuts straight to this scene, and afterwards back to Napoleon thinking about it. The idea slowly spread over the next few years, and in these, usually the framing action shows a character narrating the story of the past events to people listening to them. This happens in Luigi Maggi’s Nozze d’oro of 1911, and amongst other films in the Edison Company’s The Passer-by of 1912. This film introduces what was to become a standard way of getting into a flash-back. As the person telling the story of their past starts talking, the camera tracks into his face, then there is a dissolve to his younger face and the camera tracks back to reveal the scene in the past. There are many examples of single shot memory flashbacks by 1913, while a memory shown in an extended series of shots is much rarer. There is even an example of a flash-back inside a flashback in Just a Shabby Doll made by the Thanhouser Company in 1913.

They are fun to watch as well!!

Remember this scene from Ratatouille?? 

When we see the flashback scene from Ego’s childhood after he takes his first bite of the ratatouille, the house and kitchen is the same countryside house that rats came from at the beginning of the movie (where Remy was studying the cookbooks and watching cooking shows with the old lady). Remy actually made Ego his own mother’s Recipe.

References:

 Kenny (2004). Teaching Tv Production in a Digital World: Integrating Media Literacy.

Production Shots

Production shots:

There are four types of shots used in video production:

1.       Long shot (LS): A long shot allows your audience to see everything. It shows the big picture.

2.       Medium shot (MS): This shot gets rid of any distractions in the picture and starts the process of zeroing in on the action.

3.       Close-up (CU): This shot cuts out extraneous visual material. Faces should fill up most of the screen.

4.       Extreme close-up (ECU): Use this shot to focus attention on what’s important. It enlarges small objects to show details.

To tie the shots together:

1.       When changing to a different shot within a sequence, you should plan to have things in the same position. For example, when switching from a medium shot to a close-up of someone writing, their hand should be in the same place when the edit is made.

2.       Make sure movement in the frame goes in the same direction.

Wild Track

Wild Track:

When on location, you should always record a ‘wild track’. This should be a few minutes of the ambient noise from your location (the sound of traffic, chirping of birds etc.). In the edit it is very useful (and often absolutely required) to keep a wild track running in the background to smooth over the changes from cut to cut. A wild track is an audio only recording of an actor’s lines while the camera is not rolling. These wild recordings are used to replace a dialogue from a filmed take that may be un-usable for various reasons. Perhaps a plane flew over during the scene. It will be used in part or in whole to replace the on-camera dialogue. It is also used for off- camera lines that need to be recorded on mic. So make sure you don’t forget to record a wild track on set.

Additional tools

Some additional tools:

Other than the programmes that we are learning through the module like Photoshop, premiere pro and after effects, these are a few that can be used too: (Yes, they are all free!!!!)

1.       ArtRage2:  It’s is used for matte painting and creating the movie poster. This is a simple and artistic painting programme. It’s extremely useful. If you need any kind of digital painting with traditional artistic materials, this is your first choice. The free version is a little limited than the full version. But the full version is surprisingly inexpensive.

2.       DAZ Studio and Bryce 5.5: These are great if you want a basic 3D animation.

3.       GIMP: It’s a paint programme very similar to Adobe Photoshop. It’s great but not to the level of Photoshop. So if you do not have Adobe Photoshop 4 or later, this programme can be a useful tool.

4.       Audacity: This is useful for working with audio and converting audio to OGG files. It’s a bit clumsy but does the job.

Editing

Editing:

Stanley Kubrick noted that the editing process is the one phase of production that is truly unique to motion pictures. Every other aspect of filmmaking originated in a different medium than film (photography, art direction, writing, sound recording etc.), but editing is the one process that is unique to film. In Alexander Walker’s Stanley Kubrick Directs, Kubrick was quoted as saying,” I love editing. I think I like it more than any other phase of filmmaking. If I wanted to be frivolous, I might say that everything that precedes editing is merely a way of producing film to edit.”

In his book, On Film Editing, Edward Dmytryk stipulates ‘seven rules of cutting’ that a good editor should follow:

1.       Never make a cut without a positive reason.

2.       When undecided about the exact frame to cut on, cut long rather than short.

3.       Whenever possible, cut ‘in movement’.

4.       The ‘fresh’ is preferable to ‘stale’.

5.       All scenes should begin and end with continuing action.

6.       Cut for proper values rather than proper matches.

7.       Substance first- then form.

According to Walter Murch, when it comes to film editing, there are six main criteria for evaluating a cut or deciding where to cut. They are (in order of importance):

1.       Emotion: Does the cut reflect what the editor believes the audience should be feeling at that moment?

2.       Story: Does the cut advance the story?

3.       Rhythm: Does the cut occur ‘at a moment that is rhythmically interesting and right?’

4.       Eye-trace: Does the cut pay respect to ‘the location and movement of the audience’s focus of interest within the frame?’

5.       Two dimensional place of the screen: Does the cut respect the 180 degree rule?

6.       Three dimensional space of action: Is the cut true to the physical/ spatial relationships within the diegeis?

Camera Controls

The most used controls in a camera:

1.       Iris: The ring closest to the camera body controls the amount of light passing through the lens to the light- sensitive surface of the pickup tube or chip. It is called the iris, aperture or f-stop control and is marked off in f-numbers. The lowest f-stop lets in the most light and the highest f-stop lets in the least. Some lenses even have a ‘C’ setting after the highest f-stop which means the lens is completely closed, letting no light through at all. The standard f- numbers are 1, 1.4, 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22 and 32 where 1 allows the most amount of light and 32 allows the least amount of light to pass through the lens.

2.       Zoom: The centre ring on most lenses is the zoom control. This allows you to change the focal length of the lens through a range from wide angle (short focal length) to telephoto (long focal length). It is common for inexpensive zoom lenses to have a range of about six to one. This means that the longest focal length is about six times the shortest. The main use of the lens is in controlling the field of view of the camera when it is inconvenient or impossible to change the distance from the subject to the camera.

3.       Focus: The focus is used to control the depth of field. Depth of field is the range of distances in front of the lens in which objects appear to be in acceptable focus. It is longer for short lenses and it increases as you use higher f-stops. It is preferable to use a higher f-stop when lighting conditions permit, if you expect the distance between the camera and the subject to change often while you are taping, since you will have less trouble keeping the subject sharply focused with greater depth of field.

4.       White Balance: If you use outdoor film with normal indoor lighting (no flash) everything comes out orange. In professional cameras, it may be necessary with each change in location or lighting to make the camera interpret a particular colour. This is done by showing the camera a white platform ( sheets, walls, desks etc.) which represents the total absence of colour. Controls on the camera are then used to minimize the colour output of the camera.

POV shots

Point of View shots:

These shots are used to convey the idea of what someone in the film was seeing through e.g. a telescope and this was indicated by having a black circular mask or vignette within the frame. The POV shot, in which someone looking at something is followed by a cut to a shot taken from their position without any mask, took longer to appear. In 1910, in Vitagraph’s Back to Nature we see a long shot of people looking down over the rail of a ship taken from below, followed by a shot of the lifeboat they are looking at taken from their position. A true POV shot is introduced by an explanatory intertitle, “what they saw in the house across the court” in Larry Trimble’s Jean and the Waif, made at the end of 1910. But a few months later, Trimble made Jean Rescues, another of the popular series which has POV shots introduced at an appropriate point without explanation. After this, un-vignette POV shots began to appear fairly frequently in Vitagraph films, and also occasionally in films from other American companies.

An example of an explicit POV shot from the public domain horror fim The Driller Killer putting the audience into the perspective of the protagonist playing pinball with the top shot coming five seconds before the below shot.

Reference:

Mascelli, Joseph, V. (1965). The Five C's of Cinematography: Motion Picture Filming Techniques Simplified.