Camera Position and Angles

When shooting a film or an interview, you can make people appear differently to the audience by shooting them in different angles and different positions.

There are general rules as to where to place the camera when interviewing someone and shooting them on film. The first of these is the height of the camera. In an interview for the news or a documentary if you dislike the person you can put the camera at a certain height to make them look bad, or oppositely if you like a person, you can put the camera at a visibly satisfying height. If you shoot a person above the camera, it makes them look arrogant, and it also boosts their importance. However if you put the camera above them, it belittles them, and makes them look meaningless and not important.

The most accepted and supposable the best angle and height to shot a person from is at 32 degrees to the subject, and on the same height. This makes them look normal, and also shows the best angles of a persons face.

Camera Movement

There are two main types of camera movement. These are tracking shots, and crain shots. At Hurtwood, we dont use crane shots, however there are tracks so it is optional to use them.

Tracking shots are shots that move from one side to another. they will usually move from left to right as this is known to be more comfortable on the viewers eye.

Crane shots are the opposite to tracking shots. In crane shots the camera moves upwards and downwards. Crane and traching shots can also be used at the same time, however this does become much more difficult to do.

Colours used in film

when deciding how to light a set and what colours to use, the director will usually think about what emotion he wants to portray to the audience. In film, each colour is known to portray a different kind of image, and you can usually tell a lot about a character and the themes of the film through the use of colour. For example, in the film "The Wild Bunch" the colours used are very pasty, drab and seedy. these are colours such as brown. they also used black and white in certian areas. The reasons for this was because they wanted the area to look like a nasty worly with little colour and also the colour blck means bad, which is what the wild bunch were. It also makes the location look like a washed out world.

Different colours are also known to say a lot about a character in a film. You can usuallt tell alot about a character by the clother that they wear, and what colour they are. For example, somebody who wears lots of red is usually known as an outgoing, active and physical person, where as somebody whom wears lots of grey is usually known as self-reliant and independant.

Lighting

For our A level pieces at Hurtwood House we use two different types of lighting. These are redhead lights, and blonde lights. These are the standard types of lights used. They are ranged between 1000 pounds and 1500 pounds. This is artificial lighting which is more commonly known as tungsten.

When lighting a scene there is usually a norm for doing so. The first form of lighting you would usually use would be a spot light directly in front of the subject. This would light the subjects face as well as their body, however usually there will be one side of the face which is slightly shadowed which means you then have to use other lights to extinguish this shadow. This second light is called a fill light. The fill light is usually at 32 degrees to the spot light. This is a comforting angle for the viewer and it will get rid of the shadow on the subject. The third light used is the back light. The back light is usually around level with the subject, however instead of lighting up the subject, the light it set up to aim towards the wall behind the object to bounce back on to the object and give them a feel of depth on camera. This is the light that is used to create a 3d effect.

Types of Shot's

There are six main different types of shot sizes. Each shot size is used by the director to portray a different type of meaning to the audience member, whether it is to describe an emotion on somebody’s face, or whether it do establish an area or the scenery around it. These six main different types of shot sizes are an Extreme close up, a close up, a mid shot, a long shot, an extreme long shot and a wide angle shot.

Extreme close ups are usually used by the director to really put across a characters fear or amazement etc to the audience. They are usually so close to something that you can only see a certain part of the object. For example, if there was an extreme close up on someone’s face it may only be of their eyes, to show their feelings through their eyes.


Close ups are usually used by the director for the same sort of reason that they would use an extreme close up. They would be used to tell the audience what the character was either thinking or feeling. They can be used to introduce a character, so the audience know what he looks like etc. they are also more commonly used that ECU’s are.

Mid shot’s are shots that show a suitable amount of detail of the character to put their emotion across to the audience, yet it is just far away enough to make the audience feel as if they were looking at the whole subject.

Long Shot’s are used to show the entire person and also to relate them to the surroundings around them. In long shots you can see the whole of the person so you can also read the persons body language as the audience member. This can sometimes put across how the audience member is feeling.

In Extreme long shot’s the subject is incredibly small compared to the overall image. They are usually used to show the audience the area, rather to convey some kind of emotion from a character. They can also be used as establishing shots. These are shots that establish something to the audience. For example, they can be used to establish a setting to the audience.

Wide Shot’s are fairly much the same as extreme long shots. They are again used by the director more to show an area rather than putting across the emotion of the subject. And also like ELS’s, wide shots can be used for establishing shots.

Our pitch

Our pitch started of with myself, Ben Marks and Tom Warhurst telling Luke about our favourite idea. This was to do a music video to the song another girl, another planet sung by the Only Ones. The idea was based around a small rock band, touring around the country, and the story of what a regular day for them consists of. For example, there will be a performance scene of the band consisting of four people performing on a street outside, with a background of lost of posters of bands on a corrugated iron wall. There would also be scenes of them in their tour van, crowds at venues and them in their dressing room with groupies. Once we had told him this idea we discussed where any possible weak points were and whether all of our ideas were possible to do. Luckily Luke liked our idea, so he helped us slightly by hinting us in certain directions and then set us on our way. Overall the pitch was a success.

Research and Development

Our research and development started off with me and my group drafting 3 ideas for a music video each, and then between us choosing what we thought was the best idea. Once we had done this, we then started to research that particular song, and how we could shoot our idea for a music video. We started by scanning our original ideas, and finding all the floors in the idea and replacing them with doable ideas. We then researched who we though would be our best suited target audience. To do this, we looked at other videos and compared them to our idea, and from this we found out what our target audience would be. We then went on to shape our idea even further to attract our target audience.

We decided that we liked our idea so much that we put the majority of our time into our main idea, however I did also spend some time doing some research and development into one of my original ideas to do a music video to the clash, London calling. This was more of a safety net for us, so that if our idea was to fall through, I would have a back up plan ready.

Then came the pitching stage of our idea. For this we need to tell our teacher, what our idea was, the different stages of the video, who it was aimed out, what we were trying to portray through the video and how we thought we would do it.