Camera Work Reflection
Camera Movements:
For the Camera Movements project, I worked with two girls in a group to complete it. The prompt we were given was the word "Surprise", and the task was to create a short video. My group and I decided to make a video where someone was sneaking up on another person who was walking to surprise them in the end of the video.
However, we had to create our first storyboard before filming, which taught me that they provide a visual plan of the shots that will be in the film by providing a general sketch and basic description a scene. This ended up being really useful because my group very closely followed what was on our storyboard during the filming process.
While I mainly served as an actress, I gained a lot of insight on how to position the shots because we had to do multiple takes and adjust some of our shots. For example, we had to pinpoint the angling we needed for our over-the-shoulder shots and low shots as well as determine the speed of our crash zooms.
It started raining towards the end of our filming process, so we had to rush while still capturing quality shots as well. Something I would do differently next time for a project like this is apply the rule of thirds more intentionally and try to manage time better, so we don't end up having to rush to beat the rain.
Camera Angles and Shots:
For the Camera Shots and Angles project, I partnered with two girls in a group to complete it. Our task was to take pictures or camera shots that told a narrative about an inanimate object. My group and I decided to make our narrative about a mechanical pencil. We wanted to capture the "emotions" of the pencil as it broke, got abandoned, found and fixed again.
To do this, we created a storyboard to have a visual plan of our shots, and this took a lot longer than I thought it would. We had to think about a lot of specific details we hadn't thought about before to create the storyboard. I served as an actress and helped pinpoint the angles of the shots we needed.
Through this process, I learned the true importance of angling shots in certain ways for certain effects. For example, we mixed a long shot and high angle in one of our shots to highlight the pencil's "despair" from being abandoned.
However, because we took so long with our storyboard, we had less time to get our shots, and we struggled to make the pencil the main focus over the person using it in some shots. Something I would do differently next time for a project like this is to manage our time better, make sure to emphasize the main focus of the narrative in each of our shots, and use an establishing shot to provide context for the setting.
