First Video

Reflective writing

Today I, Kim, Janice and Charlotte made lots of different videos from many different angles that show our skills which will be really useful and helpful for us in future media studies.

While recording all the videos we learned several rules, such as 180 degree rule. The 180° rule is a basic guideline in film making that states those two characters (or other elements) in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. If the camera passes over the imaginary axis connecting the two subjects, it is called crossing the line. The new shot, from the opposite side, is known as a reverse angle.

Panning was one of the things we learned that day as well and I think we use it quite a lot actually because we had to show this on our video so it doesn’t look boring. Mounting the camera on a tripod, simply move the camera horizontally from left to right. Pan shots are used to show the viewer more of the scenery. This technique is also often used to show views from high places, such as overlooks. Pan shots should begin with a still shot, then pan, then finish with a still shot. You should practice panning at various speeds until you find the speed that works best for you.

Zooming was the hardest one I think because we could never find the right time when to stop zooming in or zooming out because it would either me to close or too far away but you get used to the technique after several recordings. Zooming is one camera move that most people are probably familiar with. It involves changing the focal length of the lens to make the subject appear closer or further away in the frame. Most video cameras today have built-in zoom features. Some have manual zooms as well, and many have several zoom speeds. Zooming is one of the most frequently-used camera moves and one of the most overused.

We didn’t really use any angles but we should’ve because we need to practice more for making the final video for our coursework. The main angle shot that we used was the eye-level shot which is the most useful one. Eye-level shots tend to be neutral. Much like the medium shot, an eye-level shot puts the viewer on equal footing with the subject being filmed. This has none of the diminishing or exaggerating qualities of the high- and low-angle shots.

As well as recording we did editing which was a little bit harder than the first part. In the editing we use lots of things that we learned with our teacher. But there weren’t a lot of new techniques used because this was our first editing

The other thing that we learned is the match on action. A match on action, a technique used in film editing, is a cut that connects two different views of the same action at the same moment in the movement. By carefully matching the movement across the two shots, filmmakers make it seem that the motion continues uninterrupted. For a real match on action, the action should begin in the first shot and end in the second shot. This was very useful on the editing part of our day. This was something new and interesting.

The hardest in the editing was the shot reverse-shot because Kim and Charlotte spoke really fast and it was really hard to catch the right moment to stop the video and cut it in the right place. Shot reverse-shot (or shot/counter shot) is a film technique where one character is shown looking at another character (often off-screen), and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character. Since the characters are shown facing in opposite directions, the viewer assumes that they are looking at each other.

Deliverance Analysis

This scene is showing the difference between people that come from different parts of town. Group of people come from the city make fun of the people that live in the mountains.  The attitude to the place and people that live in the mountains is really bad and you would never want to face people like them but the people from the mountains mocking the people from the town by saying “you don’t know anything” which are a pretty offensive thing to say.

On the other side you get the situation of a man who is really nice in the scene which shows later on because when he starts playing the guitar the child who we don’t know about comes out and starts copying the sounds that the man who plays the guitar makes but on his banjo. No one pays attention to them until they properly get into the playing everyone start looking at them and smiling because it was such a happy moment but at the same time you get a man who still makes fun of that because the old man started dancing he turned around and laughed at him which made him look very stupid from my point of view.

When they stopped playing, the man that was playing the guitar asked the kid if he would like to play another song with him but the kid turned away for the reason that no one knows and then the man that makes fun of everyone says a very mean phrase “ give him a couple of bucks “. This shows that his attitude to these people is really bad.

So the outcome of this is that different classes of people have different opinions and the people from town have no respect to people from mountains. This doesn’t only happens in the movies, it happens in real life which I think shouldn’t be going on. All people should be respectful to each other.

Deliverance Dueling Banjo

The video for my Deliverance