Preliminary task
- luhoward
- Apr 24, 2023
- 4 min read
My job was to be a cameraman and an editor in this task.
Filming
The gear that I use is a Rolin SC gimbal and a Sony A7R2. The lenses that I used were an FE50mm F2.8 macro and a 35mm F1.8.
Honestly, I wasn't that sure what to use during my first production since I was using an A7R2 to film stuff, which was meant to be designed to take high-resolution photos.
I recorded the video in the form of NTSC, just because I see the 1080p 29.9p selection in NTSC, and the PAL only goes up to 25p. Certainly, PAL somehow creates better image quality, but I'm unsure if I need it just for a task. If you need better quality, you will probably go and film logs, right?
I also made a huge mistake; I thought the number after "f" was better when it was higher. I selected a 50mm 2.8 for the film, while we had a 55mm 1.8. In addition, the lens is a macro lens, which means the focusing length will be super long and slow. It was very frustrating in the early production stages; most footage we had focused on every other space rather than people, and we had to do it all over again.
50mm is also certainly not a good choice for small-space filming. We did not have a 20mm G lens then, so the filming part was a disaster. However, the MACRO function on the length did help us to get some good close-ups. I'm sure we can also do that through a much wider lens.
Also, DO NOT USE A GIMBEL IN A SMALL SPACE UNLESS YOU NEED IT! 80% of the film time, I was busy fighting with the gimbal and trying to point it in the right direction. The way I did it was kinda silly because I was messing around with my rocker, and I only had to press the 'm' button on the back of the gimbal. There's not much camera movement, so hand-holding is perfectly fine. So I started to film with a handheld afterwards.
The clip starts with a tracking ground-level side shot to reveal the inspector. A tilting shot follows to show the inspector's face. How we achieved this was funny: Linda was dragging me sitting on a chair down the hallway to prevent the Z axis from shaking.
Lewis and Dino then held a blue and orange light on each side of me, providing complementary colour lighting. The light looks quite dramatic. Although, I'm probably going to give up such lighting later as it looks unnatural and fake. It's always good to try.
We were also trying to film a P.O.V. shot of the inspector looking at his clock. It took a thousand times to raise the clock to the right place. But Mr Alpha 7 decided not to focus on the watch, so we had no choice but to put the out-of-focus one on.
We did use a lot of dirty singles during the conversation. I planned a double shot to include the mise en scene at the back. But we did not have such a wide lens. Therefore, the clip loses the feeling of distance as it should.
The handle's close-ups were also interesting. Since we had a small translucent space, we didn't want the audience to look through the door and see what was inside, so we had Linda standing on the other side, holding a black curtain to block the other side out.
I'm thinking more about Semiotics and Genre theory when I'm filming. The genre that we picked was a thriller. Therefore all the lighting stuff has to reflect the coldness of the inspector. The blue light represented coldness and justice, and the red light on Lewis's face meant evilness (Barthes). I also tilt up when facing characters to show their position in the conversation. Mr Wunker is in charge, so the angle tilts up to show he's dominating. However, I also tilt the angle toward Lewis when he refutes Mr Wunker that he has done anything wrong. The angle represents that he's solid and rigid.
EDITING
Unfortunately, I did not reserve my editing project in Final Cut since it's taking up too much space on my computer. I corrected the colour and toned the whole thing blue in the style palette. I also added some footsteps and door opening and closing sound effects in the background since the girls were chatting in the background. I was trying to outline the thriller genre more with the sound in the first edit. There were environmental effects of a police station and even someone shooting in the distance, representing Lewis as a dangerous guy and a riot outside the station. But Linda soon refused me for that because she thought it was too messy in the background.
Improvements that I could make
I would first say: film with a wide-angle lens. I'm now using Cannon R6mark2 with an EF16-35 F2.8L adapted, which solves the problem that we do not have a large aperture wide angle lens. Therefore, the equipment is not a big deal anymore.
Improving communication between teammates is also essential. We had a dispute over the jobs. I might want to find a much more experienced teammate in the future since Linda has no idea about technical stuff.
We might also want to keep the recording process silent since the girls were either giggling at the back or telling me what to do. It means I have to mute all the clips at the end and produce the sound again. This is a valuable skill to master, but post-sound production means some sound effects will not match and be as natural.
Filming in a much brighter environment first and pressing the illumination down in the post-production is a much better way than just filming in the dark. Since I was using a 2.8 and the space was rather dark, nearly most of the clips had it's iso go up to 12800, causing the image to be noisy, and I spent a lot of time getting rid of the noises.
T
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