Cinematography - Week 2
21/02/2019
To start off today, we had a visit from Chris, who is in charge of the equipment and we carried quite a bit of it into the classroom. We can't use the equipment for projects where we profit from it because the insurance and tax is covered for academic purposes. If we break stuff accidentally, there might be an exception, but if we broke it without using our common sense, we are fined $5,000. It makes the technical part of this industry scary.
Class notes
- Resolution is about how many pixels you have on screen.
The original resolution was 400 x 400
PAL 480 x 576i
PAL wide 720 x 576i
HD 720 1280 x 720
Full HD 1920 x 1080
720p p means progressive. That's something new I learned in class today.
For this course, we shall be using the Full HD resolution.
Frame rates are included in the resolution
25p 24p 23.976p 30p 50p 60p 100p
Many cameras and phones use 30p and 60p because the United States use 30p and 60p. It's a likelihood that are a majority of their consumers are Americans. It's not surprising that those are American frame rates since their colour profile NTSC was originally 30fps, later becoming 29.97fps.
Our frame rate (25fps) is determined by our country's power efficiency, which is 50hz in New Zealand.
Light flicker 50 times a second in New Zealand
24fps was found to be the lowest and most economic resolution for general audiences without flickering
In this course, we will be working with 25fps
2K = 2,000 pixels or something like that 2K 2048 x 1080
2048 x 850 (Cinema)
Anamorphic squeezed down the image to give the illusion of a wide image and tricked the light that is exposed on the film stock. Anamorphic is an optical / analogue form of compression.
4K 4096 x 2160 (Cinema)
3840 x 2160 (Television)
Common aspect ratios
1:1 4:3 16:9 9:16
2:35:1 1:85:1
Anamorphic lenses create lens flares
We were encouraged to keep watching movies to get influenced on what genre to do for this paper.
We discussed our current favourite movie and childhood favourite movie. For me, it was Bohemian Rhapsody and Treehouse Hostage. Treehouse Hostage was the only movie discussed that the tutor and the rest of class never heard of before. One student mentioned a movie that sounded like Grave Encounters, which led me to think about possibly doing found footage horror as an idea for what genre to do for this paper.
We analysed a 2 minute scene from Terminator 2: Judgement Day. We watched it with our eyes closed, eyes open, without sound, and with sound.
With our eyes closed, we could recognise violence and technology was what the scene was about. We later notice that in all the stuff that goes on, which is a lot, there is only three simple lines of dialogue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaRuugE1R74
Point-of-view perspective in film can be hard to pull off subtly without drawing attention to itself.
Actions of the characters and camera movement in cinematography are like planning a dance in order to get the shot right and tell a story visually. It's like choreography.
Something I keep an eye out when I watch movies is how characters in the background react to the scene.
It would be interesting to watch a movie I haven't watched before (muted) and analyse it like today in class. It would drive me crazy though. However, our tutor suggested the best way to do is doing to a two minute scene.
We talked about the science behind light and colour.
At this stage, I'm a bad DoP, but hopefully that will change over time this year.
Our tutor, Ash demonstrated to us setting up a camera rig like Sony F3 and Black Magic. Thing we were instructed on included Circular Polarising Filter, Matte Box, Follow Focus. It seems like a delicate process that needs attention to detail and fine motor skills in some parts. My fine motor skills aren't good, which makes question whether I should trust myself with handling expensive camera equipment like that.
It turns out you can change a lens on a Black Magic like a Canon DSLR
Our frame rate (25fps) is determined by our country's power efficiency, which is 50hz in New Zealand.
Light flicker 50 times a second in New Zealand
24fps was found to be the lowest and most economic resolution for general audiences without flickering
In this course, we will be working with 25fps
2K = 2,000 pixels or something like that 2K 2048 x 1080
2048 x 850 (Cinema)
Anamorphic squeezed down the image to give the illusion of a wide image and tricked the light that is exposed on the film stock. Anamorphic is an optical / analogue form of compression.
4K 4096 x 2160 (Cinema)
3840 x 2160 (Television)
Common aspect ratios
1:1 4:3 16:9 9:16
2:35:1 1:85:1
Anamorphic lenses create lens flares
We were encouraged to keep watching movies to get influenced on what genre to do for this paper.
We discussed our current favourite movie and childhood favourite movie. For me, it was Bohemian Rhapsody and Treehouse Hostage. Treehouse Hostage was the only movie discussed that the tutor and the rest of class never heard of before. One student mentioned a movie that sounded like Grave Encounters, which led me to think about possibly doing found footage horror as an idea for what genre to do for this paper.
We analysed a 2 minute scene from Terminator 2: Judgement Day. We watched it with our eyes closed, eyes open, without sound, and with sound.
With our eyes closed, we could recognise violence and technology was what the scene was about. We later notice that in all the stuff that goes on, which is a lot, there is only three simple lines of dialogue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaRuugE1R74
Point-of-view perspective in film can be hard to pull off subtly without drawing attention to itself.
Actions of the characters and camera movement in cinematography are like planning a dance in order to get the shot right and tell a story visually. It's like choreography.
Something I keep an eye out when I watch movies is how characters in the background react to the scene.
It would be interesting to watch a movie I haven't watched before (muted) and analyse it like today in class. It would drive me crazy though. However, our tutor suggested the best way to do is doing to a two minute scene.
We talked about the science behind light and colour.
- Light has direction, intensity, focus, and colour
- Intensity is measured by Lumans and Lux e.g. 1 luman = 1 foot candle.
- Drop Off is how much light you have lost
- Inverse Square Law
- Focus means hardness of shadow
- You get hard shadow from sunlight because of the massive distance between the Sun and the ground on Earth.
At this stage, I'm a bad DoP, but hopefully that will change over time this year.
Our tutor, Ash demonstrated to us setting up a camera rig like Sony F3 and Black Magic. Thing we were instructed on included Circular Polarising Filter, Matte Box, Follow Focus. It seems like a delicate process that needs attention to detail and fine motor skills in some parts. My fine motor skills aren't good, which makes question whether I should trust myself with handling expensive camera equipment like that.
It turns out you can change a lens on a Black Magic like a Canon DSLR
It was an overwhelming and very technical tutorial this afternoon. I now can see how complex the job of a DoP can be.
Grip looks after the camera for the DoP when there is a cut in filming.
Handheld is good for filming under a time limit, dynamic shots, and more free camera movement.
When lifting a big camera on a tripod, lift it from under the tripod and hold the top of the camera for support. DO NOT DO the opposite.
The field trip to Queenspark in two weeks time - We will be learning about exposure and controlling daylight on a camera.
Blog
Pick a movie scene and analyse it
Film something on a phone
What was taught in this week's tutorial will be repeated over the next few weeks, but with a little extra stuff each week. If I struggle a bit by the end, things will be put in place to help me keep up with the class. If the tutorials were slowed down for me, we wouldn't get stuff done in time for this paper.
26/02/2019
Notes on exposure from 101 Filmmaking tutorial- Negative is colours swapped around
- Aperture determines the amount of light reaching the sensor
- Aperture ring allows you to naturally fade in and out on a digital film camera.
- Bokeh are blurs produced in out-of-focus
- 'Film Speed' is the sensitivity of film
- Other terms for ISO are gain (db), ASA (American Standards Association), and DIN (Deutsches Institut für Normung).
- ISO / gain (db) / ASA / DIN are the rating of sensitivity of film stock
- DIN was ignored by photographers because it was rated by degrees, so they preferred ASA instead
- ISO was adopted when the ASA was phased out
- Gain (db) is sensitivity in the digital world
- Shutter determines the amount of time that the image is exposed for (e.g. duration)
- Shutter speed creates sharpness
- Film grain is created when there's not enough light
- Motion picture cameras offer both shutter speed and shutter angle. But as filmmakers, we should use shutter angle
- Shutter is key to slow motion because it looks crisper and almost in detail
- Cinema frame rate is 24fps because it was cost-effective and mathematically convenient. It's not lower than 24fps, because of 'persistence of vision' and rendering fluid image
- 1/50 is the conventional shutter angle, which 180 degrees and is good for 24fps
- Undercranking in early cinema cameras led to faster motion, whereas overcranking led to slow motion. We still use the technique today, but for creative reason.
- NTSC was originally 30fps, but then became 29.97fps
27/02/2019
Film Boot Camp
It was interesting learning experience, I was an assistant because I was there for the first hour because I had to go to one of Duncan Sarkies' screenwriting workshops for two hours. Being an assistant that morning, I helped shift lighting stuff and was taught how to shift them safely, which was to have one hand on top of the light and the other hand holding the tripod stand. But if the light is hot, I put both hands on the tripod stand.
I came back in the afternoon and firstly, I was a grip assistant, but then a sound assistant, in which it was my job to hold the boom pole for the boom operator (Caleb). I learned that the boom pole I was using was directional, so I had to point the boom pole in the direction of the actors during shooting.
I knew the basics of this job was to have the boom mic as close to the actors as possible without getting in frame. I was a bit rusty because I haven't used a boom mic in five years.
However, I felt great being involved in the film boot camp as an assistant because it seemed like I was useful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWZYc8v3vpg
I analysed the opening scene from Walk the Line and found the audio had ambience, a crowd clapping, steel clanking, country music (which builds up), and footsteps. Without sound or music, the film has different atmosphere, it doesn't seem like music biopic or clearly hint at a concert (the audio does help support it). It just seems like a film setting up a scene about a depressing, generic prison, or that of a raw documentary.
With sound and music, you can feel a raw, exciting energy in the prison, which is different to without sound and music. One of the first shots in the opening scene shows us a bus, telling us there are visitors at this prison, as well as the name of the prison 'Folsom'. Most but not all shots in this scene are smooth tracking shots.
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