First Filming Exercise

First Filming Exercise 

Today we had our first go at filming a short sequence. We first started by getting to know the on set language. Stand by is an important phrase and this is said by the director and then confirmed by all the crew. It is usually heard multiple times, it is said by the camera man to cue rolling, the sound man to ensure the boom microphone is read and the other crew to ensure their department is ready for shooting. We also use‘Roll Camera’ and this is the cameramen’s cue of when to start recording and consequently causes the codes to begin running.‘Cut’ again is used and is only the directors right to say. It is the instruction to stop recording. It is very important to only stop sound or recording after the director has said so. For if you were to cut the camera rolling before the scene has fully ended, you could miss vital footage.

After setting up our tripod and camera we then bubbled our camera. We did not want any slanting shots so to achieve an equal shot we made sure the bubble was inside the centre circle.  After this, we thought of a simple idea we could use in order to practice the different shots we had learnt. Our group came up with the idea of having a boy trying to win over a girl, beginning with the girl on a sofa and the boy entering and ending with the boy on the sofa and the girl leaving the scene.  

To begin filming we focused our camera. We did this by zooming in on both our actors faces then turned the dial until the picture was sharp. Once we focused the shot, we zoomed out to our establishing shot with a focused camera. We then took a couple of takes on our establishing shot to ensure that we could see both actors exits and entrances. Following this, we did extreme close up shots on each actor in their beginning places and then at certain moments during the sequence in order to convey the exact emotion the actor was feeling. After this, we did some mid shots so that you could see more of the actor,and the movements they were doing. We also moved the camera to a different angle, so that we could really capture the look the male actor gave the girl. We repeated this shot many times, first in a mid shot and then in an extreme close up. 

As my first experience of using the camera in a short sequence it was very exciting and helped me get a feel on what filming was like.