Establishing Shots

We have planned for our film opening to feature some establishing shots and a few shots of the inside of the garage before the title sequence/ action begins. The establishing shots are to be of the house of the main character, focusing on the garage as that is where the next scene (and title sequence) takes place.

Although our opening is filmed in my garage, we are not going to be using my house for the establishing shots; we want something that looks like a typical suburban house, whereas mine is a town house so does not fit the look we are going for. Instead, we are planning to film our establishing shots at a two storey, corner house, with a red garage door so it is clear exactly what is being focused on. As it tends to be dark at the time school ends, myself and Rachel are planning to film our establishing shots during the day in over the Christmas holidays.

Filming- Day 5

Today was our fifth day of filming and we completed the shots we failed to film last week due to having to re-shoot certain shots. 

The shots we filmed today were:

- low angle shot of reaching for the crisps

- close up of eating crisps

-extreme close up of eyes focusing on polariods

Se7en- Reveiw

During our lesson last Wednesday, we watched David Fincher's 1995 film 'Se7en'. Over the course of the film, we saw the story of serial killer Jon Doe (Kevin Spacey) unfold, and watched the work of Detective Lieutenant William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) and Detective David Mills (Brad Pitt) as they investigate into each murder. At the second murder, it became evident to both the detectives and the audience that each homicide was based on the seven deadly sins, with Doe believing each of his victims had committed one of these.

The title sequence was featured after a few scenes from the film, but was unrelated to the story line. This was an interesting decision from Fincher, as usually titles are integrated into the film.

Filming- Day 4

For 4 hours earlier today, myself, Rachel and Ted got together to film a few more shots. As our last two filming sessions have not been as productive as we'd had hoped, we had much more planned today. Ted arrived at around 5:30 and we worked until 9:30, with a half an hour pizza break in the middle. In the 3 and half hours filming time we had, we'd planned to shoot shots 7-15, but unfortunately only got up to shot 12 due to some continuity issues. We noticed after shooting shot 12 that shot 9 would need to be redone, as our character was wearing his headphones round his neck rather than on his head. As he is wearing them in every other shot we have filmed so far, we decided we would need to re-film this as it would massively break the continuity and lower our grade. Also, we didn't manage to begin filming as soon as Ted arrived as we needed to replace parts of the set that had moved such as the laptops and any posters that had come away from the wall. For these reasons, we ended up losing nearly an hour of filming time, which is why we did not manage to get through all 8 shots.

However, today was the first time Rachel and I had decided to create a shooting schedule, and map out everything we had planned to film. This proved to be massively helpful and improved our efficiency as we didn't have to discuss what we were to film next. 

Shooting Schedule

For the first time, myself and Rachel have decided to plan out what we want to be filmed when we get together with Ted on Thursday 8th December. We are hoping this will be beneficial to our levels as productivity, as out last few days of filming have not been as productive as we would have hoped. During the first day of filming, a plan was not too essential as we had our storyboard, but now it is vital as a lot of our storyboard has changed. We are hoping to film shots 7-15 on Thursday, and have a note of what needs to be done in each shot. It is no longer correlated exactly with our storyboard as some shots have been removed, altered, or added.

Shooting Schedule

• 7   - behind shot of sitting
• 8   - mid shot of putting book on table, must see that the tape is NOT put down
• 9   - close up/ extreme close up of tape biting
• 10 - SRS, mid shot of putting the tape down and picking up the picture
• 11 - behind shot of sticking the picture to the wall
• 12 - close up of TITLE on the picture stuck up.
• DINNER
• 13 - low angle shot from Space Raiders to see reach
• 14 - low angle (different positioning) of opening crisps and taking one out
• 15 - close up of eating a crisp, eyes look round the map as if looking for something, fixates on polaroids.

Filming- Day 3

Yesterday's filming focused entirely on the beginning of our opening and introducing our main character. The shots we filmed were:
- Elliott entering the room
- Light switch and plug title

We weren't able to film much in the few hours we were together yesterday due to complications with the title shot. As we had 'Ted Russell as Elliot' on the light switch and 'In U.F.O' on the plug socket nearby, we needed a smooth, steady movement between the two; also, the shot needed to stabilise for 4 seconds on each title in order for our audience to be able to read the title. As we were using a handheld camera for this shot (in order to move freely across the titles), it was proven difficult to stay completely still on the titles. The shots were shaky and therefore had to be redone multiple times, taking up the majority of the time we had to film yesterday evening.

Filming- Day 2

Before filming, we highly underestimated the amount of time we would need to film our opening. We thought the majority would be able to be filmed on a Saturday, and finishing off the last few shows after school.

Today was the second day of filming, and we managed to complete 4 of our action shots for the end sequence. All of what we filmed today was not featured in our storyboard, and therefore anything we film after this will not correlate with the original shot number given.

Shots filmed today:
- Helmet money shot
- Backpack swing
- Taking the jacket off the chair
- Leaving the room and crushing the crisps 

Camera Change

During filming yesterday, Rachel and I decided we were no longer going to be filming on the school camera, but instead on an iPhone 6. Our reasoning for this decision was based on 2 factors; firstly, as the lighting in our set is not brilliant due to there only being one main light and a lamp in there, the camcorder was not picking up the details of set. Also, the lighting was a problem as the footage on the camera showed up as very yellow when filming from certain angles, and broke the continuity- an issue we didn't seem to have the phone. The second reason for changing to an iPhone was the quality of the footage when filming the texting scenes. The text messages are an integral part of the plot and must be legible, but we were finding them difficult to read from the camera. However, they were very clear when shot on the phone, but this did mean we had to change the phone used by the character, as we now needed this to film on.

Before making the final decision we re-filmed the shots we had taken, this time on an iPhone, and compared them- it is from these that we decided on shooting the entirety of the footage on a phone. Luckily we had only filmed two shots before deciding to change, so not too much needed re-filming.

Filming- Day 1

Yesterday myself, Rachel, Ted (our actor), and our friend Catherine spent the day filming. We had planned to shoot the final seven shots but unfortunately did not achieve as much as we had liked to, so have planned to meet up again tomorrow to film again. The shots that we did manage to film were 25- 30, but added some in that weren't originally in our storyboard. We decided to start with the last few shots as this is where the majority of the action is, as it is primarily a title sequence. Luckily we started with these shots as, after filming 25 and 26, we discovered that the camera we were using did not show screens particularly well, and both of these shots revolved around reading messages from a phone screen. 

Set Design

When brainstorming for ideas and plot lines for our coursework, myself and Rachel designed what we would ideally like our set to look like. Marked in red is where we have planned to place our titles as they trail around the room to different locations. 

Earlier today we spent the day setting up the garage, and the final set design looks very similar our initial design. The only main difference is the chair we used- we had planned to use a yellow inflatable camp chair, but swapped it for a black fold up chair as we found it was too low down to the floor.

Polaroids

For one of our titles, we have 'Produced + Edited by Katie Killeen' written on some polaroid pictures which are placed on the map. These photos are on the map for the entirety of the film opening, but are only shown as titles for one shot. We had to take these photos ourselves and used locations and objects which cannot be made out, in order for them to be realistic and look like they were taken at places of the alien sightings. We took a few pictures of street lamps (polaroid on the left of the photo), which printed out as blurs of light, making them unrecognisable as lights and somewhat passable as possible UFOs. My favourite photo is one of the scratched metal of a letterbox (polaroid on the right) as it reflects the flash and highlights the scratches, and has a blue tint to it.

Visit to the BFI

The British Film Institute on London's Southbank is a four screen cinema, used for film/ TV previews, industry workshops, and educational talks/ activities. Today, myself and the rest of the ECS AS media class took a visit here to attend a Film Openings talk, in order to help us achieve the highest grades on our coursework.

The day consisted of 3 sessions, each hosted by media and film teacher Tom Woodcock, and a Q&A session with actor and director Dexter Fletcher. Sessions 1 and 2 discussed the conventions film openings/ title sequences, with 1 focusing on macro conventions, and 2 on the micro conventions. The second half of the day was split into 2 halves- the first half was spent watching film openings directed by Fletcher and having the opportunity to speak with him. The last half was the 3rd of Tom's sessions, entitled 'Making Film Openings', which gave us an insight into what needs to be done for us to achieve the best possible results from the time and resources available to us.

Storyboard Animation

Below is the video made using the images from our storyboard. The purpose of making this video is to ensure that the planned scenes add up to the timing of roughly 2 minutes. Another reason for this animation is to plan the sounds that would be heard in the final piece, including music, and diegetic sound.

From our video, it is clear that our final piece will be of the correct time length. Also, the sounds of music, text alerts, and a UFO video clip have been added. The video clip heard is not the one we will be using in our final piece.

  

Choice of Sound

After creating our storyboard, we needed to decide on the sound that would be featured in our final film, in order to be able to add it to our starboard animation. 

Our main inspiration for the music used was the title sequence of 'Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging', when 'She's So Lovely' by Scouting for Girls is laid over the top of the scene where the main character runs along the high street of Brighton. The song is relevant to the film as it appeals to the audience, fits with the scenes it is played with, and uses lyrics that are related to the entire plot.

The song we have decided to use for our film opening is 'Holy Commotion' by The Pretenders. There were a variety of factors which influenced the decision to choose this song, the main one being that we both thought it fit well with the scenes. The song is upbeat and faced paced, but also has an element of the electronic, synthesised genre, which we both agreed worked better than pop or hiphop. Another reason for choosing this song is that the majority of it is instrumental, meaning there are only a few lyrics to match with the action.  

Other aspects of sound we needed to consider were the text alerts that are heard over the music, the video clip that is watched, and the dimming of the music whilst this clip is playing. The reason for having to quieten the song whilst the video plays is because we are not allowed to use non- diegetic sound, so will therefore have the song being played through headphones. When the character removes the headphones to watch the video, the music will become quieter but not silent, like it is still being heard by the character through the headphones, but the clip will overpower the music.

Storyboard for Final Piece

Before we could begin filming, we created a storyboard to outline our plot line and the shots used. Having a guideline of what we are to shoot will enable us to work faster and efficiently , rather then having to decide the shots whilst filming.

Breakdown of shots:

1) establishing shot of area

2) establishing shot of house

3) establishing shot of garage

4) downwards tilt of inside garage

5) full shot of garage, Elliott opens the door and steps inside

6) title: close up of light switch showing 'Ted Russell as Elliott' 

7) tracking shot from behind Elliott following him further into the room

8) behind shot of Elliott sitting down

9) close up of biting some tape off

10) behind shot of Elliott putting tape on the table and picking up some paper 

11) title: close up of sticking paper up then a pan across to 'Created and Directed by Rachel Harrison' title

12) low angle shot of reaching for a packet of Space Raiders and opening them

13) close up of looking eating crisps and looking around, focuses on something

14) title: eyeline match to polaroids reading 'Produced and Edited by Katie Killeen'

15) extreme close up of Elliott's eyes squinting to look closer

16) title: track of Elliott's finger following a string from the polaroids to 'Casting by Catherine Rochford'

17) full shot of entire garage showing Elliot stand and reach for shelf

18) money shot of Elliot taking book off shelf

19) title: mid shot of bringing the book down, paint pot on shelf reads 'Location Manager: Anna Killeen'

20) title: high angle, over-the-shoulder shot of opening to book to page saying 'Craft Services: Tim Harrison'

21) reach to pen pot and takes pen

22) writes something on Post-It note stuck on map

23) Elliott sits down and a selective focus is used to highlight laptop in the background

24) title: close up of laptop with 'Cinematography By Katie Killeen and Rachel Harrison' written in coding

25) phone next to laptop lights up from receiving a text

26) shot of phone showing text messages from a friend

27) low angle, reaction shot to these messages

28) SRS: back to phone showing a video which had been received 

29) full shot of room, Elliott moves across room in to grab a backpack 

30) picks phone up from table

31) shot of Elliott's feet running out the door and crushing a crisp as he leaves

Survey

After being approved to go ahead with our pitch, we started to consider the type of audience this could be aimed at. As it is likely to be a very light-hearted comedy, we thought it likely to have a younger audience. To confirm this, we asked 8-14 year olds their favourite genre of film.

Survey Results
Comedy- 6
Sci-fi- 4
Rom-com- 4
Animated- 3
Musicals- 2
Horror- 1

From this, we realised that younger audiences tend to enjoy comedy and sci-fi films, very fitting to our film. From this, we have decided to steer our film in the direction of a younger audience.

Location Planning

For our final piece, we are planning to shoot the majority of scenes in my garage. We feel it would suit the concept of the plot, as it is private and somewhat isolated, suggesting that the character is an outsider. Also, it has a large back wall, on which we could place the map, polaroids etc. Another reason for setting the story in a garage, is that it adds to the realism. The character is only in his teens, so would still be living in the family home, and the garage will still feature general items such as paint pots, ladders, and various other objects that would tend to be stored in a garage. These items will be incorporated into our mise en scene.
Below are photos of the inside of my garage, and the main wall that will be used.

However, although we are using my garage to film in, we are thinking of using a different house to feature in the establishing shots.

In school, there is a small office called the Network Managers Office, and we feel it had the types of objects we would use to create the mise-en-scene. If possible, we would borrow some of this unused equipment to decorate our set with.

 

Film Opening Pitch

In class, myself and Rachel had to pitch our idea for our film opening to our class and teacher. The aim of this was to get input and feedback from others, and see if they are able to spot any implications that we may have missed. In the pitch we discuss the idea of the film, and the opening two minutes in more detail.

The plot of the film revolves around a teenage boy who has dedicated his life to sightings of UFO, and looks at possible clues in great detail. For our opening, we have decided we are going to create a titles sequence, where we have physical objects showing the names and jobs of the cast and crew. This will be set in my garage, and all the titles will be placed on objects in the garage, such as on a paint pot, or light switch. Although it is in a garage, we will design the set to look like our character has taken it over and made it his own, with a map on the wall and polaroid photos and post it notes to the different sightings. The titles will be integrated into the plot line of the story, and the action will continue behind, and carry on once the tiles have finished. Towards the end of the opening 2 minutes, the titles will come to an end and the man action of the story will begin. A text message will be received from the main character's friend, and you see the character leave the garage with his backpack and some equipment. If we were making this into a full length film, the story would continue with the friends meeting up and trying to discover an extra-terrestrial.

Below is the video of our pitch which has been uploaded to the school YouTube channel.

Art of the Title

To be able to gain inspiration for my coursework, I have been looking at various title sequences featured on the website artofthetitle.com. The website has videos of, and discusses, countless amounts of film and television series openings from different genres, creators, and studios. Below are the title sequences that I think would be similar to the type of opening I would create for my film opening. 


Gentlemen Broncos

In this 2009 Jared Hess film, the opening title sequence shows a series of books with the names and jobs of various cast and crew members. The majority of the books used are sci-fi related, with covers of space/ supernatural images. This links well with our idea as we are planning to make a film based on UFOs. This is not too different to the idea we are planning to go with, as we want there to be physical, filmed titles, rather than ones that have been laid on top. However, this idea is not completely what we wanted to use as all the titles are on the same item, whereas we wanted to have them all on separate items. 

Napoleon Dynamite

Napoleon Dynamite (2004) is another film by Jared Hess, and is quite similar to the titles of Gentlemen Broncos. Like Hess' other film, this title sequence is constructed of physical titles, that are filmed and edited. The titles shown here are more like what we would use for ours, as the cast and crew are placed on various objects found in a school, where ours would be placed on household objects. However, this title sequence does not seem to continue into the story, and we have planned for ours to be integrated into the plot, with the story continuing after the titles have finished.

Community

From this title sequence, I really like how the titles are hand written. Similar to the others, all the titles are placed on a tangible object, rather than types like the majority of films. Although not what we planned to do, I am also a fan of the titles being on just one object, but on differnt parts- this makes it very diiferent to the others.

Almost Famous

Although not entirely how we planned to make our title sequence, I really like the idea of some titles being hand written. The title sequence for Almost Famous is almost completely written, except for some a few towards the end. I would like to use this idea and have at least one hand written title within the sequences, but may have it already written out, rather than seeing it be written out.

Dead Man on Campus

This final title sequence is from 1998 film Dead Man on Campus, which first features a production company animation. MTV Productions is first shown by an astronaut flying across the screen, clearly in space- fitting very well with our theme of space. Another reason why this title sequence fits with what we are envisioning is because they are designed to look like physical titles. Although they're typed, making them very different to the titles in the style of Napoleon Dynamite, they have been created to look like an exam paper which the camera moves around. I particularly like the style of the 3rd title showcased in the sequence, where the title is integrated to the other text, but put in bold to enable it to stand out.

I think the title sequence most similar to what we have in mind is Napoleon Dynamite. We would be able to replicate the variety of different objects involved, and could use a variety of different shot types to capture them. However, there are aspects of other title sequences that we could incorporate such as the hand written names of Almost Famous, and the science fiction objects of Gentlemen Broncos. 

Updated Film Opening Idea

After my last blog post, we thought of a different idea for our film opening which is completely unrelated to our last one. As we only make the opening 2 minutes of the film, we wanted a lot of the focus to be on introducing the main character, and showing the set to the audience, as both of these help to set the tone of the film. The character shown is a clumsy, geeky teenage boy who has dedicated his life to the discovery of aliens. The beginning of the film is set in the garage of the family home, which has been turned into a shrine to his discoveries with posters and books covering the walls. Both the character and the set are going to be quirky and lovable, giving a fun, friendly feel to the rest of the film.

The Set
The garage would be filled with UFO related objects such as posters, newspaper clippings etc. One of the feature points of the set is going to be the large OS map placed in the middle of the wall. The map will be set up to look like an investigation board with strings leading to photographs and other pieces of 'evidence' for various UFO sightings in the area. Below are some examples I have found:

The Character
For this idea, we would prefer for our lead character to be male as we feel the role would be best suited to a teenage boy. He would be made out to be a typical nerdy/ geeky character but also clumsy and lovable.

The Opening
We decided we would like to make a title sequence rather than 
going straight into the main action of the film, and have been inspired by Jared Hess' 'Napoleon Dynamite'. The way in which the titles are displayed in this sequence appeal to us both as it is a creative and different way of presenting them. As the character is quite unique, we thought this style of title sequence could relate well to the character.
 

Film Opening Idea

Over the last couple of weeks, myself and Rachel have been coming up with various pitches and ideas that we would like to use for our coursework.

We have decided on a film opening that features a teenage girl packing her bag at the break of dawn and leaving home. We are thinking of making it look like it was a very well planned escape, where she has supplies hidden around the house, for example hidden behind canvases and in hollowed out books.

The sequence of her collecting her items and leaving the house will take up the majority of the 2 minutes, with the last 20-30 seconds focusing on the journey after she leaves. she will be seen to walk through various different areas, to signify that she has travelled a far distance from home. As the audience saw her walk through the different areas, the natural light would need to get consistently brighter to show that she is still walking, and we could also add the time of day over the scene to further show this. 

Preliminary Task: Planning & Final Piece

In order to ensure that the preliminary exercise ran as smoothly as possible, myself and my partner Rachel had to plan what would need to be done before it came to filming. As we are only a group of 2, we would need people to be featured in it- we chose our close friends Catherine Rochford and Kate Hide. The girls were happy to help us and we filmed in Catherine's kitchen after school on Monday 26th September.

Prior to filming, myself and Rachel sat down together and mapped out the details of what we would film, with the scenes being laid out in the form of a storyboard. Firstly, we had to decide who would be our actors and, as mentioned previously, Catherine and Kate happily obliged. Next, we were considering the various locations that were available to us. As this was only our preliminary, it was not vital that the location was relevant to the plot, and, also, only needed to be very basic in order to complete the task. Taking travelling home into consideration we decided Catherine's house would best to film in, as it is quite central and the rest of us would be able to get home safely and easily. Another factor in favour of using Catherine's kitchen is the placement of her dining table in relation to the door- it is positioned quite close and would therefore make it easy to film a character crossing the room. With the permission of her mum, filming took place in Catherine's kitchen.

The next decision to be made was what the characters were going to speak about during their 20 second encounter. Like other groups, we decided to use a popular, well known song, and have the characters speak the lyrics to each other like a conversation. The song we decided upon is Carly Rae Jepson's 'Call Me Maybe'. Factors for the song choice included how known it is, the actual lyrics, and how we could use it to our advantage regarding the criteria we needed to fulfill. 

Once we had decided on the dialogue, we planned out the scenes on a storyboard, as featured below. The storyboard would help us to vary shot types, ensure we have met all the points in the specification, and decipher which scenes are shot in the same location/ position and film them consecutively, rather than in the order they would be edited.

Below is our final video that we have uploaded to the school YouTube channel.

Breaking the 4th Wall: Fleabag Review

'Breaking the 4th Wall' is a term used to describe the technique when the character in the show looks to the camera and speaks directly to the audience. The name is derived from the fact that, typically, a film set has three walls, with the fourth being the camera; when the character speaks into the camera they 'break' the barrier between the themselves and the audience and therefore break the fourth wall. In the Gaze Theory it is known as the extra-extra diegetic gaze. Examples of films and programmes that break the wall include Miranda, Deadpool, and the recent BBC boxset Fleabag.



Phoebe Waller-Bridge's self written six part series Fleabag, is an adaptation of her award winning one woman play. The show is based around a single, twenty-something woman living in London, who is desperately trying to make ends meet whilst single-handedly running a failing cafe. Over the course of the episodes, we get an insight into Fleabag's life, especially the relationship with her hugely successful older sister, her ever changing love life, and the accidental suicide of her best friend, Boo.

Many of the characters featured throughout this boxset are not given real names, including the eponymous character of Fleabag herself. Instead, they are known by a trait which defines them such Bus Rodent and Godmother. This technique consciously highlights their insignificance compared to the other people in her life such as her sister Claire, and best friend Boo.

The continual breakage of the fourth wall brilliantly engages the viewers in the hilarious, snarky inner thoughts of the main character, played by Waller-Bridge herself. These scenes provide short bursts of comedic gold, cleverly placed within the ceaseless humour. The life of the other characters continue whilst Fleabag talks to the camera, regardless of the situation, and sometimes remain engaging with her. The use of this technique is also employed to inform the audience what is going to happen next, particularly when interacting with another person; suggesting that her life follows a predictable, standard pattern. Bringing down the fourth wall makes this series all the more funny, and allows the viewers to really connect with the mindset of the main character.

Personally, I found this series hugely entertaining, and was hooked from the very first episode. Waller-Bridge's sarcasm and ingenious one-liners entwined with highly relatable yet clearly broken characters makes for side splitting viewing that always have you pressing 'next episode'. 

Storyboards

When planning an episode of a television series or film, a storyboard will be created to show each scene shot by shot. This is done in order to ensure that the shot types are varied, and it allows the crew on set to film all the scenes from one location consecutively, rather than in order of editing. Doing this is particularly helpful when filming shots from the exact same position, as it allows the camera be left still, and will therefore capture the shots without having to attempt to reposition it in precisely the same way.

As a class activity, we watched a small clip from series 3 episode 1 of 'Luther', the opening of the BBC drama 'Remember Me', and drew out storyboards for each. This task was done in preparation for storyboarding our preliminary exercises, which I will speak about in a future post. We created these storyboards as we watched the clips, but for our preliminary and final piece we will do it before filming for the aforementioned reasons.

Preliminary Task: Introduction

As a part of the course, we have been asked to create a short clip called a Preliminary Exercise. The exercise is a continuity task designed to prove we can film and edit a character who opens a door, crosses a room, and sits down in a chair opposite another character whom they exchange a few line of dialogue with. The task must demonstrate examples of match on action, shot/ reverse shot, and the 180-degree rule. This task is to be done in groups and these will be the groups that will work together on the creation of their final piece. We will not be marked on the quality of this exercise, however it does have to be done.

Techniques:

• Match on Action: this technique is used when the camera cuts from a shot, to a different shot type but following through the action of the previous shot. The cartoon example shows a shot with two people's hands meeting, followed by them shaking hands. Another frequently used example is a shot of someone reaching for a door handle, and then a new shot of them turning it.

• Shot/ Reverse Shot: this is an editing process where the scene cuts from one shot, to another, and then back to the first. It allows the audience to see both action and reactions. It is often used when when filming a conversation in order to show both participants.

• 180- Degree Rule: this is a filming rule which states that the camera/s must film from behind a line. The line is used as a guideline for filming a scene with more than one character, as it allows the characters involved to maintain their relationship regarding their positioning to each other. Without this cinematographic rule, characters will switch sides and continuity would be lost.

Shots, Angles, and Movements

To be able to get a high mark on my coursework, I need to ensure that the filming and editing is of high quality. This includes having varied collection of shot types, camera angles, camera movements, and focuses.

Shot Types - the distance at which something is shot from and their  purposes

• Establishing: an establishing shot tends to be the opening few shots of film/ television Their purpose is to 'set the scene' and give the audience a feel for the location of which the piece is set.
• Long: a long shot is employed when a large amount of the setting needs to be included in the scene. It is used to feature the character focused on and the surrounding environment.
• Full: a full shot shows the entire subject from head to toe and does not often feature too much of the setting to focus on, making it different from a long shot.
• Mid: a mid shot is used to show only a part of the subject, most commonly use to shoot a character from the head to the waist.
• Close Up: this type of shot focuses on a smaller part of the subject. It aims to capture more detail than a mid shot and is mainly used to focus on a character's face and shoulders.
• Extreme Close Up: similarly to the close up, an extreme close up is primarily used to capture small, minor details that would not necessarily be seen from any other type of shot. The difference between the two varieties of close up is how close they are. An extreme long should would show very little, for example, just a character's eye.
• Money: this is a type of shot used to how the character as they are doing something with a prop, and the camera can become the prop. For example, a camera can be placed inside a closed cupboard which will capture the moment the character opens the cupboard door and the audience would view the character from inside the cupboard, rather then outside.

Camera Angles - the angle at which a scene is shot from

• Eye Level: an eye level shot is when a scene is shot from face on. The camera would be at roughly the same height as the heads of the characters and gives the affect that the audience is at the same level as the subject.
• Low Angle: low angle shots are often used to signify looking up at something. To execute this type of shot, the camera would be placed lower down or at the bottom of the subject and shoot upwards to create the affect that the subject is towering over them. 
• High Angle: this is the opposite to a low angle shot. It is when the camera is positioned above the top of the subject and is angled downwards to capture it. It is often applied to denote looking down on something or something being below the character in focus. An example of this is an adult looking down at a child or pet.
• Overhead: this angle gives the shot a birdseye or ariel view and is commonly used to show someone moving across an area of land.
• Undershot: this gives the opposite effect to an overhead view, and is used to show being beneath something and looking up. From this angle, the audience will only see the underside of the the subject focused on. An example of this type of shot is when shooting underwater and the camera sees the underneath of a shark.

Camera Movement

• Pan: in a pan, the tripod holding the camera does not move from its fixed position but the camera itself can be pivoted. This type of shot will capture horizontally moving elements of the shot such as people walking or a car going past.
• Tilt: very similar to a pan as the tripod does not move, with the difference being that the camera is moved vertically, rather than horizontally. Shots like this will often be applied to reveal a building or a person.
• Track: tracking is the process of the camera following the subject around a scene. The camera is usually handheld.
• Dolly: a dolly is when the subject of the shot is followed by the camera when the camera is on wheels. This shot type is often employed to move the camera towards or away from the subject.
• Zoom: zooming is when the lens on the camera magnifies or minimizes the subject. It is often confused with dollying, but is different as the camera does not leave the fixed position it is in.
• Point of View (POV): a POV shot is used to portray to the audience that we are seeing what they would see and that the camera is acting as the subject's eyes.

Conversation Shots

• Over the shoulder: this type of shot shows a character from behind the shoulder of another character. One character will be in complete view, whilst only the back of the shoulder and head will be seen of the other.
• Face to face: in a shot like this, two characters would be sat in front of each other, looking at one another whilst speaking.
• Two Shot: this shot, like face to face, also focuses on two characters involved, but instead of them facing each other, they are side to side and the side of both their faces are shown.
• Over the head: this type of high angle shot shows a character from the view of above another, the character in the foreground only has the back of their head showing, whilst the other character is in full view.

Focus Techniques

• Manual: A manual focus is when the camera's focus is adjusted by the user.
• Depth of Field: This focus technique allows the shot to be blurred in either the background or foreground, to give emphasis to the other one. Depth of field is often used in the same scene, blurring the background, and foreground at different times to highlight one then the other.

Below is the video from YouTube that I used to help me learn the name of, and differences between, the range of shots, angles, and movements. 

Media AS- OCR H140

Throughout this academic year, I will be studying the OCR Media Studies AS level course. I have been interested in the study of the media since year 10, when I took it at GCSE level and achieved an A. I have decided to take this course as it will hopefully lead me into a media based degree and, eventually, a career in the industry. 

Over the coming months, the course I will be following is OCR H140, which is divided into 2 units- coursework and an exam. Each of the units are worth 50% of the final grade and each marked out of 100. They are composed like this:

    

     Unit G321- coursework

• 50% of final grade

• marked out of 100

• consists of 3 components- a blog (20 marks), a film opening (60 marks), and an evaluation (20 marks)

     Unit G322- exam

• 50% of final grade

• marked out of 100

• consists of 2 components- Section A: TV Drama (50 marks), and Section B: Institutions and Audiences (50 marks)