class 2/4/10

In Thursday’s class (2/4/10) Eric shoes us this cool video on youtube of graphics. it shows the different tricks and what it takes to do the graphics.

Cinematography is the making of lighting and camera choice when recording photographic images for the cinema. Lighting is very important because like sound, it helps set the mood and the tone of the film. There are three main lights typically used in film which is key light, fill light, and back light. The key light is the main light used; it is the brightest light, which brings attention to a particular actor, or object in a scene. After the key light is the fill light the fill light’s job is to fill in spots with lighting that are in darkness. It’s not as bright as the key light. The final lighting is the back light; it sets apart the background from the forefront. After we went through the different lighting, we saw many zoom features using eDietz’s camera, it was really fun. The Camera’s features included zoom in, focus and unfocused shots, and lighting. We went over depth of field, which focuses in on one spot and blurs out either the background, or forefront depending on where the focus point is. Focal length is the zoom and the distance between the aperture and the lens.

We watched a clip from Citizen’s Kane which also included a new step in filming during that time which was deep focus. As there where characters in the front, in the middle of the scene, and in the background, everyone and everything was in focused. How could they do something like that? Well let me tell you, they usually used projection and did overlays with the film, and other times, depending on the placement of the characters, one camera was used and was focused on all areas.

The documentary we watched on visions of light was very interesting. A statement that one of the directors of editors said was let the movie tell its story without sound, then add the dialogue as if it was music. I found that very interesting because what really makes up the story? I think that having a film that tells its own story without sound will make a good movie for a specific genre like romance. But with a suspense or horror film, not using the analogy will help keep the audience guessing. Also in the documentary, they were focusing on lighting and different lighting portrays different meanings.

Ending question: During the documentary, a director said, the lighting is dark around his eyes which make the character scary and creepy. My question is do they every make things up about the lighting and say it was done on purpose when really the had no idea or they just messed up?