Todays lesson - Camera techniques:

Completed by: Me

Today in my Media lesson, we got the opportunity to explore and get an over view of how to work the cameras; we learnt about the settings, focusing techniques, colour and lighting. This helped me understand the key aspects of the camera i will need to use when filming. Firstly, I had to write down my 'shooting checklist' or 'call list', i had to write all the things i need to have prepared in order to make a successful film shot, here is the sheet i complete:

This was very important for me as it made me understand what aspects i need to consider when filming. We will be using this when we start filming to ensure we have the right equipment.

Furthermore, after this, my teacher put up some images of camera angles up on the board and went around the class room, asking individuals what camera angle and mise-en-scene were used, which refreshed my mind for the lesson. 

Within the lesson, i learnt about the white balance, and was taught that the colour 'white' is created from all the colours within the rainbow.This allowed me to experiment with a yellow and blue piece of paper, holding them up in front of the camera, changing the settings to create the two pieces of paper to become the colour white. If the piece of paper was yellow, i would adjust the lighting; this meant i added a hint of blue within the compositional frame which created the piece of paper to become white. In addition, i did the same with the blue piece of paper, however, i added a hint of orange to create the piece of paper white. This can be done inside or outside. This was very successful as it allowed me to understand what i need to do while filming to change the lighting if it is low key or high key when not needing to be. As i am having, natural lighting when filming, this will come in very useful.

Another key aspect i learnt within this lesson, was adjusting the manual focus. When the main subject in the compositional frame moves, the camera can tend to go out of focus. This allowed me to experiment with a camera, having an individual in my class to be the main subject, testing the manual focus. This allowed the individual to move and not affect our scene as its still in focus. Moreover, i also learnt about 'depth of field' and discovered that when I'm filming, i need to make sure that its 'deep field' this will allow the audience to be able to see the background as it wont be blurred out, however, another option is that i can create the camera to focus on the main subject and blur out the background. This will make the audience to have their focus on one main subject within the compositional frame and ignore irrelevant backgrounds. In result, this particularly helped me gather my knowledge and comprehend what i need to do to not affect unexpected faults when filming. Although, i did not know how to fix this weakness which occurred when filming the continuity excesses which this has been extremely beneficial and is something I'll certainly use when filming.

In conclusion, this workshop has defiantly been beneficial for me and my group as we have learned certain aspects of filming which we have not thought of beforehand. In result, we are going to be using dark, natural lighting which if needed will be edited on the computers. I feel that this has been very effective and beneficent as it allowed me to gain more knowledge on filming and given me a better understanding of the unique settings i never knew about. In addition, at the end of the lesson i set myself (individually) and within my group.