The use of sound and why it is important

In today's lesson we were learning about sound and how it affects the viewers experience of what they are seeing. It is 80 percent of our experience when watching a film or clip.
Sound is used for different reason like a soundtrack to help the viewer interpret the mood of what they are watching.

There are two types of sound:
- Diegetic sound is within the text and can be things such as dialogue or sounds from something such as the buzzing of an alarm clock.
- Non-diegtic sound is added afterwards and is something that is not from within the text, such as a soundtrack. the characters within the text cannot hear non-diegetic sound.

Storyboard of Pixar's short film 'Geri's Game'

This short film is called 'Geri's Game' from Pixar Animation studios.

Pixar often create storyboards of their films before making them and also use them when they are pitching their ideas for a film to their colleagues. I found this interesting because even though it is an animation it still has 'camera shots' to help tell the story and because of the nature of the story camera shot and angle is very important in showing that he is playing a game of chess against himself. In one of the scenes there is shown to be hands from both sides in the shot to try and trick the audience into thinking there are now two people there, when in fact the shot at the end once again shows the old man sitting alone at the chess table. I remember watching this as a young child and being confused by this short film which shows that Pixar has indeed succeeded in what they were trying to do. Pixar created this short for testing their ability to portray humans and clothing.

camera shots

Today we looked at film shots and angles. Different camera shots give different effects to the scene being filmed and are very important in making a convincing film. bad camera shots will break the illusion of what you are watching. Above is a video demonstrating different camera shots.

http://www.mediacollege.com/video/shots/  This website shows pictures of different shots and angles and is useful for helping recognize each shot.

Storyboarding a scene

Over the last two lessons we have been storyboarding a short clip from the film Insidious. It is the ending scene and is very dramatic and there are 14 different shots that we must try our best to recreate. When we completed the storyboard we filmed our own imitation of the scene. One thing that we learnt whilst we were storyboarding is that some templates are square which TV screens are not, so we had to draw added lines to make sure that we get the correct shot composition within the right kind of space. Below are our storyboards for the scene. We hand drew them so some of the lines are faint from being scanned but I did my best to alter the contrast and brightness to make it better.

here is our finished product

Using a camera

In last weeks lessons we were learning how to use a camera properly.

We learned how to set up the camera and tripod and how to wind the tape back to the beginning so that when we came to watch the tape the footage will be at the front and we wont have to search for it. 

After we had set up our cameras and tripods we recorded a few seconds of darkness to check that the camera and tape were working.

Once we were up and running, we went to various places in the school to get different shots and angles to try out the camera and to practice. then we brought our cameras back and got feedback on our footage. The feedback we got was that there was too much head room and that we need to use the tripod more to keep it steady. We acted on this feedback when we went out again to get some more shots by rehearsing what we were going to do before recording it.

Semiotics

Semiotics is the study of signs. Within media it is important for the audience to be able to interpret the signs that are placed within a scene so that they can understand what is happening. Semiotics is split into denotation and connotation. Denotation is what you literally see when you look at something and connotation is what you can infer from looking at it (what it means).
In this picture (left) there is a denotation and a connotation.
Denotation: A woman with brown hair in a white ball gown.
Connotation: She is getting married. We can infer this from the colour of her ball gown which is white and symbolises purity.

Identifying and Analysing shots

In today's lesson we were learning about how to Identify different shots and why they have been used.

Me and my partner analysed a shot from my favourite film Mrs Doubtfire. We counted the number of shots used in the scene and counted 14.

The first shot is a medium shot and these are used quite often through the scene because the characters are all in close proximity. The first medium shot is used instead of a shot reverse-shot because the other man that is being spoken to is not important to the scene or the film. It briefly shows the face of the man Stu is talking to and then it changes to a shot of the kids playing in the pool. this shot ensures we know who he is talking about and shows us what the other man is seeing when he looks over.

In the next shot instead of a medium shot of both of the them it focuses on Stu's face as he is talking and we can also see Mrs Doubtfire's reaction to what he is saying in the background. There is then a close up of Mrs Doubtfires face as we see her/his reaction to what Stu is saying. We then see him/her pick up a lime and throw it, the shot quickly changes to the back of Stu's head just in time to see the lime hit him.