Today we spent some time in the college’s TV studio and I got to find about the necessary filming techniques that goes into a lot of TV recording. They had a number of lights. For example; there was a light called ‘the tim-light’ and others. There were also about five cameras we used to record students playing the musical instruments.
We also had a class where we learned just how important sound was in film. One might tend to think of the footage as being the most important part of film and this is probably true, but sound is most definitely up there. Music soundtracks really help get across the tone of the scene there in. If you watched a horror scene with ‘Old McDonald Had a Farm’ playing cheerfully in the background; it would be difficult for the audience to take it seriously. The scene would no longer be scary, but funny. However, if spooky music was played in a horror scene: then the scene may well serve it’s purpose which is to scare you. This just shows try how important music is in film.
The use of sound effects is also very important in film. Noises in film tend to be much more exaggerated than they are in real life. I learned today just how much that is the case. The sound of a knife or someone panting will likely be much louder in film to help to get the point across and help us to put ourselves in the characters’ shoes.
I also learned about different positions used with a camera. This includes things like the shoulder angle, the wide angle, the close up angle and the extra close up angle. These are frequently used in films, but most of time: we don’t really think about it. This lesson definitely brought them more to my attention and I feel like in future: I may well pay more attention to them when watching films which will hopefully teach me some good filming techniques for myself. I watched a clip from the Lord of the Rings of Gollum struggling with conflict within himself. I watched the clip and analysed it. I looked at the camera angles used and the affect that they had in the scene.
Thank you for reading. Below you can see some links to film work I have already done on YouTube. Some of them are more recent and others are very old. Not all of them are that good when I look back at them now but I’ll let you have a watch anyway.
The Film Student Diary 