Studying Media: A Cinematographer's Blog

I got to work with our director today to add my own input to our storyboard! We worked more on specifying particular shots in the very beginning of our film. We so far have four finalized shots, and the fifth marks beginning of our character's dialogue (which we're going to work on more tomorrow). In the first shot, we have a high-angle tilt which introduces the audience to the bookstore (Barnes and Noble is where we plan to film). The camera tilts down as our first main character (I'll call them mc 1 for short) walks into the store. We then move to a wide shot of the store's interior, which serves as our establishing shot for the film. Given the composition of this shot, I was debating with my director and editor whether or not the title of our film should appear here or more towards the end of this two-minute intro. In our third shot - a long shot - the camera changes positions as mc 1 moves to a different area in the store. We plan to have both main characters in thi...

While working on our storyboard today, me and our director had a couple disagreements on how we would film certain shots. The main focus of our discussion revolved around whether or not we were to use a tracking shot for our opening scene (where we introduce mc 1).  Our director wanted the camera to track mc 1 as they walked through the store, at first in a similar fashion to how we did our first film (where we tracked the character's feet), but I believed it didn't fit within our story. Then the subject changed to how we were going to track them:  with a hand-held camera or with a dolly cart. It was in this discussion that I learned a dolly shot was a type of tracking shot in which the camera would be placed atop a cart and moved to track the character. Later on, a separate issue arose. The way shots 2 and 3 were planned made them both seem like wide shots, but I was sure there was a difference, so I began my research. I learned that wide shots are very similar to long shots,...

 Now, let's talk a little bit about our project! To start, our editor chose the romance genre for our film, which we all immediately agreed to. I mean, it  is  February! We did face some issues in creating our original plot, though. Our film is titled "Bookworms", and is about two people of the LGBTQ community who meet in a bookstore. During our research of non-heteronormative short films, we found repetitive themes of closeted experiences, "coming out" stories, and other struggles people tend to have in these relationships. We also noticed the overall negative representation these relationships get in film and other forms of media (including television and books), so we began devising a plot that would eliminate these stereotypes and instead represent a healthy LGBTQ relationship. While brainstorming, my teammates wanted to use an idea we had for our previous film, where color would be an important aspect of the plot. The color was to shift from black-and-white...

In the first semester of this course, our class was tasked with creating a short film about chess, which proved to be a challenge for everyone. In the end, I personally learned the importance of effective planning and time management, as it played a major role in this film. We had to condense a cohesive storyline into a one-minute film - yes, exactly  one minute. My previous group and I struggled with the time constraints; we spent a decent amount of time in our post-production period cutting the film as much as possible to meet our time limit.  You can find our film here!   Black, White, and Red For this second and final project, however, we were blessed with more creative liberty! This is going to be very exciting, and I can't wait to see where this goes! You'll find my research on cinematography in future blogs! We are now tasked with creating a two-minute introduction to a film, using any theme and genre we choose. I will once again be focusing on my role a...