Montage Camera and Editing Workshop - 18/11/21 to 19/11/21

In this workshop we were told to try to convey 3 out of a chosen 6 emotions through camera angles and different colours using gels on the lights to connote the emotions. We decided to choose anxious, rage and hopefulness. 

For the anxious emotion we had our actress sitting on the floor with her knees up to her chest, as small as she could and looking around anxiously. In terms of colour, we decided to use a mix of red and purple, the purple colour representing anxiety and the red colour connoting danger. We also decided to try pulsing the light, with the red gel on, slow then fast to convey the characters heartbeat with their anxiety. In addition to camera angles, we wanted to do slow movements and the camera being at a high angle to channel the character feeling tense and anxious and the camera looking down on them to convey her feeling small in size.

For the rage emotion we decided to have our actor sitting in between piles of chairs, making it look like he got angry and threw them, looking away then looking at the camera with a psychotic look in his eyes, the camera being at eye level to make the audience feel scared. We also attempted to do very fast shots as this can make the audience feel a bit uneasy and a bit uncomfortable. With colours, we used the red gel, the same one that we used when doing the anxiety emotion, to represent the emotion of rage as it is a very harsh colour. Kendra Cherry, an author of verywellmind.com states that: "Across cultures, people intuitively associate red with the concept of anger. This relationship makes sense given that many people get red in the face from increased blood flow when they're angry." (Cherry, 2020)

With the hopefulness emotion, we wanted our actor to be spinning on a chair in a circle smiling, much like those shots that best friends use in short films, where they are holding each other's hands and spinning around and the camera focusing on their facial expressions. With colours we went for yellows and greens to give that sense of happiness and life. With the motions, we decided to do fast spinning to give that feeling of joy.

In the editing workshop, we edited our footage that we filmed when we were playing around with the cameras previously in the workshop the previous day. Our team wanted to capture the emotions of the different characters portrayed in this montage. So, we used the montage type of character development, which entails communicating the growth. When it came to sound, I wanted the same music for the anxiety and rage emotion because I wanted to show a character arc between the two characters, even though they are both of different genders, to show the similarity between the emotion anxiety and the emotion rage. The lighting that we used really helped convey the different emotions. 

However, our original actor that was portraying the emotion rage was not feeling well that day when we had the camera and lighting so we had one of our teammates step in for him to test out the shots with the gels on the lights, and we decided as a group that we would colour grade the red for the emotion of rage in editing to prevent any further problems with our teammates health. I also decided when editing to make the movements slower than originally planned because I thought it added a bit of uncomfortableness and made the viewers very uneasy. I also wanted the sound to fade into more cheery and upbeat music, for the emotion hopefulness, to show the clear difference between the previous two emotions, anxiety, and rage, as hopefulness is the polar opposite emotion of anxiety and rage.

Bibliography:

Cherry, K., 2021. How Does the Color Red Impact Your Mood and Behaviour?. [online] Verywell Mind. Available at: https://www.verywellmind.com/the-color-psychology-of-red-2795821#aggression [Accessed 18 November 2021].

Lighting Workshop - 21/4/21

In this workshop, we played around with the lighting and structured it how we would structure it when we are filming our interview scenes for our production stage of our documentaries. We decided to structure the lighting like it is shown in the pictures below. 

Because our locations are really well lit, we did not see a purpose to have another light for this reason stated. So, we wanted to use, what it is called in the media industry as a key light, to highlight the part of the contributors face that was not being hit by the natural light already provided at the location. According to SC Lannom, who is a screenwriter and director living in Los Angeles, states:

"Positioning your key light in this way is by no means required, but it will allow your less intense fill light to favour the camera which, in turn, will give your image a smoother look that is still well lit." (Lannom, 2020)

This is what we wanted to achieve and will be used throughout the production of our documentary to make the final product more continuous as we are using continuity with the lights so the lights do not change and affect the shoot. SC Lannom says:

"If you take one light source out of your 3-point lighting setup, you won’t receive the full benefits. Think of it like your favourite recipe for cookies; if you leave out one ingredient, the cookies won't be perfect." (Lannom, 2020)

This is an excellent analogy and is another reason why we want continuity in our lighting, because if we don't use the same lighting the shot will not look the same and lack smoothness and will disturb the general flow of the shots.

Bibliography:

Lannom, SC. (2020) Three-Point Video Lighting: Key, Fill, & Backlight Setup Guide. At: https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/three-point-lighting-setup/#three-point-setup (Accessed on 21/04/2021)