Cinematography Workshop

Although I wasn’t cinematographer this trimester I wanted to learn as much as possible during the workshops as I want to become a fulltime cinematographer after uni as well as improve on the services I currently provide to clients through my freelance videography and cinematography.

One major thing that is a problem for me is now I have been trying to watch more and more movies and TV series I guess my style has been heavily influenced by it and I’ve noticed I tend to use too much motion in shots, this is something I have been working on reducing and the cinematography workshop really opened up my eyes in why I should reduce it – although the motion in some shots is amazing if it is overused throughout a film it really cheapens the effect and impact that motion plays with other shots where the motion might be used to emphasise a plot or story point.

A challenge I saw coming up during the camera test was to do with which lines we wanted to use the dolly in for, our DoP Axel wanted to use it only on points that would build tension or to really drive home what an actor was saying which worked out amazing but the one problem we had was which part of the characters dialogue we were going to use it on as there was both powerful speech and a monologue which build power for the character, although on the day it was hard to decide I feel on set we will know which part it will work best with.

The camera tests were amazing! Or where they? It was hard during the camera tests everything we were doing was amazing and really helped us discover the dark and gritty look we were going to go for as well as how we will go about shooting and lighting a scene, but as we were about to go out for a break we got the bad news that one of the actors we would have needed was going to be available for both days of shooting which sent us all into panic mode I then suggested we could do a duel cam shoot which would allow us to pick up the coverage we need on one day and shoot the rest of the scene for the actors the other days, but as that plan seemed full proof we were informed we could borrow out two C100s from the uni as other groups needed them the days we did, at this point I could see the stress on everyone faces, I had a Sony FS5 but it would be almost impossible for a first time colourist to match, but then I remembered that a fellow classmate also had a FS5 so I messaged him and within minutes we had solved our issue and had two cameras to shoot with but this started a whole bunch of other challenges that we will need to work on if this is to be a successful shoot.