cinematography samples 1

These raw clips were captured on my Canon EOS 1200D camera and were taken inside my home as technical experimentation to replicate the use of close to medium framed shots that were present in the 'Golden Age' music video.

The purpose of these samples is to experiment using close to medium shots and see whether these shot types can convey more emotion by placing emphasis on facial expressions and small body fidgets.

The first clip shows an extreme close up of a hand tapping in a fidget like manner. This action was inspired by one of my earlier films called 'Anxiety', in which it displayed many extreme close ups of body parts performing fidgety actions. this was done to portray the anxiety, as anxious people are known make nervous fidgeting actions. I decided to include a test shot that derived from this idea, as anxiety is one of the prominent emotions I will be displaying in the negative side of my story with grief. I also found whilst filming, that applying a blurred depth of focus in the background and only keeping the hand in focus allowed for more emphasis to be placed on the subject in frame. This will prevent the audience from getting distracted by the background. I will still need to consider if I will have fast or slow paced cutting in the film, as this type of clip may not be appropriate in a fast paced film, due to the clip requiring impact. It was done by switching my camera to manual focus, where I could control the depth of focus.

This shot is a close up my eye and right profile of my face, looking into the camera. As it is believed in some cultures that the eyes are the gate way into the soul, I decided to take the close up of my eye to see if it can express my emotions. I feel I may have need a few retakes of this clips because the clip was not long enough and that my mind was not orientated around the subject of grief at this point. Therefore I will need to capture footage when I am in a state of thought that consists of either negative or positive thoughts as a result of my grief of my father. Also I found that having the camera facing myself made it difficult to see how the footage looked in real time. This has resulted in the side of my face being slightly out of frame and the image being blurred, due to the focus being set to manual. I may need to devise a system of filming myself that allow for this issues to be sorted.

Here, I experimented using a medium shot from a side angle, which consist of me in centre frame and the picture of my father behind. his shot is meant to a sample composition between me and the picture in the background. This was done to connote a sense of sombre  thought in my mind through my facial expressions and including the image of my father in the background to contextualise the sombre tone to match up with grieving. The 'Golden Age' music video tells the subject matter of the loss of losing one's childhood purity through focusing mainly on facial expressions. I feel that this shot worked well in telling my battle with anxiety and depression as the negative side of grief, through just this one shot alone. I will attempt to create similar shots contextualise the film with visual reminders of my life before and during the grief as they act as powerful visual markers that could coincide with illustrative editing, if I choose to use that editing style.

I included an example of a close up action shot of me drawing on a pad. I chose to include this because added a visual example of me drawing something can act as abstract footage that can  illustrate my sense of motivation that has been brought on by my very unique perspective on life that has fuelled my capacity from thinking creatively. Therefore, this shot is meant to represent the one of the positive side of my experience with grief, that being motivation to succeed in life. The shot manages to competently illustrate this message. However I will have to consider trying alternative angles and framing, as it feels lacking in these features. The 'golden Age' does feature some shots that are mainly out of focus to create a dreamlike effect, however I think that realism is the route to take for this project so that the audience find my story somewhat more relatable.

One the script is complete, I will have to attempt at matching the visuals to the voice over and then see their effect. The next set of samples will feature a more appropriate setting to better help capture the tones that I am trying to convey.