Wednesday 11 December 2013

Genre Survey




I decided to go around school and ask a few people personally what their favorite film genre was and why. I didn't want to just rely on the survey i did on survey monkey because people could easily just click anything which could lead to less reliable information By me going around and asking personally i felt more confident with my research as i felt i was getting honest opinions.

Focus Pulling


Focus Pulling




A focus puller is a member of the film crew’s camera department whose primary responsibility is to maintain image sharpness on whatever subject or action is being filmed. "Pulling focus" refers to the act of changing the lens’s focus distance setting in correspondence to a moving subject’s physical distance from the focal plane.


But I don't think we will need to use this effect.

Monday 9 December 2013


Camera Angles

Camera angles and movements combine to create a sequence of images, just as words, word order and punctuation combine to make the meaning of a sentence. You need a straightforward set of key terms to describe them.
Describing Shots
When describing camera angles, or creating them yourself, you have to think about three important factors

The FRAMING or the LENGTH of shot

— The ANGLE of the shot

— If there is any MOVEMENT involved


1 . Extreme long shot

Camera angle: Extreme Long Shot
Extreme Long Shot
This can be taken from as much as a quarter of a mile away, and is generally used as a scene-setting, establishing shot. It normally shows an EXTERIOR, eg the outside of a building, or a landscape, and is often used to show scenes of thrilling action eg in a war film or disaster movie. There will be very little detail visible in the shot, it's meant to give a general impression rather than specific information.
The extreme long shot on the left is taken from a distance, but denotes a precise location - it might even connote all of the entertainment industry if used as the opening shot in a news story.

2. Long Shot

This is the most difficult to categorise precisely, but is generally one which shows the image as approximately "life" size ie corresponding to the real distance between the audience and the screen in a cinema (the figure of a man would appear as six feet tall). This category includes the FULL SHOT showing the entire human body, with the head near the top of the frame and the feet near the bottom. While the focus is on characters, plenty of background detail still emerges: we can tell the coffins on the right are in a Western-style setting, for instance.

3. Medium Shot

Contains a figure from the knees/waist up and is normally used for dialogue scenes, or to show some detail of action. Variations on this include the TWO SHOT (containing two figures from the waist up) and the THREE SHOT (contains 3 figures...). NB. Any more than three figures and the shot tends to become a long shot. Background detail is minimal, probably because location has been established earlier in the scene - the audience already know where they are and now want to focus on dialogue and character interation. Another variation in this category is the OVER-THE-SHOULDER-SHOT, which positions the camera behind one figure, revealing the other figure, and part of the first figure's back, head and shoulder.

4. Close-Up

This shows very little background, and concentrates on either a face, or a specific detail of mise en scène. Everything else is just a blur in the background. This shot magnifies the object (think of how big it looks on a cinema screen) and shows the importance of things, be it words written on paper, or the expression on someone's face. The close-up takes us into the mind of a character. In reality, we only let people that we really trust get THAT close to our face - mothers, children and lovers, usually - so a close up of a face is a very intimate shot. A film-maker may use this to make us feel extra comfortable or extremely uncomfortable about a character, and usually uses a zoom lens in order to get the required framing.

5. Extreme Close-Up

As its name suggests, an extreme version of the close up, generally magnifying beyond what the human eye would experience in reality. An extreme close-up of a face, for instance, would show only the mouth or eyes, with no background detail whatsoever. This is a very artificial shot, and can be used for dramatic effect. The tight focus required means that extra care must be taken when setting up and lighting the shot - the slightest camera shake or error in focal length is very noticeable.




Friday 6 December 2013

The Wolverine Analysis & Review

The Wolverine Analysis & Review 



The film begins with a wide shot of a landscape, then the camera slowly pans to the right and we are given more of an idea of where this scene is located. Whilst the camera pans we hear planes drowning (Diegetic audio) followed by the sound of sirens. The Camera pans and halts at an establishing shot where the audience can identify that scene is located at military base, furthermore we hear shouting in Japanese which tells us that the base were looking is in Japan. Next we see a point of view shot, and the camera is looking at the camp site through a thin gap. We are then presented with another establishing shot and we can see place of where the person was looking through the gap. The camera slowly zooms in on the place whilst people run in and out of the shot. We then see an Over the shoulder shot of the person looking through the whole again, but this time we can see some of the persons face, at this point the audience can identify the character as Wolverine, however there hasn't yet been an establishing shot to validate it. 

Review
Before watching the film I had heard that the film wasn't that good, however when I watched the film for myself I found out this was not the case. The Wolverine was action packed and formed a nice bridge between the previous X men movie (X- Men Last Stand) and the follow up (X-Men: Days of Future Past). This is the second solo wolverine movie; however I did not find myself disappointed with it like I was with the first one. The only slight critiques I have for the film was the use of swear words. Whenever they were used they sounded out of place and did not suit the character and you kind of felt like it were forced. Hugh Jackman 100% delivers again as wolverine in this movie, we a switch between wolverine being strong and powerful to weak and vulnerable and back to being strong again. This created a roller coaster effect throughout the movie and kept you thinking what could happen next. The film is mainly based in Japan, which gave the film a fresh new story line and a new feel to the Sixth instalment of the X-Men films. 



Film Rating