Music Video Evaluation

Music Video Evaluation

Pre-production
Intended to shoot some moving ferrofluid. Inspired by The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo opening title sequence. This sequence has a gothic horror vibe to it. The fluid is evocative of death and aliens.
Footage of fluid moving, ink, oil and glitter/acrylic paint in water.

I ultimately decided upon Guilt Trip by Kanye as I felt it best suited the visuals I had in my head.
I desired to have a one-point-perspective shot from the front view of my car travelling along the A5 towards Dordon. I had travelled a lot down this road in the past year while visiting my close friends who all live there. Seeing the beauty of this road often, I knew this was going to be a desired shot long before we started the music video unit.
I wanted to make a piece that had some connection to my experiences over the last year.
The song is about trying to figure out why his relationships have gone wrong. I see the video as an expression of escapism from reality.

Production
I carried out three separate shoots of a mixture of fluids. I purchased some ferrofluid and borrowed a couple magnets from the physics department. In order to carrying out some more diverse experiments I tried to extract some fluorescent fluid from some glow sticks. However, that proved to be more difficult than I had anticipated and I didn't have enough time to go to plan B which was to extract and melt down some highlighter fluid. So instead I decided to just shoot the ferrofluid on its own and fortunately I think the footage turned out better than I had anticipated regardless. I attached the GoPro to the front grill of my car using a car attachment I bought offline. We went to Earls Shilton skate park with A2 student Cal Dawson. I was told by a friend that he was a proficient at skateboarding so I decided to get in touch to see if he could be apart of the video. I tested out the attachment prior to installing the GoPro to ensure it would be safe to use while driving.

Post-Production
I decided to go with the 2.35:1 anamorphic aspect ratio to give the piece a cinematic quality. The one point perspective of the road shot transitions into the light vortex well. it goes with the line: "I'm losing my... Im living my..."- these lyrics convey a story or purpose behind the visuals. The flashing psychedelic liquid sequence was inspired by West's own video for his other song 'All Of The Lights'. The overlay of the imagery was inspired by the editing of Locke starring Tom Hardy. I see the purpose of the video as a response to a guilt trip - when someone tries to make you feel guilty for thinking/feeling/doing things a certain way. Its a visual representation of the act of taking illicit substances in an attempt to escape feelings of guilt and existential worries. During editing, I wondered if the lack of a close-up to create an attachment to a central figure was missing. However I think the result is instead a video that makes it seam as though it were from the audiences own perspective. I wish in heinsight I had used a two camera setup as it would then have had the opportunity to be viewed in 3D via a VR headset, making it a more immersive experience. The ferro fluid footage was actually edited the same colour hue as the fluid seen in David Finchers title credits.

"Guilt Trip" Music Video

Guilt Trip Unofficial Video by ethancoledelaney

'Little Brother'

Little Brother from Chris Bradley on Vimeo.

The creation of the sets and characters.

As part of our coursework, fellow HNC Creative Media Production students and I were given the opportunity to animate, write and star in our own short clay animation as part of an outreach project produced by Nuneaton Museum & Art Gallery. The film was commissioned as the centre piece of a new exhibition at the gallery based upon the theme of 'protest'. In order for it to be appropriate viewing for any visitor, limitations to what we could create were set. These included this theme of protest, a universal
subject matter and the exclusion of any age-restricting qualities. Over the course of eight three-hour sessions, we created a 5 minute short film regarding our modern surveillance society with the help of filmmaker Chris Bradley of Willowmann Productions.

The development of the narrative.

In our first couple of sessions we had to come up with a story that related to our theme. Later on it quickly became evident that a lot of this time would have been better spent on the production of the sets and filming. As per our shared viewpoint, the film quite clearly expresses an underlying message of anti-govenment mass surveillance. We chose this theme as not only did we feel it was historically relevant to the importance of protest, but that in recent years it has become also very contemporary due to the recent revelations of the bulk collection and surveillance capabilities of GCHQ and National Surveillance Agency of the US. However, upon reviewing the film, I noticed that there was an irony to it being funded by a council branch of the government itself. This became apparent towards the ending of the film, during the end-credit roll in which the museum added the line line 'The views expressed in this film are those of the students and not necessarily those of Nuneaton & Bedworth Borough Council'. Some of my contributions to the film included; the making of the park scenery, the formation of the tallest antagonist in this scene, creative advise for the story, coming up with lighting setups and animating the dog and duck models.

Prior to working on this project, none of the students had any experience in the production of clay animation. This proposed many challenges. Most significantly, and unsurprisingly, it turned out that the modelling of great-looking clay characters required a particularly high level of attention to detail alongside an understanding of the extraordinary craft involved in clay animation. In order to meet our tight deadline, instead of initially assigning specific filmmaking roles, we all had to take part in the production of the sets and characters. Despite having this limited time-frame which ultimately restricted our potential outcome, I nevertheless enjoyed the process and believe that overall, the film turned out to be much better than anticipated thanks to the combination of all of our aspects of filmmaking coming together in unity via the expert editing of Chris Bradley.

New Wave - Health & Safety

When producing any film, it's always important to consider the potential problems and risks that may cause harm to those involved in the practical side of the production. Steps will need to be taken in advance to ensure health and safety.

Potential risks that were considered:

• Equipment
• Weather
• Location aspects
• Crew/talents
• Members of the public

Equipment

Little equipment was used during shooting. The equipment for the shoot included a Canon digital camera, a tripod and my car for transportation and camera movement. To prevent theft or damage, the camera equipment was kept by my side at all times and were secured so that they would not obstruct and cause potential physical harm to members of the public or myself/subject.

Weather

Due to poor, wet weather conditions whilst on our college trip to Manchester, I was unable to record some of the outdoor shots I had desired due to potential water damage to my camera equipment. Fortunately, the weather of the shoot that later took place in Tamworth caused no problems. 

Location Aspects/Members of the public

Due to the sheer open space of the settings, few potentially harmful obstacles were present. At points, the low key lighting of some potential shooting areas meant that the safety of ourselves could have been more at risk in terms of unknown potentially harmful strangers and obstacles. Hence, we thought it was best at the time to stay within well-lit areas.

Crew/Talents

(To my knowledge) Neither the cast nor I had any illnesses that could have been passed on to each other that could later have caused either of us any harm.

New Wave - Video Evaluation

Introduction

After having studied the new wave for a few months, the most essential aspect of the movement which I had picked up, was the idea of creative freedom of personal expression in mainstream filmmaking. When it came to creating my own film, I decided to do little planning in terms of what kind of a narrative I wanted to tell: I wanted to explore the challenges and surprises of the on-the-fly filming technique which was utilised by many of the directors that defined the era of American filmmaking. I believed it would be best to go into the process with the conventions of the movement in mind. With intuition, I could incorporate them as the subject and I explored our surroundings. I had only a couple of college restraints; the length of my video and that it must have reflected my chosen new wave.

Pre-production

Prior to creating my own New Wave film inspired video, I had viewed various films upon which my chosen new wave of cinema; the American new wave, was founded. In particular I spent a lot of time viewing and analysing such films as Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver and Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde. Unlike these filmmakers, on this project, I had no desire to include violence as I felt as though I had nothing particular to say about it that hasn't already been said extensively. From my experience of violence, it has primarily been the result of people unleashing their anger over their own insecurities and issues, unto others and objects. A form of bullying.

Similar to new wave films, I chose a location of which I have a personal connection to.
I wanted an establishing shot of the skate park and Namco parking lot (where most of the film takes place) along with hand-held camera imagery for ease of use and to reflect that which was heavily utilised in new wave cinema. Similarly to the new wave, I also incorporated numerous instances of going in and out of focus on objects. This camera technique indicates a reactionnary response by the camera operator to the sequence of events. It hence breaks the fourth wall and gives the audience a sense of realism to the scene, as if real events were taking place. This technique was also picked up from watching the mocumentary television series The Office; of which draws heavily from this new wave. The lens flares in my video are intended to be a nod to the ultimate youth couture rebellious film, Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider (1969). To add a twist to the conventional urban location setting of a lot of new wave films, I decided to shoot this urban location at its emptiest time of day.

Production

More consciously, I took visual inspiration from Taxi Driver by channelling opening moving images of blurred street lights from within a moving vehicle; a metaphor of a vision of world from a disconnected perspective. I felt that the apparent emptiness of the setting further emphasised this disconnection.

Lighting:
From prior experience of shooting test imagery at night, I had learned that it can be particularly hard to tell if a scene is well lit due to viewing imagery on a small LCD screen - whereby the blacks are lit up. This gives an initial sense that a scene is perhaps more exposed than it truly is. I used the metering system in the camera as a starting point as I knew that this was meant for daylight photography. I used the digital zoom feature to see if much digital grain was present. If so, I knew I had to perhaps increase the shutter speed. In order to achieve a sense of realism, I didn't use any lighting set-ups. I only used the artificial lighting already at the location. At times, a lack of enough exposure meant that I had to shoot aspects of other locations and later place them between shots of another. Without any acknowledgment of doing such a thing, along with a continuous tone of lighting, it misleads the audience that these shots were of the same location. This was necessary in particular to achieve some shots of graffiti.

Realism:
At times, the character or subject breaks the fourth wall by looking directly at the camera. Shots of graffiti were included as this is something which goes against the law - prior to the american new wave of cinema, films followed the 'Hayes' code. This included the rule of "law should not be ridiculed". By showing graffiti, I am also showing an "incorrect" standard of life/behaviour. The character does not criticise or condemn the graffiti; an opposition to the Hayes moral standard of "no sympathy to crime and sin". Graffiti is a perfect demonstration/example of youth rebellion and counter-culture. The character sees the images as something to laugh about and not take too seriously, despite being classed as damage to public property. The continuous tracking shots give a sense of observing someone - Indicating the presence of the camera operator, myself - this too, I believe, adds to the sense of realism.

Post-production

Editing:
Upon finishing the editing process, in various ways, I came to realise the unconscious affects these films had on my approach to editing. Both from a direct impression and an indirect, secondary impression of having viewed various media that had been influenced by these films. In particular for example: the way in which the clips are edited to the music at points, seemed reminiscent of the robbery getaway scene at the beginning of Bonnie and Clyde. Jump cuts were utilised to distort the sense of time in the viewers mind; to achieve timelessness. At times the editing is choppy, and certain shots appear out of place and to last too long.

Music:
the choice of music was also made as this is a fairly known song by popular artist Skrillex - as opposed to a more traditional "Old Hollywood" soundtrack. Edm is the new folk-rock music of todays generation of youth.
sudden shifts of tone: the break into diegetic dialogue and the lack of background music.
from editing a music video -clips edited to the sound of music, i learned how to do such a thing. I learned from the first time from editing my film from a2 film to music.
the music is calming - visceral.

Conclusion



Notes:

Things that were good:
the shoots spontinaity
the handheld camera shots evoking a new wave style
capturing the emptiness - sense of freedom from society.
capturing visceral imagery
the successful combination of the imagery with ambient, mood-enhancing music
lens flare - staple of
diegetic audio
Smudge motion affect added -similar to taxi driver opening scene
variety of shots
editing techniques; time-lapse, jump cuts, fade transitions,

What I learnt from this:
A better ability to edit visuals to audio. How to adapt to the unexpected elements of the setting; such as a sudden change in lighting and how to incorporate them.

Things I could've done in retrospect:
Hire out multiple cameras so that I could've shot two or more angles of the same occurance (to edit together a temporal overlapse).
Thought more beforehand about symbolic imagery.
Showed a representation of violence and nudity - The graffiti in the film shows a woman'f fear of an  extra-terestrial threat. - This isn't particularly clear. Her fear in particular would seem to have been mocked by the subject, this was not the case. Instead it was the expression that is mocked.

Health & Safety

During the shooting of our example video clips for lighting, shutter speed, aperture etc, numerous steps were taken in advance so that our Health & Safety was ensured.

Before starting a shoot, the location must be checked for potential risks and hazards to the Health and Safety of our film crew/talents. This is important as an injury to these people in a real-world filming scenario can result in a film going over-budget, behind schedule and in rare cases, such as a fatal incident to a director or talent, can result in them to be scrapped entirely. When a potential risk/hazard is identified, they must be evaluated and measures should be set in place to control them.

Potential risks to consider:

• Equipment
• Wheather
• Location aspects
• Crew/talents
• Members of the public

When trying to avoid incidents of injury or damage to our equipment it is important to ensure that all of the filming equipment (e.g: tripod, light fixtures, wires, props, sets, scenary etc) are made aware to the cast, crew and the public prior to shooting. This can be succesfully achieved via the following methods:

• Health and Safety notices should be posted around the shoot.
• A prepared safety plan given to all personal. This will cover all of the risks, how to avoid them and what to do if they nonetheless take place.
• Wires tucked away (taped down) so that they're no-longer trip hazards.
• Light fixtures in the studio/workspace should be switched off via the mains whilst not in use to avoid over-heating. They should be left to cool before use again.
• A clean and tidy workspace.
• Camera operator spotter.
• No food and beverages (or anything that may cause damage) near the equipment.
• Crew/talents are trained to use and handle the equipment safely before doing so.
• Equipment must be safely stored when not in use.

New Wave - Video

New Wave Film from Ethan Delaney on Vimeo.

New Wave - Design Brief

As a part of my coursework research on New Waves in cinema, I have been primarily studying the American New Wave between the mid 60's to the early 80's. Through the analysis and research on Martin Scorsese's historic first mainstream film Taxi Driver, I learned just how much you can engage an audience via the on-screen exploration of man dealing with feelings we all go through. This then made the youthful audience at the time have a connection to the man they were seeing on screen, only for them to witness the shock of the horrific acts he commits towards the end. I find this inner connection to an audience to be something that I could explore in my film. Another thing I learned from watching a documentary on this new wave, is how sometimes certain camera movements and techniques were employed just because they felt 'right' during shooting. For example the slow, almost unnoticeable movement of a camera towards a subject can have a subliminal effect on the audiences view of the characters and their situation.

Therefore, I would like to see what different kinds of reactions I could evoke using this adaptable style of filmmaking to the environment. Perhaps if I juxtaposed certain comedic iconography with horror-genre camera techniques such as dutch tilts, I could achieve a mixed feeling in the audience towards the piece. An important aspect of what is considered to be New wave of cinema, is the rejection of traditional or common place camera and lighting techniques, and therefore to try and utilise those of the American new wave now into my own film, would not be very new wave by todays cinema as the industry has since incorporated these elements. Popular editing techniques of the American new wave included jump cuts, montage and temporal discontinuity. With my New Wave film production, I intend to not follow a few of the traditional rules of editing and camera techniques. For example, instead of using a fade video transition to indicate a change of time and setting, as per cinematic tradition, I intend to use such techniques in a single timeframe.

Aperture

A change in the aperture effects the amount of light that is received by the sensor and therefore the amount of light within a still image. To adjust the amount of light in an image, say perhaps a scene is too dark, opening/increasing the aperture will result in a brighter scene. Doubling the aperture quadruples the exposure. Aperture sizes are measured in f-stops (the size of the aperture reduces the depth of field)

There is another factor that will effect the amount of light let into the image: the lens. A larger aperture is needed for a 100 mm lens and hence a smaller one is needed for a 50 mm lens for example to achieve the same result.

Aperture 2.8:
Aperture 2.8 from Ethan Delaney on Vimeo.
In this video I shot a plasma globe up close. In order to show off the short depth of field of the low aperture, I added water droplets to the outside of the globe to help the glass of the globe stand apart.

Aperture 9.0:
Aperture 9.0 from Ethan Delaney on Vimeo.
In contrast to the other clip above, this clip showcases a higher aperture and therefore the lighting in the clip is hence of a lower key. The ISO was adjusted to make up for some of this lost light. It is clear to see that in this video the plasma is entirely in focus as a result of the added depth of field.

Lighting

Night Time Lighting 

 

Night time shoots can be one of the hardest kinds of lighting setups to master. In order to fully capture the action of the scene numerous different kinds of lighting setups must be incorporated. Lighting a scene at night is particularly difficult as it involves balancing the realism of a scenes lighting with capturing your particular shots well.

Standard Three-Point Lighting Setup

1. The Key Light

The Key Light is usually the most important light that a cinematographer will use to highlight a figures form and dimension. This is the light in which will primarily illuminate our characters' face for example. This light then allows us, the audience, to view the characters facial features and emotions. Without the fill light, a conversation between two characters, for example, will not be captured to its full extent and will hence have less of an impact on the story. The fill lights position can have an effect on the audiences view of the characters. A key light positioned to the side of a characters face will subsequently cast a dark shadow on the other. This shadow can have connotations of the character having something to hide or that they're likely to be untrustworthy and the villain of the story. A notable contrast between high and low key lighting in a scene such as this is referred to as chiaroscuro in art and photography.

2. The Fill Light
Depending on its position facing the figure, the key light will cause a shadow to be cast on a
characters body. Then the fill light is usually a light of lower key that is used to fill in this shadow to ensure that their whole face for example can be seen on video. Sometimes the use of a fill light will not be necessary as the key light is positioned nearer to the camera lens, this is very common in fashion photography whereby a ring flash is utilised, or the shadow on a character is intentional. Sometimes the fill light will have different hue to the key light which would be used to imply mood.


3. The Back Light
The Backlight is the light in which will usually be positioned behind an object or character in order to illuminate them and hence set them apart from their backgrounds. This illumination can create a silhouette of the character. A notable and iconic cinematic use of backlight is evident in John Ford's western The Searchers (Left). This porch doorway shot has been copied and referenced in many films since.

Butterfly Lighting

The butterfly effect is a lighting setup commonly used in fashion photography to illuminate most of a subjects face. It was most prominently used to illuminate 1930's female hollywood film stars.
When creating this lighting setup, I positioned the model (Francesca Smith) to face the camera directly at eye level. The diffusing 'soft box' light was thus positioned slightly above the camera and faced the model at a slight 70/80 degree angle. This angle and position results in the butterfly effect; a small shadow underneath the nose of the subject thats shaped like a butterfly.

Edge Lighting

Edge Lighting illuminates just one half of a subjects face, leaving the other half in a shadow. This is not usually considered a general purpose lighting technique, however it can be used for many different reasons in film. The most common use for this type of chiaroscuro is to suggest a characters untrustworthiness or deceitfulness as the shadow would suggest another unknown "side" to their personality. This technique is created by facing the light at a 90 or 120 degree angle (the left or right side) to where the subject is facing.

Rembrandt Lighting

This technique is named after the dutch painter of the same name. This lighting technique is created by positioning the light source at about 45 degrees from where the subject is facing. It results in a small triangular shape of light underneath the eye of the shadow side of the face of the subject.

High Key Lighting

High key lighting simply refers to when a shot is overall a particularly high key of light. An obvious way to easily achieve this is to record outdoors on a well lit day. In my example I used a fluid head tripod to smoothly pan almost 360 degrees around, capturing the scenery of the college. This example used is in stark contrast to the low key lighting of the video bellow.

Low Key Lighting
Low Key Lighting (Backlight Silhouette) from Ethan Delaney on Vimeo.
In this clip, I intended to reference the backlight doorway shot in The Searchers. I illuminated my figures face with the use of a mobile phone screen. This is an example of framing within a shot. The doorway acts as the frame, this can add importance to a specific character.

Shutter Speed

The shutter is like a small curtain in a camera. It quickly passes over the image sensor and thus only allows light to enter and be absorbed by the sensor for fractions of a second. The faster the shutter passes over, the darker the resulting image. Therefore a lighter image can be created by reducing the shutter speed. A shutter speed of 1/20 of a second for example, will allow more light into the sensor than a shutter speed of 1/40. The shutter in a digital camera is also primarily responsible for effecting the amount of blur in moving imagery. By increasing the shutter speed, the image is being taken so fast that the object in movement has travelled less distance for any blur to be noticeable in a picture.

Slow Shutter Speed 1/50s:
Slow Shutter Speed (1/50s) from Ethan Delaney on Vimeo.
In this video the shutter speed has been reduced to 1/50 of a second. As you can see in the clip, the movement of the light bulb is slightly blurred. The quality of the images captured are therefore lower than in the higher shutter speed video.
I used the rule of ensuring the shutter speed of my camera is faster than the reciprocal of the focal length value (50mm) in order to avoid camera shake which would have resulted in my tests being rendered useless. A shutter speed of 1/50 was also chosen as this is the minimum speed required when previewing moving imagery at 24fps.

High Shutter Speed 1/160s:
Fast Shutter Speed (1/160s) from Ethan Delaney on Vimeo.
In this video the image quality is arguably better despite the higher amount of digital grain than the video above. This grain is the result of the fact that due to the higher shutter speed, less light was able to be taken in by the image sensor, in order to make up for this I had to adjust the ISO and Aperture accordingly to ensure the overall light level was equal to the video above.

4 hour Film Task

The">https://vimeo.com/141150894">The Conversation
from Jakob">https://vimeo.com/user43481888">Jakob Morrison on Vimeo.https://vimeo.com">Vimeo.>
On 1st October, our HNC group (Francesca Smith, Lalita Ajit, Jessica Barratt, Beth Heath, Katie Tooth and myself) were set with the task of creating a short film within a four hour time-frame of the days' scheduled lessons. This would include the conjuring up of a plot, production of cinematic shots and editing them together ready to present the following day in class. In order to inspire our creativity, we were set with the limitation of our films being titled "The Conversation" and the plot being related to just that, whichever way we decided that would be a part of the film.

We were advised by our teachers to assign ourselves to a specific creative role. However, this assignment did not take place because of uncomfortable open discussion within our group. Its my belief that our initial lack of group cohesion was due to a lack of working on prior tasks together before this project.

Instinctively, I felt that I would best suit the role of the Cinematographer due to my previous study of film at A Level that other team members did not have the experience of doing. On the other hand, numerous members of the team had taken photography courses which meant that they were better suited to operating the DSLR cameras. In post-production, this became evident to me by the apparent variation in quality of the footage. Towards the end of our film, during which I was not the camera operator, the quality is noticeably superior as less digital noise and over/under-exposure is present. However, I also reason that this change in roles (of which allowed me to focus on editing the first half) caused the plot to become less of a focus and hence it became unclear to the audience. This uncertainty was later expressed by our classmates in reviewal of our film.

In conclusion, I believe a better-established direction and assignment of clear creative roles would have significantly improved our film. A struggle between which direction to take the production and overall un-organisation caused a significant amount of time at the beginning of the shooting to be lost.

New Wave - Video Planning

Location

St Editha's, Tamworth.

For the majority of my new wave video footage, I wanted to shoot areas of and around Tamworth, Staffordshire. Due to many recent occasions of travelling to Tamworth from Nuneaton to visit friends, I have become very familiar with a lot of its scenery. A few months prior to eventually shooting the film, I had taken various images of potential locations in the town where I could shoot footage. These can be seen bellow;

Potential locations scouted.






All of these images were taken around River Anker: of which runs through the centre of Tamworth. As per many of the new wave films I have recently viewed in preparation of creating my own, the use of none-staged/setup lighting i.e. lighting that's already a part of the location, was desired and so these locations seemed to be ideal. The yellow street lights
near Tamworth skate park, (whereby the majority of the film is based) reminded me of the unnerving, sickness-inducing cinematography in Denis Villeneuve's film Enemy.

The final video was intended to be an almost montage of shots showing a late-night exploration of a largely deserted Tamworth. To achieve a distortion of time thought id be useful to include a time-lapse shot.

ISO

ISO
ISO (International Organization for Standardization) is the software setting on a camera that will dictate how sensitive your camera's sensor is to light. Increasing the ISO will result in a brighter picture, however it also has an unfortunate drawback of creating more noise in an image. The amount of noise desired in an image can be a preference of choice as this can on the other hand make an image appear more like traditional grainy film photography.

The following videos are experiments with shooting both 1600 and 3200 ISO DSLR video at night. The results were, on a whole, underexposed whilst using both ISO values due to the lack of intensity in the lighting. In order to get around this my first thought was to adjust the aperture and shutter speed. However, I could not reduce the shutter speed bellow 1/50 as this is the minimum necessary to capture video at 24fps without noticeable motion blur. With the opportunity to shoot again I would try to find a lighter area to shoot or perhaps introduce my own lighting setup. Due to the low key lighting, the auto-focus could not be utilised to its potential and hence manual focus had to be used instead.

Shoot Location: "The Green" Maple Park, Nuneaton, UK.

Technical Specs:

Equipment: Canon EOS 600D, Canon Zoom Lens

Frames Per Second: 24

Aspect Ratio: 16:9

Definition: 1080p

ISO 1600 Test 1
ISO 1600 Test 1 from Ethan Delaney on Vimeo.

Process: 

Camera position: The camera was positioned approximately 40cm from my characters bike at a low angle.

ISO: 1600

Shutter Speed: 1/50

Aperture: 4.5

Strengths: The silhouette created with the street lamp's illumination of my figure. Continuous lighting tone throughout. The fixed lighting that allowed the character to be unseen on the footage as he draws further away from the camera.

Weaknesses: Underexposure due to the lack of intensity of the street lamps and limitations of my camera equipment. Digital noise in the imagery caused by the increased ISO. The focus of the footagedoes not follow the character as he rides off.

Problem Solving: In order to solve the problem of underexposure I could use a Power LED light  source which would provide more intensity onto the figure to be picked up by the camera sensor. However this lighting source offers a natural tone, as opposed to the orange tone of the street lamps. In order to remove this difference in tone, I could use a lens or digital filter. I could prevent the  figure from being off-focus by using Magic Lantern software that would better indicate which part of the frame is in focus at all times.

Improvements: Use a lens/digital filter to ensure the lighting tone is the same. Use Magic Lantern to ensure the figure is in focus at all times. Camera movement could be intercooporated with the use of a steadicam device or perhaps a track for the camera to move along and track the bike.

 

ISO 3200 Test 2

ISO 3200 Test 2 from Ethan Delaney on Vimeo.

Process: 

Camera position: The camera was positioned approximately 50cm from my characters face at a low angle.

ISO: 3200

Shutter Speed: 1/50

Aperture: 4.5

Strengths: The silhouette created with the street lamp's illumination of my figure. The movement of my camera which allowed the camera to capture the chiaroscuro on my characters face with adds a sense of uncertainty. Continuous lighting tone throughout.

Weaknesses: Underexposure due to the lack of intensity of the street lamps and limitations of my camera equipment. Digital noise in the imagery caused by the increased ISO. The focus of the footage is slightly off my characters face when he turns around.

Problem Solving: In order to solve the problem of underexposure I could use a Power LED light  source which would provide more intensity onto the figures face to be picked up by the camera sensor. However this lighting source offers a natural tone, as opposed to the orange tone of the street lamps. In order to remove this difference in tone, I could use a lens or digital filter. I could prevent the  figure from being off-focus by using Magic Lantern software that would better indicate which part of the frame is in focus at all times.

Improvements: Use a lens/digital filter to ensure the lighting tone is the same. Use Magic Lantern to ensure the figure is in focus at all times. I could incorporate a quick zoom to a close-up of my characters face as he turns around for added dramatic intensity to the scene.

 

ISO 3200 Test 1

ISO 3200 Test 1 from Ethan Delaney on Vimeo.

Process: 

Camera position: The camera was positioned approximately 120cm from my characters bike at a high angle.

ISO: 3200

Shutter Speed: 1/50

Aperture: 4.5

Strengths: Continuous lighting tone throughout. The character is consistantly in focus. The shadow of the camera operator (me) is never shown on the screen.

Weaknesses: Underexposure due to the lack of intensity of the street lamps and limitations of my camera equipment. Digital noise in the imagery caused by the increased ISO.

Problem Solving: In order to solve the problem of underexposure I could use a Power LED light  source which would provide more intensity onto the figure to be picked up by the camera sensor. Use of lens or digital filter to remove lighting tone difference. Use of Magic Lantern software

Improvements: Use a lens/digital filter to ensure the lighting tone is the same. Use Magic Lantern to ensure the figure is in focus at all times. I could incorporate a quick zoom to a close-up of my characters face as he turns around for added dramatic intensity to the scene.

The effects of Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO on moving image

Aperture
A change in the aperture effects the amount of light that is received by the sensor and therefore the amount of light within a still image. To adjust the amount of light in an image, say perhaps a scene is too dark, opening/increasing the aperture will result in a brighter scene. Doubling the aperture quadruples the exposure. Aperture sizes are measured in f-stops (the size of the aperture reduces the depth of field). There is another factor that will effect the amount of light let into the image: the lens. A larger aperture is needed for a 100 mm lens and hence a smaller one is needed for a 50 mm lens for example to achieve the same result.

Shutter Speed
The shutter is like a small curtain in a camera. It quickly passes over the image sensor and thus only allows light to enter and be absorbed by the sensor for fractions of a second. The faster the shutter passes over, the dark the resulting image. Therefore a lighter image can be created by reducing the shutter speed. A shutter speed of 1/20 of a second for example, will allow more light into the sensor than a shutter speed of 1/40. The shutter in a digital camera is also primarily responsible for effecting the amount of blur in moving imagery. By increasing the shutter speed, the image is being taken so fast that the object in movement has travelled less distance for any blur to be noticeable in a picture.

ISO
ISO (International Organization for Standardization) is the software setting on a camera that will dictate how sensitive your camera's sensor is to light. Increasing the ISO will result in a brighter picture, however it also has an unfortunate drawback of creating more noise in an image. The amount of noise desired in an image can be a preference of choice as this can on the other hand make an image appear more like traditional grainy film photography.

Shot Type Examples

Panning shot

 

Tilt shot

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

Close-Up

 

Tracking Shot

 

Extreme Close-Up