Mater coverage workshop

1. 2nd Camera Workshop By Lexi Mikhaylova

2. Rule of thirds Rule of thirds is when people have the subject in the middle of their shot, the focus of interest is in the middle and everything around it is blurry. Where the lines cross are hotspots. Number 1 is the most important because we have been conditioned to read from left to right which means our eyes will naturally go to the left first. Matt likes to do a lot of things with depth. If you change where the camera is it can be more interesting. For example when the horizon is in the centre is looks boring whereas if you move the horizon to the side it looks much more interesting. If we drop the camera down to the same height as the subject it makes it look more interesting. It is more a guideline than a rule as it can periodically be broken and still turn out good.

3. 180 Degree Rule/ Crossing the line Lets the audience know where everyone is. When the audience don’t have context of who the people are it is important to establish who’s who. We looked at an example from the film Heat. Al Pacino will always be on the left hand side and Robert De Niro will always be on the right. It doesn’t matter how many times it cuts or what different angles its filmed from. We then made this in real space ourselves. We set up a table and 2 chairs that are placed on either side of the table. Darcy and Lara then sat down facing opposite each other. When the filmmakers made it they would have figured out this is the scene where they are having a conversation. The line is between the two actors. So when it comes to us figuring out where the line is and where we can film the 180 degrees, it is not an arbitrary line that we can just make it up, it always has to be between the two subjects. This means we can film in a semi circle around them. The reason we do this is if now we put cameras all the way around the semi circle Darcy will always be on the right and Lara will always be on the left no matter what. We then stood in a semi circle around that side of the table and Matt asked the people standing up what side Darcy and Lara were on for them and everyone said the same, that Darcy was on the right and Lara was on the left. He did this to prove the point. If you then put someone on the other side of the circle Darcy is now on the left and Lara is on the right. It just doesn’t work and is confusing because she has crossed the line. Think of it like theatre if this was a stage show with us going on, all of the audience see it from this side, if they magic to the other side they’d be seeing a completely different look and perspective on it. So what you do is you figure out who are the two things at play and the line will go between them, and then we can film 180 degrees around it. 

4. He then showed us a scene from the tv show The Mandolorian. There are people wearing masks and we can’t even hear their dialogue but we will still be able to keep track of who’s who because person 1 will always be on the left hand side of the shot and person 2 will aways be on the right hand side of the shot and they are looking inwards towards each other. It also works for people and inanimate objects so in this instance Tom Cruise is here looking to the left even though most of his body is suspended so they can see the cool stunt he is doing. He’s still looking to the left of the tv screen. So if you play it out it doesn’t matter which camera angle it goes for he’s always looking in that same direction cause otherwise if they crossed over it might look like there’s two Tom Cruises floating around.

5. It also works in chat shows. The interviewer is on the left looking in and the interviewees are on the right looking to the other side. And when it cuts close up you can see the interviewer is still on the same side looking in and the interviewee is on the other side looking out. • If you do cross the line you end up seeing two people having a conversation looking away from the camera in the same direction instead of at each other and they don’t look like they are talking to each other. So you’ll end up cutting from one person chatting to the other person facing away from them. • If you get crossing the line wrong it is wrong and you can’t come back from it whereas rule of third is more a guideline.

6. Master Coverage Master coverage is when you film wide shot first. If you film the wide shot first the film can carry on as oppose to starting with a close up. This is because if you have to go back and film anything else it will be much more difficult. The first thing you do is stick the camera at the same height as the subject. You have to set up the camera to be the same height as the person. Then you need to bubble the tripod. Next, Matt got someone roughly the same height as him to stand in and act as a sort of body double. He then put a marker down in order to hit that spot exactly. He placed it in front and then focused the camera, zoomed in and then zoomed out for his shot. The reason you use markers a lot of the time is so that you don’t waste the time of actors instead you can just get a body double to stand in. The actor has to walk in, hit the marker, say their line and then walk out.

7. As a director the first thing you have to do is get the place in order and get ready to start filming. Sets are really busy and there are always lots of people everywhere, so the director will start off by saying stand by. When they say stand by all the other people for example the camera operator, sound person, the rest of the crew will stop whatever they are doing and repeat stand by so that the director knows everyone is ready to go. They do this as it is very clear and direct, whereas “are you ready” is not as broad and clear. You could be talking to anyone. Next the director says role camera, at this point the camera operator will press the record button and the numbers on the screen will start to go and there will be a red dot. This is when the camera operator say rolling. The reason you need that is because the director might be miles away from the camera and you won’t know if there’s a problem with the camera until it’s going. Maybe it has just run out of battery, maybe the memory card is full. If you are shooting a film there might be a mechanical fault with the camera. Once they have started rolling they will let it record for a second and then the director will call action. You do the whole scene and then at the end of it the director will call cut and that is when the camera operator will stop filming.

8. We then played out a scene in which a man would walk into the shot pick up a pair of pink scissors, put them down and walk out. We did that as a wide shot and then had to figure out what other coverage we need to make it interesting. Peoples faces are critical in scenes as they can show a lot of detail. We then got the body double back in so we could get a close up of the face. The line is between the person and the scissors and that is the 180 degrees we can film around. We slightly moved the camera so that it would be from a different angle, bubbled the tripod, focused and zoomed in and then zoomed out to the shot. We then practised saying stand by, rolling, action and then Matt walked into the scene. We made sure he picked up the scissors with the same hand so that there wouldn’t be any continuity errors. He repeated the exact thing he did in the last take and then we called cut. On sets you have a script supervisor who makes loads of notes about what the actors are doing like what hand they are using, where they are looking this is so that in different takes it is consistent. We then changed the camera height to the same height as the subject (rule of thirds). Again we repeated the scene but this time with a close up of Matts hand picking up the scissors. We let the shot keep running so that we end up getting another shot just for the scene playing out. We then took all the takes and put them together. So it started with the wide shot of the man walking in, then cut to the mid shot, then cut to the close up, then went back to the mid shot of of him looking at the scissors, then went back to the close up of the scissors being put down, then went back to the wide shot of him leaving. So from those three takes we actually got about 6 different cutting points. Whereas if we just filmed the individual bits and tried to put them together it wouldn’t look as good.

9. We then Practiced creating an opening sequence for practice. We assembled the camera like we were taught in the previous workshop. We did a sequence where I walked in picked up my coat, put it on and left. We did it three times. 1 wide shot, 1 close up on my hand picking up the coat, and 1 close up on my face. Some errors that occurred were not placing the coat in the same place and putting it on differently. None of us asked how to watch the footage back which was a good thing as it takes time and wastes time. If you feel you need to watch something back you may as well get another take. Having more material is better than not having enough. If you watch yourself back you may see errors and change it in the next one and that may cause you to look unnatural. That’s a wrap, strike the kit. We then finished the workshop and cleared away the kit.