Camera Class 2

Camera Class 2

PART 1

Last Thursday (25th of September) Mike (my teacher) brought us back to the film room for another camera class with Matt and Paul. There was camera set up next to a monitor which was showing what could be seen on the camera screen, so that we could see what was being filmed. Matt got on the floor with the camera and a phone in the shape of a Ferrari car. He showed us how if the car phone was driving in one direction down a line, the camera had to stay on one side of the line because if we took one shot where the car was moving it and we were filming from the left side and then another shot of it moving on the right side then it would look like there were two cars driving in opposite direction rather than one car driving in one direction. This is called the “180 degree rule”.

The “180 degree rule” creates some sort of an imaginary axis between the camera and the actors/objects being filmed. The camera should stay on one side of that axis (180 degrees of the full circle which is on the axis, hence the 180 degree rule) and the actors/objects on the other, if the camera were to cross the axis and go to the other side then it would look like suddenly the actors/objects have switched positions, the actors/objects on the left would now appear to be on the right and the actors/objects on the right would appear to be on the left. This is done to allow audience to never get confused as to where the actors are situated on the set and in relation to each other.

180 degree rule (diagram)

The 180 degree rule is followed in most films because the director does not want to to confuse the audience, it simply makes sense and looks a lot better, if a Director were too not follow the 180 degree rule then it would be quite some awkward cuts which would leave the audience disorientated and lost in terms of the characters positioning.

His Girl Friday (1940)

In some instances though some directors decide to break the 180 degree rule on purpose to possibly give across a certain effect. One director who was notorious for often breaking the rule was the Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, he apparently did this because he wanted to make his films different from the norm and to try and trick the audience and make them feel tricked for comedic reasons or to ease tension. A famous movie which had a breaking of the 180 rule was The Shinning, Stanley Kubrick broke the rule to try and give across a surreal feeling in the scene.

Late Spring (1949)

The Shining (1980)

PART 2

Later on in the class, Matt and Paul brought back out the tripods and camera’s from the last class we had with them. Are challenge was to shoot a short simple clip which included many of the shots we had learnt in class with Mike. 

Long Shot (LS)

Medium Shot (MS)

Extreme Close Up (ECU)

Close Up (CU)

The scene which my group decided to film was of a girl going up to a chair from out of shot, then she lifts her foot up onto a chair, does up her shoelaces on one shoe, and then walks out of shot. We used a Long Shot (LS) for when the girl was walking up to the chair so that we could see her whole body and the untied shoe, we used a Mid Shot (MS) for when the girl was bending down, we then used a Big Close-Up (BCU) of the shoe and the shoe laces being tied, next a Close-Up (CU) of the girls face while she was tying the shoe and then finally a Medium Long Shot (MLS) of the girl walking out of the shot.

To conclude, in the class my knowledge of the 180 Degree rule was refreshed and put to the test which I found useful and helpful because it had been a while since I had looked at the technique. Then we also got to actually film shots that we had learned about in class, this was nice because it was the first time we were really filming something with the school camera’s, we could actually see how footage filmed with the camera turned out which was nice to finally see.