Final Course Reflection

This course has truly been one of the best TCF courses I've taken. I don't get how it's not required for all media production majors. The most valuable thing has been going hands on with all of the cameras we did. I've learned to be much quicker in terms of jumping around from camera to camera and being able to figure out where the different settings for each are, and how techniques tools translate between them, what advantages and disadvantages they each have over each other. It's given me more confidence to be able to pick up a camera that I've never used before and get moving with it. 

In particular, I’ve learned the most about DSLR cameras, and that’s what I most wanted to learn so it’s fantastic. I’m so much more confident with them now.
Likewise, I’m more confident with lighting. I’m sure about the basics now and can see more clearly where I need to go next. I’d like to keep working on learning how to make things look more consistent from shot to shot.

This course has also given me much more experience in terms of knowing how a set is supposed to run, how everyone’s role factors into the successful operation of a set, and how to manage when things start going wrong as the inevitable will in some way.

I’ve developed more direction in terms of knowing what kind of visual looks I like a project to have and how to articulate that. I’ve figured out that I will likely play around with developing DSLR skills next. I love the look of DSLR footage and how people seem to connect to it. The alternate viewing reality they create totally suits me. The camera can so easily go beyond what our eyes do, it’s great.

I think I may be more attracted to the previsualization and post production stages of a project because that’s where I see myself being able to contribute the most vision, but with DSLR I’m totally engaged in the shooting stage. I think it’s because DSLRs up to this point in time have been able to most closely achieve that which I see in my head in terms of visuals that I want to create.

I also really enjoyed reading The Filmmaker’s Eye. The way the book is written is really interesting, going over the basic rules and then showing examples of “successfully” breaking them. And the images are gorgeous.

Overall this class has taught me a great deal that I'm excited to build upon. And honestly, I really feel like if every media production major had to take it, we would all be much less frustrated when it comes to working with each other, because it's teaches such basic language and technique that we all need to know, and it's now obvious to me when a student hasn't taken this class, weird!

Reel and Artist Statement

Lauren Jacobs - DP Reel 2012 from Lauren Jacobs on Vimeo.

I am obsessed with the act of documenting. I didn’t truly realize just how much it means to me until very recently. I think this is because the obsession has always been there, underlying most everything I do. I take hundreds of pictures. I journal via emails to my best friend without even meaning to. I let the camera roll on my little brother’s first everything long after whatever it was he was doing was done. Recently however, my acts of documenting have become much more conscious. Purposeful efforts made for the sake of not losing something. As of late, my work of documenting has led me to capture the processes and products of other artists. Specifically, artists whose pieces are fleeting without such documentation. A dancer performing to an audience for one night only. A spraypainted tribute to an illegal and often removed form of art. The sly glances of a painter who mid-brushstroke checks to see if her work measures up to her neighbor during class. It is important to me to capture the process of creation through the medium of video because to me, watching these images can give birth to inspiration in an infinite number of ways. By observing how creators create, my own mind is opened to new worlds of potential. I can see thing in the way they make art that will cause me to think about the way that I myself do. Perhaps my subconscious has led me to put myself in positions to have these opportunities to record artists without really even realizing that I’ve been doing so, through taking certain internships and enrolling in certain classes, but once I’m there, something clicks and I know exactly how and why I want to shoot. I want to record subjects by showing how they interact with their medium and also how they interact with others who observe them. I want to show their thought process and preparation. I want for the execution of their art to read visually as the release of energy it is. I want to do this because of course it looks fantastic. Because it can inspire. And because it should not be lost.

Scene Assignment Reflection

*I was going to post my scene assignment but I cut it in Avid and I need more time to figure out how to export it with the right settings for Vimeo. But I'll be back to do that ASAP!*

In the process of doing my scene assignment, the main thing that I've learned is that I likely need to overcome my scatterbrainedness. I'm good at staying on task while shooting, but I can improve in terms of making sure all of the tasks get done and that I haven't overlooked anything. The thing that I was most disappointed in was not having enough coverage when I sat down to edit such that a couple of times my shots lined together awkwardly and there wasn't any other coverage I had that could go over it to fix it.

As a DP I'd like to improve in almost the same way. Continuity and consistency of shots is I think one of the most important thing to achieve in terms of making a product look professional. The lighting in the scene that I DPed could have been much better in terms of looking consistent from one shot to the next. I'd like to learn how to make sure that that happens on set. It's sort of difficult to look at playback on the monitor and know what will work, so I definitely need to develop some skills and tools for that.

I learned that I feel pretty solidly about directing and envisioning a piece though, and I know it's more of a DP job but I feel really strong in terms of creating a nice/interesting composition. I think my favorite thing about the way my scene turned out  are the shots where framing is really interesting. I love the establishing shot of Claude and Anna with them in the bottom left corner that foreshadows the wall as spot for future action, and the way their shadows bounce off of it. Likewise the shots of Sadie where she's spray-painting and you can only see parts of her and parts of the message.

My small crew of three worked pretty well together. Michael and I had fantastic communication with each other, I thought. We worked together really well in terms of being on the same page and knowing what the other was trying to say. Ted was sort of a gaff/grip/sound combo, and managed to do well at all of it. Everybody showed up on time and was down to stay until everything got done, and everybody was in pretty good spirits and helpful so I was thankful to them for that!

Sizzle Reels

A sizzle reel has got to show your skills. I think the more diverse and encompassing you can show your skills to be, the stronger it will look. That said, if you're just trying to show off one particular skill or kind of look that you're good at, then maybe you only want to show that specific part of yourself in order to have access to work where you get to use it, so I guess it just all depends on what you want to communicate about yourself. But obviously the main thing you want to say is "I'm the shit. Look at all this."

Here's some reels that I've found cool, ultra-sleek and ultra-professional.


Director/Cinematographer Reel from David Reece Jr. on Vimeo.




Garrett Shannon DP Reel 2012 from Garrett Shannon on Vimeo.



Russell Cramer DP sizzle reel OCT. 2011 from Russell Cramer on Vimeo.
(Turns out he's actually been a DP on music videos for a band I like!)

My Choice! - Pondering Parks and Rec

Throughout this semester, I found myself unable to stop taking the knowledge we've been learning in class and applying to how I think production must work for one of my favorite TV shows, Parks and Recreation.

Knowing what I now know about how difficult it can be to make zooming and pulling focus look good, I am beyond amazed with this show. I mean I know they are a major professional production, but still! Look at all the stuff the camera is doing in such a short time!

And, the timing that the actors and camera people have to hit together to stay in sync, it makes my organizational brain hurt just thinking of it. Watch this scene where Leslie throws her phone and the camera pans really quickly:





Of course this movement adds so much and is practically essential to this shot being as funny as it is. They had to get it right. When I imagine our class trying to pull of a shot like this, I see it taking at least an hour just to make sure everything looks right and the focus was ok. I would love to try it sometime though.

I love this style that shows like Parks and Recreation have, the mockumentary using documentary aesthetics like zooming, handheld camera, and frequent changes in focus. I think it makes the show really interesting and visually dynamic.

I recently DPed a mockumentary project for Creative Campus, and as I was the only camera person there when we started shooting, it was too difficult to attempt shots like this. This would have required two or three more people to operate the zoom and pull focus while I just handheld the camera, panned, and got the composition right. I would love for us to try some of these shots in the future though. They just look too cool and add so much to the story to not try them.

Camera Selection

For our scene assignment's, Michael and I both chose to shoot with the Canon 7D DSLR. I DPed Michael's project, he DPed mine, and we really wanted to achieve a cinematic, shallow focus look, so the DSLR seemed to immediately be the best fit. In fact I think he described what he wanted from me as a DP as a "DSLR" look.

I definitely wanted the 7D for my scene because in thinking about how we would be shooting an exterior scene at night, I wanted the background to be out of focus and inky, with background orbs of light in soft focus. The majority of my shots were to look like this, with the subject illuminated relatively bright and the background dark, however I also called for some shots of the subjects in shadows and darkness. The 7D allowed for these low-light shots to still turn out visible enough, so that the viewer can see the subject a bit more defined than the background, even though we didn't put much light on them.

Had we used another camera, we would have faced a harder time crushing the depth of field. This would have proved unsavory for my shoot because I really only wanted the characters to be in sharp focus during their dialogue. I believe a larger depth of field would have distracted from that and drawn the eye towards other things happening in the frame. Another camera might not have renders the background lights as soft orbs but rather as distinct, and that would have made the image look flatter to me, and less cinematic.

I wish I had seen Vincent Laforet's "Nocturne" before I shot my scene, but I recently saw it after and was like, "Yeah! See, that's sort of what I wanted to do!" I mean of course I don't yet have all of the practice and knowledge to make it look this smooth yet, but the way his subjects are lit and the background blurs light is the look I was thinking of when I started to plan my scene assignment! He shot using ambient light on a Canon 1D Mark IV

Nocturne from Vincent Laforet on Vimeo.

The main disadvantage of shooting with the 7D were the limitations on what we could do in terms of moving the camera. Originally I had called for a dolly shot that had we done it would have been difficult, using prime lenses and keeping our actors in focus as they walked toward the camera.  We ended up not having the equipment to do that shot, and while I would have liked to try it just for the experience, I think that we were better off for it. We instead recorded that part with a shoulder mount, which made it still just as difficult to keep everything in focus, but was much less time consuming so that we were able to attempt that shot over-and-over much quicker, until we got what we wanted.

DSLR Cinematography

This semester, I have really grown to love DSLR cinematography. I'd been wanting to learn more about it and get more experience with it for a really long time, so learning more about DSLR video was actually my favorite part of class. I studied still photography all throughout high school so it was nice to feel close to these cameras again. Now I'm saving up to get a t3i!

The main advantage of DSLR cinematography to me is that it just downright looks gorgeous. The color and depth that these camera can pull out of a shot is just lovely. They look more classically "cinematic," thanks to their ability to crush the depth of field so that the focus becomes extremely shallow.

I've really enjoyed learning the particular settings we can adjust in camera to get the most out of DSLR. I know that it will take much more experimentation on my own to discover how these settings affect the picture and what I'm comfortable working with myself, but I felt like Shane Hurlburt's videos explaining his preferred settings really took what I already knew to a whole 'nother level.

Disadvantages:

It makes me sad to even think of the sweet little DSLR's disadvantages, but of course there are some.

• overheating - the cameras can overheat relatively quickly, especially if shooting in the hot sun. this will slow down production as you will have to wait for them to cool down before you being shooting again
• jelly roll - probably the most disappointing disadvantage, a  DSLR can create a weird affect if you move the camera quickly 
• shallow depth of field can be tricky - because the depth of field can be much more shallow, you may only have a teensy bit of room to get something in critical focus. this is made even harder by the fact that the DSLR has a tiny on-camera monitor, so if you're not using an external one, you have to really trust that your eyes are seeing the focus correctly on a such a small screen. pulling focus can also be hard.

But still, DSLR's are just really lovely and can create beautiful imagery.

I like to move it, move it - the camera

I thiiiink that I was first shown this scene in a class of Dr. Butler's. And I remember the entire class being like, "whooooah. oooooh. ahhhhhh."
This scene from Orson Welles' Touch of Evil  is downright iconic for its use of camera movement. In fact, some dude writing for AMC called it the "grandaddy of all tracking shots" I remember the first time I watched it, just wondering "...how?!" Oh to be a fly on the camera and move with it. It's beyond fair to say that this movement is effective. It sets pacing to a fast and suspenseful level, exposes our location, reveals objects that our protagonists can't see, and keeps us glued to the screen by being one long shot.

So I know that this is sort of cheesy, but I can't help but adore this next kind of camera movement that I want to focus on. After a little bit of googling, I have come to find that's it's even been given a cute name! The "Orbital Kiss" shot is one where two characters kiss and the camera rotates a full 360 degrees (or more!) around them. As films had been produced over time using this trope, modern audiences have come to interpret this movement as predictable, obvious, cheesy, overkill, etc. But I can imagine that the first few times it was done, people had to be impressed, incredibly touched, and not gonna lie, probably turned on by what this movement achieves. According to tvtropes.org, the first known use of the orbital kiss was in a 1968 film called the Thomas Crown Affair, staring Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway.  You can glimpse the shot at the 22 second mark in this clip:

The orbital kiss movement creates a tight encapsulated sort of feeling around the two characters who are embracing and heightens their emotion. It's often used when this kiss is one that the audience has been waiting on for a long time, as sort of an "at last!" sort of reward to the viewers.

Sidenote, one should never use the orbital kiss to be discriminatory! When Star Trek aired television's first interracial kiss in this same year, they partially hid the view of Kirk and Uhura's lips meeting behind a slight orbital camera movement. I mean, they did what they had to do to get it aired though! Props for that of course.

A last of my favorite types of camera movement is one that is less obvious to the viewer. The vertigo shot. This shot is achieved by zooming in on a subject while moving the camera away from it and racking focus. This changes the depth of field of the image while maintaining the subject in focus, creating a weird, disorienting sort of stretching effect on the image. Hitchcock used it first in his film, Vertigo, hence the name. Here's an example from Apollo 13, the shot comes in around 25 sec.

Shot-by-Shot Scene Analysis of a Moment in Mad Men

For my scene analysis, I've chosen a scene from Mad Men season 3, episode 3 entitled, "My Old Kentucky Home." Mad Men is of course a TV show on AMC set in a 1960's American advertising agency. This scene is set in the home of Joan, a secretary from that agency, and her husband Greg. Greg has invited some of his medical colleagues and their wives over for dinner. He expects not to be embarrassed in front of them, and for Joan to be a perfect, entertaining host. This scene centers around Joan's reactions to her husband's behavior. In the three minutes (and 58 shots) that the scene lasts, the message is communicated that Greg puts Joan into situations to do things that she does not want to do and is extremely proud, and yet that Joan is aware of these moments where he uses her as a trophy and is perfectly capable of calling him out for it. You can watch the full scene on instant netflix if you have it, or the majority of the scene here on youtube. (the acting is amazing!) 

SCENE ANALYSIS

There are 58 shots in total in this scene, I tried to speak to each camera setup at least once, so that explains why there are sections where I haven't said anything. Keep on scrolling through til the end to read everything!

The first shot of the scene is a medium two shot of Joan and another woman in Joan's apartment. Because Mad Men uses multiple protagonists to tell multiple stories in each episode, this shot immediately establishes for the regular Mad Men viewer that it's Joan time and that the focus will be on her.

The next shot establishes more of Joan's company

This is the widest angle of coverage in the whole scene and establishes a full view of the room. The perspective of being on the outside of the circle looking in creates a sense of distance and outsiderness that is relevant to Joan's feelings in this scene, as she is an outsider to the conversation taking place between her husband and his colleagues. This is also the first shot that shows her husband, Greg.

Greg's first medium shot show him places solidly in the frame, occupying a good amount of space. His dominance in the frame will come to match his domineering behaviors as the scene progresses. This over the shoulder shot is also meant to match eyelines with the next shot of Joan.

Greg's shoulder intrudes much more into Joan's frame than the shoulder entering Greg's frame above. This makes her appear much slighter, intruded upon, and much more gazed upon. This is appropriate because Joan is under observation by the entire group for the duration of the scene. All eyes will come to be on her as she is expected to perform.

It is revealed through dialogue that this is Greg's boss. He is given a lot of importance and boss-man space allowance in the frame.

This three shot that is used often in the scene communicates so much about Joan's relationship to these visitors to her home. She is placed on the edge, as far from the middle of the group as she can be, and in such a position that she has to crane and twist her body in order to be participatory in the conversation. She is smaller, and more distant. She is not on the same level as everyone else both physically in the frame and with regards to the story as she is an outsider to their world.

This wider version of the three shot includes the boss as a framing device. This alters the perspective in that the audience is made more aware of his gaze and point of view. This gives him importance and the feeling of being able to judge the others.

As it is revealed that Greg has not been telling Joan about things that have been happening at work, the shots get tighter as the tension grows. As Greg begins to get nervous and antsy, we get to see more of those emotions read up close on his face. Likewise for Joan's reaction shot a few shots later.

The first medium close up of Joan comes right as the emotion of the scene calls for it and things are beginning to become suspicious. This shot shows Joan wondering why Greg keeps things from her, and its use heightens the connection between the audience and Joan by finally bringing us closer to her when the other shots so far have kept us at a distance. This shot brings you into Joan's head at last.

At the height of Greg's dominance in the storyline, he become huge in the frame. He's looking down on Joan when he speaks to her, and the shot communicates this by being close to Joan's point of view looking up at him.

Meanwhile when it cuts to Joan we are kept right on her level. This makes us more sympathetic to her plight because we've been set up visually to identify more with her perspective. Having Greg literally hold something over her in the frame as she looks up with him creates again the sense of intrusion. We're watching him ask her to do something she doesn't want to do, and the frame reflects this feeling of forcing something upon someone.

Greg just looks super imposing here. The lines leading to his head even make the frame feel like there's no escaping him. He just fills the space up with his presence. And there's the way he's blocking out light that's radiating from behind him and casting shadows on the walls. There is just no escaping him at this point. Though Greg's dialogue reads like he's asking for a favor, this visual implies that he's telling.  This and the preceding close-up are really what let the audience know that there is a subtle interpersonal struggle happening between the two of them. Their dialogue really does not speak to it so much as their body language and the composition of these shots.

Joan's body pointing away from Greg in another direction makes it feel even more like she just does not want to do what he's asking her to do. And again, Greg's body as a frame is pushing and imposing upon her.

They then cut to the other couples looking really awkward to open the space and remind you that this tight, intimate tension between Joan and Greg is actually happening in public in the company of other people.

This is the first and only shot in which you're allowed to see Joan and Greg's faces in the frame together and it comes when he is handing her her accordion to perform and entertain when she does not want to. This image lets the audience know that he's forcing it upon her, even though their dialogue alone has seemed relatively polite.

Greg being imposing all over the place with everybody, not just Joan. He's forced them all into this uncomfortable tight space.

The small glimpse of Joan's body sharing the frame with everyone looking at her visually communicates that she is being observed closely. 

It becomes obvious that Greg is trying to impress his boss by using his wife as a trophy. His standing behind the seated boss shows him as controlling to Joan and yet accountable to his more important boss.

This shot communicates the feeling of gazing at Joan, as all the other characters are.

Boss man getting importance in the frame again, which cuts to...

Imposing Greg standing behind him looking satisfied...

Matching Joan standing but filling the frame much less, with all the space around her creating the feeling of isolation that she must be feeling.

Meanwhile these folks look delighted, cheesy and oblivious to the drama

And this shot is the crux of the whole scene to me. The idea of the preceding shots of the other couples signifying them being oblivious to the interpersonal drama between Joan and Greg are verified here. This action of Joan giving Greg an amazing "How dare you" look is covered in close ups of the two of them. This really is just between the two of them. This is the closest shot of Joan in the scene and conveys all of her emotion, and her true disdain for Greg in the moment. All of the wider shots of her performing have showed her smiling and playing along, but as soon as we get this close up, we become privy to a view of her that only Greg is seeing, and there are no smiles.

We can be sure that the information in Joan's close up that we're seeing is only seen by Greg in the scene by the way they alternate these two close ups to show Greg's reaction to the fierce look she gives him.

Still fierce. And this proximity to Joan is the only time we see her straight on, not from an outside angle, with no one else being used framing device, and with full light in her eyes (which seem to be a little watery). This angle conveys truth. Because we can see her full on, we know that this must be the truth of Joan and her perspective. The other shots communicate the persona she's putting on for show, but this close up tells us what she's really thinking.

And then we finish back out at a distance in a wide, reminded that Joan has had to do this all to entertain others at the forcing of Greg, who stands watching it all at the edge of the frame, still being imposing. 

So there it is. I just love Mad Men and this scene is really, really well done. They manage to do the expected theme of 1960's patriarchal, strict husband crushing his wife's spirit and make it not so expected. The connection they can make the audience forge with Joan with how they cover this is amazing.