Thursday, February 22, 2018

BSA234 (Cinematography) Week 2 : Depth of Field


Photo Credit : Dillon Kirton

In class we went over two main things:

EXPOSURE TRIANGLE

We went over the exposure triangle again this week because it relates directly to the exercise we did in class. We played with Depth Of Field and the interaction of different camera setting to others. 

DEPTH OF FIELD



 Editing by Sebastian

In class we did an activity where we had to use different settings on the camera until we reached a point where bokeh occurs (which happens when the aperture is the widest it can be). It's a Japanese word meaning blur or haze and creates spots of light in the background.

In class we did this by strictly following instructions on a paper - this sounds worse than I make it seem. We did it so that we could understand at which point, and on what settings, this effect occurs.   

We started close to the subject and slowly moved away, always keeping the subject in a mid shot (waist up framing). 

The further away you are, the more zoomed in, the more bokeh will occur. You can see this in the footage above, where the later shots have a lot more blur in the background - see: the NZCU sign in the footage we recorded. Increasing the distance between your subject and the background is an easy way to achieve bokeh with a higher aperture, this is why it's so commonly seen in close ups.

The shape of the blades in the lens is a deciding factor in the shape of the bokeh, it'll be more diagonal or circular depending on the shape created by the blades.

I found a good tutorial on Youtube:


I like that they demonstrate how important distance from the background is, in our exercise we didn't move the talent, here they stayed the same distance from the talent while moving away from the subject. I like the tips they give for achieving this effect:

- Get close to subject
- Get far away from background
- Keep Aperture wide open

They also mention shooting small light sources, this is the reason I think our experiment went so poorly. We didn't have very small objects and they weren't even lights.

VIMEO

Bokeh is often used in amatuer short films, usually found on Vimeo, because it gives a professional quality to the image and is easy to achieve on DSLR cameras.

Here's a video exploring how it can be used effectively, he also mentions the Vimeo craze:







These behind the scenes images show how the camera is always close to the talent to ensure that they achieve bokeh. 


Bokeh can be used in many different ways, below is an example of someone who likes to emulate this effect to an extreme for use in things like interviews (he places lights in the background knowing he's going to apply the bokeh effect):


We also got our genres this week and I was very happy to get Horror. It was the one I was hoping for, surprisingly it's completely open unlike what some other groups got - e.g. Michael Bay Action Movie. Horror is such an expansive and old genre, with a bunch of different sub-genres and visual styles.

Some visual styles present in the genre:

CRIMSON PEAK/60's Horror


 






EVIL DEAD, BRAINDEAD/ B-Movies




CONJURING, IT/ Modern Horror








PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, BLAIR WITCH/ Found Footage



NOSFERATU, CALIGARI/ 20's Horror



 

Giallo Horror 






We are currently contemplating the B-Movie look, mixing it with a psychological horror story. It's something that I'm pretty sure hasn't been done.

No comments:

Post a Comment