Filmmaking: The Basics

Key Questions

• What is your goal?
• What are you setting out to make?
• What kind of story are you trying to tell and how do you wish to tell it?
• Who is the target audience?
• What purpose does this motion media piece have?
• What tools and other assets will you need to make it?
• Where and how will it be shown and viewed?

Make a plan:

Developing a visual plan – one that incorporates both the overall style and look of your project and the technologies and techniques that can help you to achieve that look – will prove very beneficial.

Choosing Frames

Lens: gathers, focuses, and controls the amount of light entering the camera body.

Camera Body: houses the light-sensitive “imager” (digital light sensor, emulsion film, etc.) that forms and records the image that you ultimately watch on a screen.

Frame: a particular horizontal rectangle cut-out of reality that is out in front of the camera’s position. i.e. 2D representation of the actual world

 Aspect Ratio

Dimensions of a camera’s frame in width-to-height ratio. e.g. 4:3, 16:9, 1.85:1.

• 4:3 -- height is three units tall, then the width is equal to four of those same units, aka. "four to three"
• 1.33:1 -- aka. "one-three-three to one",  aspect ratio for standard-definition (SD) television in North America and Europe in 20th century.
• 16:9, or 1.78:1: high-definition (HD) video. 

• Pan and Scan: Extract smaller aspect ratio frame from a larger/wider aspect ratio frame.
• LetterBoxing: Maintaining the original aspect ratio of the picture by placing black bars at the top and bottom of the frame

Pixel Dimension

Alter. to aspect ratio -- measures the overall resolution in pixels -- how many pixels comprise the height * how many pixels comprise the width

e.g.1920 x 1080 -- Full HD; 3840 x 2160 -- Ultra HD

Wider screen is preferred because the field of view (what we get to watch) is closer to what our eyes naturally see when we look at the world 

Long shots/ Wide shots

LS/WS shows a large area (width, height, and depth) of the film space

• Clear physical relation -- subject, object, environment, action
• Person or objects appear smaller, environment >> human
• Establish place, time, and mood for the audience

Extreme Long/Wide Shot

• Wide and deep field of view
• Large amount of the environment, little human/person details
• Often used as an establishing shot at the beginning of a motion picture or at the start of a new sequence or scene within a motion picture

Use the link to learn more about ELS

Very Long/Wide Shot

• Less wide and deep than ELS, but still environment > human
• Can see a bit detail of the human
• Used as establishing shot where movement of character brings the figure closer to camera

Medium shot

MS approximates what normal people see

• Moderate distance (3-5 feet) between the camera and the subject
• Person shows only waist up
• Audience feel comfortable with the proximity because the subject is near but not in his or her “personal space”

Close-up (CU)

CU is the intimate shot of the subject, object or action

• Magnified view -- more details
• Subject invades the viewer’s personal space -- could be good or bad, it depends on the viewer

“direct-to-camera” or “direct-to-lens” shooting: subject centered in our frame, looking straight to lens, breaks the implied fourth wall of the cinematic space.