Camera Focusing
You can have a camera automatically focus of course, but with manual focusing you can control who or what the camera shall focus on, this is done by turning a dial usually placed around the fore front of the camera just before the lens, turning this dial changes the depth of field of your shot.
What is depth of field you ask?
Well Depth of field is how much your camera is in focus at the given time, if you have a clear shot where everything or mostly everything is in focus (the background and the foreground) you have a deep depth of field, If however you have a small amount focused in the shot you have a shallow depth of field.
The changing of this depth of field is done by this lens I mentioned earlier, to change the depth of field whilst filming is called a focus pull, as you are changing the viewers focus to something else. For example, You're filming a woman in a shallow depth of field walking towards the camera as we track her, we then do a focus pull to a deep depth of field to reveal there's a man 100 yards back with a mean look on his face following the woman.
The man was obscured before to the viewer as we had a Shallow depth of field which only shows things close to the camera but as we did a focus pull, he became visible as there was a deep depth of field which allows you to see things that are further away, in detail.
What is depth of field you ask?
Well Depth of field is how much your camera is in focus at the given time, if you have a clear shot where everything or mostly everything is in focus (the background and the foreground) you have a deep depth of field, If however you have a small amount focused in the shot you have a shallow depth of field.
The changing of this depth of field is done by this lens I mentioned earlier, to change the depth of field whilst filming is called a focus pull, as you are changing the viewers focus to something else. For example, You're filming a woman in a shallow depth of field walking towards the camera as we track her, we then do a focus pull to a deep depth of field to reveal there's a man 100 yards back with a mean look on his face following the woman.
The man was obscured before to the viewer as we had a Shallow depth of field which only shows things close to the camera but as we did a focus pull, he became visible as there was a deep depth of field which allows you to see things that are further away, in detail.
My media class's example:
Crane Shot
A crane shot, sounds like what it actually is, it's a camera on a crane. Yes that's it really...
A crane shot allows you to enter or exit a scene via the sky coming in to the scene, or via the ground going up to the sky to come out of a scene.
It also allows you to film things from a "birds eye" perspective, and what ever other way you can think of filming that you may need to get your camera higher than steady reaching arm span.
Tip: When used in the right circumstances and setting, the crane shot technique, when its high looking down on a character can make them look to the audience as if their character is small and isolated.
After having a go on filming with the crane, I discovered that it's not a practical tool if you dont practice with it before filming, it has a slight weight to it, but mainly its hard to get a smooth appearance on screen, no jumpy footage and so forth.
here is our media classes very first attempt at filming with a crane shot:
A crane shot allows you to enter or exit a scene via the sky coming in to the scene, or via the ground going up to the sky to come out of a scene.
It also allows you to film things from a "birds eye" perspective, and what ever other way you can think of filming that you may need to get your camera higher than steady reaching arm span.
Tip: When used in the right circumstances and setting, the crane shot technique, when its high looking down on a character can make them look to the audience as if their character is small and isolated.
After having a go on filming with the crane, I discovered that it's not a practical tool if you dont practice with it before filming, it has a slight weight to it, but mainly its hard to get a smooth appearance on screen, no jumpy footage and so forth.
here is our media classes very first attempt at filming with a crane shot:
And here is a professional movie crane shot:
All of this is important to know when creating a semi decent film. I will be using all these skills and techniques with the knowledge of idents and title sequences to create with a team, a 2 minute opening of a movie genre that I will be investigating into and sharing my thoughts on in the posts to come.
