Lenny #2 reflection

Okay so all i can say is that we messed up our sound big big time. There was something wrong with the sound cables and we couldn’t fix it and i guessed we panicked cause none of us thought of the ideal solution: which was to connect directly to the z7’s sound pod.

Note to self: stay calm and do what’s best and not panic at one obstacle!

So yeah we went ahead with Michael Lincoln’s storyboard and I went behind the camera hoping to brush up some camera operating skills;) It was fun and really frustrating at the same time since we had such little time to actually shoot according to Lincoln’s storyboard (since we spent a whole lot of time trying to solve our sound issues haha). Good lesson learnt here definitely. 

I guess another learning point here would also be strategic camera positioning? I realise that in some of our scenes, the camera placement could have been in better angles or positions so that lesser movement or manual movement/workload would be needed. It’s not about being lazy or ignorance but seriously, i think that in this case given the task of creating an in-cam edit scene; and given the short span of time? Using the one/initial camera placement would definitely be advantageous:)

Yep! That’s one good exercise and experience for me!

xoxo,

anticipating lenny #3

drunkonhelium

Lenny #2: Prep-work and storyboard

Okay im officially the WORST storyboard artist ever,correction im not even deserving of that title. HAHA. I seriously cant draw freehand so thank God for technology/softwares like storyboard artist for Macs and iPads etc. So as shown in the photos, i officially gave up trying to sketch after gazillion (28 times yes i counted) times. I ended up with stick figures and horrible lines. But i really did have an idea of what i wanted to film on my mind. The angles, what kind of shot, framing, lighting; all up there screaming to get out but not drawn out.

So yeah, bad memories bad art. Thanks in advance to Manal who agreed to be my actress for the Lenny exercise.

Lighting lesson #2: Color Temperatures

White light contains the colors of a spectrum as learnt in tutorial

But the exact colors of the light depends on the temperature of its source.

According to the Kevin-degree scale, our perceptions of colors are different. For example, we would see red as a warm color and blue as a cold color. However! Kevin begs to differ as seen in the chart above:)

In addition, this is just an additional bonus table from the book i was reading up  on! Color filters/Light balancing filters for the ideal mood, environment for each scene.

Check this out.

Lesson #2: Lighting Part 1

Since our film project has a tint of abstract essence to it, i thought of shooting some scenes in high key lighting in order to give our ‘flower’ a magical glow. I think it could be done easily in post-production though. So i was not sure how to go about setting up high key lighting, hence; the answer to this doubt?

TADAHHHH!

This is a simple image to show the set-up for high key lighting in order to create a washed-out feel to the scene. Lights must fill up the entire set to minimalise shadows.

 

HIGH-KEY LIGHTING

A lighting scheme in which the fill light is raised to almost the same level as the key light. This produces images that are usually very bright and that feature few shadows on the principal subjects. This bright image is characteristic of entertainment genres such as musicals and comedies such as Peking Opera Blues (Do Ma Daan, Tsui Hark, Honk Kong, 1986)

LOW-KEY LIGHTING

A lighting scheme that employs very little fill light, creating strong contrasts between the brightest and darkest parts of an image and often creating strong shadows that obscure parts of the principal subjects. This lighting scheme is often associated with “hard-boiled” or suspense genres such as film noir. Here are some examples from Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958.)

Lightman

I’ve always loved short films that uses interesting ways to communicate an objective or simply just as a form of art:) The usage of lights to create this stopmotion film was pretty cool as the light-doll image sort of represented the pianist as you can see his shadow faintly in the second layer in the frame. Hope you liked this:)

 

xoxo

drunkonhelium

#KONY 2012

I watched #KONY2012 live and I was literally taken aback Joseph Kony’s terrible actions. On a hindsight, I’m really amazed and proud of Jason Russell. His passion and determination really caused such an outburst of optimistic impact:) I am definitely a supporter of his campaign and I hope Joseph’s operations will be axed soon.

On a social media aspect, this IS BEYOND MAGNIFICENT and i think social media is proving its power amongst all different mediums. I mean, think about this way.. I think the message Jason was trying to put across would never be executed as effectively if it was communicated through print. In this case, the short film had a much more visual impact and people would be able to acquire more information.

Memories

This was an award winning film i came across and I really liked the colors used in the flashback scenes. The simple usage of props, and the facial details from the protagonist was captured effectively to add impact and portray the ideal emotions:)

Our baby z7

So this is the camera that we’re going to use for film tv:) Never got a chance to upload these pictures and reflect back on POWFER. So what is POWFER you might ask?

P: Power

O: ‘ON’

W: White Balance

F: Frame / Focus

E: Exposure (Remember exposure is linked with zebra and not W/B!)

R: Record

Lenny

 

Okay so i’m done with Lenny. This is a link to what I’ve done so far:)

Humanzoo Short Film

Humanzoo

 

Came across this talented man called Mack Fisher. He did this short film project called Humanzoo and I absolutely loved the way he frames each shot and his lighting choice was pretty risky in my opinion? You could not see the actors in some scenes but it all worked out well with the soundscape and camera angles:)) I can’t describe it, you’ll just have to watch it yourself!