Film Techniques/Prelim (re-upload)

Today we were looking at the 3 different types of shot, which include;

1. Man On Action
2. 180 Degree Rule
3. Shot Reverse Shot

The first type of shot is called "Man on Action." This is where you have a character close up doing a certain action, then the camera pans out to a landscape distant shot of the same action being done on a much larger scale. For example in the James Bond movie Quantum Of Solace an example of the man on action shot would be James in his Aston Martin, then seconds later a landscape shot of the traffic jam Bond is trying to escape. This is a perfect way of emphasizing the intensity in scenes like this or another example would be a child eating ices cream at a fair, then seconds later another shot but this time instead of just focusing on one person eating ice cream you would have a wide shot where the audience can see the whole fair ground wit many people eating ice-cream.

                                       

The next shot is the 180 degree rule which is a little easier to explain. This rule just states that the camera must not switch sides whilst filming for the simply because if the camera switches sides in a different shot it would like like the characters have switched side whilst filming which would look very unprofessional. An imaginary line called the axis connects the characters by keeping the camera on one side of this axis for every shot in the scene. The first character will always be frame right of the second character, who is then always frame left of the first. If the camera passes over the axis, it is called jumping the line or crossing the line. Which would give the false illusion that characters have switched side, unless this was the intention of the director. "Jumping the line" can be used in fast pace fight scenes where the audience struggles to keep up with the on going action however this is one of the few circumstances "jumping the line" can be done.

Last but not the least Shot Reverse Shot, and this technique is where one character is shown looking at another character, and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character. Since the characters are shown facing in opposite directions, the viewer assumes that they are looking at each other.

Having studied these three shots I decided it was far time I put these shots into action (pardon the pun). So I went out with my group to see how difficult it was to do each technique and in the end after much deliberation we managed to film the techniques and put them into effect. I had a lot of trouble editing the task on final cut pro so i had to use Imovie instead. Imovie was good to put it all into one clip but was difficult to add transitions and titles and headings on the iMac. If I am honest i would have had much nore succes editing on an iPhone or iPad. Now that i have practiced using all the different techniques I feel that I am fairly confident in putting into practice.