My Television Production Blog

In this workshop we were taught one of the basic filming techniques, that is, the 180 degree rule. This is put in place so that the audience will know who is talking to who in dialogue sequences. Below is an image which shows how it work. The images shows that when two people are facing each other, there is a line down the middle, this shouldn't be crossed. If this line was crossed and the camera was positioned where the black camera is then the actor would be looking in a different direction. When editing it become a very un-natural cut and can throw of the audience and bring you out of the immersive experience of the film, this is the last thing you want. In the image on the left you can see Callum and I experimenting with this rule in one of our workshops. We had to film a short sequence of two people talking and apply what we have learnt about the 180 degree rule to this. We placed the camera in three different positions, one was over the shoulder of each actor and the other wa...

  This image is from our first camera workshop which took place in October. On this day, we were taught the basic of a camera which was really interesting as I've never worked with this type of camera before. The main part of the workshop was to build our knowledge of balancing the camera on a tripod. Building our knowledge of how to balance a camera properly is really important as the last thing you want to happen whilst filming is the the camera to start moving. On the tripod that me and my Callum were using had two friction points which could be used to keep the camera steady. One was located on the left side of the tripod which is visible in the photo, and the other was just below this. The friction point on the left is used to stop the camera leaning forwards of backwards. The reason for the camera doing this is because it wouldn't be centred in the middle of the tripod. The trick we were taught was to hold the handle on the top of the camera and try and balance it on our ...