August 30th- Learning Camera Shots

We are making photographs to understand what our lives mean to us

-Ralph Hattersley

This past week we discovered eleven different kinds of camera shots, all of which can be used for our future film project. These shots are all pretty different, and capture very different emotions, feelings, and messages. After learning about them, we had to try to take some photos using these shots. And that got interesting.

Out class split into groups of two. I partnered with a guy named Kain, who sits at the table I sit at. We worked well together and were able to get some very nice shots. However, with the limits our school has to filmmaking technology, we were limited to only doing ten out of the eleven shots. Our personal favorites were:

These three picture we felt best captured the essence and the feeling we were going for. However, our other shots weren’t bad. We also took some nice birds eye view shots, master shots, medium shots, closeups, establishing shots, two shots, and full shots. The only kind of shot we unable to take was the aerial shots.

In researching and learning about the shots in class, I can better identify shots in things other than strictly photographs, such as comic strips. For example:

For the most part, the types of shots are pretty straightforward. However, the shot that was the most confusing was the Long Shot. Comparing it to an Extreme Long or a Medium shot made identifying them difficult at first. However, through query and research I discovered a Long Shot has a subject taking up 1/3 of the frame with background or other minor details taking the other 2/3.

Research I did outside of class was minimal. I had a good grasp on the concept and any questions were answered by the teacher so it wasn’t very necessary. However, I did take a little peek into the frames used in comics and found, in my research, that long, medium, over the shoulder, and two shots were some of the most common, considering they are very useful and very easy to show in a still image.

When I create my film, still frame shots won’t be incredibly useful, but they can be used to help concept a scene before its filmed or to help give a general definition to the feel a scene is going for and how to adjust it into a moving image rather than just a still frame.