Camera Operating

Camera: Sony PD-170

1. Camera operation and functions

First thing to do is setting up the tripod and adjust the bubbling to make the camera steady.

-> The tripod enables the camera (wo)man to do smooth camera shots and movements, such as panning, tracking, tilting and zooming evenly. This is different to handheld camera shots where the shots are shaky and likely to jump. The decision to whether use handehld or steady camera depends on what a scene should communicate, also according to the genre of a movie. Handheld camera shots are often used for Horror or tricky situations in Thriller.

Before starting to record the following has to be settled:

• Timecode - it's found in the right hand corner of the LCD. It's read from the left, showing hours, minutes, seconds and frames recorded. Every second there are 25 frames, it's the amount of pictures taken per second. This creates the illusion of motion.
• white-balancing - The camera needs to know what is "white" to ensure that colors are reproduced accurately. Otherwise, your camera thinks white is what it saw under florescent lights when you are shooting in warm sunny summer sunlight and causes light changes every shot. How to do? Show the camera something white e.g. a wall under the light you'll shoot in. It's possible to white balance manually or with an automatically white-balance setting that most of the new cameras have.
• focussing - the adjustment of the lens so that the image you are video taping is sharp and clear in your view finder or on your monitor. It's important to zoom in on to one spot and focus so it's sharp and then zoom, this enables me to zoom in and out as much as I'd like with a constantly sharp picture.

 Aperture setting\recording speed - We can choose between Standard, Extended and Super Long Play. But we shall only record a video tape with Standard Play! Otherwise there'll be overlapping and the result is a smeared and streaked video that possibly can't be read on a VCR.

The Shutter Speed allows us to speed up or slow down the camera movement.

2. Using the camera

Camera shots are chosen related to how a character or object is framed and represented on screen. Directors use different shots to add atmosphere and create a specific mood in a scene.

•  Extreme Long Shot/Establishing Shot - usually exteriour shot, establishes time and location, important! Often used at start of a production to provide the audience with information regarding the setting of a storyline. Often followed by...
• Long Shot - character is in frame from head to toe, allows viewer to understand relationship between characters and their environment.
• Mid shot - Character is framed from waist up. Viewer can become more familiar with character because body language and facial expressions are shown in more detail.  
• Two shot - two characters in frame, often used in TV Chat shows
• Close Up - character's shoulders and head with a little background is in the frame. Enables to focus on character's emotions, can provide significance to the narrative!
• Point-of-view shot - Is a reference to Close Up. The object or person that is shown is of significance to the charcter we've seen before in the Close-Up shot and he's looking at it at that moment. Used to engange audience with character's motif.
• Extreme Close Up - draws attention even more on emotions of character. No other action taking place around the shot is seen.

The rule of thirds: The rule states that an image should be imagined as divided into nine equal parts by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines, and that important compositional elements should be placed along these lines or their intersections. Proponents of the technique claim that aligning a subject with these points creates more tension, energy and interest in the composition than simply centering the subject would.

When filming people (or photographing), it is common to line the body up with a vertical line, and having the person's eyes in line with a horizontal one.

Continuity editing

This is the predominant style of editing in narrative cinema and television. The purpose of continuity editing is to smooth over the inherent discontinuity of the editing process and to establish a logical coherence between shots. Basically, to ensure that the selected shots are put together in an order that makes sense to the audience – so that they can follow the story as clearly as possible.

In order to do so, the 180 degree rule plays a crucial part to let as scene look conitnious. The rule prevents the camera from crossing the imaginary line connecting the subjects of the shot, so the characters don't jump away from their positions all of a sudden.