(Term 1: Week 2)

This week, Luke showed us several videos from YouTube and the first one is ‘How to Speak Movies’ that comes with 3 parts. Below are some points and notes that I have taken directly from the videos and from other online sources for future references.

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Film and Visual Language

Film, like speech and writing, has a unique language. Filmmaker has a choice of a great variety of techniques to tell the story or communicate the ‘bits and pieces’.

Camera

Shot Length and Angles

• Wide Shot – Also known as Long Shot. It frames the entire subject and their relation to what surrounds them.
• Extreme Wide Shot – Also known as Extreme Long Shot. It focusses on its surroundings and frames the subject from distance, but not necessary to see the subject. This shot also functions best as Establishing Shot.

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• Medium Shot – The most common camera shot. This shot is also known as Waist Shot because it frames subject from roughly the waist up.
• Two Shot – It frames two characters at the same time and useful for allowing performance to play out on in a single take.
• Close Up – It frames a subject at close range intended to show significant emotion, details and something important that has significant influence on the story.
• Extreme Close Up – It frames a subject very closely and commonly used to focus on specific portions of the subject, like an eye, fingers or a tea-pot base to show greater details.

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• Eye level – When the shot is placed at the same height as the eyes of the character. It’s not necessary the eyes of the actor visible in the shot nor to look directly into the camera.
• High Angle – A versatile shot that can be used in many situations. One of the common usages is to make a character seem powerless and vulnerable.
• Low Angle – It frames the subject from below the eye line or pointing upward. It is most often used to make the character look strong and powerful.

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• Dutch Angle – Also known Dutch Tilt, Oblique Angle or Canted Angle. The shot has a noticeable tilt on the camera’s ‘X-axis’ and often used to show something is wrong, disorienting, or unsettling.

Focus and Lenses

• Depth of Field – The area of acceptable sharpness within a shot that will appear in focus.
• Deep Focus – Everything in the shot is in focus.
• Shallow Focus – Only part of the shot is in focus. It’s often used to show an important part of the frame.
• Rack Focus – Changing the focus mid shot and can draw the eye to important details.
• Tilt Shift – Fake shallow focus or artificial depth of field that selectively blur part of the shot to create interesting results like a miniature effect.

• Telephoto Lens – A long lens that compresses space, allowing cameraman to photograph a subject that is far away or magnifying the subject in the frame.
• Wide Angle Lens – Has wider angle than normal lens, allowing cameraman to fit more into the frame, making them perfect for capturing scenes such as expansive landscapes or cramped interiors.
• Fisheye Lens – An ultra wide-angle lens that produces strong visual distortion intended to create a wide panoramic or hemispherical image. It’s rarely use but can make some disturbing image.

Camera Movement

• Handheld – Shot taken with the camera being supported by the operator’s hands or shoulder, often used to create shaky image or to show character movement in point of view.
• Steadycam – Technically a handheld shot but with a rig to help stabilize the movement and allows for smooth tracking shots.
• Pan – Swiveling a camera horizontally (left or right) from a fixed position.
• Tilt – Swiveling a camera vertically (up or down) from a fixed position.
• Zoom – When the focal length of a camera lens is adjusted to give the illusion of moving closer or further away from the subject.
• Dolly / Tracking shot – The camera put on a moving dolly or on tracks and it moves with the subject or without from left to right, or back to front or on a curve.
• Jib / Crane Shot – Camera pun on a platform and raised above the subject or brought down to the subject.
• Dolly Zoom – Also called a trombone shot where the camera is dolly while zooming, changing the depth of the shot.

Mise En Scene

It’s a broad term which describes the arrangement of scenery and stage properties in a play. Translated from French, it means “setting the stage” but, in film analysis, the term mise en scene refers to everything in front of the camera, including the set design, lighting, and actors. Mise en scene in film is the overall effect of how it all comes together for the audience.

Decor

• Setting – The time, place and social environment in which a story takes place.
• Set Dressing – Object that does not use by the actors and usually a background items to show place, different times and can add texture to the scene.
• Props – Objects that are meant to be used by the actor. Prop can also be used to show characteristic.
• Costume – Clothing, appearance or makeup of a character that can reflect their characteristic and background.

Lighting

• Three-point Lighting – The most common lighting setup consists of Key Light (the main source of light), Fill Light (fills in the shadows created by the key light) and Back Light (lights the back of the subject to separate them from the background).
• High Key Lighting – Brightly lit subjects with softer shadows. Fill lights are used to increase the amount of ambient light and reduce the contrast to produce images that encourage an optimistic and upbeat reaction.
• Low Key Lighting & Chiaroscuro – Darker light setup to give more somber mood. A lighting effect that uses a hard light source to enhance shadows and sometimes a very strong backlight to emphasize the outline of the character.

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• Hard Lighting – Bright harsh key lights that create hard shadows making the scene tough angular and unflattering.
• Soft Lighting – Light diffuse through a filter causing it to wrap around the subject scalping the subject without harming. It’s a romantic kind of lighting.
• Ambient Lighting – Also known as General Lighting is a light that comes from all directions which usually available in an environment.
• Unmotivated Lighting – Any lighting that is off camera, that is necessary to illuminate the scene properly but has no apparent source in the film.
• Motivated Lighting – Lighting that look natural and imitates existing sources like windows or lamps.

Color

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• Black and white – Camera takes in light and records everything just by luminosity whether it’s light or dark.
• Tinting – The entire scene is bathed in a certain color.
• Sepia Tone – Most common colors to tint film in the monochrome era which gave it a dusty look.
• Color grading – The film’s color is selectively adjusted for a distinctive look for each scene.
• Saturation – The intensity of a color in a scene. A highly saturated scene can feel bright and exciting while a lowly saturated scene can feel washed out and desolate.
• Color Palette – Dominant color in a shot. Palette can be broad taking in the entire spectrum or selectively drawing attention to a single color that dominates the others.

Space

• Balance – Gives weight and emphasizes the symmetry between the subjects in the shot.
• Deep Space – Where the scene places elements both far and near to the camera drawing attention to the distance between subjects.
• Shallow Space – Emphasizing the closeness of the subject and background objects or even implying no depth at all.
• Offscreen Space – Where scene draws attention to something out of the frame.
• Blocking – The actors movements that are heavily choreographed.

Editing

• Sequence shot – Also known as long take. It’s a long running shot usually over a minute that takes in a lot of action in a scene. Sometimes it cover simple dialogue or complicated sequence of events
• The Cut – Transition between the end of one shot and the beginning of another. The simple cut is the most basic transition between shots.
• Dissolve – One shot slowly fades into another, sharing the same space for a few seconds
• Wipe – Where the second shot rolls over the first shot.
• Fade-in and Fade-out – A common way to start and end a film. Going to and from a black screen.

• Continuity Editing – Combining related shots, or different components of a single shot, into a sequence which directs the audience’s attention to the consistency of story across time and location.
• Continuity error – When combined or related shots do not have consistency such as different lighting or the position of prop and actor.
• Match on Action – Respected cuts linked together by continuing the action from one shot to another.
• Eyeline – A character looking at something off-screen, followed by a cut of another object or person.

• Screen Direction – Consistent direction of movement between shots giving the audience a sense of relative location.
• 180 Degree Rule – A guideline for spatial relations between characters or objects in the shot to prevent confusion to viewers. It sets an imaginary axis by keeping the subjects and camera on the consistent side throughout the scene.
• Crossing the Axis – The opposite of 180 Degree Rule. But sometimes because the character placement is made clear, the shots will not feel too jarring when the axis is broken.

• Establishing shot – To shows where the scene takes place.
• Master Shot – A wide shot to establish all the characters location in the scene.
• Reverse Angle – The opposite side of the previous angle in the scene.
• Insert Shot – Breaking away from the main action to show an important detail

• Discontinuity Editing – Intentionally breaking continuity that stops reflecting reality but to reflect emotion
• Freeze Frame – Single frame of film is stopped
• Slow Motion – A clip is slowed down to let viewers see the tiny movements or details that could be missed at normal speed.
• Fast Motion – Speeds the actions, often used for comical feel.
• Reverse Motion – Plays the action backward, giving a dreamy feel or impossible things to happen.
• Jump Cut – A piece of time is cut out of a shot to change subject, background etc.
• Match Cut – A technique using two shots with similar graphics to transition between scenes.

• Cross Cutting – Jumps between two different scenes to show that they are happening simultaneously
• Split Screen – Two or more shots are spliced into the same frame showing simultaneous action.
• Overlay – One shot is placed or composited over another shot.
• Montage – A quick series of shots linked together through a theme or through time.

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History of Animation, Film & VFX

Animation History

Animation is a method or sequence of images created to appear as moving images. History has shown that humans have attempted to draw and produce motion images since time immemorial. There are several examples of early sequential images on bowl, caves and chamber that may seem similar to series of animation drawings.

From there, people keep discovering and inventing new ways to create motion images from ‘shadow play’ possibly in the 1st millennium BCE and ‘magic lantern’ circa 1959 to the creation of numerous devices like ‘thaumatrope’ in 1825, ‘stroboscopic’ disc or ‘phenakistiscope’ in 1833 and ‘zoetrope’ also in 1833.

During the rise of the cinematic industry, several different animation techniques were developed, including stop-motion with objects, puppets, clay or cutouts, and drawn or painted animation. Hand-drawn animation, mostly animation painted on cels, was the dominant technique throughout most of the 20th century and became known as traditional animation.

Among the earliest traditional animated short on film pre-1910 are the transparent hand-painted colorful pictures; ‘Pauvre Pierrot’ (1892) by Charles-Émile Reynaud, the oldest known drawn animation on standard film; ‘Humorous Phases of Funny Faces’ (1906) by J. Stuart Blackton, and the first animated film using what came to be known as traditional animation methods; ‘Fantasmagorie’ (1908) by Émile Cohl.  

Beginning of 1910s, animation creation evolved from original artists to “assembly-line” production studios such as Barré Studio, Bray Productions and Fleischer Studios. 1914’s Gertie the Dinosaur being a notable to mention because it was the first film to combine live-action footage with animation.

After a number of pioneers began creating animated shorts in the early 20th century, the very first feature-length animation using traditional methods was created titles El Apóstol in 1917. The 70-minute long movie running at an impressive 14 frames per second. The movie also holds the distinction of being the first commercially profitable animated movie ever made. However, the only copy of the film was destroyed in a house fire.

In 1920s, Walt Disney founded his own studio in California. Although it was the third instalment of the Mickey Mouse series, it was the 1928 classic, Steamboat Willie, where Mickey Mouse finally captured the hearts of the public.

Throughout the early 1930s, the ‘rubber hose’ style of animation dominated the industry, typically set to jazz music which was popular for the era.

Then 1937, Disney’s Snow White and Seven Dwarfs was released. It was the first feature-length film created entirely with hand-drawn animation. Disney had to fight hard to get the film released, even mortgaging his own house to help pay the massive production costs. The film was a tremendous success and it paved the way for many more iconic Disney movies to come.

Prior to 1940s, you could only watch animation in movie theatres. As home TVs became more popular, the very first animated TV series debuted in the form of Crusader Rabbit, a series of 4-minute long satirical cliffhangers which would continue to air as late as the 1970s.

1980s sparking the beginning of “anime boom” that would spread throughout Japan, the USA, and the world. Inspired by the commercial success of the Star Wars franchise, Japanese space operas Mobile Suit Gundam and Space Battleship Yamato were revived as theatrical films.

Fast forward to 1990s, rapid advancements in computer technology revolutionised animation production. Walt Disney’s ‘Rescuers Down Under’ was the first feature film created using a Computer Animation Production System that removed the need for a traditional animation camera. Released in 1995, ‘Toy Story’ was the first fully 3D computer-animated film, utilising artistic techniques such as transparent shading and blended colours that weren’t possible using older forms of animation. Starting from there, more and more 3D animated films and series were produced.

Nowadays, computer animation became the dominant animation technique. Computer animation is mostly associated with a three-dimensional appearance with detailed shading, although many different animation styles have been generated or simulated with computers.

Film & VFX History

1895 – The first moving images are recorded by Lumiere Brothers. Almost immediately there is a split between them who produce documentary sequences, and Georges Méliès who produces fantasy films filled with optical effects and camera tricks.

1897-1927 – Films develop from shorts to around 90 minutes feature length. The films are silent, and any dialogue is shown as written captions. The basics of film structure; lighting, editing and mise en scene are established during this period. Newer lightweight cameras allow shooting on location.

1920s Hollywood becomes the heart of the American film industry and vertically integrated which mean these studios make films, distribute and own the theatres in which the films are shown.

It evolves into the big 5 Studios; Paramount, Warner Bros., Leow’s/MGM, Fox (which becomes 20th Century Fox in 1935), Radio Keith Orpheum (RKO) And the Little 3 Studios; Columbia, Universal and United Artists

1927 – The Jazz Singer by Alan Crosland is released. It is the first feature film with a soundtrack.

1935 – Becky Sharp by Rouben Mamoulian is released. It is the first film to use the Technicolor Corporation’s ‘three strip’ colour process which allows films to be shown in colour.

1941 – Citizen Kane, produced by Orson Welles, was noted for its creative experiments with sound like overlapping dialogue and layered sound, for its numerous complex flashbacks and non-linear storytelling. It also included innovative camera angles like low-angle shots revealing ceilings, montage, mise-en-scene, deep-focus compositions, tracking shots, whip pans, lengthy takes, and dramatic or expressionistic low-key noirish lighting.

1953 – With the invention of television, film needed to up its game. New widescreen processes to produce bigger and more exciting films were the answer.

1953 – The first 3-D film, relying upon stereoscopic technology, achieved wide release in 1953. Earlier attempts had been made, but the 1950s saw the popularity of 3-d.

Late 1950s – Lightweight cameras suitable for hand-held use become cheap enough for widespread use. They become popular with documentary makers and young directors in France.

1970s – Garret Brown develops the Steadicam, a rig worn by the cameraman who can move around while keeping the image steady. First used in 1975 and made famous by The Shining (Dir Stanley Kubrick, 1980)

1975 – The enormous success of Jaws by Steven Spielberg creates the idea of the Summer Blockbuster. This becomes the main way that studios make money in the future.

1977 – George Lucas’ Star Wars trilogy began making $11 million due to the exhilarating, action-paced computer-generated effects.  George Lucas helped bring in an era of fantasy films with expensive and impressive special-effects. George Lucas established Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) to provide the special effects for his film Star Wars. The success of this film cements the idea of the Summer Blockbuster and creates the idea of tie-in merchandising (toys, actions figures etc)

1990s – ILM starts to use computer generated imagery (CGI).

1993 – Jurassic Park by Steven Spielberg, replaced the initial plans to use stop-motion with a combination of CGI and practical effects. From here, producers started using CGI for visual effects because the quality is higher and most effects are more controllable than other manual processes.

2001 – In The Fellowship of the Ring (dir Peter Jackson) and the two sequels, Andy Serkis plays Gollum. The character is entirely created by CGI, mapped on to the movements of the actor. The technology is called motion capture allows non-human characters to be created convincingly without complex make up.

2000s – High quality cheap cameras allow people to shoot their own films more easily and digital editing makes even quite complex special effects doable. Youtube and other streaming sites allow people to distribute their films for free and find an audience.

2001 – Gollum was easily the most memorable creature of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. The creature was digitally created by the VFX team and the performance was driven by an actor with a specially created motion-capture suit. 13 cameras pointed at different sensors attached to the suit to track the actor movements, allowing animators to create a more realistically moving character.

2003 – With improving technology, 3D films became more popular. In addition, a number of new IMAX facilities, offering larger format screens were constructed. Today, many large-budget films can be watched in 2D or 3D.

2009 – Director James Cameron created the highly successful film, Avatar. He teamed up with Sony to pioneer a specially designed camera built into a six-inch boom that allowed the facial expressions of the actors to be captured with sensors and digitally recorded for animators to use later. The actors were filmed with infrared light bounced off the reflectors, which was then captured in 3-D by up to 140 digital cameras positioned around the set. Nicknamed the “holy grail,” Cameron’s camera system used lightweight, dual-lens and hi-definition digital imaging to create an insanely advanced 3-D picture.