The Minor Project: My Ideas and Objectives
‘Tis time! The blog on my Minor Project has finally commenced after two sets of work experiences and the creation of a learning agreement!
My Problems and Objectives
So what will be the content of this series of blog entries?
To no surprise to my avid readers, I still want to become a cinematographer. However, I realised that I hitherto focussed the bulk of my studies on the aesthetics, and thus neglected the technical aspects, which are equally important, if not more.
Since I realised that my lack of knowledge in regard to the technical application is now becoming a problem – and since I am leaving university in about nine months – I need to improve upon this as quickly as possible to stand a chance in the industry. Especially so, since female DoPs are still a rather rare occurrence and need to test their metals more.
My Ideas and (Hopefully) Solutions
This led me to my decision of conducting camera tests and experimenting with equipment for my Minor in order for me to learn more about technical aspects, the individual equipment and outputs, and the procedure of camera testing itself. My hope is that it will give me more knowledge about crucial elements and aspects of cinematography in general and that my filmmaking skills will benefit from this.
My Procedure
For this, I’ll pick a very short scene of my script for Pillars of Creation and design one lighting style in order to create an example scene that can then be filmed and compared by at least two camera systems. As of now, the choice of scene is not yet fully settled as I am collaborating with Hannah and Chloe and we need to find a solution that can be used as a basis for all three Minors.
For my further research within my Minor, and in term of the two FMP productions later this year, I thus decided to settle on a darker Science Fiction setting.
My reason for this is:
Since I will be the DoP of Madame Nomvula, a dark horror/thriller, I will be requiring to learn how to convincingly light a darker scene. Even though both genre styles are different, I hope that the grittier, darker science fiction genre style was a good gateway into learning this more difficult lighting style
Since I will also be the DoP of Pillars of Creation – a student science fiction film – it will be beneficial for me to learn how to light and create a darker science fiction style.
In order to make this more feasible and achievable, I decided to break my research down into smaller chunks and topics, which currently are:
Let’s see how this pans out!
References:
Behar, S. (2016) How to Perform a Camera Test: Narrow Your Focus to Three Simple Things [online] Image taken from: https://www.moviemaker.com/archives/mm_guide_2016/how-to-perform-a-camera-test/ [Accessed on 7 October 2019]