Contextual Studies New Wave cinema- Nouvelle Vague research

The new wave was all about representing the spirit of the era, creating a new style of filmmaking (had to make the audience aware they are watching a film)

The French New Wave of the late 1950s, one of the key movements of post-war European filmmaking, forever altered long-established notions of cinema style, themes, narrative and audience. The New Wave (or Nouvelle Vague) showed the vibrant realism of Paris’ streets and its inhabitants at a time when many Hollywood films were still formulaic and studiobound. A Hollywood film of the time would more than likely have included a linear narrative and uncomplicated shots and edits (such as a typical shot-reverse-shot); a film from the New Wave, however, would astonish you with extended shots, handheld footage, naturalistic performances, on-location shooting, whip-pans, socio-political commentary and ambiguous or unresolved endings. Today, its impact can still be felt in the work of many contemporary directors including Martin Scorsese, Bernardo Bertolucci and Quentin Tarantino.


The French New Wave was born out of the dissatisfaction that many young filmmakers and critics felt towards the existing, outmoded, French cinema of the time. While cinema was the most popular entertainment option in France in the 1950s (it was, after all, not long after the war and television had yet to fully impact upon society there), serious art critics found the films on offer to be unchallenging, stolid and without vision. Critics of the existing order, including Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, believed an auteur cinema, in which the director’s vision was paramount and personal, should be developed. They wanted to make films in which social and political issues could be explored – films that felt ‘raw’ and new. Taking matters into their own hands (and a dash of inspiration from the Italian Neo-Realist movement), Truffaut, Godard and several others set about changing cinema forever. The New Wave was born.

Jump Cuts- show the difference of space and time between two shots (to match or to mismatch 2 shots)
Camera-stylo (personalising films)
"Golden rule of show dont tell"
capturing a 'fly on the wall' feel
breaking the forth wall
push the boundaris of story telling
ahead of their time
'look at what works in your medium and think how could it be done differently'
'all you need to make a great film is a vision'
heavy on stylistic experimentation

'reality was the world as it presented itself to consciousness, and the film-maker as perceiving consciousness was responsible for mastering the flow of this perceived reality and shaping it to make its truth visible.' Andre bazin's nomenology (the Cahiers group)


'The French New Wave was a group of trailblazing directors who exploded onto the film scene in the late 1950s; revolutionising cinematic conventions by marrying the rapid cuts of Hollywood with philosophical trends.'

look at- the umbrellas from cherbrough

Bibliography 

'In France the great commercial success of 28–year-old Roger Vadim’s Et Dieu . . . créa la femme(And God Created Woman, 1956)' p.214 Cinemas of the World'

French New Wave, The pocket essential

Making Waves New cinema of the 1960s

https://theculturetrip.com/europe/france/articles/the-french-new-wave-revolutionising-cinema/

http://www.newwavefilm.com/new-wave-cinema-guide/nouvelle-vague-where-to-start.shtml

http://www.filmeducation.org/pdf/resources/secondary/FrenchNouvelleVague.pdf

Bibliography

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0R7R0JHvvgo (entry task)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatbed_editor (entry task)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moviola (entry task)

https://indiefilmhustle.com/french-new-wave/  (unit 1)

http://www.newwavefilm.com/new-wave-cinema-guide/nouvelle-vague-where-to-start.shtml (unit1)

Camera practise- Shutter Speed task

• After shooting and watching the 3 examples of how Shutter speed affects movement in the video, I realised that wasn't the best way to show how SS affects it, as the water source isn't big enough to see the difference in the Shutter Speed
• What i would change next time when i need to show a difference in the Shutter speed is firstly to use a tripod, to stabilise the video and also to give the same perspective, so the difference in the SS would be more easily noticeable. I would also use a bigger and a constant moving subject, as the videos of the water dispenser were too short and the water stream was to small to notice a big difference between the three.
• I later found out that my camera didnt have good recording quality and its settings weren’t good enough for recording. To improve that next time i will need to use a different camera to record footage to reflect the camera settings.

Camera practise- ISO task

• When shooting outside the lighting was very high key natural, and that's why the ISO of 125 was essential for the settings, by doing so I lowered the sensitivity of the camera to the light, meaning that the shot wont be overpowered by it or washed out. In this case i also had to bring the aperture up to f11 to minimise the bright light even more.

• Initially i thought i wold find it challenging to film with ISO of 1600 indoors, as the quality of the video would decrease, and you'll be able to see the noise, however due to the low natural lighting and there was no visible graininess, meaning that if I'm facing another situation in which i need to shoot in low key lighting, ill know ill be able to use higher ISO of 1600 without worrying about the picture quality. I also had to bring the aperture down to f5 to allow as much light in as possible.

Camera practise -pull focus

Experimenting with Pull Focus 

Pull focus can be used to create a certain mood/ ideas in the audience, as the director can choose which subject to focus on and change the focus on to.

Examples of Pull focus indoors

Filming inside was more challenging due to the lack of natural lighting. To improve that i tried to get as much natural lighting, by choosing settings as close to the windows as possible, without having to put my ISO higher than 200, however the lighting on the first short clip can be seen as too harsh and too bright. To improve next time I would think about weather I'm filming indoors or outdoors and will consider bringing a light source with me to compensate for the dull low lighting 

Examples on Pull focus outdoors
When filming outdoors i had no trouble with the lighting, I also positioned the camera at a lower angle so i could capture a different perspective and more than 2 subjects in my frame. The camera goes through 2 subjects before focusing on the last 3rd one.

Camera settings

Shutter Speed
simply refers to the amount of time that the camera's shutter is open. The longer the shutter is open, the more light that passes through to the camera's sensor. Conversely, the shorter the shutter is open, the less light that's able to pass through.

• measured in seconds 
• to freeze movement in an image you'll need faster speed/ to let the movement blur you'll need a slower Shutter Speed.

ISO

How sensitive a film is to light
A camera setting that will brighten or darken a photo. As you increase your ISO number, your photos will grow progressively brighter. For that reason, ISO can help you capture images in darker environments, or be more flexible about your aperture and shutter speed settings.

However, raising your ISO has consequences. A photo taken at too high of an ISO will show a lot of grain, also known as noise, and might not be usable. So, brightening a photo via ISO is always a trade-off. You should only raise your ISO when you are unable to brighten the photo via shutter speed or aperture instead (for example, if using a longer shutter speed would cause your subject to be blurry).

• the lower the number, the lower the sensitivity and the finer the grain in the shots/ higher numbers mean your sensor becomes more sensitive to light (use in dark)

Aperture
Can be defined as the opening in a lens through which light passes to enter the camera. It is expressed in f-numbers like f/1.4, f/2, f/2.8 and so on to express the size of the lens opening, which can be controlled through the lens or the camera

• the opening in the lens
• the larger the hole the more light gets in- the smaller the hole the less light
• measured in 'f-stops'

Frame rate

• the number of individual frames that comprise/make each second of video (how many frames per second)/ the simple act of measuring how many video frames the surveillance camera captures per second of video. 30 fps means the camera captured 30 frames in a single second of video; the higher the frames, the smoother the video will be. Frame rate also has an impact on the size of your video files. A higher frame rate of 60 fps results in more frames, so the video file will be larger and heavier for the device.

https://www.photographytalk.com/beginner-photography-tips/shutter-speed-explained

https://photographylife.com/what-is-iso-in-photography

https://www.videosurveillance.com/tech/frame-rate.asp

Unit 1- Enrolmnt task

Conduct textual analysis on the following scene from Easy Rider (1969) . Explain how the text has been constructed to create meaning.

The 60s' are described as an era of irresponsible excess, flamboyance and decay of social order which are also factors to the beggining of the New hollywood movement where movies were starting to break social taboos. This is not only evident in the scene from Easy Rider, but is also summing up the overall message of the film while also exploring the rise of the hippie movement, drug use, and communal lifetyle.
At the beggining of the scene we see a medium shot, establishing the mise-en-scene of a cemetary in NewOrleans while following the reactions of all four character in the frame. The lighting is high key natural and dull, with a diegetic ambient noise adding to the unnatural and uncomfortble atmosphere. While the camera is static to begin with, once we see them taking the acid the scene jump cuts to a one second upward tilt shot of a building, going up towards the sky, using shot reverse shot cutting back to the characters then nce again to the tilt, deviding the world in two, juxtaposing the moral verus the immoral, the taboos (the use of drugs, sex, and alcohl in the scene) that go against the church with the church itself and God, by using the viceover of girl reciting prayers about crucifixion 'God, father oh mighty, creator of heaven and earth...', while the scene jump cuts between the tilt shot of the camea moving up a building towards the sky, 'closer' to God, with the high key light and sunbeams lighting up the scene making it almost heavenly, then jumpcuting back to the static shot of Fonda an Hopper. For the Catholic church which owns the cemetary these image would be seen as scandalising and were the reason why the cemetary was closed for the public after the film was released.
Halfway through the scene there is a following sequence of jumpcuts, hectic and in no specific order, which coud represent what is going on in their head and the effect of the drugs. It represents the voices in their head they cant silence even with the drugs, how they can't fit in and find their space in the society they live in. The shots are ment to make you uncomortable from the close up of the females face in a long angle shot while she recitise, to show the power of the church at the time, to the zoom in on the sun, however the sequence always cuts back to Peter Fonda in the arms of one of the statues in the graveyard

Unit 31- Editing Enroment task

Research the development of editing technology

The use of film editing to establish continuity, involving action moving from one sequence into another, is attributed to British film pioneer Robert W. Paul's Come Along, Do!, made in 1898 and one of the first films to feature more than one shot. (1)

Early editing - cutting
The Lumiere brothers started everything in 1895, by inventing the cinematographe- a three way machine that recorded, captured and projected a motion picture. The only work they produced however consists of one long roll of film. In 1901 Edwin S. Porter showed the world that it didn't have to be just ne long clip- he experimented wit film by sticking different parts of film together,

• Moviola
A device that allows the film editor to view the film while editing. Invented by Iwan Serrurier in 1924, it was the first machine for motion picture editing. It started out as a home movie project to be sold to the general public, however due to its high cost at the time, very few sold and Serrurier decided to adapt it only for use by film editors.








• Flatbed Edit Suites
 -a type of machine used to edit film for a motion picture. The most popular company which became associated with the flatbed suits was Steinbeck. It was invented first in 1930 in Germany and similar to the moviola allowed the editor to watch the film while editing. It also allowed for the audio to be edited as well as the video- even though sound was recorded separately, the flatbed allowed the editor to sync both the film and the audio track.











• Linear and Non-Linear editing

Linear way of editing involves selecting, arranging and modifying images and sound in a predetermined, ordered sequence. In the past the film editing was always done in a linear way where film reels were cut into long strips divided by takes and scenes, and then glued or taped back together to create a logical sequence of film. Now days non-linear editing is a way quicker and easier way of editing film which allows for more freedom and out of order sequences .









• Online and Offline Editing
-any format beneath broadcast quality is considered offline and any resolution at or above broadcast quality is considered online. The difference between the two can be seen in the price, the offline editing is usually the proxy/duplicate footage in lower resolution of the original source used for editing purpose. It can be used when editing a higher resolution video files to speed up the process and can be done on most average computers, saving money.



• The Digital Era (CMX-600, Edit Droid and Avid 1)
CMX-600, was one of the first digital editors. This system stored the video on computer disks, which provided instant access to both picture and sound, and the ability to make, and see, changes in real time. It consisted of, an ASR-33 Teletype which was used to control the recording process, and to input, and, output the Edit Decision list. (2)

The EditDroid is a computerized analog NLE (non-linear editing system), which was developed by Lucasfilm spin-off company, the Droid Works and Convergence Corporation who formed a joint venture company. (3)
The system was LaserDisc-based, relying on several LaserDisc players and a database system which would queue up the clips in the order needed from the LaserDisc players in the most efficient way, so as to minimize skipping. This however wasn't always possible. So if the edits weren't sufficiently close, the system wouldn't always be fast enough to cue up the next clip. (4)

An Avid editor uses Avid's Media Composer software to edit digital video footage for films, shows, commercials, promos, and on-air campaigns. ... The finished results of your video editing work can include DVDs, YouTube videos, motion pictures, and television.








• Modern editing platforms (Final Cut, Premiere Pro)
In 1991, Adobe came with its first video editing software Premiere. Premiere Pro, today, has become industry-leading software for video editing. The software is widely used across the globe by both beginners and professionals. 

• Film and file types




(1)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_editing
(2)http://www.vtoldboys.com/editingmuseum/cmx600.htm
(3)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EditDroid
(4)https://lucasfilm.fandom.com/wiki/EditDroid
(5)
(6)

Bibliography 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatbed_editor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moviola

http://www.videoeditinginstitute.com/surprising-facts-on-the-history-of-video-editing

Unit 30- Lighting Enrolment task

A. how and why lighting affects camera techniques for
moving image.

Lighting could be what devides bad films from good ones as it not only finds the balance between underexposing and overexposure but also sets he thone and the mood. The reason why ligh is also so important is because our eyes respond to light differently compared to film and video which see things in much more contrast. Threfore, ironicaly to make a scene look natural, youll need enough artificial light.

This is what te mst common lighting set up would look like. The key light  would be the most promnent light in the frame. Te fill ligh isn he light that literary 'fills in' the shadows so the contrast from he key light wont be as overpowering and it wont be creating deep shadows.
The backlight, usually set behind and higher above the subject is used to add depth.

Hard and Soft film ligting

The hardness or softness of the light depends on how large the light sourse is, and how it affects the shadows in the frame. Soft lighting uses several lighting sorces from different angles to achieve that  more 'soft' and gentle with faded gradient and an aery feeling to it.  

Hard lighting is coming from only one source/point,  making it a lo more dramatic, creating a sharper edge over the subject in the frame as well as shadows.




B. Post a suggested list of lighting equipment and setups that you would use
for the following scenarios

 A small documentary where portability is paramount

• tripod- Would produce sharper and smoother videos.
• portable digital audio recorder+ headphones- would bring the quality of the sound up, and you'll be able to check the recoding quality throughout. It may not feel as authentic for people, may be intimidating.
• Lights/ LED lights- better video quality, would look more professional. More gear to cary+ it may take long to set up.

 ‘Talking Head’ style interviews

• 3 point lighting camera set up+ light reflectors- natural lighting will be key so with this set up, there wont b any shadows and the film lighting will be soft. Hard and time consuming to set up.
• Tripod- steady and more professional content as its for an interview

 A ‘night time’ shoot

• 2 lights with a softbox one behind the subject to get rid of unwanted and unnatural lighting, and one infront to light up the subject
• tripod- allowing longer exposure

Bibliography A.

https://www.lavideofilmmaker.com/filmmaking/film-lighting-tips.html

https://movingimageeducation.org/create-films/production/camera/lighting

https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/film-lighting-techniques/