Camera Work Reflection

 Hi everyone, my name is Antonella Escorza, and I am currently a junior in high school. In this post, I will be reflecting on both of my camera projects!

                                                Camera angles and shots project

Learning camera work is a slow process because it requires understanding and practicing various camera shots, movements, and framing techniques. From there, I focused on the lighting and the quality of the pictures my team was taking. We had to make up a story in order to begin our project. We made sure that each of our scenes and pictures matched a camera movement and had meaning. 

For this project, my team and I had to make a story that told a narrative of an intimate object using 15 different shots. We decided that our story was going to be about a pencil and an eraser. We made sure that every picture we took correctly used a different camera movement and explained the story well. My experience with this project was a little stressful because we struggled taking some of the pictures. This was because our story needed some movement in order for the audience to understand what was going on. Eventually, we figured it out and came up with a solution that worked perfectly and allowed us to succeed. 

Some challenges that we had were that, as mentioned before, we struggled with taking some of the pictures because we needed some movement. Another challenge we had was that we were planning on taking a shallow focus shot, but we couldn't figure out how to take it. So, we just decided to change the shot to a standard focus shot. We did have a few successes while doing our project, though. One of them was that we successfully took all of our pictures accurately, and it had meaning to the overall story. I believe the way we made our project was easy for our audience to understand. 

Throughout the project, I learned that it's important to not rush it and to go slow for the best results. I gained a better understanding of all the camera shots and movements because, as we were taking the pictures, I was memorizing what each of them looked like. I also learned that the lighting makes a huge difference in each scene that we took. When we were taking the pictures, I realized how important it is to make the shots as accurate as they can be so that the story can flow more easily

Some things I would do differently for this project are that I would prepare a better storyline and try to create easier scenes to film. Overall, I believe that my group and I did a good job telling our story, but next time it would be better to make the story simpler. 

                                                     Camera movements project

The process for learning camera work for a camera movement project is to first understand the purpose of each camera movement and how and why we use them.  Each of these movements creates a different meaning to the audience and makes a huge difference in the film. Overall, this process includes knowing how to correctly film every movement and creating a creative story for the audience to enjoy.

For this project, my group and I had to create a creative story using the prompt "surprise". We decided to make the story about two girls who wanted to scare their friends by yelling "surprise" as she was walking out the door. We then had to create a video with different camera movements and accurately film the story. We filmed about 4 scenes and made sure to use a different camera movement for all. My experience with this project was really fun. I enjoyed filming with my group while also learning about camera movements. We created a fun and stable story for us to successfully film. This project helped me learn most of the camera movements and how to accurately film them. 

One challenge that we had while filming our project was the lack of good lighting. We struggled a little to find good lighting to start filming our video. After a while, we finally found a stable place with good lighting. We had a lot of successes for this project. One of them was that all of us knew our part and successfully completed our part. We also knew how to edit it to the best of our ability and came up with a good video. We also made sure that we created a video and a storyline that would be easy for our audience to understand with no confusion. 

Throughout this project, I learned how each type of camera movement can significantly alter the audience's experience of a scene. I also gained a better understanding of how the speed, lighting, and quality affect the overall footage of the video. Having a stable story is also important because it will make filming and accurately capturing camera movements easier. 

If I were to do this project again, I would focus more on where I will be filming the scenes.  I would choose a better place that has better lighting and more space. I would also plan out my scenes better and make each camera movement smoothly transition to the next scene. Being intentional with each movement is also very important because it will change the way the audience understands the film.