Category: Nuke

Reviewed the concept of Mise-en-scène and everything in a shot being relevant to the scene. Also discussed composition, aspect ratio and the rule of thirds in film. Below is an example of rule of thirds, with characters in a scene being positioned along rule of thirds lines or broken by positioning a character in the center of the frame to isolate the character

Also reviewed the concept of Frame Axes and filmmakers keeping film axes in mind when creating z depth in shots similar to things like Maya. As a film screen only has an x and y axis a filmmaker must use elements in the scene to create depth.

Talked about the use of high and low camera angles in use of making a character either feel confident by using a high camera angle to make a character feel powerless and a low camera angle making a charcter feel confident. The rightmost image being an example of a high camera angle and the second shot being a low camera angle

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Discussed type of film shots and shot selections, that being full shots, medium full shots, medium shots, tight medium shots, loose close ups, close ups and extreme close ups, these all being categorized shots that dictate how close the picture is to the character.

Also touched upon lights and good lighting in film, keeping into account light spill and how light will be refracted around a scene, especially when accounting for greenscreening and bluescreening when compositing understanding light refraction and the way light behaves when bouncing off objects is imperative in creating a good composition. An example below being light spill from the background appearing on the character in frame’s arm and making it appear in a composition.

Things to take into account when lighting a scene are the four attributes of light, those being intensity of your light, the quality of your light, the angle and the colour. These should all be used in tandem to create a cohesive feel for the scene.

The intensity of light can be done inn both soft and hard light with hard lights producing sharp edges with little fall off and soft light being the opposite with larger falloff and softer edges wrapping around the subject in frame.

Talked about The main lighting set up used in film being the three point lighting set up with a key light being used as the light to define the character and being the main source of light, the fill light being used in lower intensity and being an ambient and filling shadows created by the key light, and lastly the backlight being used behind the subject to separate the character from the background.

The last thing discussed was the colour temperature being used, those being measured in kelvin being low kelvin as warmer and higher kelvin as colder tones, with standard film cameras being set around 3200K tungsten or daylight 5600K. An example below being warmer colour temperature tones with a lower Kelvin on the left and colder with higher Kelvin on the right.

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Reviewed standard camera basics like depth of field, parts of the camera and how it can be affected by the aperture ring of your camera, and the factors involved in depth of field such as lens, depth of field and focal length from your subject.

Also reviewed things like exposure and how it can affect the image, especiallly when images are overexposed vs underexposed and how these can be read properly via a histogram. This in tandem was also reviewed with the classic Exposure Triangle and how it is affected with things such as shutter speed, ISO and Aperture.

Also reviewed ISO, with ISO being how sensitive a camera is to light but in digital photography also adding noise, in short it can be used as a hail mary to lighten your image as a last resort if you don’t want to sacrifice aperture or shutter speed but at the cost of adding more digital noise to your shot. Below being an example of a shot with a lot of digital noise from a high ISO, too fast of a shutter speed and a very tight aperture, resulting in a dark image with high amounts of digital noise.

As an example of this, in this rack focus shot from 007 Casino royale, the distance of the depth of field is very small with a low aperature focusing on your subject, with the foreground being obscured being closer to the camera then our other subject of the actor. This would be shot with a lens that allows for a very small wide aperture creating a shallow depth of field.

Next was simply reviewing full frames and cropped censor, with the difference being a crop censor cropping your frame for a tighter sense of view.

Next was going over things like shutter speed and the effects it has on an image, being higher shutter speeds capturing less light and tighter images and low shutter speeds capturing more light but more blurry “motion filled” images. An example of a high shutter speed image on the right with darker areas but less motion almost frozen in time, and the right image being a longer exposure low shutter speed that lets motion flow through it more.

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Afterwards was the standards for NTSC Vs Pal and frame rates done throughout the industry. Showing how to get the cinematic feel.

Afterwards was going through lenses and lens angles, with wider angle lenses allowing for more information but having greater distortion, standard lenses (Usually 55mm) being closest to what our eyes see, Telphoto lenses being able to take shots at great distances away from the subject and narrowing the depth of field, Fisheye lenses being an ultra wide angle lens that creates a very heavy distortion outwards from the focal point, and macro leneses working at very short distances from the subject to capture maximum detail.

Next was simply a refresher on encoding and video formats, with standards being usually mp4’s for low compression with decent quality usually being used for web, and ProRes usually being the standard when delivering high quality commercials, streaming and HD Broadcast files.