David Le's Final Project Blog

How does your knowledge of cinematography inform your artistic choices in your video?     My knowledge of cinematography informs artistic choices in the video by using combinations of close ups, medium shots, long shots, dolly shots, and moving/tracking shots to create a music video. In the moment, it was sometimes difficult to try to keep all the subjects in the frame without their heads or feet being cut off (as needed), made worse by the phone that was being filmed on having a privacy screen protector "blacking out" as a person looks at an angle as I recorded the scenes and my groupmates were dancing/acting. The knowledge that we attained in class helped formulate what a close up, medium shot, and long shot looked like, and dollying in/out with my hands and feet (as the person who recorded the video) to achieve the requirements needed in the video for differing types of shots. It also felt intuitive to try to move smoothly as possibly with hands and feet (soft steps) to no...

You will reflect on your skills as a filmmaker (using a camera, setting up a scene, and editing). Please discuss your experience you have had with these skills prior to this course. Then explain how this has potentially changed having been in this course. Finally, discuss whether or not you need to develop your skills further to be able to complete your Film Opening Sequence that you will create next semester. My skills as a filmmaker (at this time) could be said as virtually next to nonexistent, as I have little to no knowledge or skills on considering the different elements of filmmaking (such as lighting, blocking, mise-en-scene, etc.) as deeply as the course required compared to just filming a video just for the sake of filming a video. I do not have experience using an actual camera (with a lenses, buttons, that type of camera) to take photos, as the only experience I have had are using a mobile phone and simply clicking the shutter button on the screen to take a photo (which in i...