DSLR Practise | Workshop

To prepare us for the filming of our fiction adaptation, we had a camera workshop to gives us more practise with the DSLR Cameras and to experiment with pieces of equipment we have access too. This workshop was run by Mike Rymer: a filmmaker who's worked in TV and film and has released his debut short film "SICK" that has broken the silence on mental health.

http://mikerymer.info/biog/

Within the workshop, Mike talked about the different type of camera movements and how important they are in telling a story. The camera movements that were mentioned were:

• Tracking
• Panning
• Crab: camera moves from left to right
• Jib: camera moves up and down
• Track/Dolly: camera moved backwards and forwards
• ContraZoom: camera tracks in and zooms out at the same time

We were shown many different examples of these camera movements and as a class we experimented with trailing out these different movements. This showed us that something like the ContraZoom is actually quite difficult to perfect, but with practise it's quite doable.

After the presentation, we split up into groups of 4 and began to experiment with the pieces of equipment that we have access too, like the jib, the camera track and the fig rig.

My group started with the camera track and tried to recreate some of the Wes Anderson tracking shots. These were fun to do, and although the outcome wasn't the best, we were able to trial this movement out and experiment with different ways to make it work.

We then moved onto the jib and created a revealing shot. We had two people sitting down in front of the camera, and another person stood on the other side of the room. The jib comes up and reveals the person on the other side of the room, while the two people spot her and run towards her. This shot worked really well, and we all thought the jib made the shot look effective.

Overall, this workshop was really useful to have and has helped me feel confident enough to use these pieces of equipment within my own work.