Shooting B&W is harder than you think!

For my independent practice I've been researching the various ways to use Black and White to add meaning to a picture, but also how to use it technically as well, what I've discovered has been eye opening.
Due to B&W not being the most commonly used format in film making today there hasn't been much to find online that will help me in film making, but I have been able to find a lot in regards to photography, of which it is still very popular. Firstly, black and white still picks up colour information even though it doesn't show them on screen, so red might be a darker shade of grey than blue for instance, so adding colour filters to the camera or in post can create some fantastic creative pathways. If you use Red as your primary filter, Blues become much darker, but Reds become much lighter. 

During the silent film era the actors that you see wearing make up probably weren't just covered in standard Black eyeliner, in fact it was probably more likely that they were wearing whatever makeup worked the best with the colour filter on the lens, which lets the audience build up a different impression of them simply dependent on their colour.

For my film, which includes Red Blood, I want to make the blood come out like it is strong, bold and violent, so I think that by adding a Green colour filter it will give me the best contrast between yellowy skin which will come out a sharp white and red that will appear very dark and threatening.

http://www.photographymad.com/pages/view/using-coloured-filters-in-black-and-white-photography

Laura El Tantawy: In the Shadow of The Pyramids

Very Inspirational talk by Laura El Tantawy today at University Campus, Weston College.

Laura El-Tantawy is an Egyptian photographer. She was born in Worcestershire, England to Egyptian parents & grew up between Saudi Arabia, Egypt & the US. In 2002, she started her career as a newspaper photographer with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel & Sarasota Herald- Tribune (USA). In 2006, she became freelance so she could focus on pursuing personal projects. She is a graduate of the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia (USA) with dual degrees in journalism & political science.

Laura discussed her path into photography and her choice to focus on personal projects rather than assignment work. “It’s important for me to maintain my sense of independence as a photographer. There is more than one road to doing so and given the nature of the profession and the sheer number of photographers versus work, it is important to understand who you are and what your work represents amid this influx of imagery in order to find your place,” she says. Her talk focussed on her long-term project “In the Shadow of the Pyramids”, with pictures spanning 2005-2014 covering the political and social upheaval in Cairo’s streets along with her personal search for identity in a changing country. The book is being published by Dewi Lewis and due for release in late January 2015.

Visit her site below to see her work

In The Shadow of The Pyramid is Laura El-Tantawy's photography project of Egypt during the Arab Spring. "I am an Egyptian citizen. For the first time in my life I feel hope. The popular revolution of January 25, 2011 revived a long lost sense of pride & dignity for Egyptian people & its implications are reverberating across the Middle East.

Hindu scriptures say a person who commits suicide becomes part of the spirit world, wandering the earth until he/she would have normally died. Over the past 15 years, more than 250,000 farmers have committed suicide in India. Many had borrowed money through government lending schemes or private lenders to plant more efficient crops, but could not pay off their debts. Because of the extremely fast transition India has undergone — from a rural to an industrial, urban economy with an open market — farmers have been confronted by immense social and economic problems. This has especially impacted cotton farmers in the state of Maharashtra. “I’ll Die For You” explores the epidemic of farmer suicides using still photography, video and archival documents. The project takes as its focus the peculiar bond between man and land, a relationship unique to farmers given their reliance on the land for livelihood and the equal reliance of the land on farmers for survival. It's a relationship based on love, trust and nurturing and goes far beyond the customary attachment one has with his/her source of livelihood. This relationship is symbolically represented in close up pictures from farmer's skin juxtaposed against details from the landscape photographed in a way that attempts to blur the distinction between man and land to show in this environment the land and its inhabitants are one and the same: When one dies, so does the other. This short film is my window into film making. It is narrated by farmers who experienced the suicides first hand as it was imperative for me to attach a face and voice to this story - to humanize the issue and bring it to the attention of a global audience given the story remains largely under documented in the international media. copyright 2013 © Laura El-Tantawy / VII Photo Mentor Program

Test shoot to test for Sound

Today we did tests on the camera to work out which Cine settings to use and to play around with the sound to test out how we would use it for the project in February.

Whilst we learnt a lot from the Cine settings, but when it came to the sound, something was very off. I connected the Microphone cables into the SQN mixer and at first we could not use it properly as the sound was far too quiet, however I quickly remedied this problem by switching off the attenuator switch which artificially made it quieter than it should have been. I believed that this would remedy our situation, but I was mistaken, because when we listened to the footage through the mixer later, it sounded clear but very very electronic and noisy in the background.

Listening to the footage it would seem impossible to do an easy grade, and I'm incredibly confused as to how this problem came to be in the first place, as the settings appeared to be the same that we did on our first shoot 2 months ago. I will attempt to resolve this problem by the end of next week as this is a serious problem, I am not very skilled in sound design and require as much hands on as possible.

During the shooting we did 3 different takes of each Cine setting. One quiet, one loud and one in between. Overall I found the quietest one was best because the majority of the background chatter was reduced but the sound was still at least usable to some extent. I will use this as further research material in the future, that shooting on as low a setting as possible is probably the best action due to it capturing the cleanest sound quality.

Left to Right Heroic Actions and Evil actions

In class today Ceejay mentioned composition in shots by describing the com-positioning of screen movement. Of course many of us are already aware of the traditional Right is Adventure, Left is Home motif, but supposedly in the majority of mediums it is also noticed that all the good characters moving from Left of frame to the Right, nearly ever side scroller in video games follows this rule and is probably relatable to our standard reading method of Left to Right.

Evil actions however involve the characters moving or looking from Right to Left, this makes it appear awkward and jarring to our normal perspective and narrative. This isn't set in stone as there are innumerable scenes in film where it breaks this rule, but at the same time if you've looked at any standard action or adventure film, you'd notice that all the action appears to happen from Left to Right of frame. Notable examples off the top of my head, Con Air, The Princess Bride and The Matrix.

The film Snowpiecer uses a similar evolution on this old fashioned technique but this time uses it as a motif of the character evolution itself. The film is set on a continuously traveling train, and our protagonist is constantly traveling from the end carriage Left, to the Engine of the train on the Right. As he fights his way through however, the train becomes a metaphor for his mindset we notice that all that in front of him are things that are trying to deprive him of his humanity (Guns and Warriors) and all those behind him are things that represent his humanity (Friends, Children, Community). At the very end of the film, he is given a decision, Save a child from a cubicle prison, or take control of the train and become it's ruler.

https://vimeo.com/110329961

For my independent practice, I want to play on this idea of Left and Right, this time referring to the concept of Left meaning Reality and Right being Dreams. Whenever the character is looking to the right he is wanting something more than his reality, but when he looks left he is starting to accept and understand his current situation.

I will work on this idea over the next few months and play around with it.

Camera I need for Low Light

The A7S Camera from Sony is a beast when it comes to low priced, high quality tech.

Firstly this camera has more Dynamic Range than the current top dog of professional cameras the Arri Alexa, nearly 14.5 stops. This will enable people to film in different tones of light and dark simultaneously without having highlights blown out or blacks crushed. It also contains in-built gamma settings to allow you pick up the full range of detail in your shots. What DSLR style camera do you know that comes with that!?
Second the camera has a Full Frame sensor, capable of picking up plenty of detail and giving you the full capabilities of the lenses you use. Since it is mirrorless and has such little flange distance, it will enable you to attach basically any lens ever made and not ruin your focus range. For my A7 camera, I tend not to buy really expensive lenses and instead go for the cheaper old fashioned ones, which cost barely anything and enable you to get some pretty good looking shots, despite a loss in sharpness.
And the final killer is the fact that the Noise levels on this camera are almost unnoticeable. You can literally shoot in pitch darkness and only pick up a fraction of the ISO noise that you would pick up on a standard DSLR. What makes it even more sexy is that the light that seems to appear from this is something rarely seen, its a strange greyish light that gives off an oneiric appearance. 
 

All in all this camera is fantastic, whilst it still contains rolling shutter, lacks XLR ports and sucks up battery super fast, these are easily manageable problems that can be fixed relatively simply.

The three videos I leave below show how good this camera is in low light, and the latter 2 show just how good this tiny camera can be for some professional situations. Better I would argue than most cinema cameras. And its only 1.4k!

https://vimeo.com/105690274

https://vimeo.com/100312989

https://vimeo.com/110960666