Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Let's Move

     It is, at times, completely unnoticeable. Yet is so essential to telling the story that it cannot  be over looked. Camera movement is possibly one of the most important elements of film. Rather than me sit here and continually pound this idea into your head, let me show you.



     Love Interruption by Jack White has been a large influence for my creativity lately. First off, it's Jack White. If that's not an influence, I'm not sure what is. Secondly, this video is very awesome. From the color scale to the camera work, it's a solid piece. But what attracts me to this video the most is the camera movement. The song is a blues song about love not interrupting the character's life. To convey this, the camera is dollied around the two subjects. However this isn't an ordinary dolly. They use a shaky dolly to convey the unsure ground the character lives on. Everything, in fact, is very shaky. It makes the whole thing seem so chaotic. You are paying attention, because the camera is almost constantly moving.


     I watch a lot of music videos, because they are the most inspiring to me. There is only a limited amount of time to convey a meaning, therefore cinematographers pack large amounts of information into that time period. With this in mind, Elliott Sellers packs as much as he can in Jason Mraz's I Won't Give Up lyric video. Sellers has a certain style that is a little bit off the beaten path. However, in this video, the beginning has more interesting camera movement to establish the location. The jerkiness is almost like a person is picking something up that has an eye and starts to walk around to look at the different items. Then, the zooming starts. This is how he gets the viewer's eye to look at the lyrics. At the end of the video, the lyrics are shapes of stars. There is fast pace panning to show the different lyrics, which shows that the song is climaxing. His camera movements are slow and convey the story of not giving up on love. It makes the video simple yet adds so much.


     I prefer simple camera work. You don't need a lot to get a viewer's attention, unless it's something not too noticeable. Handheld works for what I usually aim for. This is because I want things to look like you're actually watching it with your own eye. But handheld is extremely tricky, and you have to know how to work with it. Therefore, sometimes it does not work. The best example of this is the opening scene of The Hunger Games. I understand they were attempting to show you from Katniss Everdeen's point of view, but it does not work. In fact, you get sick and have to turn away. They needed better establishing shots. Tripod to handheld indicates that something big is about to happen. In the opening scene of the movie, nothing huge is going to happen except establishment. Therefore, it is not needed.

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