Camera Workshop (2)

Continuity is important in a scene as it makes the scene feel more real and fluid. If their is a continuity error in a film, it is usually something small such as in 'Pretty Woman' (1990) when the food that she is eating changes, however, this is barely noticeable and hardly noticeable, however, if a continuity error is noticeable, it could potentially make the film worse as it breaks the immersion that you have with the film thus making it less enjoyable. Continuity is often very hard to keep right especially with things like smoking and drinking, as a cigarette can burn out in between takes, this means that a scene could start with a freshly lit cigarette but as soon as there is a cut the cigarette has burnt out. Continuity with drinking is also hard to get right as through multiple shots of people drinking, the level of drink in their glass will change and this means that a scene could start with a full glass, halfway through, have a empty glass and by the end of the scene, the glass will be full again, however, continuity should be followed as closely as possible to keep the film as realistic as possible so that people feel immersed and not like they are watching a fake environment.

On a film set there are various cues that the director uses to make sure that everyone involved in the scene is prepared to begin filming. usually before filming you say "standby" when you say that, everyone should get to their positions and get prepared. After "standby" the directer will say "rolling" when the director says "rolling" it tells the camera man to start recording, however, it does not mean that the actors start acting, it just means start recording as the clip can be edited down later. The las cue is "action" this means that the actors start acting, and everyone else on set does their job.

When setting up the camera for a scene, a body double (someone of the same hight and stature of the actor) stands in place so that the cameraman can focus on where the actor is going to be and mark the location of where the actor needs to stand for the scene. When the body double is being used for focusing, usually a piece of tape is put next to the body doubles foot, this is so that the actor knows where to stand so that he/she is in focus when the scene has started filming.

When on set, you shouldn't review your footage as if you review what you filmed every time you film something, the shooting time would be substantially increased. Sometimes the actor wants to see what they look like in the footage, so if you show them one shot it should be a close up as it is also known as a beauty shot so when they see it they can look at how they look in the scene and usually they like it.

You always start with a wide angle shot so that you can see all the information in the scene and if a shot goes wrong, you can just use the wide angle shot and you still have all the information you need in a scene so you can replace the closer shot that went wrong with the long shot that has all the information in the scene in the first place.