Today I learnt about the various types of lighting within shots(scenes) or pictures. I found this very interesting. You have multiple lighting techniques, one is the 3 way. Which consists of 3 of them, one being the key, this is the brightest light that’s on the right side of the object/person and then you have the fill light, which fills in all the shadows the key light brings, and finally you have the backlight, which helps divide the object/person from the background.
You can also have a key light and a backlight which makes it Noir. It shows the contrast between the person where some of the face is light and some of it is darker. This is normally used in old silenced movies and black and white movies.
You also have a Spotlight lighting technique which is basically just a key by itself. This will focus on the object/person entirely while the background and surroundings are just completely dark.
With old films, films developed from theater (as shown in really early films) as you can see it’s just sets where actors/actresses bring on props by dragging it, they act over the top to emphasis the fact they are not able to speak and they also break the 4th wall as it’s like a theater. This obviously evolved.
Early films like these would mainly be shown in carnivals or little events as no one really knew about movies and wasn’t all interested.
Some filmmakers would use the in-camera editing technique where you would stop recording and move the camera to another location (mainly a close up) and then continue recording so it looks like it’s a cut.
I watched this short silenced movie about this woman stealing a baby and then the dog locates the baby. What I noticed within this is the angles the film used. It would sometimes show one scene and then change angle when they were walking down the street to show they were actually moving. This will also show a better view of some woman stealing the baby from the pram. I noticed a lot of different set pieces compared to just one or two, there were plenty in here. I kind of noticed a little passage of time of the long scene of the dog running in different locations. But I could be wrong.
I also learnt about George Melies who accidentally found and started the jump cut. He was an illusionist and used this to his advantage like making a woman disappear in one scene with the jump cut.
Edwin. S Porter pioneered the use of cross cutting in the film “The Great Train Robbery” where there was a scene of people dancing and then instantly cuts to this woman crying over the guy who died at the start.
I also learnt about match on action which is a technique used when a character does an action but then it continues onto another frame/angle.
The Kuleshov effect is a little montage that creates meaning. They get two images with different meanings and then emerge them together to create one whole meaning itself. An example would be a bowl of soup on one scene and then it cuts next to some guy staring down at it, making it seem like he’s looking at the soup being very hungry.
TV and Film Production 