The Innovation Hubs

The Toronto Public Library (TPL) has recently launched a program to bring new technologies and technological skills into a range of different Toronto communities. I’ve been delighted to be involved in this program, as one of the TPL’s Innovators in Communities. It means that I have spent the past two months travelling around Toronto, leading a series of hands-on filmmaking workshops. 

In my blog post from last week, I outlined some of the information covered in my first two workshop sessions. Today’s blog post will focus on some of the information I covered in the third workshop session, which was called Shooting Your Film.

Chanda demonstrates some principles of shooting at The Spot

In this session, we talked about what makes a good shot, how to shoot a simple scene, and how to conduct an interview.

In my mind, there are three elements to a good shot: lighting, focus, and framing.

Lighting might be the most problematic element for a first-time filmmaker working with consumer equipment. There are several lighting related issues to consider:

1) The Amount of Light: Often, our shots are too dark or lit so brightly as to look flat. A range of highlights and shadows is the ideal, with the main subject of an image being lit in a way that makes it easy to see. We can change the lighting in a shot in two ways: by adjusting the lights themselves (moving them around, turning them on, or turning them off) or by adjusting settings on the camera (including the aperture, the ISO, and—on a still camera—the shutter speed).

2) The Direction of the Light: If the main source of lighting is behind you, you might cast a shadow on your subject. If the main source of lighting is in front of you, your subject may be in silhouette or you may get lens flares on your image. If the main source of lighting is to the side, these problems will be reduced. This doesn’t mean that you should never shoot into the light or have the light at your back. It just means that you should be aware of the direction of the light as you are shooting, and reposition yourself and the camera if it’s problematic.

3) The Colour of Light: Different types of light have different colours. Daylight is blue. Indoor conventional bulbs tend to be orange. Flourescent lights tend to be green. When you move from one location to another, you need to tell your camera that you’re in a different place and the colour of the light may have changed. You do this by setting the white balance, which adjusts how your camera sees the colours in a given lighting situation. The colours of light might also mix in a room—if you are shooting towards a window, the light streaming in might appear blue, but if there’s also a light on in the room, that might appear orange. Be aware of different light colours in a scene and if it’s problematic for you, try eliminating one light source. 

Focus is a fairly simple element in making a good shot. The basic rule to remember is that you should keep your subject in focus, unless there’s a specific reason not to. The best way to focus is to pick your camera’s placement, relative to your subject. Once you have your shot framed up, zoom in as far as your camera will allow and turn the focus ring back and forth until your subject looks as sharp as possible. Train your lens on the part of the subject an audience member would be most likely to look at. For faces, we often focus on the subject’s eyelashes. For inanimate objects with text, we would make the text look sharp. Once you have your focus, zoom out until you are back where you started.

Finally, framing is a key element to making a good shot. There are some basic guidelines about conventional shot sizes, how to frame a shot by following the rule of thirds, and paying attention to the background in a shot. Here’s a good resource highlighting some principles of great framing.

The workshop participants seemed to really enjoy this session. As did I. We found ourselves playing with cameras, getting down on the floor to see how changing an angle of a shot could change the whole feeling of a shot, and blocking out scenes to see how they would be shot from several different
perspectives for editing purposes. And my next blog post, on November 29^th, will talk about just that: Editing Your Film.

Chanda Chevannes is currently an Innovator in Communities with the Toronto Public Library. She is an award-winning Canadian documentary filmmaker with The People’s Picture Company and a member of the Documentary Organization of Canada. Her most recent film is Living Downstream, a feature documentary about the environmental links to cancer.