Nira's VFX Blog
A journey through my master

Tag: Cinematography

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Nuke VFX Fundamentals

Week 2: Cinematography Foundation II

This week we continued with cinematography basics but this time more focused on video (moving picture).

A movie is a story told in pictures (moving images) which consists in capturing the light reflected or produced by a subject (exposure). In order to capture the amount of light desired, we will need to take care of the type of lens/optics of the camera (focus), the lens aperture (amount of light let through), the camera shutter (speed of aperture and closing of the lens’ blades), and the digital sensor of the camera that captures and process the light to store it in a digital file.

Depending of the exposure set, the image can be brighter or darker. Generally, the image should be balanced by the mid-tones. If there are too many highlights or whites the image will be over exposed and if there are too many shadows or blacks, the image will be under exposed.

In order to reach the desired exposure value (EV), we will need to take care of the ISO, shutter speed, and aperture. With the ISO, we can change the sensitivity to light and can be measured from 25-6400 or more. The more sensitivity added, the more noise in the picture, so this only should be increased if really necessary. With the aperture of the lens (f), we can add more or less light as well as depth of field (DOF – focal point of an image). If the aperture of the lens is wide, the DOF will decrease (shallow) and more light will come through, whereas if the lens opening is small, the DOF will increase (deep) but the light that comes through will be low. With the shutter speed (how long takes to the blades of the lens to open and close, measured in fractions and seconds), we can expose the sensor to more time of light or less. With a fast shutter speed we can freeze motion in the scene, but with a slow shutter speed we will capture blurred motion instead (more light comes through). In cinema, this is measured in frames per second (fps – frame rate) and depending of how smooth we want the movement to be or more realistic we can make it higher or lower. Shutter angle is used to describe the relation between shutter speed and frame rate in cinema (cinematic motion blur), which has a golden rule that says that shutter speed should be set to double the frame rate.

Another important aspect to take in consideration is the type of focal lens used (distance between top of the lens and image sensor and measured in mm). The shorter focal length, the wider the angle of view and vice versa. Also, the digital file in which we export our video (MP4, MOV, AVI, ProRes, etc), will also determine the quality desired depending on where do we want to reproduce the final video (social media, TV, cinema, etc).

The assignment of this week is to shot 2 to 3 seconds videos from the city (using our personal phone cameras) and put them together in a short video (can add music too). As I live in Cambridge, I decided to show the life in this city which has a slower pace and it is not as big and noisy as it is London.

City life in Cambridge – Week 2 video assignment

Most of the scenery has been filmed with a long shot, since my phone’s zoom has a really low quality and it doesn’t look as neat. However, I tried to add a zoom in and I also used some pans following subjects in movement to give more dynamic to the video. I tried to use diagonals and leading lines in the composition of the frame to add some depth to the frame. Finally, I put it together in Adobe Premier Pro and colour-corrected it to have a consistent style.

Categories
Nuke VFX Fundamentals

Week 1: Cinematography Foundation

In the first session with Gonzalo, we learnt the basics of cinematography such as what is visual story telling and the components needed to simulate an emotional experience.

The professor made clear since the beginning that every shot or take in a movie counts. Also, the director’s requirements need to be met regardless of what style or preference we have and each frame needs to be cohesive with the thematic and style of the movie.

The composition of a scene has to be carefully crafted taking in consideration:

  • Aspect ratio – proportions of the frames depending on what type of screen the film is going to be on.
  • Positioning – where the subjects are placed in the scene, taking in consideration rule of thirds, diagonals, focal points, hierarchy, etc.
  • Lighting – this is possibly one of the most important points to take care in a scene, since if there is no light, there is no scene. It needs to be considered the intensity (brightness), quality (soft or hard light), size of source (for example, small sources have softer light), distance from the subject (the further away from the subject, the harder light obtained), filtering (through diffuser or bouncing), and angle and positioning of the light (key light, fill light and back light are the three basic lights). We could use natural light (from the sun for example) or artificial light (with spotlights for example).
  • Colour – it needs to follow the style of the movie with warmer colours or colder colours (colour temperature measured in Kelvin units). Cameras in general are usually set for tungsten (3200K) or daylight (5600K).
  • Angle of the camera – this can defined the mood of the scene and can give the subject more or less importance. When a high angle is used (camera placed above the eye line), we can transmit weakness, less importance of the subject; and when a low angle is used (camera placed below the eye line), the subject becomes more important and powerful.
  • Camera shots – there are several type of framing that can be used to show the subject on camera: extreme close up, close up, loose close up, tight medium shot, medium shot, medium full shot, and full shot. A closer shot is used to show more detail or intimacy. A wider shot is usually used to situate the audience in the time and place.

In order to put in practice all these concepts, the task for this week is to take a maximum of 9 pictures that show or transmit the concept of ‘time’.

The speed of time

In these pictures I thought in how the time passes throughout the day depending on what are we doing and were we are. For example, when we go to work and we are in a rush or when we are doing an activity that we enjoy, usually time seems to go faster. Therefore, with my DSLR camera, I took several photographies using a closed aperture (f11 in most of the photos), a low ISO (to catch the night contrast and to don’t have much noise in the dark spots) and long exposure (slow shutter speed) in order to catch the light trails of the cars and bicycles passing down the road. I consider that the light trails show the rush of time and they also give movement to a still picture directing the viewer’s eye from one point to another.

In contrast with the rush of time, I also took photos of the stillness of time. For example when we are at home chilling at night time after a long day, time goes slower. I also used long exposure for the building and the lamp’s pictures with a low ISO and closed aperture to keep the contrast between light and shadows. However, for the picture of the moon between the plant leaves, I used a much higher shutter speed since the moon is quite bright and long exposure would result in a more than over exposed picture.

Thirdly, I took several photographies of the moon rising in the sky and put these pictures together in Photoshop to show the pass of time during night time.

Lastly, I also took several pictures of the view in front of my house throughout the day (from sunrise to sunset). In Photoshop, I put them together, showing only a triangular portion of each picture, and creating like this the effect of time passing during the day in the same scene.