Bruno Chavez on the Summer film School camera workshop
On Wednesday afternoon, on the first week of our film
summer school, we had a short camera workshop with camera operator, Alia
Bianco. This was to get us accustomed
to working and filming with the camera we were using. Firstly we were told how
to set everything up, starting with the tripod and then the actual camera. This
was actually more complicated then most people expected, and after a while we
started understanding that there was more to filming than pointing and
shooting. An example of some of the
things we had to do in preparation were; setting the level of the camera with
the bubble on the tripod, white balancing (making sure that what is white looks
white on the camera), colour bars and tone, cleaning and checking the lens. And
if this didn’t seem enough to us we then had to set the focus on our actors by
focusing on their eye. Later, we split into two groups; one went to film a
short silent film, and the other discussed camera positions for our film with
Alia. This prepared me and Huw to be the camera operators for the film.
