The Basic Principles of Creating Audiovisual Images 2

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Subject guarantor

Jan ŠÍPEK

Name of lecturer(s)

Jan ŠÍPEK

Learning outcomes of the course unit

1. To present students film media as a distinctive manner of interpretation with a rich scale of expression tools.
2. To explain the basic rules of film language
3. To learn to master the camera in order so that any documentarist can understand the role of the cameraman.
4. To introduce the expression tools of film so they demonstrate in direction to guide the shooting of the Original Report and My View (films of the first study-year of the Documentary Dept.)
5. An in this, to not remove from the unlearned the joy of film which they experienced, when they first shot something.

Mode of study

Classes, analysis of film examples, exercises, discussion

Video-exercise example in which the student must formally characterize the type of recording rough out a short situational narrative.

Video-exercise ŠTAFETA

One guide to events: it must contain a scene of a meeting between two people in which something (small or large) is handed over. If the etude is able to include the following list of shots, I'll be thrilled. The film may not have dialogue, edited to the camera.

The meeting must contain these types of shots, the order is not prescribed!

1. Use VC, C, PC, PD, D and VD (or edit all types broadly)

1B. Macro-detail of an eye or ear

1. Panorama (camera leading the view)
2. Motivated movement (camera follows movement)
3. Over-focus (use a lens with a longer distance focus and low shutter number)
4. Distinct view
5. Vertical view
6. Only one zoom which uncovers something for the viewers.
7. A built-in dynamic shot of hands (everything else static)

(Note: by a „built-in shot“ I mean that the choreography in front of the camera and the camera movement is thought through previously. That it is not simply a movement of the camera following someone.)

1. Shot in which takes place on a different plane
2. An unsual shot of the Charles's Bridge.
3. A subjective view.
4. Shot with diagonal composition.
5. Compositoin with an obvious color accent.
6. Reflection (shop window, puddle or something similar).
7. A night shot with a sillhouette
8. A vista (behind a window, across roofs....)

Prerequisites and co-requisites

Basic knowledge of working with a digital camera and videocamera.

Course contents

The subject of interest in film language. Great emphasis will be placed on form: How to shoot....academic studies teach tha form is inseparable from content, so we always ask, why shoot THIS this WAY and no ANOTHER???

Film Language - we will learn to speak through film. To be able to speak, narrate through film is the same as speaking Finnish, or any other foreign language.

To learn a foreign language and write a book in it. Not only to arrange, but to create or completely change it. (A tall order but should be attempted)

Film has avaialble particular manners of narration: and these differ it from theatre, literature, photography, etc. When you don't use these tools of film, then you misuse them for something else: If you mistake it with theatre, literature, or photography then you take away from it what it is. (IT IS FILM). Confusing in this is that film borrows a lot from the aforementioned branches, but this does not mean that it does not stop being what it is.

The noise microphone on a camera is strife with nonsense (example of confusing film with radio)! The camera is not a dictaphone and the synchronus camera is the first nail in the coffin of real (cinematographic, not radio) film. Also, „Do not announce what we will see: Do not narrate, what we saw.“ (Jean-Claud Carriere)

The trouble is in that that everyone understand „cinematically.“

Warning - to understand and to speak are not the same. These are two different abilities.

From childhood we are under the influence of television and film and the internet and this has taught us to understand an audiovisual language/code. It has not taught us how to speak it.

From the beginning we will cover exclusively the static image, or photography. We will be devoted to the basics of image construction. We will cover the basics of composition, angle and breath of take, camera angle (top view, bottom view) and lighting. We move to film in the learning of the basic function of the videocamera - it is possible to cleverly present with it, simulate influential parameters of the film image. After this basic glimpse we will make the first attempts at formulating something through film:

Course aims:

The documentarist if their own crew. To master the camera and be able to link a microphone makes creative and genuine communcations with the cameraman and sound man, and posible makes it possible to substitute for them. The documentarist largely does not stage situations but follows and records that in which, to a larger measure, the cameraman takes part (a situation irrevocably occurs and the cameraman decides for the director as well how to behave in the situation, how to focus the shooting, etc.). Therefore the documentarist must be able to view the object of interest through the camera. Intuitive use of audiovisual preservative leading to the joy of the rough material: All shooting material surprises what happened by coincidene, event pleasantly. A confirmation of the purpose will be when the aforementioned surprise (and joy) drops and keeps an awareness of what occured at the given moment of shooting better and how to do it next time

Recommended or required reading

Recommended literature:

CARRIERE, Jean-Claude: Vyprávět příběh, Národní filmový archiv, 1995. ISBN 80-7004-081-5

JURÁČEK, Pavel: Deník, Národní filmový archiv, 2003. ISBN 80-7004-110-2

KOKOLIA, Vladimír: Slovník Grafiky II., AVU, 2008. ISBN 978-80-87108-08-6

NYKVIST, Sven: Úcta ke světlu, Paseka, 1999. ISBN 807185-268-6

MONACO, James: Jak číst film, Albatros, 2006. ISBN 80-00-01410-6

TRUFFAUT, Francois: Rozhovory Truffaut - Hitchcock, ČS filmový ústav, 1987 (lze sehnat na www.e-antikvariat.com)

VACHEK, Karel: Teorie hmoty, Herrmann a synové, 2004. ISBN neuvedeno

Assessment methods and criteria

Credit is awarded based on:

1. class participation
2. implementation of exercises (video assignment „Relay“ and a documentary video clip)

Overall grading is comprised of 40% for class activity, 60% for exercises (30% for each of the aforementioned exercises).

Conditions for completion of the course: Class participation, completion and presentation of the exercises.

Schedule for winter semester 2018/2019:

The schedule has not yet been prepared

Schedule for summer semester 2018/2019:

• Week view
• List

The subject is a part of the following study plans

• Documentary Film - Bachelor - 1819 (required subject)