Innovative Camera Movements

Tracking Shot Taken from Inside Car

For health and safety on this shoot please click link. 

All of the footage on this post took inspiration directly from a handful of Neuvelle Vague movies, as it is this style of film making we are aiming to achieve and is stated in our original brief. 

While thinking about the possible shots we could experiment with on this particular shoot, we decided that one of the group could try out a tracking shot taken from the inside of a car. Long tracking shots are something that are used throughout the new wave, such as at the end of Truffaut's 400 Blows. Shooting from the car has particular reference to Godard's A Bout de Souffle (as is with the inspiration for the escalator shots).


MVI 0051 from Sammie Masters-Hopkins on Vimeo.


As it was not my group that went out to film the particular piece of footage I can't comment on the ease at which the shot could be taken, but from what I understand from talking to the group the most difficult part of shooting this was maintaing good focus and keeping a strong composition within the frame. This is something that can be seen from viewing the short clips they shot. For example, as the road is not a perfectly smooth surface, any bumps could cause a car wing mirror to appear briefly with the frame. The clip I have chosen is one of the most successful of this type and manages to avoid having any of the car coming into the shot.

What you can also see form the above footage, is how under-exposed it is. This is due to the fact that, to keep the image in focus, the aperture was set to an f/22, this causes less light to get into the camera due to the the narrow lens opening. When setting the aperture to this, it is vital that the shutter speed and ISO are correctly adjusted to counteract the small amount of the light getting into the camera. In this case, it would have been best to change the ISO to a more sensitive setting, the higher light sensitivity would have avoided this under-exposure. I say altering the ISO would be best, as due to the nature of the footage, there is a lot of movement, therefore slowing the shutter speed would have caused the footage to be very blurred. Shots such as these require a fairly higher shutter speed, to capture as many shots per frame as possible.

Below are some screen shots of ones that did not work quite so well.

Here you can see the wing mirror in the bottom right
hand corner. This screen shot also gives an example of
how keeping focus can be difficult, as you see
the focus is quite crisp.

This clip it is quite clear to see, again, the wing mirror
creeping into the shot.

Location 2

One of the shots that were taken on the this shoot proved to be very successful, especially with regards to the 'innovative' camera movements that the brief specifies in order to maintain a close influence from the French New Wave. 

Merry-Go-Round

For the health and safety from this shoot (below footage) please click link. 


MVI 9780 from Sammie Masters-Hopkins on Vimeo.

This shot was taken on a merry-go-round in the park location chosen for that day. The shot was achieved by getting the subject to stand on one side and then setting up the camera and tripod on the opposite side. We then spun the merry-go-round with both the camera and subject stood upon it, allowing the subject to remain completely in focus while the background spun around it. This kind of shot links in well with the idea of the french new wave influence as we are making use of objects etc that all ready move, much like the way in which Godard places the camera on the car and the escalator. The idea of achieving such shots with such a low budget reflects the work of the new wave directors and therefore, maintains a link to a our brief.

After the success of this particular shot, we aim to achieve something similar in all our other shoots, to create footage that is inspired by the neuvelle vague style as well as coming with our ways of ways to cleverly move the camera while focussing on a subject, to give our film an innovative style.

Something that we can take from this shoot, is that though this shot has worked well, the aperture (deeper discussion of aperture in a future post) is an element that we can work on the next time we try this kind of shot. In this shot, if we were to alter the aperture, to say an f/4, we could achieve a more shallow depth of field, creating a more stylised look by keeping the subject in focus and the background out of focus.

Shots From Escalator and Lift

For the health and safety outline from this shoot  (below footage) please click link. 

As we were in a shopping centre we decided to take advantage of the escalators, to see if we could shoot any interesting footage by placing the camera and subject onto the moving platform. The initial idea was to almost imitate the scene from A Bout de Souffle (Godard). We shot the subject moving up and down the escalators from a few different angles (though I feel more would have given us a better variety to work which is something we should consider for future filming, particularly when it comes to filming the final footage). We achieved this footage by using a hand-held technique and having the camera several steps in front or behind the subject whilst travelling on the escalator. The result offers a smooth tracking shot, at a consistent distance from the subject.

Another technique we experimented with, was the idea of placing the camera inside a lift and shooting through the glass panels whilst the lift descended, we thought this possible due to glass doors that this particular lift had. On attempting this shot, we soon realised it would not work quite as we hoped. Though the doors are glass, the platform etc on the outside got in the way of actually seeing any activity on the outside of the lift, defeating the object of the shot entirely. As you can see from the clip below. I feel this particular experiment has potential, perhaps with an entirely glass lift it could work. This idea of experimenting with new techniques and making the most out of what little budget there is to work with, is a string connection to the new wave movement.





The two pieces of footage below, are two different angles that we tried whilst shooting on the escalator. This definitely turned out to be a fairly successful experiment and we will definitely consider using such a shot in the final final, something that I feel could be worked on for the next time would be the composition and framing of the shot to ensure that we stick as much as possible to the rule of thirds and leading lines rule etc. This should hopefully give us a more professional looking finish as well as a stylised feel due to the use of innovative camera movement. The camera work is something that Godard's Breathless inspired us try out, this keeps in with the new wave style we are trying to achieve. This, as well as the fact we are shooting with a very low budget  and the subject within the footage is a non-actor, keeps us in line with our brief.

This is a screen shot of the scene we imitated from Godard's A Bout de Souffle

The footage below, off the subject travelling down the escalator, is shot with a narrow aperture, recognisable from the focus of the image. to ensure that the image was correctly lit, we had to ensure we adjusted the other settings in relation to this aperture. The shopping centre in which we were filming was very well lit, therefore the narrow lens opening was not too much of a problem, so we simply had to up the ISO just slightly.
One thing that is definitely notable and could be improved, is the position of the camera behind the subject, if we were to have the subject a little more central to the shot, the over the shoulder style shot would have worked much better and the entire balance of the image would be better, improved the footage as a whole.



MVI 3018 from Sammie Masters-Hopkins on Vimeo.

The clip in which the subject is travelling up the escalator (below), and we can see her face, is fairly well framed, the escalator runs directly down the middle of the frame, balancing the image nicely and the lines of the escalator direct nicely to the edge of the frame. However, the actual angle of the camera doesn't allow for the subject to be central to the image, i feel the camera angle is too high, therefore we do not see much of the subjects face. Definitely something that can be improved for the next shoot in this way. I also feel that the subject herself, is begins too dark though the rest of the shot is well lit, perhaps the use of a reflector would have improved this, as changing any camera tech settings (aperture/ISO/shutter speed) would have risked over-exposing the rest of image.

MVI 3019 from Sammie Masters-Hopkins on Vimeo.

This piece of footage (below)was shaken during our shoot in Oxford. As we tried to experiment as much as possible during this shoot to maintain as much footage as we could, we opted here for a piece shot at an oblique angle to see what kind of effect this would give off. This unusually camera style is, in some ways reflective of the New Wave as it uses a different technique to a mainstream movie. However, it does take the image into a more surreal feel and New Wave tends to stick to realism, due to its context of society etc.



MVI 6393 from Sammie Masters-Hopkins on Vimeo.

For the health and safety from the shoot (above footage) please click link.