Week 9: MOVEMENT IS THE FOCUS OF THE PRODUCTION PROCESS

In this Media Arts tutorial, we explored the composition, time, space and lighting to communicate story principles. We learnt about movement through the Wink or Assassin game. In this game, players make an inner circle and an outer circle. The players stand in a circle so that each player can see each other players' faces. The Assassin must look around and discreetly wink or raise his eyebrow to another player. The player that receives the wink is the victim. The victim must then run to the Assassin. The player stands behind the victim that see the Assassin's wink try to tap the victim's shoulder to stop her or him from running to the Assassin. If the victim is tapped, the person at the back will be the new Assassin. If the Assassin is able to successfully get the victim, the Assassin wins. The victim will become the new Assassin. And the game continues. This game is a really good activity to teach kids about the important of camera movement in film and video production.
 In the tutorial, we also learnt about the most popular rule in filming is the Rule of Thirds. It works like this: imaginary lines are drawn dividing the image into thirds both horizontally and vertically. You place important elements of your composition where these lines intersect ( diagram 1). Using the Rule of Thirds helps produce nicely balanced images. Also, as you have to position things relative to the edges of the frame it helps get rid of unnecessary objects. The division of the composition into nine equal parts and aligning a subject with these points create more tension, energy and interest in the composition.
In the tutorial, we also explored camera angle as it helps to determine the point of view of a camera. We explored  depth of field, close up shot, long shot, medium shot, zooming, angle of view, low-angle shot, panning, point of view shot by examining the still images extracted from a film.

I think this learning experience is really engaging and meaningful. I cant wait to teach the children how to make a script, operate a camera, choose which camera angles for the film, how much they can shoot, how to evaluate their composition using the rule of thirds, and how to edit or add special effects such as lighting later on the computer.