Composition Techniques

Composition Techniques are what makes a video go from good to great. The four main types are rule of thirds, leading lines, framing, and unusual angles. When a person takes a picture, the subject is almost always in the center. That can get boring, so we use rule of thirds. It is where you place the subject out to the side, so that it isn't smack dab in the middle. Leading lines in a photo draw the eyes of the viewer to the subject. Often these kinds of shots interest the viewer. When you use framing, you take the subject and use the natural surroundings to frame the subject. Such as trees, or a wall and ceiling. Often people use the same old "take a picture holding the camera level to your shoulders" method. But this can get boring. To make a shot better, you could get low and shoot up at the subject, or get high above it and shoot down. These four simple techniques could make your shots way more interesting to the viewers.

Three Shot Sequences

A sequence is a combination of wide, medium, and close up shots that make a video more pleasing and interesting to the viewers eye. A good shot sequence explains an action or event without the extra stuff. That means you can express more ideas in less time. Long video clips bore the viewer to death. That's not what we want. To create a sequence you need to first identify the action that you want to shoot. Then you need to get the interesting shots. For example if you want to shoot someone scrambling eggs, you could get a wide shot of them cracking the eggs in the bowl. Then you could get a medium shot of them scrambling the eggs in the bowl with a whisk. Lastly, you get the close up of them cooking the eggs in the pan. This combination of shots will not only compress time, but it will catch the viewers eye in a way that one long, boring shot couldn't do.

Practice Story Assignment Reflection

Our most recent project in  my G.T. class was a practice story. We had to get into teams and choose one of us to interview. That person would communicate a story in the video. My team consisted of Claudia Hanson, Gabby Mahoney, and Me. Our story was why Gabby loves dance. We had top notch Cannon cameras and wireless microphones. One of the requirements was B-roll. This is important in telling the story. B-roll is just video over the interviewees voice. We were graded on the sound quality, the storyline, and the video quality. This assignment was just a warm up for what we're about to do next. An interview of one of our elders telling their words of wisdom.

During the process, I thought my team worked well together. Sometimes we disagreed. I feel like we weren't always working great, but then again we never really butted heads. Claudia worked on the transitions. Basically, just adding some voiceovers in between the interview so that the whole thing kind of ties together. Gabby worked on the transcription template. This is a basic outline of how we were going to shoot the video, what questions we were going to ask, and the b-roll or transitions. All of us did the editing in Final Cut Pro X. We were a little late on the deadline, but I feel like the quality of our video was good. Getting B-roll was tough because we didn't have any props and there is only so much we can do with footage of Gabby dancing. 

Overall I believed that this practice story was great practice for what we have coming up. I do think that it prepared us in terms of working together as a team and meeting deadlines. That is the most important part. Even though the audio and video needs to be a priority too, we can't get that stuff done without cooperation and teamwork.