Induction
Codes and Conventions
Codes and conventions are a set of guidelines that most films adhere to in order for a piece of media to be identified as the genre it intends to be. Codes and conventions can be categorised in four ways: Symbolic codes, (Setting, Mise en scene, Acting, Colour) Technical codes, (Camerawork, Editing, Audio, Lighting) Written codes, (Printed language, Spoken language) Conventions, (Form conventions, Story conventions, Genre conventions)
For example a horror movie would have lowkey lighting, actors playing fearful characters, extreme close ups and extreme long shots of actors and the villain, respectfully, quick jump cuts, non diegetic sound, red or black text and speech from characters that indicate fear.
The overhang of the house and pillar frames the woman and draws attention to her, leaning on the pillar. This is important because it helps the audience concentrate on the action.
The rule of thirds comes in to play here with the woman and pillar in the middle part of the frame, and the two monuments on the left and right of the frame. The woman takes up most of the sections in the rule of thirds which draws attention to her, which is why the rule of thirds is important.
In this image the leading line is the pillar, which draws the eyes down to the woman.
The frame has symmetrical composition where the image is separated in half with the subject of the image, the woman, in the centre.
Sherlock uses transitions in a much more involved way than most pieces of media by incorporating the transition in to the format of the next frame.
For example in a scene where Sherlock is slapped, the camera travels with his face for a moment before cutting to another scene where he 'wakes up' and shows him reeling from the slap, with the camera traveling in the same fashion.
This immerses the viewer and creates a smooth, striking transition that keeps the viewer engaged.
Big Hero Six has a montage in which there are transitions where opacity introduces the blueprint to the finished product. This gives a sense of progress and time passing and puts an emphasis on the main character's incredible ability to engineer robotics.
180 Degree Rule:
The 180 degree rule is a guideline that controls the on-screen spatial relationship between two characters or between a character or an object. An imaginary line called an axis is placed through the character and the object/other character. This is so that when you are filming multiple shots between a character and another character or object, your audience can follow where everything in the scene is.
Types Of Transition:
1. Painting Transition: This is a transition that turns a painting in to your footage and can be done in reverse. You take your footage and add a CC Plastic effect. You will need to adjust some of the settings on the effect until you get an effect that looks similar to a painting. Then, add a CC Vector Blur and a brushstroke effect to make it look like a hand painted image. To stop glitching while the footage plays with the effects, you go to composition, save frame as which will export the frame as a jpeg. Put the jpeg in your project in to your picture frame and mask out the footage outside the frame. Add an extract effect to the painting and to the footage. Animate the black point and white point at the same time so it reveals your footage.
2. Action Transition: This transition makes you look like you are doing the exact same action in a different place. Measure out the difference in length between the point where you are going to change your shot in the action to the camera. It must be in the exact same spot. Bring the footage in to premiere pro and line the footage up under each other to the two points where the footage is at the same point of action. Use the opacity to help line it up to the point that you get a seamless transition.
3. Scene Jump: This is a similar transition to the action transition, except you crop your other piece of footage in to the same frame to look like you are moving through the two pieces of footage. You can add a turbulent displace effect for emphasis.
4. Shatter Punch: This transition makes the footage look like it is shattering like glass after being punched. Take some footage of you or an actor punching towards the screen and put it in After Effects. Add the Shatter effect and set your view to rendered, set your pattern in shape to glass and adjust the properties to your liking. Animate the footage so the shatter happens when the fist is at its closest point to the camera.
5. Frame Fall: This is similar to 2 and 3 in the sense that you are passing through two frames, except this time you are falling. You need footage of you 'falling' off frame and then jumping in to frame from above. Position the falling footage on top and the landing footage on the bottom so that you animate in a way that makes the two bodies look connected. As the body falls, animate the top footage upwards so that it goes off screen as the bottom footage becomes the main footage with your actor landing.
6. The Pinch: This is a transition that relies more on effects that makes you look as though you are pinching the footage. Film footage of you pinching the camera, put it in after effects and use spiralizer to add a warped effect. After, add an Optics Compensation, check reverse lens distortion, then animate the view so it moves up and back so that it looks like you are pinching the footage. Add the footage you want to transition to and add the same optics compensation effect as you go in to the footage. Animate the field of view up, then to zero, blending the opacity slightly until it looks seamless.
Compositing Experiment
He. Never until this night have I been stirred.
The elaborate starlight throws a reflection
On the dark stream,
Till all the eddies gleam;
And thereupon there comes that scream
From terrified, invisible beast or bird:
Image of poignant recollection.