This morning, going through the rules and conventions of news packages has helped me to get a more in-depth understanding of what elements go into a single section of a live show.
News Packages
I’ve noted everything that I’ve noticed to do with the fundamental details after doing some quick research on these websites: queensbury school, bbc bitesize and Journalism Now.
The main rules that I saw for most news packages included being around 1:15-2:00 minutes, natural sound, B-roll, PTC and the fact that they would be pre-recorded.
The most interesting detail I learned from this session was the term ‘Vox Pops’, meaning ‘voice of the people’. It’s something that I see whenever I watch the news or something similar on YouTube, as my mind goes to a vast majority of Max Fosh’s videos, such as ‘Speaking To The Public About Literally ANYTHING‘, where the entire video comprises of him having conversations or interviewing the public. Although I have been watching so many examples of Vox Pops, I never realised the importance or context of it, especially in news reports and packages. I’ll definitely be picking apart elements of clips that I watch even further after learning about so many that go into a 2 minute segment.
On the subject of live shows, I’m now aware of a role with the title ‘vision mixer’, who works along side the director during a broadcast to switch between the cameras at the right time in real-time. It’s a job I would be terrified to have due to the considerable amount of pressure they would have, but makes me have great respect for the people who do this.
Cinematography & Technology
Wanting to become a cinematographer, there’s a lot I need to learn and practise. Today was an eye-opener to the fact that there is so much technical and theoretical knowledge that is needed to do this successfully, after recapping as well as going over new aspects of cameras, and it’s been a push to me to really develop my understanding thoroughly.
The components within different camera lenses are quite complicated to get my head around, but are incredibly important to understand why you’re doing something to the camera settings or lenses when filming. After today’s lesson with Attila, I know what happens, and why, with each camera lens and only want to go more in depth with other technical parts of filming. Zoom lenses have many lens elements – conventionally 3 moving optical groups and 1 stationary. Each of these can contain multiple lens elements which are fixed together to form the groups. Unlike the zoom lens, fixed-focal (or prime) lenses have a lot less moving moving (and usually overall number of) elements which, although give it a fixed focal length, also provide a sharper image – this is because the lower number of lenses, causing less diffraction.
I’ve heard of S-Log and REC-709 for the first time that I can recall this afternoon, and knowing about them has given me more of an insight as to why exactly images turn out more or less detailed (on the colour side of things). Recording with REC-709 enabled saves the colours as they’re seen through the camera, whereas S-Log takes in as much information recorded by the sensor as possible, resulting in more variety of shades but with much less colour saturation, allowing a colourist to create a highly dynamic palette.
Sources:
http://www.adaptall-2.com/articles/InsideZoomLens/InsideZoomLens.html
https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/101927/why-do-prime-lenses-have-multiple-lens-elements